First, the teeter update. Apparently turkey is all it took. Lexi is doing the teeter in the living room every which way she can think of (it's currently at around 18" high). She'll jump on one end, get into position. She'll even turn around and go right back to the other end (though I try not to encourage that!) Anyways, this is the Lexi that I know, whose motto is "the world is my playground!" And that's exactly how I want her to feel about the teeter. Next steps are to raise it to full height (probably in a day or two) and then sloooowly start to alter the tipping point using weights.
And since we don't have any tricks on video, I thought I'd share this fun one from November. I got this little robot hamster for Christmas the year before and have discovered that the dogs (mostly Lexi) hate it! Bentley just loves any excuse to bark!
Showing posts with label TBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TBC. Show all posts
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Alphabet Drills and a Teeter Update
For Christmas I got the Nancy Gyes Alphabet Drills book. It is AWESOME. I will never be looking for sequences to practice ever again. Just one letter can keep you busy for weeks. I love that each set up is simple and small enough for a medium-sized yard. I should also point out that the first thing that Bentley did was eat the packaging around the DVD and ruined it. Nice.
Anyways, here's a quick video of letter A, AKA box drills (I'm behind on videos, and this one was taken right after Christmas)
Thought I'd give a quick teeter update. This evening we lowered the teeter and tried to work more independent driving. Jonathan reported that she would do it if he amped her up, ran with her, or encouraged her, but was less likely to do so if he just stood there, even with cheese on the end. I decided to see if she would push herself more for turkey, and that's what we used this evening (just a note that each session is very short, maybe 10 reps?) She had no issue going to the end. A couple times I held the teeter in place and let her eat turkey out of my hand as I held it, and then dropped it as she continued to eat. She had no issue with that (too busy eating to notice, I think!)
In class tonight she did the teeter on the first pass (and off of a forward send, which has been a scenario where she's opted to go around before). I filled our trainer in on the issue and she felt that we were doing the right thing, just that I pushed her too hard by holding it immediately. She recommended changing it just slightly every other day or so (by 1-2 lbs of weight). I didn't think of it, but she made the point that if the teeter usually starts to tip right before she steps in the yellow, and I held it until she got to the end, I essentially changed the tipping point by 36" (the size of the contact zone). That's a HUGE change.
Diana (my favorite blogging friend over at http://4dogcraziness.blogspot.com/) recommended that we try the two table method, and I like that idea. But, we don't have two tables here...in fact we don't even have one! But, I'm going to try to set this up during our building rentals this month to change up our methods a little bit.
Thanks to those that have contacted me with suggestions!
Anyways, here's a quick video of letter A, AKA box drills (I'm behind on videos, and this one was taken right after Christmas)
Thought I'd give a quick teeter update. This evening we lowered the teeter and tried to work more independent driving. Jonathan reported that she would do it if he amped her up, ran with her, or encouraged her, but was less likely to do so if he just stood there, even with cheese on the end. I decided to see if she would push herself more for turkey, and that's what we used this evening (just a note that each session is very short, maybe 10 reps?) She had no issue going to the end. A couple times I held the teeter in place and let her eat turkey out of my hand as I held it, and then dropped it as she continued to eat. She had no issue with that (too busy eating to notice, I think!)
In class tonight she did the teeter on the first pass (and off of a forward send, which has been a scenario where she's opted to go around before). I filled our trainer in on the issue and she felt that we were doing the right thing, just that I pushed her too hard by holding it immediately. She recommended changing it just slightly every other day or so (by 1-2 lbs of weight). I didn't think of it, but she made the point that if the teeter usually starts to tip right before she steps in the yellow, and I held it until she got to the end, I essentially changed the tipping point by 36" (the size of the contact zone). That's a HUGE change.
Diana (my favorite blogging friend over at http://4dogcraziness.blogspot.com/) recommended that we try the two table method, and I like that idea. But, we don't have two tables here...in fact we don't even have one! But, I'm going to try to set this up during our building rentals this month to change up our methods a little bit.
Thanks to those that have contacted me with suggestions!
Teeter Boot Camp
Well, this isn't going to be as easy as I thought!
Lexi has had a teeter issue for several trials now. Sometimes she does it, sometimes she doesn't. She's had this issue since as far back as I can remember. We've retrained the teeter probably 3 times (basically just starting over and rebuilding confidence) and we're still not progressing. It seems like 1 step forward 2 steps back.
It's clearly a confidence issue. She knows the end criteria and I don't even remember EVER having to correct her for coming off the teeter, or flying off, or somehow or other not making her criteria (which is 4-on). But, when a teeter doesn't do what she expects (typically it's when she finds a really heavy teeter that doesn't drop when she immediately gets to the end, or even vice versa), she freaks out and avoids it for the next who knows how long.
We've been teaching her the teeter using Wendy Pape's method (breaking it down into its components, bang, height, position, release, etc...) I'm not sure if that was a contributing factor or not because the issue didn't show up until she was spooked for a reason, or even no reason.
I think I knew all along what needed to be done, but it doesn't sound like much fun. Stuart confirmed my suspicions, and we were off to teeter boot camp. We borrowed a teeter from a friend and it now resides in our living room (oh if my non-dog friends could see me now!) and Lexi is going to learn to get into position at different tipping points using weights.
I thought it would be easy. But on the first attempt, she was weirded out by equipment in the house, and we had to start with just the bang and getting into position just on the down side. Well, we moved on past that pretty quickly (I should also note it is not at full height) and went on to doing the whole thing. When we originally retrained Stuart told us to not encourage her, but to allow her to find the tipping point on her own. That is VERY hard to do as she'll go halfway up, decide it's not doing what she wants, and come back and get into position on the side that's already on the ground. I'm trying not to lure her as I want her to think about it, but I keep thinking that if I lure her, maybe she'll realize it's not so scary.
She did it fine last night, and so this morning I decided to up the criteria and sometimes hold the teeter so she would have to run to the end before it moved. SETBACK! After I did that once, she didn't want to do it again. I resorted to luring, and she still wasn't interested. If my girl isn't interested in squeeze cheese, then I know I've pushed her too far (bad mom!) so we took a break and did something fun for cheese. When Jonathan gets home we're going to have to lower the teeter even more and work on going to the end.
I guess I'm just not sure how to fix this if she's going to get worried every time she gets to the end and it doesn't move and we have to start over...any advice?
Lexi has had a teeter issue for several trials now. Sometimes she does it, sometimes she doesn't. She's had this issue since as far back as I can remember. We've retrained the teeter probably 3 times (basically just starting over and rebuilding confidence) and we're still not progressing. It seems like 1 step forward 2 steps back.
It's clearly a confidence issue. She knows the end criteria and I don't even remember EVER having to correct her for coming off the teeter, or flying off, or somehow or other not making her criteria (which is 4-on). But, when a teeter doesn't do what she expects (typically it's when she finds a really heavy teeter that doesn't drop when she immediately gets to the end, or even vice versa), she freaks out and avoids it for the next who knows how long.
We've been teaching her the teeter using Wendy Pape's method (breaking it down into its components, bang, height, position, release, etc...) I'm not sure if that was a contributing factor or not because the issue didn't show up until she was spooked for a reason, or even no reason.
I think I knew all along what needed to be done, but it doesn't sound like much fun. Stuart confirmed my suspicions, and we were off to teeter boot camp. We borrowed a teeter from a friend and it now resides in our living room (oh if my non-dog friends could see me now!) and Lexi is going to learn to get into position at different tipping points using weights.
I thought it would be easy. But on the first attempt, she was weirded out by equipment in the house, and we had to start with just the bang and getting into position just on the down side. Well, we moved on past that pretty quickly (I should also note it is not at full height) and went on to doing the whole thing. When we originally retrained Stuart told us to not encourage her, but to allow her to find the tipping point on her own. That is VERY hard to do as she'll go halfway up, decide it's not doing what she wants, and come back and get into position on the side that's already on the ground. I'm trying not to lure her as I want her to think about it, but I keep thinking that if I lure her, maybe she'll realize it's not so scary.
She did it fine last night, and so this morning I decided to up the criteria and sometimes hold the teeter so she would have to run to the end before it moved. SETBACK! After I did that once, she didn't want to do it again. I resorted to luring, and she still wasn't interested. If my girl isn't interested in squeeze cheese, then I know I've pushed her too far (bad mom!) so we took a break and did something fun for cheese. When Jonathan gets home we're going to have to lower the teeter even more and work on going to the end.
I guess I'm just not sure how to fix this if she's going to get worried every time she gets to the end and it doesn't move and we have to start over...any advice?
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