Motion Component Games and Teeter Work

We're still here! I may not be blogging (mostly because I have run out of pictures and hate my camera but can't get a new one) but we're still practicing.

It's somewhat un-nerving to be out practicing agility in the "country" (at Wet Noses last night) and have the coyotes start up howling sounding like they're just beyond eyesight in the adjacent field. If it weren't for the fenced agility field we would have been outta there then and there!

Motion component games have been a huge part of Spencer's training. What is a component game? It's making a component of a behavior into a fun game away from your finished behavior so that the dog LOVES to do it. Then, when you chain it all together you get a more enthusiastic response and a better finished behavior since hopefully your dog didn't learn (or more accurately, you didn't teach) anything you didn't want to see as part of the finished behavior.

Take for example the weave poles. If you teach by luring a dog through the poles you build several things you don't want to see into the performance;
1) Your body position is what tells the dog what to do and the dog's job/criteria are very unclear to them.
2) The dog learns to do the weaves very slowly and it is difficult to speed them up as you have built this into the performance.

As well, if the wheels should fall off somewhere down the road, you can work on particular games away from the finished behavior to "fix" it instead of rehearsing that behavior you don't want to see repeated. Bailing off the teeter before the pivot point anyone?!

But, back to Spencer.

He can wobble disc with the best of em, okay, well maybe just the best of thechihuahuas. Both extension (front feet on one disc, back feet on another) and compression (both sets of feet, same disc.) He can even balance on 2 discs stacked on top of each other.

Upping the ante with a travel plank on balance discs also poses no problem. Walk up it, walk down it, turn around in the middle of it. Not a problem!

Small ghetto wobble board, nary a issue. He'll bounce onto it and then spin around to grab his tug toy. I need a larger one though - this one is a little too small.

Confidence running full tilt across a plank, fantastic. I have a hard time beating him across the dog walk - he loves it!

Now for the hard part - the teeter. Last night was all about the teeter. With a high table under each end to reduce the motion, we practiced driving across the pivot point into end position. Super high value food rewards and then break to have a party with yellow ball. He noticed the pivot but didn't bail off of the teeter.

I also made a point of interspersing the teeter work with dog walk and a frame work. The frame to just mix it up, but the dog walk to make a point that it is NOT like the teeter. I've seen a lot of teeter nervous dogs end up with issues on the dog walk since they look similar. Not a problem though!

Since he "noticed" the pivot, the drop was reduced. What I should see before I up the difficulty is no fear across the pivot. Since he noticed, it's back to more extreme wobble board work before we work that particular teeter game again.

Slowly we're working our way through the content of the contact course.

What I'm happy with is how he will still work his way through something, despite being worried or stressed. This is the second time this week he handled stressful situation well and bounced back from the worry to continue working with me - which is huge! I couldn't believe how well he handled crazy barking dogs on Sunday, and being handled/held by a "stranger." He was concerned, but we moved away from the action a little bit and he would offer play and tug if I really worked for it.