Here is the latest training session.

I added the up plank to the table set up from the end of the last post. I tried her on it one time that I didn't tape about a week ago. For the most part she did ok with this, she had a couple of really good hits. I think her striding was thrown off because she was trying to avoid hitting the spot where the 24" table met the 26" picnic table and that was probably close to were she would naturally put her first stride. Her solution was to take one short stride and then clear the picnic table and land on the down plank. I think she thought that was too hard, so she did manage to figure out a second place to stride on the picnic table.

After this session was over, I added some more foam pieces underneath of the carpeting on the 24" table, this now makes both of the tables even. I will tape another session of that set up as soon as the snow from this morning melts off of it a bit more.

Running contact Journal thus far...yeah I know I am way behind!

After USDAA Nationals, I talked to Rosanne DeMascio and we had a couple of lessons were we just tried to get Cheetah to run, it worked some, but I figured I should go back to the beginning and really try to do some of the Trkman foundation steps. Last February when I got the new rubberized DW, I started it, but I didn't have very much room in my basement to work on it and it didn't seem to be working very well. So as I am want to do, I ended up reverting back to a 2o/2o and trying to muddle through with the contacts. I really worked on her teeter and that is making good progress, but I don't think we will ever be completely done working on that.


Anyway, I first tried to use the electronic touch board that I have, and that proved to have limited success. As both Silvia Trkman and Rosanne pointed out, too much thinking on her part is not what we want.







So I played around with a couple of other things, and then I got out my teeter plank and propped it up on a cinder block and ( at first with the hit it board, then later sessions without it. I like the ones without it much better. The other thing that I think really made her think was the target out in front. She thought she was being proofed. So I spent a couple of sessions ( not taped ) where I introduced her to a frisbee upside down like a bowl with some kibble in it. ( She loves working for kibble - freak that she is!) then I held her collar and revved her up and said "ready - ready - get it! I did that for her dinner a couple of times and that seemed to get her out of the proofing mindset!




Then I ran her over the see saw plank on a cinder block a few sessions, always giving her at least one cookie already in the frisbee and throwing several more in if I liked the rep- if I didn't she got 1 cookie and I said "nice try - try again"

Then I put it on a 16" table with her running from a tunnel. I did that 2 different times, one at the love on a leash training building and the other at Hunter Mountain Farm where I teach a couple of days a week too. I liked that one of the boards had slats and the other one didn't, because I didn't want that to be a factor.



I have been putting foam ( the puzzle piece type flooring foam) underneath it to help stabilize it, since she is NOT going to run over a plank confidently if it is wobbly.

The next session I put the table up to 24" and tried the same set up, but her confidence went down since she smacked her leg trying to time the jump up with the next stride forward. so I didn't do too much with this set up.



I have decided that she needs more room to run at this height, so I placed my 24" table at home up against the picnic table, added some old carpet for traction and added a jump to send her to an viola! a working set up for this height. I am still putting the target out about 15-20' out and putting some kind of treat pre-loaded and then following up with more if I like the rep. I am not moving too much my self yet, mostly because I have to send her to the loop before I can put the treat down, then by that time she is on her way back and I don't want to be running towards her while she is running full speed down the plank.



My next step is adding the up plank to the picnic table set up and start to do a little bit of turning off of it. I don't want to go too quickly with that, I want the running full tilt to be pretty set before I start asking her to do any collection on it. I will also add a jump between the down plank and the frisbee, so she gets used to looking for obstacles after and not just the target.

I promise to keep you posted more frequently.

Let me tell ya what I want - what I really, really want...is yellow!

Over the last little while, I have been working on a 4otf in practice with Cheetah. It has been fairly successful and has been very successful for several students dogs. The problem really lies with the simple fact that there is only 1 criteria that I care about. I don't care if you stop 2o/2o, 4otf, 1rto, or belly slide through I WANT YELLOW!! After pondering this sad fact of my psyche, combined with the added admission that I am a adrenaline junkie and that only leads to one conclusion....you guessed it. I must figure out how to get a running dw/aframe on cheetah and NOT get it on the teeter. So here we go - running contacts take 4,563 ( actually I guess its only 4 or 5)

Poor Cheetah, she's going "what are we doing with wood today you psycho-path?" Luckily, she is game for whatever as long as there is a cookie involved. At last weekends trial, (see video)

She missed 2 dogwalks and it was rubberized. I really liked it and I needed one that I could lower and use flat on the ground if I was going attempt to train running contacts from the Dogwalk perspective. Up until now, I'd only looked at the aframe and that was not real successful. So with the fact that my current dogwalk was homemade on saw horses and couldn't be lowered and was getting unstable to the point that I held my breath when she got on it ( many months ago when there was no snow on the ground) I decided to take the considerable plunge and buy the dogwalk.

I stored most of it in the shed until we have a spring thaw, but I took one plank down in the basement and for the last week, I have been doing Silvia trkman's method with her. I only have 26 feet across, so it is not really enough room to "run" off of it but it is at least giving her the idea. I am using the clicker and feeding mostly from my hand, although I have put her food bowl down when we were on the last rep and she did go to it- if I said "get it" as she was going across the board. Last summer I had played briefly with a plank on the ground and her food bowl, but it made her stop in a 2o/2o - even though it was 20 feet away. Now, she is doing better with that. I just did 12 reps and recorded them finally, so I will get them up asap.