Monday, February 11, 2013

Beginner's Agility Week 4

I am a bad blogger. I apologize to everyone who was waiting on my next post. *crickets, am I right?* I am bogged down with school and a new job. I am now working at Pet Supplies "Plus" which is fun but I still have to finish up at my other, waitressing job. Which means for the next two weeks I will be working two jobs and also attend school. Blahahahahaha... dying inside.

In week 4, Pepper was not the perfect animal he almost always is. He was wild! For all of class. It could have stemmed from him not really eating dinner before. All kinds of crazy nonsense went on when the lease came off.

Puppy parkour is not allowed in class.

We introduced the really, really low teeter. And also the A-frame. Pepper loves that low A-frame. Its a really nice A-frame considering it is covered in little rubber granules instead of just being plain old wood. Pepper scaled that thing real quick. And repeatedly wanted to go over it regardless of wether or not I wanted him to go on it.

The trainers also thought it would be a great idea to treat Pepper for doing some really easy things. The lowered teeter was so easy and he kept getting treated for jumping up and down on it. The other dogs needed the treats because the teeter was scary to them. Pepper was like, "This is soooo easy + treats from a fanny-pack = They always give me snacks from their fanny-pack for easy things!" This led to some interesting begging behavior.


All those wonderful sits right in front of the trainer? That would be Pepper doing extremely polite begging. Naughty dog...

Week 5 was better considering I asked the trainers to NEVER treat my dog. He doesn't need it and it teaches him that anyone in the ring will be a treater. He needs to focus on me and me only. Especially with our trial coming up.

2 comments:

  1. Hi there!

    Nice to know the improvement of your pet. I have a question, is a dog ramp useful if you are going to teach new tricks for a puppy or let's say a young dog? Usually dog ramps are only used as steps for big vehicles for dogs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can use a ramp as a training tool for agility. I would actually suggest using a plank (12' long X 12" wide) lying flat on the ground. This plank later translates to the teeter, dog walk, and to the A-frame. I taught Pepper the teeter by ramping the teeter plank up to a bucket or table thereby decreasing the actual movement of the plank. After he was comfortable doing that, I let the teeter fall slightly onto something a little bit lower. Its kind of tough to explain in words but I promise I will make a "How-To-Train the Teeter" post soon!

      Delete