Free Falling and Powering Ahead

Last nights goals were pretty much accomplished to some degree, depending on what I was doing. And I have a couple more things to challenge my self with I learned. These are the MAIN things I took from outreach this weekend, and I will be focusing on, this is ust a snip it of what I did last night.

FREE FALLING:
Gyp loves the teeter. Since she was the kind of dog who was worried about movement etc when I got her, we made sure that she would have no teeter issue. Fast forward to now. We have done LOTS of surfing, running to the top with no teeter movement all while not jumping off, and jumping on to it and hitting it to the ground her self. So she has learned to stay on the teeter until it hits the ground. She does not know about a teeter tip point in the middle, so as not to slow her down. The part where we are lacking is a CLEAR end behaviour, she had been hitting it to the ground and leaving, now that she is even more confident, she has no problem, kicking it down with her back feet and taking off, so technically she is correct. She is leaving when it hits the ground, but it is causing her back feet to hit the ground before her front feet, and I am getting a bit of rearing up as she come off, which isn't good. SOOOO since she has a 2o/2o everywhere else, I am fine tuning the teeter, and being pickier about what I want, and last night she did great.

Step 1: One step into her 2o2o position on the teeter, and lift her off with no release.

Step 2: Someone hold the teeter about 6 inches off the ground from the back while gyp is in end her board position. I say TARGET and the teeter is dropped and she must drop her front feet to the ground and stay in her 2o2o position.

Step 3: After a few repetitions the person holds the teeter higher and higher so eventually the teeter is dropped from the highest point and she stays on the board and drops her front feet into position upon my cue TARGET. We got to half way last night and she was great. During this whole process I am moving MY position, and never hovering, as she has the 2o2o understanding, I need to let her do her job, and when she does, she gets rewarded.

So far so good!

POWERING AHEAD
I need to be aware of where my body is pointing and not rely so much on my arm, mostly my OFF ARM (arm farthest away from my dog). OK, so if my body and my verbal cue are already both telling my dog where to go, and she is on her way there, and then why do I need to throw my arm. WHY?? I had to think about this for a day: it CAN confuse my dog, so technically I could be giving three cues for one thing. I have been working on specific directionals, this will be my next goal. So my goal here is to trust my dog can get there based on the fact that I am going there anyway, especially with a verbal cue and body position. I will however still use the off arm when turning off a contact into tunnels underneath, my dogs do this very well. So last night I tested the no off arm, and well we had ALL of our entries, by me getting my command and having my body in the right spot, lesson learned.

Kaleb needs to power ahead without me, I race him alot because I can, and it does keep him motvated, but I have to let him do his job too, and understand that when I say GO ON that he does, which he DOES, when I am still running, so I need to teach him that when I DECELERATE, and I say GO ON that he continue to power ahead an gain speed, we did this by throwing a toy in the spot I want to increase his speed. Last night my group said they could really see him POWERING AHEAD on my deceleration and GO ON, so I will continue to work on this on ALL equipment and varying distances. I have noticed, if I send him away 10 - 20 feet to do the jumps on his own, generally he IS FASTER, so I will focus some more on this too.