As you all know, I've recently started Cedar back in agility. We've been having an absolute blast with it... everyone in the class is really great, and Cedar is such a natural at it. However, our Achilles heel is the teeter. Cedar totally freaks out at any sort of motion under her feet. Obviously, that just won't do for a future potential agility dog!
Thankfully, our friend Glenda (who owns Moss's littermate, Ruben) lent me a tippy board last week and I've been working Cedar on it with the clicker all week. For those that don't know what a tippy board is, it's pretty much just like it sounds. A long board with a piece of PVC pipe in the middle so that when weight is applied to one side or the other, the board tips/moves. Basically, it's a dramatically less-scary mini teeter. At least in theory. ;)
It took me a few minutes to get Cedar comfortable enough with the board to even start to figure out what would get her the "click." She eventually figured out that I wanted her to put her feet on the board, and got comfortable with putting her front feet on pretty fast. However, it's taken me the rest of the week to get her comfortable with putting her back feet on the board. I'm hoping that with a few more weeks of work, she can figure it out so we can start working on the actual obstacle. I want her to get over her fear before that, though... I don't want her associating scaryness with the teeter.
Anyways, I'm off to class, so I'm sure I'll have a lot more to blog about later!
3 weeks ago
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