Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Fun on the Teeter

An amusing incident happened in Mimi's class this week. One of the other students has three shelties. She had just finished running one of them and was walking off the course as I was moving to the start position with Mimi. The sheltie stopped to visit with Debbie, the instructor, who gave him a treat. I didn't realize the dog was still on the course, and started to run the sequence.

Suddenly, I see Huggy heading right for me as Mimi and I are running towards the teeter. His path took him between Mimi and the teeter. Mimi didn't bat an eyelash. She shouldered that sheltie out of her way and ran up the teeter like she always does. I turned and followed her, and being a good boy, Huggy decided to follow me and turned and ran up the teeter too!

His weight changed the tipping point and it didn't fall like Mimi expected it would. But she stayed on that teeter, Huggy right behind her, until it hit the ground.

I gave both dogs a handful of turkey hot dogs bits while they were still on the teeter. They thought this was great fun.

I figured, crazy stuff like that happens all the time. Dogs get loose and decide to do some agility on their own while another dog is running. I didn't want either Mimi or Huggy to think there was anything bad or scary or even unusual about them both being on the teeter. Plus, I wanted to reinforce Mimi for doing the teeter no matter what.

You just can't make up distraction training like that.

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