I love my method of training the teeter. No monkeying around with all those intermediate steps, no putting food on the teeter to lure the dog to the end, no "walking" the dog up the teeter in the beginning, no bracing the teeter on the table or lowering it to less than full height. No worrying about whether my dog will freak out on different equipment at a trial. It's all about the tippy board!
You'll recall Gracie's tippy board training. I only had a couple more sessions with her after I posted that video then set it aside.
In class we are working a small contact trainer, not full height equipment, and none of the dogs have been run over any of the real contact obstacles. But the dogs are using a target plate and getting rewarded multiple times for staying on the contact trainer.
For my non-agility readers, the concept is this. You teach the dog to touch a target, usually a round plastic lid, with their nose or paw. You move the target around to different places, eventually putting it on the ground at the end of a contact trainer or contact obstacle. (You can even put it on the table if you are having problems there.) The dog runs to the end of the contact trainer, sees the target, and stops to do their trained behavior on the target--voila! this ensures that at least one paw, and ideally two, are solidly in the yellow zone. I teach what is called a two on-two off contact behavior in which the front paws are on the ground, the rear paws on the obstacle, and the dog is lined up square and facing forward, not twisted to the side looking at me. It's easy to teach this with a target. Gracie drops back on her haunches into a nice down and pats the target with her front paws as well as dipping her head and touching it with her nose. She covers all the bases! I reward her for any of those behaviors so she usually does them in combination in the hopes of maximizing her reward.
The teeter is balanced such that one end always drops to the ground if there is no dog on it. This is the up side of the teeter (which is obviously a one-way obstacle for this reason). The teeter is a 12 foot long, 12 inch wide obstacle--and it moves. Some dogs do not like this at all. It can be tricky to perform correctly at speed.
A couple of weeks ago, I showed Gracie the regular, full height teeter. I started with the target at the bottom of the up side and let Gracie jump up on it from the side and do her target behavior a few times, lots of clicks and treats.
Then, I pushed the down side of the teeter (the side that sticks up in the air) to the ground and put the target a couple of inches beyond where the end of the teeter would hit. The idea is that I want Gracie to stop at the end of the teeter like she has to stop at the end of the dogwalk and Aframe. Both she and Mimi are heavy enough to hold the end of the teeter down and stay in their 2o2o position until released.
Gracie was an old pro at the teeter, but she didn't know it yet. She had already run up and down a narrow, wobbly plank. She had already thrown herself with gusto on a noisy, wobbly tippy board. And she sees plenty of targets all over the place and knows exactly what to do with them.
So I pointed her at the teeter and told her to "hit it!" which is her tippy board command, then reminded her as she hit the end, which was still in the air, to "touch" which tells her there is a target out there even if she can't see it yet. The first time we tried this, she jumped off as soon as the teeter started to move. The second time, perfect teeter performance. Ran to the end, rode it to the ground, put her front paws on the target and waited for her treat.
This morning in our training field, she repeatedly did beautiful teeters with obstacles before and after. Not a single flyoff (jumping off before the teeter hits the ground) and I believe I had her attempt the teeter perhaps a dozen times in our 20 minute session.
Now, purists will certainly quibble that I am using TWO verbals for one obstacle. And you know what, from the purist perspective, I have to agree that this isn't very good dog training. But with Debbie's encouragement (and frequent reminders!), I use very few verbals with Gracie so she isn't having to sort through a lot of chatter. And I believe that if two verbals provides consistent and clear information to the dog that helps her complete the obstacle quickly, correctly, and safely, then that's how I'm going to do it.
Mimi and Gracie are living proof that it works.
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