Monday, May 11, 2009

Breeze dogwalk basline-to see what we have to work with

DEFINATELY this video is not anything to brag about or write home about for sure. I decided to post a video of our baseline on the dog walk. We have had a lot of problems with the dog walk. Over time it seems like the problem has been two fold. First off Breeze tends to splay her legs a bit when she really gets going and she fell off the dog walk and partially tore her ACL a year ago. Second when Breeze runs half the time she is running with her head turned backwards watching me, because I am usually behind her, LOL. When Breeze gets really excited she gets a bit spastic and it makes the whole thing harder.

So in addition to these factors the dog walk where I take lessons with Alicia has been broken for a long time and can not be put in a lowered position. I have not done a lot of work at home because I have been uncomfortable not having someone else here to help watch her and notice what is going on. It is hard to even video the whole dog walk because it is so long. I am lucky to have a really nice dog walk, so I have decided if I am going to conquer this dog walk I guess I will just have to figure out how to do it on my own. My instructor at PawPrints yard really does not like to work with Breeze on the dog walk because she has had such weird accidents on the dog walk, so that has not be an option either.

I have worked with Breeze a lot on learning to turn round, do tricks on the dog walk, run across it, jump on and off at different points, I have a small plank for the dogs to play on in their yard, I have done a lot of running across a plank that looks like a dog walk in the house. I originally started with a four on the floor contact, and then in dong all my plank work Breeze has just seemed to want to do a 2020, so I was going with that. Breeze does a 4 on the floor on the Aframe to make things easier on her hips because of her dysplasia.

Today I pulled everything out and my original plan is to teach her to run back and forth on the dog walk to manners minders so that she is focused on that and to discourage her looking to me on this particular piece of equipment. She obviously does not remember the manners minder. Now maybe because we are doing more Aframes she is reverting back to the 4 on the floor....and she has no clue about not looking at me. I was experimenting around with waiting for her to look forward and then mark it, but boy she was pretty sure she is supposed to stare at me.

So I am going to think and work up a training plan, based on today's work I think I am going to have to go with a 4 on the floor, and I am going to have to work on the plank a little more and I am going to have to really work on ways to reward forward looking and take myself out of the picture totally. I am going to have to think about this a little more based on what I saw today.

Hopefully by making and posting a video in a few weeks we will have a really awesome before and after!

4 comments:

ffluffy said...

i like the 2O/2O position better but if she is going to offer the 4 on the floor you should go with it. baby steps. i will video hunda on the plank and you can see how bad it is, he turns around just like breeze. i stand in front and then fade myself slowly to the back and always click when he is ignoring me and facing forward. we can do this!

Diana said...

You might want to just work the down plank. With you standing still, let her run down to her postion and get the treat from the manners minder. Then start varying your postion. Then start adding motion. (Just a thought, I have lots of problems myself, so I may not be the best person to listen to. LOL ) Diana

Diana said...

Sorry I couldnt see the video when I posted my first comment. You probably think Im stupid. So here is my next comment. I would not use the manners minder right now. It looks like its in her way. I might stand in front of her and just work on getting her the postion you want her in. Maybe even just use the down plank on the ground so she hops into positon. I think she just is unsure what you want her to do so she is offering you a lot of different things Diana

Kathy Mocharnuk said...

I TOTALLY agree, basically I took her out just to get a feel of where we were at and I found she needed a lot more foundation work, so we started on plank work today. The biggest thing though is I have to use something to get her not looking at me while she is on the dog walk, I think that is where she gets hurt and loses her balance, so I have got to have my plank work totally independant of me.