Working on Handstands!

We have not finished training a handstand but we are getting there. The handstand was one of the tricks that we are doing as part of the Sylvia Trkman Puppy 2 class we are doing now. It is funny I am doing the course with all three dogs and as usual ...all the dogs learn so differently. Each dog has tricks that come easy to them and tricks that do not come so easily. Breeze is definitely the best with handstands-who would figure that with her back. Cricket is catching up and does pretty good. Liz is working with backing onto a small pillow, LOL, she is so far behind it is not funny.

I started doing this trick before the ST course by backing onto a board resting against a wall. I even painted the board with sand so it was non slip. A few weeks into the course Sylvia says to another person that working on a slanted board does not work as well because the dogs have a tendency to walk up the board and you want to encourage them to push both feet up at the same time, like a hop. DUH, wish I knew that to start out with-I was sort of doing all the wrong things, hahaha. When I read that helpful advice I started over again, first rewarding a 2o2o position, then when called off they naturally hopped back into position. From there I just kept finding higher and higher things for them to hop their back feet onto. The chairs or cat tree work well because they do not encourage climbing up with the back feet. It has been a fun trick and I hope we see it through to the point where we can fade the props. We have a good start ;-).



Here is Cricket just because she gets into her handstand practice and does not want to stop, LOL. She really is such a character.