Knight and I embarked on a new adventure tonight. Treiball. Which was started in Germany, it involves the dogs "herding" balls into a goal. The focus the Treiball: Level 1 class is to get all the dogs and handlers intoduced to the sport with a solid foundation.
Exercise 1: Precise Nose Touches- Pretty much everyone in our class has some other sport experience with their dogs so we skipped over introducing the nose touch and went straight into adding in precision. Denise gave everyone a small dot sticker to put on their finger tip. Instead of asking for hand touches, we were asking for finger touches. Then, just like switching from a hand target to a ground target we slowly worked our way from touching the target on the finger, to touching the tiny target on the wall, or mat, or chair.
Homework for Exercise 1: Continue working on finger touches and transfering it to a small area on other objects
Exercise 2: Set outs to a mat- The second exercise was sending the dogs out to a mat, once they "checked in" with us, or looked at, we'd click and release. The first goal was to position yourself straight ahead of the mat and to be able to send them to the mat without moving. (I was about 2 feet away) Once we could send them to the mat from there, we were to move the mat back a foot.
After you got your dog confidently running to the mat with minimal movment from you, you'd move the mat so it was either to the left or right of you. So instead of sending the dog to the mat straight a head of you, it was slightly off to one side.
Homework for Excercise 2: Continue working on sends to a mat. Switch up the location, distance, and angle it is from you.
Exercise 3: Introducing the Ball- I really like how Denise got us started on introducing the ball. First she had us place an upside-down frisbee on the ground. Our dogs were supposed to be set up a few feet way and asked to stay (or wait, whatever you use) while the handler put a treat into the frisbee. I put a few small pieces in, usually 2 or 3 each rep.
I wanted Knight to understand that if he got to the frisbee there would be treats in it, so I did a few reps without the ball in the picture at all. The next step was to set your dog up in a wait, place treats in the frisbee, and hold the ball above the frisbee. High enough that it was still very easy for the dog to get to the treats. For Knight (the wonder pup, standing at a whopping 9" tall) I just held it up about a foot. If they were comfortable with that then we could slowly lower the ball until it was completely coving the frisbee.
It's extremely important at this stage that the dog is only using his head to move the ball and get the treats. At a treiball trial the dogs aren't allowed to touch the ball with their paws at any time so you don't want to encourage that behavior at all. I'm pretty sure Knight was the only dog who tried to "fish" his treats out from under the ball with his paws. At the time I was using a ball about the size of a soccer ball, so I switched to the 55" exercise ball with it raised again and the fishing stopped.
Homework for Exercise 3- Continue working on head nudges using either a frisbee or simply placing the treat on the floor with the ball over it.
Exercise 4: Left and Right Side Heeling- The final thing we talked about in class this week was heeling. At a treiball trial you're required to walk your dog into the ring off lead. So Denise wanted us to get started on some left and right side heeling. It's up to the handler to decide what standards we have for heeling, since a few dogs are actively competing in Rally-O or Obedience. It's important to work on both sides so you can set your dog nicely for a send no matter which direction they're going.
For the dogs that go crazy when the lead comes off she suggested using the cookie dump technique. When the leash comes off a bunch of cookies come out. So instead of making a mad dash for freedom the dog has the option of sticking around it's handler and getting lots of yummy cookies. When the leash comes off the reinforcement rate also goes up. If you're clicking every 10 steps for onlead heeling, then offlead should be every 3-4.
Homework for Exercise 4- Work on right side heeling and off lead heeling (both sides).
All in all it was a really, really fun class. Looking forward to doing more with it! I'll get some videos of us doing the homework, along with some vidoes of what we worked on in class when I introduce it to Lilly.
