We decided to do something a little different at last week's puppy class. Instead of having everyone sit around the room and practice different skills, we created an obstacle course through the hallways. In the obstacle course, the dogs had to practice going under a chair, down with distractions, self control at the food bowl, leave it, go on through a tunnel, walking over strange surfaces, and loose leash walking. The dogs and their puppy raisers had a blast!
We also played Doggy Limbo - a great way for the dogs to practice maneuvering themselves through challenging spaces.
SSD Jagger waits patiently for his puppy raiser to ask him to go through to the other side.
SSD Opal scoots under the limbo stick. To help her keep her body low, her puppy raiser drags a treat along the floor.Eventually, it came down to SSD Falcon, a black poodle, and SSD Peach Pie, a black lab.
SSD Falcon demonstrates the "poodle scooch" method of moving under the limbo stick. Even though he's a tall dog, he was able to keep himself right next to the floor as he scooting under the limbo stick. Eventually, though, the limbo stick moved down too low.
SSD Peach Pie stays in a nice down before she did the "lab crawl" under the limbo stick to win the game!We also introduced a new method of training, called TAGteaching. We learned this method of teaching at the Clicker Expo.
What is TAGteaching? It's clicker training for people! Everyone puts their name on a bunch of raffle tickets, and then when they see someone doing something good with their dogs (such as loose leash walking, recognizing when their dog needs a break, etc.), they give that person a raffle ticket. Recipients also put their names on the tickets. Those tickets can then be used for the raffles at our puppy lectures, and every time a ticket is drawn, the people who gave and received that ticket win a prize!
We think this will be a fun new way to train our dogs and reward our puppy raisers for doing an awesome job!
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