Teeter play

We've been playing around with our mini teeter. Moe had told me to teach the teeter by putting a foot target at the end and teaching him to hop from the ground onto the end of the board. I should feed multiple treats on the target, keeping his body low, and then release him straight forward and completely off the teeter. I should slowly raise the height of the end of the teeter. This means that eventually he will have to be jumping from a raised object onto the teeter, such as a couch or chair.

Yesterday was the first day that I used the mini teeter I created. Since we'd already done lots of work with other practice teeters, I was able to quickly raise the end until it was about 10-12 inches off the ground. At that point it was hard for Dragon to hop from the floor onto the end. I tried to get him to jump from a chair onto the teeter, stupidly without any prep work! He got spooked and I ended the session.

This morning I was ready to actually prepare him for that step. I pulled out his mat and a little round bed. I had him move back and forth between the mat/bed. I put the mat onto a box and had him hop onto that and back onto the bed on the floor. I put the bed onto a chair and had him hop onto there and then back to the mat on the box. This was about 1.5-2 feet above the floor. Now we were ready to transfer this behavior to the teeter.

I put one end of the teeter up on my agility table and the other up on a crate, so that it wouldn't move. I put his mat onto one end of the teeter and practiced hopping from the mat onto a chair and back. At this stage I had to put my arm between the two so that he actually hopped instead of placing his front feet and then his back feet on the mat. When he was happily doing this I moved the crate so that the teeter end under the mat would fall about two inches and hit the agility table. At this point I ended the exercise.

I decided to throw in one more exercise to increase his comfort level on the teeter. I placed the bed on the opposite side from the mat and had him run back and forth, with the teeter falling about two inches every time. This time I cued him to lie down on his mat when he reached it. He liked this exercise. Thank you Control Unleashed!

Next session I will have him hopping from the box or chair onto the end of the teeter and resume slowly raising the height. I think that I will keep using the mat for a bit, then redo it with his foot target when he's comfortable with a good height. The mat creates a softer landing spot for him and will lower the difficulty of the exercise. And I'm going to continue with the running back and forth between his mat/bed, at a much lower height.

Having worked through all these baby steps at home should set us up to coast through the steps much more easily when we're eventually working through it with a full-size teeter in class.

I wish I'd gotten all this on video!