Restarting the teeter

Dragon's teeter training was going well a few months back. He would run across the teeter any time we were walking next to it on the field. But at some point something went wrong. He started slowing down at the pivot point here and there. Each time I was able to re-energize him and get him to drive to the target at the end, but finallly last time I raised the teeter, he slowed almost to a stop as he hit the pivot point, and I knew that I needed to retrain the teeter rather than trying to work through this.

It's disheartening, when you've put so much work into something, to see it fall apart. I have done a lot of foundation work for this. Tiny Dog will happily walk around on a very high wobble board, even when I'm forcefully bouncing him up and down, throwing him into the air. He will close cabinet doors and knock things over (though he's still rather sensitive about the noise). He will jump onto the end of the teeter when it's 12 inches in the air, about the limit of how high he can jump and twist to get onto it. But still something went wrong.

I believe that the hardest part about the teeter for him is the unpredictability. Perhaps every time I thought that he was doing well and raised the height, it actually undermined his confidence in the obstacle. I think that I initially did well with raising it in teeny tiny increments, but as it got higher I started lumping, since it was harder to judge the height and I thought he would "be fine".

Wendy, our current instructor, suggested a technique that she used on her papillon, as well as other dog. She gets the dog running across toward a toy or handful of treats, and uses that reward to "drag" the dog across the pivot point, and off the teeter onto a table at the end. The idea is that the dog is so excited about the reward and chasing it down that they don't even really notice the tip. (The teeter is lowered at first and gradually raised, of course.) I tried this with Dragon but it was not the right technique. He doesn't drive hard toward toys or even favorite treats that way. He actually became more nervous about the tip because it would now catch him off guard. After two sessions I could see that this wouldn't work for us.

This morning we went to the field for our own practice time, and ran into Susanne, our previous instructor, with whom I connect very well. She commented that Wendy's technique wouldn't work well for a nervous dog, because of what I'd seen and because the table causes them to be in close proximity to the teeter moving back up again. We brain-stormed other things I could try. One variation on the "bang game" that I really liked was doing it as a restrained recall, with the dog jumping onto the end of the teeter (sideways) to get treats held there by a helper. We're going to try that with the teeter lowered all the way again. I'm going to go back to my foot target or teach a nose target to a piece of tape sticking up an inch above the end of the teeter, and slooowly work height in again. We'll also play around with holding the high end of the full-height teeter up and having him drive up it without any tip. We did that a few times in the past and he was running up without any problem. It reminds me of Silvia Trkman's technique, in which she holds the end of the teeter and slowly lowers it for the dog, over time increasing the speed. If I were very careful and consistent that might be something that would work for Dragon, since it would add in that predictability he craves. I will keep it in mind.

It's inevitable to have setbacks here and there, and I knew from the beginning that this would be Dragon's most difficult obstacle. We will figure it out. There's no rush.