Flying Poodles

Dancer’s New Rocker Board

Dancer hates the teeter. For a while, she did it, but she got slower and slower, then she scared herself and then she didn’t do it at all. So I’ve spent the last few months going back to the bare minimum of teeter training: the rocker board. Using a simple two-foot wide rocker board that really barely moves–it’s five feet long and supported through most of its length and only moves about two inches–I’ve been clicker-training “rocker board love.”

Dancer has learned to walk across it, sit on it, lie down on it, turn around on it, stand on it. Yesterday I lured her with a cookie into the “sit up and beg” position and then actually had her walking on her back feet on the rocker board. All without any hesitation. We had to put the rocker board away to keep her off it.

So it’s time to move on to a teeter board. Jay made this board for me:

It’s six feet long, 15″ wide (a cheap pine shelf), painted with matte white indoor/outdoor paint with sand added for non-skid. There is a piece of foam glued under each end so I can use it inside without scratching the floor. The fulcrum is a styrofoam half-roll that I bought at an exercise store, glued on. The end moves down about six inches. It weighs about ten pounds.

In our first session with the new board and the clicker, Dancer stood on one side of the board and I stood on the other, treats in hand. When I teach anything new, I usually put ten treats in the non-clicker hand–when I run out of treats, I’m done and I move on to something new. If I get something spectacular, I’ll stop early and jackpot with the remaining few treats.

So there’s Dancer, who’s been clicker trained from the beginning, wondering what she should do with this new board. She very carefully reached out and touched the board with her right paw. Click! I moved her away from the board to give her the treat and then moved near it again. Dancer touched it with her paw again, a little faster. I held the treat so she needed to move toward me, onto the board, to get it. Two paws on the board and another click.

At seven treats, she walked onto the board with all four paws and pushed it to the floor. Jackpot, put the board away.

Second session last night: in ten treats, she was walking the length of the board from either direction, without hesitating. Now we take the board on the road (outside, to other places, etc.) and get that performance in as many places as possible.

Then we’ll move on to the lowest setting on the teeter. I figure that will happen around March.