Flying Poodles

More teeter training…

Dancer’s teeter… once again, I’m working on it.

The rental house is tiny, and the yard is tiny, and the dogs have worn a muddy path from one side of the yard to the other, around the back of the house. They love to run from one side to the other, barking the whole time.

It occurred to me that I could take advantage of the tiny yard. I set up the teeter board so that the dogs HAD to run across it:

The Dancer Teeter Project

That was what it looked like the first day. When I first put it out there, Dancer actually slid to a stop rather than get onto the teeter. Elly, of course, ran across it, and then back across it, running and barking. You could see Dancer’s frustration build. And then she put her foot on it, and in a few more minutes, she was carefully walking across it.

It took a few days before she too was running back and forth without hesitation. At that point, I let it be a little more rickety; I took out some of the bracing. After a few days of that, I moved the board to the side yard, where Dancer didn’t have to go across it, and put a jump bar under it so it rocked. I got out the treats, and every time we went in or out for a few days, she did ten fast runs across the rocking teeter board.

After a few days of that, I actually moved the teeter to the base and put it on the lowest setting. At that point, she started running the teeter, and she actually offered a two-on-two-off at the end. HUGE jackpot!

This morning I moved to the second lowest setting, and she’s still running across the teeter.

Progress!