The title almost sounds like a band, eh?
Let me start out by saying I don't normally feed my dogs popcorn, I go out of my way to make sure that they don't have corn in their diets at all as a matter of fact. But, popcorn really did make the PERFECT training treat in this case, really! It is kind of like letting your kids eat M&M's for breakfast, you know its not right but perhaps it serves a momentary purpose.
We, my family and I have on occasion been known to teach the dogs how to catch popcorn. Not real often. But, it totally entertains us:) So, Tangle really likes popcorn. This is how I got the idea.
It made the perfect training treat because:
*It is white, high contrast to the grass
*It is light and floats down instead of a fast drop, enabling me to see EXACTLY how well I am delivering the treat timing wise.
*Tangle finds it quickly, it stays on top of the grass
*Tangle can watch it on the way down too (and I wanted his head down).
I started Tangle out jumping, but he wasn't keeping his head down well. Also, the treat that I had been using was really hard to find in the grass. So, I needed a solution.
I think this one worked well!
Tangle jumping for popcorn
Tangle also got to start his dog walk tour this week. Earlier I mentioned that we were going to start a tour to help some training issues 1) he is showing a hesitancy to do a DW on unfamiliar equipment 2) his hit rate goes down dramatically. Friends were gracious enough to set up their dog walk for Tangle, thanks Don and Lori!! Since Tangle has been hesitant on his first run across a "strange" dog walk, I just trotted him across. Then we began our runs. Overall I would say that he did well. You can see that his speed increases the more runs he completes. This is encouraging! Also, his hit rate was right at 80 percent. Great for a unfamiliar place.
Tangle's DW Tour #1
No comments:
Post a Comment