I saw the video from the link Pegasus recently posted. There is this miniature horse that stand with it's front legs on a stool and spin it's rear end around the stool. Cool! and Cute!
I have no idea how to get the spinning action - we will just have to cross that bridge when we get to it, I thought.
So out comes my footstool from my office. Enter 4 ys old crossover doggie. We have done "step into box" which took a while to shape ... several months ago... but I think that helped now, even though we haven't revisited "the box" for a few months. She got the idea in less than five minutes. Then she started to feel bored and tried out new stuff - as jumping from stool onto mom... jumping on stoll with hind legs..etc. It got a bit too energetic for my taste, particularly since the stool was on a stone floor, and started sliding. Out with stool, go on to other things.
Spring forward in time about 10 minutes (I guess) Dog is thanked, gets her costumary " finish" handful of treats on the floor. And dogs are changed around so I can work with puppy.
The dogs not working (we have five in all) are behind a babygate and very interested in the proceedings indeed.
Puppy is jumping around doing her recently learned "wave frontleg" thing... she is very enthusiastic. Out comes stool again.
1 -Sniff stool - c/t
2 - Put frontpaw on stool - c/t
3- Stand up on stool with both front feet - c/t and mom goes WOW... in three clicks she had it..... And that was it. 5 clicks later I had added the cue and she had the whole thing down - cue and all in way less than five minutes. I can even send her out across the room to the stool ... we had to go on to other things...cause she gave me no time at all to figure out that "spin-rear-end-around-stool"-bridge...
what a rush...love this
Christina and a bunch of chessies
thank you
for explaining!
Ah, for a new challenge... we have already done sidestep and backwards-forwards...now to work on swinging the rear while keeping the front still...hhmm could also be useful for repositioning in the conformation ring...hhmm... or on a hunt/FT when I want to swing the dog towards a new mark...that would look sort of cool...hehe... recently I unthinkingly repositioned my 4 ys old in the conformation ring by walking her backwards when we had to change places with another dog. That got a few amazed comments from the ringside...
Christina
Congrats!
Great job Christina....it's fun to see you achieve that so fast.
Moving the hind end away is one of those behaviors that horse people generally put into their program early, because it's a safety issue to have the hind end yield.
It started with a tiny weight shift away from me as I walked towards his hip. Once he did that, I asked for the step, and so on. I also supported the process by using a lead rope with just enough contact so that he didn't walk forward. It was all very polite with lots of C/T for the small tries.
Then we transferred it to the pedestal.
Can't wait to see a picture when you've got it...
Peggy Hogan
www.thebestwhisperisaclick.com