Learning to roll with the punches......

How cliche! But, really it kind of explains what I am trying to do with little, worried Spur. He worries, it's who he is and I am SO demanding. I have a lot of practice being demanding. :P The Pin Heads allow it. They thrive on it. Roscoe needs it. But, Spur.......no. Demand from Spur and he goes into the corner and "does his rosary". He's thoughtful and concerned and when I ask too much of him he melts a bit. However, I make it sound like he is really a wimp, which he is, but he isn't THAT wimpy. He LOVES to train and in these videos the barking dog in the back ground is SPUR, barking his fool head off in the crate waiting for his turn to train.

I started with Colby and Roscoe to see how it might go teaching a dog to roll a bar. See, my thoughts here are to get Spur to understand that jump bars falling are not the sky falling. It's just a JUMP bar. In agility if he knocks a bar, he scurries off with his ears at half mast, his tail down, it frightens him. I tried classical conditioning - treats for me knocking the bar. Over and over, I did a ton of that. That stuff works sometimes, but this time, no. Not with Spur. So, I changed my plan. I decided to teach him to knock bars. Well, not really, but to take control and MOVE the bar. We are starting slow, just rolling the bar on the floor. It's that simple. It's that scary. You'll see............

Colby, she gets it. She figured it out in like......two minutes. Done. Roll the bar. "Got it MA!"

Roscoe - he's frantic!! He's offering everything he can think of. Roll it, yeah, somewhere in that crazy activity he rolls it. Yikes!!

Then we have Spur. Worry, worry. All the barking is simply worry. When Spur doesn't know what else to do or gets worried/frustrated he barks. However, I do not discourage that. He's trying.......notice his half mast ears when we get to the wood floor and how we have to go back to simple nose touches for a bit. Tomorrow I'll try to video an update. Today he was really rolling it all over the kitchen. This after just two sessions at home. We have done some in other settings, to try to generalize this work. Little Screamin' Monkey Pants is taking control of his jump bar!!