Wobble Board

[Root Beer]

As I have suspected all along, the teeter has turned out to be Dean's stumbling block in agility. He doesn't mind the motion but the noise bothers him.

 

Last night I set up a wobble board in my living room and clicked and treated him for banging it on the floor. Today I moved it to a floor where it would actually make noise when it bangs.

 

Have any of you had any success helping a noise sensitive dog to be comfortable with the teeter this way?

 

He's liking the wobble board, in any case.

[JohnLloydJones]

As I have suspected all along, the teeter has turned out to be Dean's stumbling block in agility. He doesn't mind the motion but the noise bothers him.

I'm facing the same challenge as you with Senneca. She tried out the wobble board for the first time this weekend. She hated the noise, of course. I'd better go and buy some materials and make one for home practice. I know that once she gets used to it, she'll ignore it, but we'll need lots of practice at home.

[Kat's Dogs]

It (the wobble board on a hard floor) did help Daz with her fear of the teeter noise. It is also currently helping Peanut too.

[3dogslater]

Most dogs have issue with at least one aspect of the teeter which is what makes it so difficult to teach. The dogs need to be taught about the noise, the movement and the height to have a really good teeter. IMO, there are very few dogs who love the teeter right off the bat. I'd rather take things slow than create a teeter issue which is way harder to fix and takes longer.

 

I initially teach height, sound and movement separately and then start putting the pieces together. I teach movement using the wobble board, and put it on a soft surface so there isn't any noise. When the dogs are good with that, I teach them to bang the bottom end of the board - the bigger the bang, the better the treat. At the same time, I teach the dogs to run a plank.

 

Once they are good with the bang and the movement and the height of the plank, I set the teeter up between two tables so that it drops and inch or two, and put a towel under each end to minimize the noise. I get the dogs to run back and forth between the tables. I gradually increase the height of the teeter so that there is more movement and more noise but in small steps.

 

Once you get to a 12" drop you can get rid of one of the tables (lowering the height at first), then the other. Gradually bring up the pivot point until you reach competition height. I also teach the dogs to do a teeter that is slightly higher than standard just in case a trial teeter is set differently. I don't increase the difficulty unless the dog is running just as fast and happy at each stage as they were when it was just a straight plank.

 

Finally, I lower the teeter the first few times my dogs encounter "new" teeters because there is so much variation in weight and speed and bounce and I wrecked my first dog's teeter because I didn't realize just how different teeters could be.

[diane allen]

All good advice above. A couple more thoughts...

1) Wobble board: if you're using a clicker, this is the TICKET to success! If not, get thee a clicker!! I taught my very young pup to absolutely LOVE the board - especially on concrete where it made a HUGE noise! At first, of course, it was a very gentle foot touch. Then it soon got to where I could barely carry the board to the concrete, without him pawing and clawing at it to make that BIG NOISE!!

 

2) Teeter: Play the same game with a teeter! Any foot touch first gets a click/treat; then two feet; then anything more. step by step. You can also put squeeze cheese (nothing I'd eat, but man dogs love it!) on the "up" end. Soon, they'll be pulling it down to get the cheese - which is hard to do without motion and noise! ('Course, the trick will be later to wean them from that to actually going ONTO the board - but once the motion/noise isn't a problem, it's easier.) Teeter jungle gym!

 

3) Another teeter trick: prop the teeter up SOLIDLY, so it doesn't move at all (I use a jump wing). Squeeze cheese the end of the board, show the dog that the cheese is there, and race the dog up to the cheese. As soon as dog has eaten most of the cheese, praise and gently lift dog off board (don't let him jump off). This builds drive to the very end off the board, rather than having them stop at the pivot point, and wait wait wait (whilst the clock is ticking!) for it to drop. Especially with a sensitive/scared dog, this will be important!

 

4) Oh yeah, one more teeter trick: start with teeter propped on a table, board flat. Put dog on table, have someone hold him (and rev him!) if his sit/stay isn't superb; with squeeze cheese on end of board, let dog run to end, get a good lickin' into the cheese, then drop the board - gently, slowly at first, then faster and finally immediately. This does take some confidence, but at least YOU are controlling the drop, rather than the dog. Again, just to build confidence.

 

Then, as outlined above, step by step.

 

Good luck!

 

diane

[Alaska]

Lots of good input here.

 

One more thing you can do with the wobble board to build up noise tolerance is put a cookie sheet under the edge to make it extra-noisy (when the dog is ready for that, of course).

[2 Devils]

Tempe and I are no way near being good at agility since we are still learning. She was terrified of the teeter. A friend had me actually teach Tempe to bang the teeter with her front feet. I would get her wound up and have her bang it and she got rewarded for doing it. The teeter was quite low obviously but it worked great. I also worked with the wobble board which Tempe had no problems with... The teeter banging was a miracle. We did this at the beginning of class and when we went to do the teeter during class she was much much better.

[Root Beer]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I am going to use some of them with my students, as well as with Mr. Dean Dog.

 

Maddie does that thing, Diane, where she stops at the pivot point and rides it until the bottom touches and then she goes to the bottom for her contact. I'm not really concerned about it with her, but I definitely don't want to teach Dean to do that.

[airbear]

I guess I will be the odd man out on this, but the wobble board did nothing for Wick. She would interact with it, do stuff with it, but none of that helped her with the teeter, even at a low height. For 18 months (yes, 1.5 years) we worked on shaping and c/t around, near, and on the teeter, but she still wouldn't set foot on it. Finally (and she was in Masters/Elite Jumpers at this point and still hadn't tried Standard b/c of the teeter)!), I popped her leash on, walked her across the not-quite-full-height teeter, and told her "touch" (which is her cue for 2o/2o, and which she knew and performs on the frame and DW). She slammed into position, and looked at me as if to say "Well, why didn't you just TELL me that's what you wanted?". By the end of the night, she was doing full-height teeters. A few weeks later, she did a teeter for the first time at a trial and took BIG AIR. She didn't want to do the teeter again, so we didn't. Went to a friend's place a few days later and did (and I don't recommend this to anyone who doesn't have an insane dog) 70 teeters and 40 DWs in a couple of hours. Teeter fear gone! That was in 2004.

 

Fast forward to this year's regionals - she decided that the bouncy aluminum DW in the standard ring was going to eat her or something. Well, we just skipped the DW (and the teeter) that weekend. No, we didn't Q for Nationals (came really close thanks to some stunning Jumpers rounds) but after a couple of sessions on "home" equipment, she is back to her lovely DW and teeter.

 

So I think that our problem was that she showed fear of a piece of equipment, and I enabled this fear by perhaps tensing up, or somehow conveying to her that her fear was legit, and I overdid the babysitting. Wick is a very black and white dog (in thinking, and in colour) and if you treat things in a very consistent manner, she will give you very consistent behaviours. We fed off each other in terms of our fear of the teeter, and once I switched tactics to a more matter-of-fact approach (slam the teeter/earn your ball) she treated the teeter the same way she treated the rest of the equipment - which is "Fast and loud as possible!!"

[SoloRiver]

Solo's one of those dogs who just did the teeter right off the bat. He also remains unfazed by equipment disasters, which usually surprises people who have met him but doesn't surprise me as all his fears are of social encounters, not of things or places. He can have the worst wipe outs ever, slip off the table and land on his head, run into a closed chute and have jumps fall on him as he struggles to get out, whatever, and it never stops him from doing the same equipment again, sometimes less than five minutes later. He wasn't introduced gradually to anything. We basically pointed him at stuff and he did it.

 

The one time he developed a teeter problem was after he encountered his first unslatted dogwalk. He (and many of the other dogs at that trial) went halfway up, paused as if expecting the plank to start descending, and then tensed up and bailed off. A dogwalk with no slats looks very much like a teeter to an approaching dog, and as far as Solo was concerned, the teeter had betrayed him. He is not bothered by loud teeters, metal teeters, squeaky teeters, but they always go down and this one didn't. He didn't want to do the teeter for a couple of weeks after that, so I put him up for a little bit and when we came back he was doing the teeter again.

 

Sometimes less is more!

 

By the way, speaking of the wobble board (which was introduced to Solo after he already knew the teeter), the first time Solo saw one he immediately jumped on it and rode it like a mechanical bull. "Wooo hoo! Check me out! This thing rules!"

[BCDreamer]

Zoey had a HUGE problem with the noise, and still kind of does, but the wobble board really helped us! I suggest you keep using the wobble board, and see how it goes from there.