Parkour (5/6)

I just discovered I'm behind on my parkour class reports, so you'll get two in a row. Gimme doesn't care as long as I don't fall behind in taking her to the classes.

Boardwalk & swaybridge video - Gimme still doesn't like the swaybridge, so I get her to do it a couple of times and pay her extra for standing still on it.

Sequence 1 video - Gimme normally likes the "thru" barrel, so I don't know what was going on with her. She seems so unfocused for this sequence, she was actually more focused when she was doing the evil swaybridge.
 
Sequence 2 video - I slowed things down a bit on this sequence to help Gimme get focused and she did do better.

Sequence 3 video - I slowed her down even more to get this right. The stay is something Jo suggested after the last sequence. You'll note there is a blip in the middle of this video - its a discussion I had with Jo and I couldn't understand her on the video, so I edited it out.

Creative sequence 4 video - This time we were to create our own sequence, trying to do some novel uses along the way. We made good use of Gimme's favorite "bacon".

"Hands" with "sit" video - The goal is to get Gimme to do "hands" on a prop and then "sit" and "stand" while keeping her paws on the prop. Jo says its physically challenging and I just assumed the challenge would be to come to a "stand", but what I see with Gimme is the challenge is to "sit". She just assumes she is supposed to "pivot" any time I have her put her paws on something low, so I have to physically block her to get her to listen long enough to realize I want her to do something else. She really always wants to do the things she's good at (who doesn't?). I have to push the treats toward her to encourage her to move her center of gravity back, otherwise the "sit" she gives me is really no more than a crouch. Jo wants me to encourage Gimme to be more still while she is doing things, which has always been a huge challenge. You can see how frustrated she gets when the treats aren't coming and she doesn't know how to make them come again. She goes into a little melt down when she doesn't understand how to get the system working, so we have to do some other stuff, so she can calm down a bit. After the break I start doing some stroking and touching to help her calm down. In the video it looks like I'm using her harness to push her into position, but I'm not - she likes it when I massage around and under the harness straps. She's always been very tactile, so I really should use touch more to calm her. After the second break I was using touch to calm her so I could reward being still. Of course her tail never stops.

Open practice video - For the last session we were given time to practice anything we wanted. I decided to use the mini-scaffold and see if I could get her to do side-steps with her feet on a high prop. It wasn't very successful, so we tried to do it with the barrel prop. The barrel was a little bit better. I want to try this on a longer prop and use a clicker to help her understand what I'm after. I think using the practice boardwalk I've set up in the yard would be a good place to start.

As always, a good class...