Today was Treibball training session #2. It went very well. Penny went first, since she tends to be the more excitable one. Malcolm was put in a "place" on a mat nearby where he mostly stayed. :-) He only got up a few times and went back when reminded. Penny did very well. She was a bit excitable at first, wanting to paw and mouth the ball. But she settled down and went to work fairly quickly. I included a new technique to help and it worked really well. After she nudged the ball I tossed a treat behind her to get her to move away and approach the ball again. This worked very well. It allowed me a chance to move the ball back into place in front of me and helped her move into a better position to try again. We're still working on nudging the ball towards me, from a distance of about 2-3 feet away. Tossing the treat also helped keep her from being confused and doing a down when I cued her to back up. I'm definitely still using the clicker for nose nudges, touches, and bumps to the ball. That's working REALLY well.
Then it was Malcolm's turn. Penny went into her crate temporarily as she just gets too excited to stay out of the way. Malcolm started with pawing the ball a bit too. With some polite no reward marks ("Nope!") he settled down into nose touches. He's a bit less enthusiastic than Penny, so his nose touches and nudges of the ball aren't very hard yet. That's fine. There's no rush. As we progressed he started nudging the ball harder, which was excellent. Those harder nose nudges got two'fer and three'fer rewards (two and three treats for each click, instead of just one treat for each click). He started doing the harder nudges more often, which was excellent. We'll have to work a bit on direction as time goes on. He's tending to nudge the ball to the side a bit, rather than straight on towards me. So I'll have to tighten up on his nose nudge placement a bit. But I didn't want to be too picky in the beginning, as I was working to encourage any form of nose touch or nudge.
I made a few mistakes during Malcolm's session, clicking on accident for the wrong thing. I just tossed his treat behind him in those instances to reset his position and we tried again. Not the end of the world. I accidentally clicked for a couple of paw touches to the ball, which I do NOT want to encourage. My timing was a bit off, no biggie. We just tried again. Any paw touches that happened after an accidental click I just used the neutral no reward mark and encouraged him again to nose nudge.
I decided to start incorporating the cue "Bump" for Malcolm with nose bumping and nudging the ball. The cue "touch" he tends to associate with a paw touch, so we're using "Bump" for a nose nudge. That's the word that most easily comes out, so we're using that instead of "Nudge." Penny isn't quite ready for the cue to be added in yet, but she's close. I'll likely start adding it in next session for her.
All in all, both dogs did excellent for their second try at learning Treibball. Soon I'll start working on training some directionals and a few other things. I had fun and it seemed like the dogs did to. I think we're all enjoying giving this new sport a try. Hope you'll join me here and read about our continuing sessions in the future.
What new training tips or techniques did you learn about recently that you found helpful? Please feel free to share in the comments! :-)
Donna Hill Treibball Video on YouTube
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