Turning On The Box

[lucyandmeg]

How would you go about teaching a good turn of the box? Meg is fast, but the only way we could get faster is to teach a better turn on the box, i.e. touch the box with her front feet and push off from box with back feey. At the moment she just hits the box with her front feet and whips round without touching the box with her back feet. Similarly i want to teach murphy to get it right from the beginning before he learns to get it wrong.

Similarly how would you go about teaching a sensitive dog the box? Ellie is fine running down fetching the ball from the ground and back, but she tends to be wary of things that make loud bangs and is not very ball motivated so its going to take her a while.

Edited April 18, 2006 by lucyandmeg

[mad mandy]

I would start off by keeping meg on a lead about 6 foot from the box. put something in front of the box we use a traffic cone so that the dog can still see the ball but has to go around it to fetch the ball. you might have to experiment on how close to the box to put the cone but to start with try putting it touching the front edge of the box. Send the dog for the ball guiding her in with the lead to turn around the cone. As she pushes off the box gently pull on the lead to encourage her to come off the box faster. give her loads of praise if she gets the turn right and ignore it if she dose it wrong. This might take quite o lot of repititions, espeacailly if the dog has been doing the box for a while. Once she is doing it right on the lead try sending her down the lane to the box as normal but leave the cone in front of the box while she dose it. the cone might have to stay in place until you are confident she can do it right with out it.

This is how I would do it but I am sure there are a lot of different ways of teaching a good turn and some one else on here might be able to further help.

 

As for getting Ellie used to the sound the box makes I would treat the box like a gaint clicker. set the box and trigger it, every time you trigger it and it makes a noise give Ellie a treat. do not use a tennis ball at this stage but food or other reward that she likes. So that the box is a fun place to be around.

We had a dog that was affraid of the noise and this worked for us.

Hope this helps

Mandy

[gooster]

Well, I think Mandy has covered it all

We used the traffic cone to teach her dog Rye on the box, and she has a beautiful turn. Charliegoo and Eddie's turns came naturally, and we didn't need to use the cone.

Another thing some teams do, is to put some netting against the side of the box, creating a narrow passageway to get to the box, which makes the dogs turn tighter and therefore faster

[Kimbas_mum]

Hello Mandy, good to see you on here. See you on Wednesday.

 

K