In theory I’m waiting for daylight savings before I do any contact training outside on planks. But well … last weekend my scungiest rotten 20+-year-old crossover plank made its way into my living room.
Able’s contact behaviour isn’t quite ready to transfer to a plank yet, but I’ve decided I also want to do some body awareness work with him on a low plank that’s parallel with the ground. He is much bigger than any of my previous dogs, and I think he may need some practice to actually learn how to walk along a 300mm wide plank and keep all of his feet on it.
Learning to Walk the Plank
I’ve been racking my brain for the last couple of weeks, trying to figure out what I have round the house that I can use to elevate both ends of the plank to around hock height. I only have one amazing perfectly sized mop bucket/kitty litter tray (although it came from The Warehouse so I could buy another) and none of my other dog training props will support a 25kg puppy and a ramp.
And then I had the brilliant idea to use couch cushions.
Naturally I didn’t want to take the couch cushions outside and get them covered in grass stains while they were holding up a grubby rotten plank of wood, so the plank of wood came inside. Able the Beaver’s face lit up in glee when he saw me walking inside with the World’s Largest Stick for him to chew up, but fortunately “Nah Matey” did the trick and the plank is still in one (crumbly) piece.
I haven’t looked forward to a training session this much since Able’s first jumping lanes lesson. Finally my puppy was going to do something that looked like real agility, on actual agility equipment!
Well … my genius plan turned out to be a flop. The couch cushions were nowhere near firm enough to actually keep the plank level with the ground while Able walked along it. The whole thing swayed alarmingly from side-to-side and I don’t think Able made it all the way from one end to the other once before he got tipped off.
Never mind. Failed omelettes make delicious scrambled eggs, and my dogwalk training debacle turned into an excellent seesaw preparation exercise! I am so pleased with how confident Able is on uneven surfaces. He hopped straight back onto his indoor swing bridge after every wipeout, and he actually managed to pull off some impressive feats of proprioception and core strength to stay on it.
Paws on Pods
I decided Able’s extreme wobbly plank should be a one-off, as it looked like a pretty full-on body workout, more than he is really strong enough to handle at his age. I needed a different body awareness exercise to keep us both entertained this week, so I pulled my FitPaws Pods out of storage. These were designed for dogs and not cheap to import, but you can find similar equipment through NZ (human) fitness shops.
Able hasn’t seen these before. We’ve done lots of work on putting pairs of feet on things, but this is the first time I asked him to put individual feet onto things. I thought the rear feet would be a struggle and they were the first few times, but he had soon figured out how to feel around with his foot until he found the pod.
I had not expected a massive misunderstanding for what the front paw pods were for. Having always put his two front feet together on every prop he’s seen, Able was convinced this was what I wanted on the pods too. It’s not easy for a large puppy to squeeze both of his front paws onto one pod, but he found a way! Next week we’ll have a lesson about putting his front paws on two individual targets, perhaps using an even smaller prop so that it’s harder for him to do his beloved two-front-paw stationing behaviour.