The Days of Johann - an agility dog!

Posted by Animals at 4:05 AM Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The Days of Johann - an agility dog!

Link to The Days of Johann, an agility dog!

I got it, I got it!!! Finally!!!

Posted: 21 Dec 2009 04:06 AM PST

Since I was just a wee pup, I've been really good at going out and targeting away from Mum. She taught me that trick very early as part of my agility training.

But get me to go get something, and bring it back to her, (other than my soccer ball in the backyard) and put it in a box...and I was stumped! Mum's been working with me to help me understand the behavior of (what I call) 'go get it' and 'put' for about a year now. And guess what! I did it this past week! Finally!

Mum was so excited she had to get it on video, even though we did it when it was dark outside (hence the poor quality of the video). But you'll get the idea.



So how did we do it? Mum thought...for me to be that excited about carrying something around in my mouth it had to be my most treasured toy. So we worked with this toy, which is actually Wiggy's little furry toy that you can stuff with catnip. I love this toy, and if I can get it from Wiggy, I carry it around with me all day.

Mum knew whatever she threw would have to be super high value, so she threw the furry little one, and then ran the other direction, with me right behind. Great first step. Then she put out a little box (the one she wanted me to put it in), threw the toy and had me bring it back to her next to the box. I like to hop into boxes so she knew I would be interested in the box...and voila! I dropped it right in. Alert the call center!!!

Next step is to work on me fetching and putting other items, but we are so happy I finally got it, and Mum finally figured out how to help me learn it.

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