Try This! 3 Thresholds with a Bunch of Dogs

This is Ron’s followup to the Try This segment on our weekly 1/2 hour dog training and lifestyle series on YouTube, Pawsitive Vybe

Session 1 – Hoop as Threshold

Ska – Experienced

Ska & Kiva work on crossing the threshold of the hoop on cue. Ska has much more experience than Kiva with hoops (and buckets :-), so she’s a bit more solid.

I missed a really important moment in her session. She reacts to, acknowledges the threshold then checks in with me at about 1:12. That was a pretty critical moment. I’m glad it happened with Ska instead of Kiva.

Kiva – Noob

Kiva is new to this skill with hoops. He’s really animated and is extremely vocal when frustrated. He gets frustrated a couple of times here, but does some pretty nice work. We think it’s important to see some ‘not so perfect’ training and dogs…

Session 2 – XPens & Baby Gates with a Bunch of Dogs

Ska, Hops, Loot, Harpyr, Pan, Juicy,  and Si work an important threshold in an exciting location in the Studio here. This was shot right at the front door. That makeshift XPen gate is the second to the last stop on the road to freedom!

We work the XPen threshold as a gate or door and as an open gap.

I think Loot is interesting to watch here – he really thinks he’s gotten away with something, doesn’t he. Funny that nothing of interest happens whatsoever, and it’s not until he gets back behind the threshold that things get interesting.

In the full cut of this video, towards the end he was really pretty solid. All the dogs got better as time went on. Repetition is huge here. I moved all the dogs into all 3 spaces – both sides of the XPen ThresholdA dog’s working state can be said to be over or under Threshold. A dog that is over Threshold has trouble working. A dog that is under Threshold is in good shape to... More, in the grooming room, and into and out of the XPen itself.

Session 3 – Hoop Threshold for Localized Leaping

Not too long ago, I was working on this skill with a dog (can’t remember who) leaping from hoop to hoop. It was awesome. I gave it a shot with Si and we had some fun.

We warmed up the Threshold by freeshaping the in and out and then went on to leaping.

Si actually decided to do the vault skill on her own (a pretty bad disc dog issue!) but I went with it as I thought it was pretty cool and would be a nice use of the Threshold as a leaping localization device.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed doing it.

We’d love to hear from you if you’ve tried this or have questions…