Crate Games with Tala
This past weekend we did some work with Mary & Tala in the pasture. Tala has a hard time controlling herself around active dogs and we’ve got a few, appropriate, active dogs here.
Mary has a good history of Crate Games, from Susan Garrett’s Crate Games, so Tala has no issues with her crate and is pretty solid with serious distraction. The problem comes in when there is some multiple dog chaos and she’s not part of the game. Like many good working border collies, she gets a little bonkers.
A few weeks ago we worked on dismissing Tala out into the chaos, making her go out and interact with the dogs. It went quite well. Tala got a bit passed the forbidden fruit and grass is greener stage rather quickly and was able to work with her handler and be called off of a super fun pack of running dogs.
Mary wanted to take it to the next level and bridge this new found impulse control with crate games. The idea here was to get calm in the crate and reinforce with access to the doggy chaos and to get a recall off the dogs. Rinse and repeat.
I didn’t get much decent video and missed the release of Tala from the crate and also the return to the crate. My bad Mary!
The music for this piece is by the Spares – http://thespares.net – They Rock!