Just had a great training session with Ice.  Here is the course we ran.  I started with a warm up exercise (not numbered) which was tunnel over the Dog Walk to the Manners Minder which was placed adjacent to the #1 jump.  Ice did great at this which was good as this is a pretty easy challenge for him now.

Next we ran the sequence #1 through #3, this is a lot harder for Ice as he likes the tunnel so much he will often forget his Dog Walk criteria in his urgency to get to the tunnel.  We did 3 reps of this and Ice aced the contact on all 3 runs.  I marked the contact hit with “yes” and rewarded him with a thrown tug toy after he exited the tunnel.

We then moved on to the Teeter, which is at full height but I put 3 plastic blocks under the “up” end which raised the up end 9 inches and subsequently lowered the “down” end by the same amount.  I sent Ice into the #3 tunnel and cued the Teeter.  The first time Ice slide off the end of the Teeter, he knew he had to stop but forgot to control his rear end and momentum carried him forward.  The next 2 runs were perfect, Ice waited in position with all 4 feet on the Teeter.  I rewarded him with cookies for remaining in position and then released him over jump #5 to a thrown tug toy,

Observations on the session

Ice was very enthusiastic to go to the training field, he ran across the grass and bounced up and down by the field gate.  This may have been because I was carrying the manners minder which he loves.

Once on the field Ice remained very focused on me, he didn’t lose interest and go off sniffing like he does sometimes.

He loved the warm up exercise over the Dog Walk to the manners minder and he liked it even more when we ran the Dog Walk the other direction and he got to go in the tunnel.

Finally I was very pleased with his performance on the Teeter, he clearly knew the Teeter was not the Dog Walk even on the first run when he couldn’t quite control his rear end enough to stop on the board.  Ice was also very keen to chase the tug toy again which is a relief as this is my primary motivator.

Overall I was very pleased with his efforts today.