Saturday, February 22, 2020

How to Make a Bang Board and training session gone wrong.

Two videos one unedited how-to ending with a shut down dog.
Second one, a later session with everything fixed.

First up, how to make a bang board and why should I?

A bang board is a simple diy obstacle to prepare your dog for agility, or increase courage for skittish/noise sensitive dogs.  A bang board is a board (plywood square) placed on top of a smallish obstacle. For a beginner dog, especially  a skittish one, place your board on carpet and use a very small obstacle, even a small rag or rubber cap.
For my dog, not a rookie, but rusty, I used a small soft cap and placed the board on a hard surface--very noisy right from the start.

Click & treat (or use a very short sharp vocal reward marker) for any interaction with the board including a sniff or a look or movement towards the board.  Be ready to instantly click/treat party (shower of treats) the moment your dog gets an unpleasant surprise and back up a few steps (use a smaller softer article, move the board onto a soft surface).  You might find, if your treat party happens fast enough, you can just carry on, but what happens at the end of the video is a good illustration of what happens if you make a mistake, and you end up with a shut down insecure dog.  Obviously, if your timing and judgement is perfect or you have a bomb-proof scared of nothing dog, this is not a problem, but depending on your dog, you will have to be more or less careful.  Should things go wrong, no worries.  End the session, do something fun and easy with your dog, reflect on your error and make a plan to correct your error, and start again later.  In this case, I took Sonic inside and dremelled his nails, which he loves, and it made me feel good (useful) too.  Then I changed my reward to string cheese all de-packed and separated into wiggly  strings and went out again.

This time I made sure I could click and reward rapidly, no fumbling.  I also released him off the board with a reward frequently to take the pressure off. IE, making a bang noise get's a treat AND leaving the board gets a treat. I also threw a party every time something surprising happened, like an extra loud bang or spinning board.  Super fun, brave dog is the  happy result.  

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