It's time for us to start working on some contacts, as I would really like him to have some nice solid contacts that I don't have to worry about. The trainers that I am taking classes from are fantastic, but I'm not a huge fan of the method they are teaching for contacts. They are emphasizing the 2o/2o contacts using a hand touch. Well, I'm just not coordinated enough keep up with Romeo, beat him to the bottom of the contact (he flies over them all!), get my hand down there and ask for a touch before he comes barreling down, and then click and treat after his nose touches my hand. I'm not an athletic person, and I'm certainly not coordinated enough for that!
I've decided that I now want to teach contacts "my own way" at home, and if we work on them enough here I should be able to transfer it over to the contact equipment at class without having to play along with the hand touch method. I'm certainly not trying to second guess my instructors, I have no doubt that they know exactly what they are doing. I just don't see this method working for me.
I started tonight teaching Romeo to nose-touch the ground on command using the clicker. I then rigged up a board with one end sitting on top of a thick broomstick so that it was on a bit of a slope. Set Romeo up behind the board, and ask for a touch, at which point he ran across the board and nose-touched the ground at the bottom. YAY! Success!
The rest of our short training session worked on making the touch more solid, really getting it into his head that his front feet need to be on the floor before he can nose-touch, and trying to keep the speed up so that he races to the bottom of the board. He hasn't gotten it 100% yet, of course. But it's a pretty good start.My eventual goals with this is to have a longer board propped up against the couch for him to run down, practice this method on the stairs, and also work on being able to send him to do the contact from various different angles and distances.
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