I’m still semi-conscious from the week at the llama show – I’m allergic to hay, straw, dust, etc, so being in a sand-floored dusty barn with hay and straw, and running back and forth and showing and being show secretary – it leaves me pooped for a couple of weeks. I need something fun to get me back into training, so we go outside. I’ve got the dogwalk taken apart for the llamas to walk the boards, so I get Stitch walking the boards. Excellent, and she stops automatically in the yellow at the end. Woo hoo. We working up to it, so I won’t count it today, but she’s very secure.
We walk past the teeter at full height on the way in to the house, and she tells me she wants to work on it. Last time, I got her going up to the fulcrum. Then I took her off and put her back on at the fulcrum and led her down, easing it to the ground. She’s a bit leery of getting it on it. She wants to walk her front feet up and leave her back feet on the ground. I reward that X20, then stand in her way so she can’t get her front on up as high as she wants to. The only way to reach high is to get right on the board. So she does. I let her eat handfuls at a time, and X5 brings her to the fulcrum, where she reaches the end of the handful and jumps off to start again. Another 5 gets her past it, and waiting there while I get more food out of my pocket. The first time the board tips, she thinks about bailing off but decides she’d rather kibble all the way down. X3, and I feed her while it’s tipping, then let her walk down on her own and stop on the contact.
EE-HAH.
She easily accomplishes the board walk and stop on the contact. In fact, she runs over and does it before I get there, stopping and turning to stare at me when she gets to the end. “Well? Click, dammit! I’m waiting!”
She’s decided, however, that she’s not as brave about the teeter as she thought she was. It isn’t a setback, we were working WAY ahead of ourselves this morning. X30 gets her back to the fulcrum. I pick her up off the ground and put her there X5, and she’s still fine with walking down after the tip and stopping on the contact. She just can’t put them together yet.