Parkour Dog Training??

Ivy

Ivy

Well-Known Member
Hi everyone! I was wondering if anyone has every thought of doing dog parkour or "barkour"? I have a blue heeler who has a lot of potential in this righteous sport! It's kinda like agility but more extreme probably not like agility then lol. Of course I would never put my dog in a dangerous situation but this sport seems so much fun and I know he would love it! He loves to do more physical things like running, jumping, climbing than to do tricks so I would love to give this a go. The thing is, how would I go about teaching this? Any clues? Any ideas? A great example of a parkour dog would be TreT! Just type his name on YouTube!
 
I've seen TreT. He is truly amazing!

If I wanted to train that, I would ensure excellent conditioning first. I would definitely do some therapy ball work and swimming, if possible, to build core strength, balance, and endurance. You want to build excellent proprioception skills, especially with the rear end. Look for exercises that do that. Other than that, I don't really know.
 
Oh man, now I have another youtube addiction! He's really awesome! You could buy the video/training set?...
Actually, back when agility was a new sport...(gee, am I dating myself?) whenever I walked my dog I used to look for obstacles in the environment, so he walked fences and jumped signs and went all over kids play structures and down slides etc, etc. Just expanding on core basic behaviors like jump up on something, or over this or put your feet up on that. So that would be an easy place to start at least. Do be sure your dog is especially fit for jumping down off things though, start small and build up.
 
I was disappointed to see Tret's ears were hacked off almost completely. I hope his family rescued him, and weren't the ones that did that.

Re: the original question, SD&B's answer is right on target IMO. Do you live in an urban area? Then you can just do some everyday agility, use the environment. I will cue my dog to jump over something, or hop up on a something, just on our everyday walks.

For anyone not familiar, pit bulls are known to be excellent climbers and jumpers. They are great agility dogs, I keep waiting for them to crowd the BCs on the agility honor rolls!
 
Yep, now I know for sure she talks a little about it in the art of trick dogging video in part one although that is not the most useful part of the video for me. I caved and bought the TreT style training guide but haven't watched all of it yet. I figure if I don't get to do it with Rocket then I'll use it with my next dog. Tret's person is very disciplined and it seems to me there's some good info in there. I have started with Rocket since you start on a flexi and he's doing pretty well and having a good time.

A bit off topic but following this line of thought- for those who may not know Tawzerdog is a company that publishes dog training videos and they have a program for folks in the states where you can pay a monthly fee and rent training videos. I am really excited about it because I can't afford to buy them and these are some really good ones. Anyway, I am really excited about it and thought it might be of interest.
 
I love the Tawzerdog video rental =). I don't think I would be able to complete my CEUs for my CPDT-KA if it wasn't for that =). I have actually started trying to teach Lin-Zee the jump off the tree (well it will actually be off of me because she's so little and I am much more accessible than a tree =) ). So far what I have done is teach her to jump on a chair and then immediately off of it. I plan on adding myself to the chair (tried it a bit already but probably tried to jump to that too soon). So again, I'm going to have her jump on my lap then turn around and immediately off. My plan is to start slowly standing up so that eventually she will be doing the tree trick off of me. I will try to keep everyone updated as to how it is going =). (I will also try to actually work on our tricks more frequently, since I have been a major slacker lately ;-) )
 
Well, I think it looks cool, but I would be concerned with a couple of things. one their joints would take a serious beating, so proper conditioning and supplements would be critical, as would the proper breed and size (I don't think it would be a good idea for dogs much bigger than bc's, imho) I would also worry about proper foot conditioning, running around on all that concrete and rough surfaces would wear pads and nails, and I know Oliver's feet could never stand up to that (he has the softest feet ever and is forever tearing his pads... crazy for a street dog) Ollie himself would be (and is, to a certain extent) excellent at that, if it weren't for the soft feet.
 
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