How Would I Even Start This?!

luckylego

luckylego

Experienced Member
Hey guys..

Its been a while since I've been on the forum, but we've been hard at work training the girls and will hopefully have a new trick video to post soon. In the meantime, a friend of mine sent me this video of an Am Staff having some fun with parkour, and honestly, it blew my mind. Because Streets is such an insanely athletic and acrobatic dog, I think she would have a lot of fun with this - and be quite good at it too! My question is.. Where to start? I'm sure its probably a lot simpler than I think, but I haven't got a clue of where to begin teaching something like this.. Any ideas?

 
Hi Luckylego

I'd start with a vet check up that includes an orthopedic exam so you know she's a good candidate for hard-impact exercise. My dog is the wild man of the dog park, running and chasing and wrestling, but an orthopedic exam revealed pretty bad hips so he's not a dog I'd want to do parkour with. It's a good idea even for dogs who seem so athletic and agile. Anyone can have a partial CCL tear and still get around fine -- without an exam, you'll end up finding out about it when the ligament blows out (and that is very very painful!).

Next I'd start doing "everyday agility" out on your walks. Up onto a bench, down off it, etc; get her to walk on some low walls, crawl to you under a railing, anything you can find can be an obstacle. She can learn to jump through your arms, over a stick between two benches, etc.

At home I'd teach her tricks which use "hind limb awareness" like pedestal tricks, the elephant trick, etc. She'll gain confidence and better balance from this.

All this will get help build your relationship, so that when you want to do more advanced things, she'll have the trust in you to follow your cue even with novel objects. For example, I am able to cue Calvin on and off of odd-shaped 'pedestals' like curved rocks because we have a history of working together and he knows if I tell him to get up on something, it's something he can do safely. My late dog astonished the instructor in his beginner's agility class by racing straight through the collapsed tunnel on the first cue -- he just trusted me to only cue "through!" when something was passable, even though he couldn't see the other side.
 
Adrianna gave great advice. I'm starting to get Missy to do parkour the way Adrianna said, having her get on benches, jump over fallen tree branches and working on hind end awareness.
 
He's a great dog. Amazing what he could do but I dont think I could do it with my dog as I would be scared that she would get injured. I'm to much of a chicken
But its brilliant though
 
Thanks Adrianna, to be honest I hadnt even considered getting her hips checked so its probably a really good thing that I posted this! I've actually seen quite a few dogs blow their knees out at my work recently (due to being overweight and/or partial tears that thw owner thought was fine and never had checked out), so I've become extra paranoid about my girls and their joints - Especially Lego, who only has one back leg left! Luckily our vet is currently taking an agility class with us, and has been encouraging us to get Streets into competitive sports, so perhaps I'll ask her a bit more about it at our next practice! In the meantime, could anyone give me a couple simple hind end awareness trick ideas that we could start working on? I know the elephant trick was mentioned, but as Streets is fairly new to trick/clicker training (we've mainly been focusing on her manners lately for an upcoming CGN test), I'd like to create a bit of a beginners "to-do" list for her and have a few that we could be working on.

She is pretty fearlessly acrobatic as it is, when a ball is involved, so I thiink she might catch on fairly quick - and have quite a bit of fun with it.. She absolutely loves showing off by flipping herself through the air for even the simplest of tosses. But she's also a tad cheeky and selective when it comes to paying attention so she could just prove me wrong, haha! I posted thos video in a different thread, but I thought it was a cool example.. This is just her showing off for a couple little throws. She could easily just catch it, and she knows that, but it wouldn't be HALF as much fun that way now would it? :P

 
And sidenote.. Do you guys think its possible to put a cue to that "flip" thing she does in the video? I'd love to be able to teach her that on command but, again, am horrible when it comes to knowing where to begin :S
 
For rear end awareness tricks I've been doing: Handstand, and a lot of backward tricks(backing between legs, backwards weave) You could teach her to lift her hind leg(like boy dogs do), back onto objects.
 
She is beautiful. :D I agree she likes to show off. LOL.

here is a vid that Kikopup just recently posted about dog tricks and safety. I post this just as something to think about it is not judgement or commentary on what you'd like to do with your dogs. :D

 
Sure some tricks can be dangerous such as Frisbee tricks but things I do can be dangerous for me such as skateboarding but I still do it because I have fun. It's the same with the dog they have fun let's say flipping to catch a Frisbee are you going to prevent them from doing it just because they Could get hurt. Sure if your dog has bad hips they shouldn't be doing high impact tricks or if you have a dog with a long back it shouldn't be jumping. But I don't see a problem with a healthy dog Vaulting, jumping, or flipping. In order to have fun you risk getting hurt, just use your head when doing tricks with your dog so your dog doesn't get hurt. I do plan on doing parkour with Missy but not as extremely as TreT, because it's something Missy would enjoy and I would to.
Make sure you post videos of Streets once you get the okay to do parkour.:D
 
Oh for sure, I agree to all of what was said above.. And incase anyone is worried, I fully plan on taking things extra slow with her - the last thing I'd want to do is have her seriously injure herself trying to do a trick! At the same time though, I'm kind of the same as southerngirl, certain tricks I'd like to teach Streets maaay be a tad risky with the landings, but she really just has so much fun flying through the air the way she does.. I figure as long as we're being careful and steering away from the riskier tricks (like you said, I won't be nearly as hardcore as this dog) then she should be alright, its kind of a fun alternative for a walk :) Lego on the other hand would NEVER be allowef to do something like that, I definitely wouldn't put her last remaining hind leg at risk.. At the same time though, I do let her do certain things that other people see as "too great of a risk" for a tripod, such ad letting her join agility and go for hikes. The way I see it, Lego loves to run, I couldnt stop her if I tried, so rather than worry her whole life, I let her do pretty much anything a normal dog would - just with extra supervision ;)

I meant to get around to working with Streets and introducing her to the clicker ages ago, but we've had a hectic month (Lego ate a bottle of ibuprofen and gave herself ulcers and kidney damage :( ) but I finally got around to it this last weekend and honestly, I cant believe how fast shes picked it up! I have the house to myself tonight while the boyfriend is working a graveyard so we'll have nothing to do but work on our hind end awareness tricks.. Hopefully I'll be able to show off her progress soon. In the meantime I'll probably be making several "how would I teach this" posts over the next few days, haha!

Thanks guys, you rock my world - as usual!! :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top