Handstands and Boxturns

Yesterday I worked early, took a wonderful nap curled up with my puppies afterwards, and spent the evening training the dogs.  I'm working on Pan, Shiner, Trophy and Demo to teach them handstands, or the "Circus" Trick as I will eventually call it.

Pan needs more work with hind end awareness, and since my sister won't work with her, I am training her on this since it will also help with flyball (hopefully?).  I didn't work with Pan for this video, however.  I'm always trying out new tricks with Trophy, who picks up on new behaviors VERY quickly and he seems to be quite enjoying this one.

I'm using this currently as foundation 2 on 2 off work with Demo with full intentions of turning it into a handstand eventually.

And Shiner?  Anyone who knows Shiner personally and knows his extreme aversion to anything resembling work has to be asking how Shiner got roped into this... well, Shiner loves freeshaping, and I've gotten him to do a few fun tricks.  Quite honestly the thought of Shiner doing a handstand amuses the snot out of me, so I decided to teach it to him.  I don't know if his body will let him do it in the end, but we're trying anyway.

So I started teaching this several weeks ago.  Trophy knows exactly what I want, but he doesn't have the muscle to quite do it yet.  I'm working on just holding the position over and over with him and occasionally asking him to offer it without the prop board (like when I show people at work what we're working on).

Trophy's part starts at 2:40 and Demo at 4:45.  Also, I messed up the dates in the video, they were all taped on 3.12.12.



Also, sorry for all the dog butt in the video, It was hard to get a good angle.


Now, today was my day off.  I worked Demo on his boxturns again.  I'm SO thrilled with his progress in this one session!!



I think the video speaks for itself.

I WOULD have a video of Trophy working on 2x2 weaves, but Trophy's brain decided to take the day off.  We went outside, he pottied, he took some treats and he chased one "warm up" ball... and then he wouldn't pick his nose off the ground to even try to run through the weaves.

I'm just hoping that whatever is wrong with him isn't going to affect our agility class tonight as we are leaving in half an hour...