Clean Run - May 2012 - 14

Identifying The Inner Naughty Items and Activities
Below are several ideas on how to turn your dog’s IN in everyday life into great tugging for agility training. With each idea, you can first engage the dog to tug with you, then transfer the dog’s excitement to an actual dog toy. The Rules of Engagement can be applied to each IN item or activity. Each dog will find something different to be exciting, so feel free to add to this list if your dog’s inner naughty is not included here.

Raid the Fridge, Fruit Bowl, or Bread Basket
Does your dog ever surf the counters or poke his head in the fridge to try to steal something delicious? In these cases, your dog is likely to tug on some of the larger food items that he is interested in. Popular IN delicacies include fruit or veggies (sweet potatoes, apples, and bananas are frequent visitors to the IN list), meat (raw bones, turkey necks or wings, liverwurst), cheese, peanut butter, and bread or bagels (dogs, like humans, sometimes love a carb fix). If the food item is large and solid enough (or maybe even frozen enough) for the dog to tug on, you can incorporate it directly into your tug game. For example, you can braid a tug toy around a frozen bagel for those carb-loving dogs or an apple for the fruit lovers to get a fun game of tug. However, most of these items are not easily handled for tugging, so we can incorporate them into other tug games in the next section.

Magic Sock: Laundry Basket Meets the Fridge (or Fruit Bowl or Bread Basket)
You can combine two of your dog’s greatest IN loves by using the Magic Sock technique. Take an old, long sock and stuff it with your dog’s favorite food item (see above). Tie a knot at the top of the sock so you can swing the sock freely without spewing food everywhere. Then use it in the same tantalizing ways outlined in the “Rules of Engagement.” If your dog has a variety of food preferences, you can have a variety of Magic Socks stuffed with all sorts of great food. For the dogs that might be more reserved at first and less likely to grab at the stuffed sock, you can punch some small holes in the sock so it is easier for the dog to get a taste of the goodies inside. If you have an apple or banana in the sock, you can also poke some holes in the fruit to get more flavor oozing out. Never open the sock and take out a treat for the dog; the tugging will develop when the dog realizes that he has to grab at the sock to have a chance of getting his favorite flavors—not when he lets go if the sock to eat a tidbit.

Stolen Moments from the Laundry Basket
What does your dog steal from the laundry basket (or the pile of clothes on the floor left by spouses or children)? Can this be your new tug toy? Many dogs find the laundry to be an irresistible source of the best play items. Undies, socks, bras, towels—put away your modesty in the name of tug! And remember the IN value of old shoes, particularly running shoes. These can be stand-alone tug toys, or incorporated into other toys to transfer the tugging.

e Magnetic Cours Map Clipboard
Here's a great way to organize your course maps at trials as well as to design agility courses or “copy down” a course at classes, seminars, or trials.
p The Magnetic Course Ma 100' Clipboard has an 80' by magnetic agility grid (1"=10' scale) on the top and comes with a large les variety of magnetic obstac ). (plus handlers and a dog

Jen Pinder’s

A Program for Training the Teeter and Solutions for Common Teeter Performance Problems

Now there’s an easy-to-follow, progressive program that will help you teach a terrific teeter performance to any dog, large or small. Jen Pinder’s teeter training program is designed to teach the dog that he is truly in control of the motion. Part of being in control means the dog must know what is expected and how to do it. While the program can be followed start to finish to teach new dogs the teeter, there is an entire disc designed to provide problem-solving support for trained dogs with teeter performance problems.

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Clean Run - May 2012

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