Clean Run - October 2015 - 54

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3

4
T&T

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12'
T

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24'

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36'

a foot or so from the end, facing the
Treat & Train. Facing the same direction
as your dog, step over the board with
one leg so that you are now straddling
both the board and your dog. Restrain
your dog by holding him by the chest
or in front of his hips. See Figure 3.
Give your contact cue and release your
dog to run forward. If your dog stops in
his end position, give your release cue
and press the remote control button
of the Treat & Train at the same time. If
your dog turns back to you, try again,
but this time restrain him only a few
inches from the end of the plank and put
the Treat & Train a bit closer to the end
of the board.

Straddling the board and your dog, move the starting position back in small increments.
Once your dog can go ahead of the you the length of the board (12 feet), move back to 24
feet and then 36 feet. Finally, do the whole dogwalk.

5

T&T
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With success, move back your starting
position and the dog's in small increments. I use the slats on my dogwalk as a
guide, and I don't move backward more
than one slat at a time. If you are using a
plank on a table, you can continue straddling the plank with your dog until he
is doing the entire 12 foot plank to go
ahead of you to the Treat & Train.
Note: If you are using a dogwalk for this
exercise, you will reach a point where
the ramp is too high for you to straddle
it, so you will have to stand next to your
dog and restrain him. As soon as you
choose a side of the plank to be on, shift
the position of the Treat & Train so that
it is not directly ahead of the dog, but
rather off to the side just a bit-the side
opposite to the side you are on. If the
Treat & Train and you are on the same
side of the plank, your dog has more incentive to curl toward that side and you
do not want to reinforce that. By having
the dog turn away from you slightly to
get his reward, you are compensating for
the curling the dog is sure to want to do
when the Treat & Train is not at the end
of the contact.
54

Gradually move the Treat & Train so it becomes less of an aid and more of a distraction.

Once your dog is running with confidence and speed to his end position at the bottom of the 12-foot plank, I find that it's typically pretty easy to move our starting
position back 24 feet and then 36 feet, and finally to the full dogwalk. At this point my
dog is running the full length of a dogwalk to get into position, with me still behind
him. Because the Treat & Train is out in front of him, he has no reason to look back at
me. This progression is shown in Figure 4.
As with the weave poles, I don't want the dog to become reliant on the sight of the
Treat & Train to let him know where to go. So once my dog can run the full length
dogwalk ahead of me, I begin to gradually move the Treat & Train so it becomes less of
an aid and more of a distraction as shown in Figure 5. Each time the dog must move
forward to his end position on the board before getting released to the Treat & Train.
I also alternate between having the Treat & Train on the right and the left so that my
dog continues to drive straight ahead. If I leave the Treat & Train on one side all the
time, my dog will anticipate turning in that direction and may have trouble continuing
to drive straight to the end of the board.
Clean Run | October 15
Clean Run - October 2015

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