Devon’s teeter and weave progress

In the last week, Devon has made great progress on the teeter and the weaves. For the weaves, she’s been doing straight up poles at home and sequencing them. However, when we got to Pawsitive, she was having problems turning into the second pole again. ON Thursday after some work with wires off to the side before we started sequencing, she started getting the turn to pole 2 on her own without wires during the sequencing. Liz also saw it and said, “When she drops her nose she gets the turn to 2.”

I decided to go back to working at home with the wires, and Kim reminded me to put them on pole 2 and 4 to do the self correct versus 1 and 3 for guiding. However, when I did this, I realized she didn’t need the wires. Sure enough, I pulled the wires off and she was weaving perfectly all 6 poles! She had indeed worked through it during class on Thursday night and figured it out! She was even sailing through the poles faster than she had previously!

We also took the big step on Thursday to try the full-sized teeter at Pawsitive. This was a big step since it was only the second time she’s ever been to that building and the first time I’ve asked for the full height teeter. She wasn’t really sure about it, but the food bowl helped and she went over it 3 times with me on her left. I also noticed she’s more confident and less likely to bale off if I’m behind her. I need to play with this some so I know where her comfort level will be at a trial in a new environment for the first couple of trials.

At home, I moved her aluminum teeter up to full height, and she was comfortable pretty quickly. She’s even sequencing it. She knows it moves different from her old one and tried them both to see the difference. Once she got the hang of it, she was running over and volunteering her aluminum teeter for cookies!