Nice video.
How long did it take you from start to finish? That is a nice method if you have access to a teeter like that. Seems pretty quick, too.
I'm curious as to how she generalizes the movement when it is her own weight moving the board, rather than being at the end and having it moved for her. I would be concerned that she didn't move to the end but instead jumped off after the 'bang'.
I can definitely see the pros in this method!
Well, we definitely aren't finished yet, so I can't comment on how long it has taken start to finish. You can see in the video that we aren't yet letting it go all the way down on its own. We also really haven't been training it in a dedicated way. I think we've been working it a couple months, but like I said, we don't do the teeter every time we're practicing.
I think that the idea is that she learns the pieces. So to answer your question, she learns to run to the end and ride it down until we say "okay". So right now, the piece that we don't have is her being able to stay on. In the video, she isn't crouching the way that she should at the bottom, so sometimes the "bang" pops her off. I guess the hope is that she learns to hold on in her learned end position, then wait until I release her, at which point she is rewarded. Popping off before I release her, just like in a 2o2o, gets no reward, and we try again.
The problem is, like I said, that she tries to hold on, but can't because she hasn't lowered her center of gravity (the crouch).
So we are bouncing her to get her to crouch. The bouncing isn't really part of the training method, but we have to teach her to hang on, and that's the way to do it. Some dogs crouch naturally, others don't. It's especially important for dogs who run immediately to the end.
