Finally, A Chance to Go Play

To say the dogs and I are suffering from cabin fever is an vast understatement.  The snow has been too deep to run any agility or even practice Treibball.  Thursday is open course night at the Quad Cities Dog Center, but unfortunately, the weather has gone to h.... every Thursday this month with the exception of the first one.

I have Belle entered in a NADAC trial this weekend at the QCDC, and Micky and David will be running Dusty on Sunday.  We've been socked in with fog for almost 48 hours; hopefully, it will dissipate this evening.  However, the warm temperatures and southerly winds that have brought the fog, have also melted much of the snow, and I was able to go out and run Belle and Dusty on the course that is still set up from last month.  Belle was her ever conscientious self and did the course like we hadn't had a four-week break from agility.  Dusty was pretty good, but he needed body support to not pull off obstacles.  He also was not listening as well as he normally does.  But for such an over-the-top dog, he did pretty well.

Since it is still foggy and my jump standards are white PVC, I didn't try any bonus line stuff with Belle.  Instead I decided to bring out some balls and practice Treibball with Dusty and Belle.  Dusty still doesn't caught on to the concept that the idea is to push the ball toward me and the goal, so I didn't do much work with him.  I decided to see if Belle could still be sent out and bring in the ball that I indicated.  She did a really good job of it.  Also, on the last ball that she brought back, it started to slip by the side of the goal and she cut it off and pushed it in. 

A New Sport Comes to the US - Treibballing

I found a reference to Treibball when looking at the schedule for the upcoming pet show in St. Charles, Illinois.  Since I didn't have a clue, I Googled the word and found it refers to a game played in Germany that involves herding exercise balls into a goalie's net.  There are numerous videos on YouTube--most in German.  However, Living with Dogs has several YouTube videos in English that show how to begin training.  They also offer a book translated from German, Treibballing Handbook.   

From watching the German videos, treibballing looks like an excellent way to exercise your dog's body and mind and to increase the handler-dog working bond.

Dusty is a reactive, over-the-top dog who gets very excited in the presence of large balls.  I took him out and worked on sending him to a mat, which is step one.  I was really shocked that he was able to go to a mat and lie down.  I didn't think I had taught him that behavior, but apparently I did.  (Either that or he learned from watching me teach it to other dogs.)

The next step was to bring out the pig ball.  (It's a hard plastic ball about 18" in diameter that was designed to keep pigs from getting bored.)  Dusty goes ape over this ball, and I very rarely let him play with it.  While straddling the ball, I sent Dusty to his mat.  He was able to do it, but it was hard for him to ignore the ball.  When released to his reward, he lunged at the ball several times.  If Dusty can learn to do this new sport, it may prove to be transforming experience as far as his general reactivity and self-control are concerned.