Stair Work For Contacts

You cannot do the stair work until the dog has a very strong nose touch to a target. The reason for the nose touch is:

1. So the dog learns to "go to" a certain spot (i.e. wherever the target is)

2. To get the dog to drop it's centre of gravity and shift it's weight back coming down the contact (a dog with his head down will not jump off)

3. To give the dog an alternate and repeatable behavior to offer once he gets to the target (i.e. keeping the endings unpredictable and fun)

STEPS...

1. Place the dog on the bottom stair in his final position and "machine gun" or rapid fire the treats. Release with your chosen release word off the stairs. Make sure you count out your rewards. Feed between front feet.

2. Place target on the floor, ask dog to come down ONE stair to target. Touch with nose and treat each time and release. Feed over target 5-10 touches before the release. Be variable and unpredictable.

3. The dog should be coming down one stair to target with no stopping and checking back (count your response rate)

4. Dog should now start to come down two stairs to the target. Handler should be standing facing the dog or beside the dog depending what type of stairs you are using. NEVER put food on the target plate itself.

5. Fade the target plate at this point and try to get the nose touch to the floor between the feet, thus assuming a "target position" of two feet on two off.

6. Back chain until the dog can do a full set of stairs with no stopping and checking in before he gets to the target position. Always feed between front legs with the head down.

7. Try to get some proofing of this position by throwing toys, running past etc. You are working on Accuracy of the position and training the fluency of this behavior.

8. Chang the 'H' by going to many different sets of stairs.

Once this is done, you will take the dog to the dogwalk set at 2 feet and re do all steps from 1 to 8 on the contact. Start by placing the dog in the final "position" and back chain.

NOTE: Stairs and Floor need to be TWO DIFFERENT surfaces. Dogs cannot tell the difference between Yellow and blue but they can tell the difference between grass and wood.