Skateboard clicker training

[Horace's Mum]

Horus got a new toy yesterday - I finally found a little skateboard for him to mess around with. Been looking for one for while, just as a new project for us to work on. I happened to have my camera handy so I videoed the whole first session, and then I thought it might be interesting to people new to clicker work or anyone else who can be bothered to watch(!) to see absolutely every stage. Usually you just get a brief view of each stage involved, which can make it hard to imagine the speed of the whole process, and how much repetition is involved. So I thought I would start a thread on here, and include a link to the video for each session we work on it - unedited. Yesterday we worked for about 10mins, and ended with both feet on the board but needing more consistency with that.

I don't really have a plan of what we are doing, just seeing what is offered, so this really is freeshaping at its most basic. Notice I am clicking for nose touching, then foot touching, then it varies a little depending on what he offers me - sometimes it is one foot, sometimes it is 2 feet, and sometimes the board moves so I click to keep him confident in it. A couple of times he gets a little frustrated and mouths at me - there is no sound but he isn't actually barking, he just looks like he is!! I probably should have stopped at a couple of earlier points, but by doing a bigger session at the start it actually means Horus is keener when we come back to it - that is just the way he tends to work. So this video is quite long, but others will probably be a lot shorter, as I start to get more specific.

No idea how long this project will last, might be a week, might be a month!

And for those who don't know, Horus is deaf so his clicker is a blue light - you can see it well in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_kbG_liZ3Y

[emmabeth]

Ooooh... good stuff! Off to watch now!

[Horace's Mum]

Part 2 - very sorry for the blurriness, the camera was focussing on the table it was resting on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssNpM90H098

Aim of this session was to get a solid 2 feet on, and try to get him to stand a little further back so he could balance more easily. Not quite there position wise yet, but he is starting to lean his weight backwards and compensates for the slight movement underfoot. Very confident with it moving though, pleased about that!

[dontpugme]

I'm so excited about these. I was trying some free shaping over the weekend. It was the jump in the box thing, but I don't want to stress out max's joints. This seems a lot more practical and more fun. I bought a skateboard a year ago for 25 cents at a garage sale. It wasn't in bad shape. I've stopped riding it though because I got a RipStik. Time to pass my skateboard down to max!