Saturday, January 14, 2017

Miley - Relearning the Ramp

I don't know how it happened, but Miley became afraid of using the ramp to get into and out of my vehicle.  She'd been using it since she was a puppy and had no issues.  She definitely hasn't taken a spill off of it and I can't think of any negative incidents that would cause her to dislike it.  The only timing I can come up with that somehow ties in, is the passing of Heffner.  It wasn't until after he was gone that she started disliking using the ramp.

At the time, with only one dog, it was just easiest to load her up in the cab of truck, and later the minivan, than work on actually getting her back to being comfortable with the ramp.  It's lazy, I know.  But sometimes it takes me getting irritated with something or mentioning it a few times before I realize, oh yeah, I could train that.

With the host of winter events that we've had and me going back to relying on the truck to get around, I came to the realization that I need to get on it and get the dogs used to the ramp so that I can take them out to run around in areas that are only accessible by the truck.

For Miley, I had to REALLY break things down with the ramp.  Initially (unfortunately I didn't record these sessions to show where we started at) I had to just put treats on it and get her comfortable just being near it and taking treats off of it.  That's how bad her aversion to the ramp was.  I finally got her up to the point where she was okay walking on it flat on the carpet.  In the clip below, you can see her gradually getting more comfortable as the session goes on.  That's a pretty regular occurence for each of her sessions with the ramp.  She starts off hesitant, but gets more confident as the session progresses.

The clip after that is of her first session on the ramp where I added some height.  I used my aerobic step as a nice solid base to add just enough height to give the ramp a little of the bounce it will normally have, while keeping it at a low enough height that neither dog should feel uncomfortable.  Here's the video:


No comments: