Rosie asked me if I would recommend this "hit it" board? Personally, I think this is a great training gadget. It works like a clicker. If the dog understands a clicker, this is a very good and reliable tool to apply on an agility equipment especially when you are training on your own. I find it very difficult to watch my dog to see if he hits the target point then click & reward. Running with the dog, I don't think I can turn my head back to see what he is doing but this "hit it" board does the click for me. If the dog hits the board, it beep. This "hit it" board came into two sizes, a smaller size for the Dog Walk and a bigger size for the A Frame.
A couple of years ago, I was talking to my friend Helen Millyard about how to train Saturn to be more confidence on the contacts and she told me all about this super "hit it" board that I have never heard before. When we met up at an agility show later, she kindly lend it to me to try it on. Unfortunately it didn't work on Saturn, he has a longer body and it is always risky to get him to run the contacts. I then used the board on Sing for experiment, he is a very clever dog, he understands the board immediately and we were doing well to start with, so I went to purchase one from Nose Touch who produced this fantastic training tool but the website would not send the board outside US and I was very disappointed. Then I found out Clean Run will ship the board outside US so I immediately ordered one from them.
It didn't take me long to train Sing to run a near perfect Dog Walk with this "hit it" board. We are now about 98% accuracy. A straightline after DW is 100%. We still need to work on our turning sharp left and right after DW. If the board is there, there is no problem. If I encounter a new problem with the DW, I always put the board back on and Sing knows what to do.
Sorry if I have not mention about our running A Frame, we never have any problem running the A Frame, so I have not buy a bigger piece to train the A Frame.
I have uploaded one of our runs at KCI that shows both running A Frame and running DW and a few clips of our running DW:
8 comments:
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This looks like so much fun for hooman and dog :) We wish there was a place like this around here somewhere!!
Thanks for posting that Lian,but as you say it may not work so well for bigger longer dogs.
The hit it board is really cool, I've never seen one used until I saw Sizzle's video. Clean Run is a great company - I'm lucky I live close to them, so whenever I order something I get it two days later!
Sounds like a great tool. :D Thanks for the informative post.
Great running dogwalks!
Hi Rosie,
As you know I haven't have a big dog so I don't know what outcome I will get from them. I know there are a few Large dogs that doing quite successfully with the "hit it" board, you can find some video on youtube.
It didn't work on Saturn is because he was already thought 2o/2o. He is not a very strong dog so any change in his pattern will make it worst.
Lian
Hello Lian. Sizzle is amazing. Im really interested in knowing more about this method. If you can kindly spare time and email me and explain how you Fade the touch board i would be most grateful. heathl123457@yahoo.co.uk
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