Want to build your distance control and connection with your dog while participating in a great new sport? Or maybe you’ve always been fascinated by herding, but don’t have sheep. Check out Treibball!
Sometimes called “ball herding” or “urban herding,” treibball is a cross between billiards and soccer that you play with your dog. It’s perfect for a dog who is retired from other sports, dogs new to the sports world, or reactive dogs (since most venues restrict access to the competition field).
Melissa has earned her CH. title on her german shepherd Riley through the ATA and is now working on her titles through NATE. Students are welcome regardless of their venue of choice.
Come learn about this relatively new dog sport!
This class is structured for beginner and advanced teams alike. Lectures will cover the basic rules of the game and the foundation skills through to novice to get beginners started. However, more advanced players are welcome to join at Gold or Silver for problem solving and additional help including (but not limited to) help with: control around the balls & stimulus control for pushing, not biting the balls, directionals, steering, adding distance, building confidence for the game, and more.
Please note: All lectures in this class will be released on the first day of the class, to allow students at different levels to work on the skills they need most. Students are encouraged to work at their own pace.
Teaching Approach
This class will take a step by step approach. Each step will have written instructions with a corresponding video of each step. Videos tend to be short, with the occasional video that is a bit longer demonstrating one piece at a time. Lectures are released in one batch at the beginning of the class — then students work at their own pace. Feedback will mostly be written, however for gold students I will occasionally do a screen recording if I think the student might benefit from feedback on timing.
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Syllabus
How to use this class
Foot Target
Find the Cookies - Yoga Mat
Reinforcement Strategies for Treibball
Go Where I point
Find the Target - Step 1
Watch / Check In Cue
Sit / Down at a distance
Learning to Push (foam roller)
How to Reward Pushing
Other Pushing Games
Find the Target - Step 2
Find the Target - Step 3
Find the Target - Adding a Ball
Find Two Targets - Step 1
Find Two Targets - Step 2
Adding Distance
Learning how to push the ball
Find Two Targets - Step 3
Moving Sideways between Balls (Building Work Between Reinforcers)
Fading the target
Adding Distance
Find the Target / Push the Ball
Moving Between Balls (2-3 ball)
Push through resistance
How many can you push?
Teaching the Point Cue
2 Ball - Find the Farthest Ball
Fading the Target for Point
Teaching the starting position (ATA)
Putting it all together
Problem Solving:
Dog is biting and popping balls
Dog doesn't like pushing balls into each other
Dog is struggling to steer
Dog is bringing in the wrong balls
Prerequisites & Supplies
Recommended Supplies for this class include:
At least 1 exercise ball (in later weeks you may want 2-3 if you're new to treibball; students with prior experience may want up to a full field of 8). The right size ball for your dog will be dependent on the organization you want to compete in — here are links to NATE's guidelines and ATA's guidelines.
A xpen or other item to use as a "goal"
A xpen, Julie Flanery's gates, or other items that can be used to create a "channel" to help teach your dog to push (2 crates, or a crate and a wall or an xpen and a wall etc all work perfectly well. We should be able to find something you already have for this, so don't feel like you need to purchase something new)
3 foot targets (a small piece of cardboard works fine; other popular options are pieces of a cut up yoga mat, or tupperware lids)
OPTIONAL:
A rolled up yoga mat or foam roller
A large toy car (like those designed for toddlers) that your dog could learn to push
Sample Lecture
Once we’ve introduced the concept of pushing an object with our nose to find cookies, this is a fairly easy concept for us to transfer to other objects.
Today we’re going to begin to introduce this concept with a ball.
Equipment:
1 ball
Channels (or something to use as channels - can be almost anything! Be creative....)
How to Teach Your Dog to Push the Ball
To begin to teach our dog to push, we’re basically going to make it as easy for them to do the right thing as possible.
So we’ll set up our ball in a “channel” so that there’s no way your dog can push the ball in the wrong direction, and lay out a row of cookies behind the ball, so as your dog pushes the ball they reveal cookies to eat! And to get to the cookies, they have to push the ball.
Here is Levi’s very first try at this game - again, he’s a little unsure, so you can see how I “help” him a bit, when he gets stuck during his first try at this new thing. But he picks it up pretty quick! This video shows both his first and his second try at this new game.
You’ll notice that my channel is narrow enough that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t get around the ball to get the cookies behind it. As he progresses, I’ll place my cookies a little further apart, and then eventually fade them entirely.
Here’s another team working on this — this is Alycia and Coulee again! You can see she’s using fewer cookies than I needed with Levi; they’re set so that he can do a good push and then discover a cookie… really nicely spaced for his skill level. And Alycia has gotten pretty creative with her channel too!
And then finally, here’s Amanda and Pogo - Pogo here is at the point where he’ll push the cookie the entire channel and then gets his cookie at the end. She’s using a crate and an xpen as her channels here!
Testimonials
A sampling of what prior students have said about this course ...
Melissa was very helpful and guided us through Mickey's over-arousal issue with the ball. He tends to go 'cray-cray' whenever he sees a big ball, and I was afraid we would never get past that, but Melissa really helped us build his impulse control! I am confident we will actually be able to go for titles in this sport! Mickey has come a long way, and we have enjoyed the Treiball class immensely. It has been a lot of fun. Both my dogs, even the 13 year old, have enjoyed playing the games.
It really helped keep my energy, motivation and focus up with advancing my skills in this area. I get easily distracted by the business of training and often lose focus on doing these big, dedicated training education pieces. SO glad I did this!
This was a fantastic course with so many benefits to both trainers and dogs alike. It really helped me focus in on and refine my technical skills while having a lot of fun doing it. Treibball training also requires a lot of problem solving and creativity which I really appreciated. It definitely made me think more about the needs of my dog, the environment and setting achievable criteria. It was much more complex than I anticipated but I had so much fun seeing the progress we made each session, the reward was a huge payoff for the work! Melissa made this a fun, highly-motivating training course that brings out the best in every handler and dog. She was so positive and her feedback was absolute gold. I am really glad I did this course and can't wait to keep progressing in this sport!
Thank you, it was so fun to learn something that is completely new to both me and my dog! We progressed well through the class exercises and the lectures made it easy to see what I needed to do, as well as offering a bigger picture view which I needed since it's a brand new sport to me. Fabulous class!
Melissa is very encouraging and is great about encouraging us to adapt training styles to the individual dog and owner team. She gives great feedback and will do her best to ensure the team succeeds.
I can't speak highly enough of Melissa. She was endlessly helpful, great at troubleshoot, explained every element really clearly and her feedback was so positive and personal. It made a huge difference!
Registration
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