Friday, November 30, 2012

Dogs Running on the Treadmill

As I mentioned in the last post and shared a video - my dogs run on a treadmill. Eventually I would like to buy a carpet mill - just can't justify spending $400 right now - especially when I have a working treadmill.

The treadmill is perfect as the rainy season has only just begun, so when it's too gross to do things outside I can just put the dogs on the treadmill. Right now I run them almost everyday. Seppel has been on one before and has been a pro almost from the beginning. Seth and LiLo took some warming up but they are both very confident running on the treadmill now.

A few weeks ago I would have never believed the dogs would be eager to get on the treadmill. Seppel is the most eager of all. I've used Peanut Butter, Almond Butter, and canned food as bait. Almond Butter is actually the best choice because it's thick and sticks to the spoon so you can feed less. Lately I've been using canned food, I split a can between the three dogs. I don't reward them as often as I did in the beginning, but I still reward them fairly frequently because that is the whole reason they want to be on the machine. When I initially started them out I put them in a harness and held them through the process... I think I only did this 1-2 times before they were willing to walk on it by themselves. As we went I just started upping the speed. Seppel got into it right away because he's clearly done this before - Seth took about a week to get really confident in the machine.

As I said in the other entry, I see a HUGE difference in Seppel when he has been on it vs when he hasn't.

Here is an update video from tonight:

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