Pivot
Ok, so I really have a hard time saying the word pivot without thinking of an old episode of the tv show “Friends”. They were trying to move a couch to Ross’ apartment and they were going up some stairs and he just kept saying, “pivot, pivot, pivot”. Just makes me laugh everytime I think about it.
Anyway, to get back to the subject at hand. Dawn and Ricky wanted to know how I taught Dare to pivot. So I went out and attempted to get a video showing what we did. The problem is that since she already knows the game, she kept offering it with or without me asking. LOL So, this was our best attempt. I will forewarn you that it’s not great. You have to keep in mind that I’m not a teacher by any stretch of the imagination, and Dare kept wanting to just give me the finished skill. I still think that the video on youtube of Kikopups was probably better. 
A couple things to keep in mind if you do want to use a dowel instead of the perch box. Some dogs don’t like the dowel at all initially. If that’s the case and they are worried about it, I would do some work with them to get them comfortable with the dowel separately before you could even start using it in combination with teaching the pivot. The other thing is that if you are as uncoordinated as I can be, you may want to practice using the dowel without the dog there at first too. Just see if you can keep your hand with the treats were you want the eyes to focus and still move the other hand in the direction you’ll need it to direct the rear end. It might sound silly, but I know that I find that sometimes my hands don’t follow the plan that I had in my head. LOL Anyway…here is the video.
Very clear process on the video. Great job!
Ok, first of all, mom just totally lost it remembering that episode of Friends! It’s nice to start the day laughing out loud!! She is totally picturing Ross on the stairs with the couch!
Thank you so much for making that video!! We really appreciate seeing how you taught the pivot with the dowel! It is a great video – you might have opened up a whole new world now – maybe I can get you to make training videos of tons of stuff!
I have seen kikopup’s video with the perch (book) and that didn’t seem to work for us for some reason (maybe we didn’t give it enough time) so it’s very helpful to have an alternative method in mind!
I’ll give you time to recover before I ask my next question!