Sarah Baker says:

Skeptic really struggled with this one as well. I ended up using a combination of shaping, luring and molding : ) I like to shape but sometimes it can be best to move along to another method to jump start a behavior.

First, make sure your reward delivery is on the side of his head as that can help him move his back feet again.

Moving toward your dog can work, but it often needs to be combined with some luring by putting your hands with cookies near your dog’s nose to keep him on the perch. This can help him from moving all the way off the perch in response to the pressure of you moving in close. Remember this when doing handling work too, that BCs can be very sensitive to pressure.

I also used cookies in my hand above Skeptic’s head to turn his head. If you get it turned enough, the body follows.

Perch work can require lots of praise for just being on the perch to make sure the dogs know they are correct about that part of the behavior.

Something that helped Skeptic was to reset him often. So I would wait for rear foot movement, click, reward on the side of his head, clicking and treating again if my reward placement helped get more rear foot movement. If not, I released him off the stool to a tossed treat, then rewarded rear foot movement when he came back to the perch. The momentum from coming back to the perch would cause his back feet to move.

I would also work body awareness in many forms to assist in him moving his feet to get cookies (feet in and on boxes, on balance disks, stepping over cavalettis, backing up, side steps, etc).

I also try to always have at least one trick that I am shaping to help keep my dogs in the frame of mind of offering behaviors and working through mistakes.

If he gets bored easily, try have several stations out and move between them. Perch work, then circling, then crate sends, then backing up, then more perch work, etc.

Please let me know if that helps and if you have more questions!