[agilitywawa]

Here’s some more of the plank – with less moving. At the end of the session, she is hopping up and turning around with the toy in her mouth. She definitely has a preferred way to turn. I was using teh small HR and alternating chase and strike with some tugging to try to get out of our rut of only using those toys for chase. She did fine with it.

On the toy races I was telling her to “get it” – I guess that’s my cue for a dead toy. I may also have said “go”.

We did some more backing up – I’m trying to get upright. The erratic bouncing of the treats is not helping at the moment – the treat never seems to end up in the correct place.

I keep trying the wing wrap with different methods of toy play. I feel like she is just barely humoring me and we are not really making any progress. Her first rep is generally the best, so I know I can’t do very many. But even after ending the play, she’s not very excited to work again. On the second rep tonight after both chasing and tugging on the HR, she went to one bowl and then sat and stared at me and would not move. The second rep on the video is the third (and final) rep. Not really sure what more to change.

Thanks for the video of working on the steps to return the toy to hand. Something else we can work toward.

Joan

[agilitywawa]

I dug out the big plank. It’s the width of a dogwalk and she had no problem turning around on it. Then I raised it a few inches off the ground.

I got outside for a little toy race too. We are expecting abnormally good weather this week, so I think I will have some additional opportunities to train outside.

“Rather than 2 categories of toys, you can work to have different markers that apply to all toys. So a frisbee can either be a thrown toy or a tugging toy and the marker indicates which, in the moment.”

I do have 2 different words – “chase” means I’m throwing the toy and “strike” means she should grab it and we will tug. In the toy class I took, one of the things I was working on was a kind of rapid fire striking where I had 2 toys, tell her to strike, tug for 2 seconds, let go of it and cue her to strike the second toy. She liked this game – it was high energy and I used udder tugs for this since they were easy to present to strike and she likes to chase them. I am working toward inserting some chase into this game. When she chases toys, she is good about coming back to me and dropping the toy, but she has a hard time delivering a toy to my hand (I’ve been working on it for a long time and I don’t know if I care anymore if she ever returns it to my hand). Just so you have some background of where we are at.

Right now, she is not used to striking the HR and I don’t mind tugging on it, but it’s harder to use than some other toys. I did get her tugging on the bigger round HR. I played around with mixing in the tugging with the chasing the HR again this afternoon and once I throw it, it is definitely harder to get her back to tugging on it. Maybe I should try the game I described above with the HR (and I may need to buy some large HR, lol) to get more reps of striking it with really short bursts of tugging…
I never knew playing with toys could be so hard until I got this dog. 🙂

[agilitywawa]

We did the sit to stand on the bosu/donut and that went well.

My second plank is behind a bunch of equipment, so I need to dig it out. I did go back to the same small plank and she did better on the turning around. And with both exercises, I released her and waited for feet on the ground before giving her the toy.

For backing up, the hand signal is the cue to do it. I started to work on getting the verbal more solid on its own.

“Remind me -will she tug with the hollee roller?
We never really have done much tugging with the HR – the 2 I use most often are the small football shaped ones, so there is not a lot for me to hold on to. I got out a bigger round HR and we did some tugging – she needed a little encouragement at first. I think I have had definite categories of toys – the throwing/fetch ones and the tugging ones. She will fetch and tug on the udder tugs, so I should get those out to use too. We played around with the tossing and tugging with multiple HR. She has such a strong preference for chasing that it was not always easy, but I think we made some progress.

[agilitywawa]

We did GOAT 2 with a couple of things. In the beginning, I was waiting a little to see of she would put all 4 feet on the donut. When that looked too difficult, I added a second thing.

Here’s Plank 1 – this plank is too small for her to turn around on now, but we have a bigger plank that I can try.

Here’s some backing up – we have not done this in a while and we look a bit rusty. We did have several toy breaks during the session (edited out).

Between yesterday and this morning, I have done several short sessions with the wing wrap and discovered a couple of things (at least that were true yesterday). Throwing the hollee roller was way too much. She brought it back and got all stalky, standing and staring at me to throw it again. I quit that session and when I came back to it, she was still sticky and not wanting to move. This morning, I went back to a regular tug toy. And I realized something else – I have been delivering the toy only on my right, so after the first reward there, she did not want to go to my left to that bowl. So I had to do some remedial work. So I seem to be going backwards in terms of progress on this one.

[agilitywawa]

I have not shown you any of the GOAT game. And I see it’s going to be progressing this week. Here’s the first level.

I have been working on wing wrap foundation to get a system for rewarding. We use bowls for a couple of reps and then reward with the toy. She has been happy going back and forth and taking the cookies, but I try not to let it go too long before the toy comes out. And I’m letting her win the toy and playing a little differently. For the sake of time, a lot of the play is edited out. I’m thinking this would be a good place to use the hollee roller for chasing. I may try that next session.

[agilitywawa]

“Keep working the shaped wing wrap because the foundation ends up being wicked strong, particularly in terms of being able to commit to doing the thing even when cookies/toys/distractions are right there.”

I tried a little experiment – grilled chicken and bowls. It went well for a few reps before she lost interest. Then I switched to toys. From all of the toy work we have done I am noticing that this game is causing her some frustration. When we do tugging, she likes to win, so I try very hard to do short tugs and let her win more than 50% of this time (also to encourage the return to hand, which is really hard for her and still a work in progress. I do a lot with 2 toys and then she willingly comes back and drops the first one because the desire to chase is so high). Here, although she gets to tug a lot, she does not get to possess the toy and that is frustrating for her. I know because there is a lot of regripping the toys and with regripping usually comes biting my hand on the regrip – a big tell. So I feel like I am undoing some of our toy work since I am not abiding by the rules we have set for certain things. And Dellin is pretty serious about her rules and more of an old soul (unlike her brother), so I don’t want to erode the trust we have built up.

At one point she sat at looked at me, like there were just a lot of questions, so I did another little experiment of adding a cone for some context since she is familiar with it. That did seem to help and she went back and forth more easily with the cone there (dumb luck? maybe). So wondering if it’s ok to keep the cone there? I was right up against it – no space.

Prop with food and toy:
“You can do a couple more short sessions like this on the prop and on any thing you would normally shape with food. You can also add in a bit of the sending to the prop, I think she would enjoy the action! But still use the food-then-toy procedure.”

I tried this out too and did a couple of the little sends – she did think it was great fun. And she is so sneaky – takes the cookie and appears to have eaten it and her mouth even opens, but then it falls out with the toy.

This morning I also tried starting the session with frisbee, then going inside for work, then back out for frisbee. Too early to tell anything. It was warm this morning, so this option may not always be available in the dead of winter.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Joan

[agilitywawa]

“Focus forward:
She thought that this perhaps is the BEST GAME EVER.”

Yes – anything that involves chasing is the highest value – more than tugging. I have taken a couple of rounds of an online toy class with her and she is interesting. She has definite feelings about how things should be.
Today was the an unusually warm day, so took the next step of focus forward outside. In retrospect, my choice of toy was not good – the small blue/green orbee balls are are hard to see and she overran them a couple of times. But going ahead of me was not an issue!

Drive to Handler. I added in a cookie, a pivot and a toy reward. I tried to talk to her too. She did pretty well with all of this. She has had previous exposure to this type of game. I find that leaving her in a stay gets much more drive to go. A cookie toss would not get the same enthusiasm to chase me.

Wing wrap – I will continue to work on that. She does already know how to wrap a cone/wing, but I will work on this method.

Here’s the first step of the Blind Cross foundation. I had to cut out a few reps where I totally did it wrong. I have a real problem with being coordinated while standing still!! So the toy delivery may look a little spastic.

Here are a return to the prop pregame and nose touch pregame using the treat and then the toy. I think there has been a huge improvement in energy and attitude.

Prop (she got me once, then I’m watching closely for the swallow):

Nose touch (I should time how long it takes to chew 1 Zuke. lol)

In response to the food questions – she does now reliably eat her meals and does so pretty quickly. This has improved dramatically in the last 4 months. Now she eats all of her meals (she used to skip some meals or leave food). If we do a “treats with friends” type game where other dogs are out getting cookies, then she looks like a normal dog -all about the cookies. I used to train her before her breakfast and it did not really make a noticeable difference in her attitude towards cookies. Now I train her after her breakfast and she actually does better. I have been in a pattern that first we would do what I wanted to do (i.e., some obedience type training or foundations), then we would get to do what Dellin wanted to do (i.e., go outside for frisbee). The frisbees are the highest value objects (chase) and she’s quite skilled at catching them.
My other dogs are such savages, I don’t know if they could watch. LOL. Maybe I could borrow Burst for that.

Question about the GOAT game. Dellin is older and basically full grown, so won’t fit on a lot of things anymore that you recommend. As a young puppy, she did lots of empowerment type games, walking on surfaces and climbing on props (at home and in her in person puppy class). She now stands on unstable surfaces (fitbones) too. What do you suggest I do with respect to this game?

Sorry for the long post – the nice weather and time in between meetings let me do several short sessions. And I can’t watch the zoom live – I have agility class with the adults tonight.

[agilitywawa]

Thanks for the new loop for the prop – I tried that tonight – gave her the cookie while her paw was on the bag and then tossed a hollee roller. She got me couple of times – cookie came flying out when she went for the toy, so then I watched the chewing (it’s very slow, so easy to see. lol). But, overall, this was much better and I really liked how it looked. I’ll do another couple of sessions and then show you a video. I did not retry the nose target yet – that’s how she is generally – gentle. Until the toys come out.

I did try out the baby steps of 3 games that I could do with toys.

Here’s Focus Forward:

Drive to Handler (I was not sure if I had the toy positioned correctly):

First steps of wing wrap with toy – she has a word to drop one toy and take another, but I did not use it. The 2 toys are identical. She preferred being on my right side. Which makes some sense – to go back to my left hand, she would be “circling” in her less preferred way. From herding I have learned that she strongly prefers to go clockwise. This felt a bit clunky to me. I though about trying it with bowls and treats, but I suspect she would wander off.

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