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Thanks, Tracy! We will try the parallel path again later today. I’ll do what you suggested and see if he understands it.
Here is our first try with the Rear Cross game. I had to stop and just remind of the value for hitting the prop with his front paws for a couple reps. He got a little stuck, so I thought going back to that was best. Then he was doing well with going ahead of me to hit it! He turned the wrong way on each rep, but I was really happy to see him still going ahead to the pillow case. Rear crosses are my long time nemesis with my Ridgeback, so please let me know if I am doing something wrong here!
And we did a little more of the Start Line Stay game. One rep where he broke before the release word – my fault! Since he is doing so well, it’s easy to keep pushing.
We’ve been working on switching between food and toy as well, and I’ve also been taking the toy to different locations and simply playing with it. I want to make sure he as interest in the toy in a variety of locations before inserting the food into the game.
I totally agree on the latent learning!
We tried parallel path again, but I’m still not sure he actually understands the game. A good percentage of the reps, he didn’t actually hit the prop, he just barely stepped over it, but I anticipated him to touch it, so I clicked. Hopefully you can see what I mean in the video. I think he is more just following me, than trying to touch the prop….what do you think?
Yes, my Ridgeback LOVES motion! Are you saying to add in the motion slowly with the whippet because it will be TOO exciting if it’s added too quickly?
Again, I had to take notes on all your feedback! Lots of good stuff to process.
We did what you suggested on the wing wraps. The first set went really well! Then we took a play break and came back to it. I picked up the bowl so he wasn’t trying to play the game during our break, but then I realized I had no idea how far I had pushed out the jump stand. So then when we restarted, I think I had it too far out and well….as you can see it was a trainwreck lol! Next time I’ll just do our break upstairs do I dont mess with the setup.
He really impressed me with the start line stay game though! I only tried working on stay one time weeks and weeks ago and he wasn’t getting it so I immediately jumped ship and haven’t worked on it since lol. So many things to do with a puppy, so I figured I’d get back to it eventually. He was offering a couple downs, and I just rolled with it. Didn’t want to be too picky on the first session. He seemed to understand the game quickly and I’m so pleased with how well he stayed put even with me moving around!
We worked on the sends with Opposing motion again. I tried to move away more slowly, but you’ll have to tell me how I did. It’s a lot to think about…the timing and making sure he actually hits it and getting the treat ready, etc… Unsurprisingly I can struggle with timing with my Ridgeback too haha!
Tracy, here is Shaping the Wing Wrap with the jump stand pushed out just a bit. Again, he did great here.
And here is playing with toy and then offering the low value treat. I think he did pretty good with this too. My phone stopped filming a bit early, but the session ended with a treat scatter and I put away the toy. No bites! Should I continue with this game for more sessions?
Edit: Here are some of the Week 2 games! First, the sends to prop with opposing motion. Overall, I think he did well. I marked on a rep when he didn’t actually touch the pillow case, and then he misses the rep after that too. I should have made that 2nd rep even easier so he was sure to get it.
We also did the blind cross with a turn, just the baby level to start. One little mistake when he came through my legs LOL! I probably needed to maintain more connection with him…what do you think?
And here is parallel path. There were a couple misses here…I’m not sure he quite gets this game yet. I definitely won’t add more lateral distance yet, and I think we need to hang out here before doing the rear cross, as he isn’t driving ahead to hit the pillow case.
We did another session of the wing shaping with a high rate of rewards and he did great again! We also did the prop sends and I did as you suggested – more reps at each distance rather than moving away each time. He was awesome for that too! I won’t post video since it is very similar to the last ones I showed you.
Today we’ll work on the toy/treat switching and tune in for week 2 games!
>> For now, have a low value treat in your hand, and toss the close and keep it moving – if he engages with the toy, yay! Play! Then give the treat. We will be able to fade the toy movement when he understands the back and forth more.
I think there may be a word missing or an autocorrect, so I’m not 100% sure on what to do with the toy and the low value treat. It sounds like I toss the toy, but keep it moving (so a long toy) and then if he plays, play. Then offer the treat. And then do I repeat?
Here are sideways and backwards sends from today. I broke things up with some food play so he got some time to be play around in between. I think at first he was following my hand to the prop lol. The sending hand was always empty, but he thought it had something. But as we went on I can see he was actually sending to it and not just following my hand. The backwards sends went surprisingly well! My Ridgeback has such a hard time with these, so im so happy to see him already kinda getting the idea that I can face you while you do this thing.
And here is the wing wrap setup with a much higher rate of reinforcement. No opting out here! I think this went much better.
Wow, you’ve given me a lot to think about and digest! I have been taking notes on your feedback so I can reference things more easily.
We tried again with the forward sends and I tossed the toy a very short distance, but he didn’t go for it. So maybe the distance isnt the issue? He didn’t bite me, but he doesn’t seem to understand the game in this format…? Maybe the collar grab is downing him? Or perhaps the dead toy on the ground isn’t interesting for a young whippet?
After the first try, I didn’t really know what to do lol, so I put the toy away and used the treat scatter to prevent biting. And then I thought maybe I’d go back to using no treats and just the toy for comparison. That seemed better, but then he did lose interest in the toy. Maybe I went too long, or he may have been thinking about getting more of the treats and no longer cared about the toy. Hard to know! Toys are hard!
>> Question: is he happy to go back and forth between food and toys?
It can sometimes be an issue for him. I find that often once the food has been introduced, he has a hard time going back to the toy and would rather just get more food. It’s not every time, but it’s often enough that I notice it as a pattern. Or sometimes he will find a treat in the carpet while we are playing with toys and then he loses interest in the toy and looks at me like, “I’ll take more of whatever that was.”>> start with tugging
get the toy back, give him a treat.
gently take his collar, give him a treat while holding the collar.
toss the toy – send him to it – tug
repeat 🙂When you say get the toy back, what exactly do you mean? He has a pretty good “out”, but it’s not 100%. Sometimes he will chomp a couple more times before outing it. I’ve tried doing the thing where you hold the toy still close to their muzzle, but he is very persistent lol. He will just pull back and growl and tug and seems to think it’s fun. Eventually he does let go, but it seems like a game to him. Should I use the “out” cue? I’d say it’s about 80% reliable.
Is the idea of adding in treats at each step of the forward send game to lower his arousal in the presence of the toy?
EDIT: We gave it a go, but he still got very bitey, including some butt bites while I walked to pick up the toy. Very sharky lol! Here is the video.
I will cut out the smacking him around. I will confess I like to play with him without toys too, but he can get bitey with that, so I’ll stop that too. He doesn’t really seem to know how to play too well without teeth. Even his snuggles sometimes come with teeth lol! He gave me a bloody nose and an almost nose piercing this week while cuddling me – he’s so sneaky about it too!
>> So, using this game as an example – because there is no movement from you, we can get the cookies moving faster to get the arousal into the right zone for keeping him with you: with the upright nice and close, be quicker on getting the cookies in: as soon as he lifts his head from one target, plop the cookie in the other target (you can even move them further apart so it is more of a toss, he will like that!).
Makes total sense! Even I was feeling that the treats were slow during this training session, but wasn’t sure how to improve things. We will use your suggestions tomorrow.
For the wind down transitions – super helpful! I always do a treat scatter when I’m training with food to end the session. But I usually don’t bring food with me when I’m just working with toys. At first I was thinking I should keep a treat jar down there, but then I pictured the space between ending the toy play and walking to the treat jar, and I can just see him lunging at me and biting me LOL. So I think I will need the food on my body so there is no lag time between the toy play and the treat scatter. I think I’ll experiment with your list of suggestions and see how it goes.
I’m a total toy newb, so that probably isn’t helping things lol. My Ridgeback has never liked toys, so all her training has been with food. I’m way more comfortable with treats than toys, so I have a lot to learn myself. I appreciate all your help!
>> So is that the main pattern you see? You stop playing and then he goes all velociraptor chomp chomp? Does it happen early in the session, like on the first rep, or generally after several reps? I suggest a bit of training game with a low value toy: a little bit of play, nothing too insane, take the toy away for a heartbeat and if he does NOT velociraptor you: throw the toy and let him run around with it as a reward for modulating the arousal (throwing the toy and letting him run with it can be a nice stress release). Let me know how it goes and we can build from there!
It’s one of the patterns, but not the only one. Sometimes in the middle of toy play, or if I’m attempting to use the toy as a reward, he will “attack” me. So he can be tugging the toy just fine and the suddenly drop it and bite me instead. Or if I’m asking for a known behavior and he knows the toy is the reward, he will jump and bite me. I saw your suggestion of playing for 30 seconds. I will do that, but he may jump and bite me when I end the session lol
Here is what we worked on this morning. He had breaks and some silly play in between, so it wasn’t one long session.
Decel & Turns: Tried to incorporate your advice of turning more slowly. Let me know how I did. And we did the front cross as well.
Shaping Wing Wrap: I set the bowls further apart, like you suggested. And I kept the jump stand nice and close. Once I saw he was in a groove and getting it, I scootched it out a couple inches. You can see he got frustrated and barked and then decided to ditch me 🙁 I can’t recall a time he has done that recently, so feeling a little sad about that. I’d love your advice on that!
Here is the Forward Sends video, sorry about that bad link!
Hi Tracy, yes it makes sense. Sometimes he will be playing with the toy just fine and then all of sudden all his energy is directed at jumping and biting me. Like you said, I don’t really understand it, but I suppose we don’t need to know the underlying reason to begin working on it.
What do I do if after he eats the cookie and is calmly standing there, and I present the toy, but he doesn’t want it? And what do I do when he does come at me and bite me? He will do that behavior (jumping, biting) fairly often when we stop playing with a toy, even if he is the one who ends it by losing interest. I will pick it up to put it away and then he “attacks” me.
Not sure if you saw the other 3 videos in the post prior to the Blind Cross post 🙂 Thanks!
Here is our first Blind Cross attempt from this morning. It would be better if I had more space because he catches up so fast. Maybe I’ll try this out at a park (I don’t have a good yard for training). The video also highlights some of our issues. You can see on the second rep, he started to bark once I had the toy back. That was pretty mild, but sometimes it becomes jumping up and biting me when I have the toy. Then on the third rep, you can see he didn’t want the toy. This may be related to his challenge of switching between food and toys, I’m not sure. Then you can see he did start jumping up and biting me. The jumping and biting can happen when there is no food in the picture, but I can’t recall ot ever happening when there is only food in the picture, so it seems to be connected to the toy.
Thanks for all the feedback and the advice about incorporating toys.
And so cool that our pups are related 🙂 It was kind of a crazy time getting him from Louise amidst the pandemic, but I’m glad it all worked out for us.
Today we worked on:
Forward Send: This was more like his usual toy play. On the first rep, I didn’t have a good grip on his collar and he blasted ahead lol. I wasn’t being very intentional about looking at him on the first couple reps, and then when I did make sure I was looking at him, he barked at me. Not sure if it was coincidental or if he was weirded out by me lol. I did look at him for the next rep too and that was fine. (I cut out some of our tugging between reps for time, but I like to tug with him for a bit so he feels rewarded.)Prop Send: I guess this went okay, but I’m not quite sure he is getting it. He isn’t really driving to the pillow case yet, but maybe it’s too soon for that. Let me know your thoughts.
Decel & Turns: I followed your advice and tried to move away as he was moving toward the treat, and then decel once he got the treat. It all kind of happens fast, so I’m not sure how good my timing is. Then I also progressed to not having food in my hand and that was fine for him, he didn’t seem to have any issue following with an empty hand.
Tomorrow we will work on incorporating toys, the wing wrap and blind crosses.
I hope the video of my Ridgeback was one where we looked like we knew what we were doing LOL! We’ve come a long way 😉
Lazlo is from Poeta Whippets in Canada. I feel so lucky to have a Poeta puppy! Yes, latent learning is definitely real! I’ve already experienced it with him – sometimes it’s like he isn’t really getting it, so I’ll stop and then a couple days later he has it down perfectly without ever working on it again. When I first got him, he wasn’t much interested in food and would just walk away from training session, basically before we even got started. His food interest has gone way up since then and he really enjoys his training time now. Sometimes I’m ready to end it, but he has such an eager, focused look on his face that I will do a little more with him haha! Often I’ll toss a treat away so I can move a prop or readjust my position and he’s already eaten it and is attentively waiting to begin again before I’m read 🙂 It’s very cute.
But yes, please tell me if you think I am doing TOO MANY reps with him, or my sessions are too long. He’s so fun that sometimes I get carried away. I do have a timer, though I forget to use it all the time. Or if you think he’s ready to progress to the next step, let me know so I’m not holding him back. I wish someone had told me I was doing this with my Ridgeback much sooner, so I will take no offense if you tell me to shorten it up or move ahead.
Your advice about using a pre-loaded hand, rather than reaching into my pouch makes perfect sense. I’ll try that again this evening.
As for doing the games with a toy…he really likes toys, but I find it hard to shape or train new skills using a toy. He can get really excited about the toy and has a harder time thinking. Sometimes he will just jump up and bite me if he wants the toy, or he’ll sit and bark. I really don’t want to build frustration into his training so I’ve just been using toys to reward things he already knows. I’m open to advice on this.
Here are some of our Week 1 Game videos:
Decel & Turns This was fun and I think he did well!
Shaping Wing Wrap He also really liked this and didn’t want to stop. This is 2 sessions combined into one video. I only moved the jump stand out a bit, and you can see it was still enough for him to squeeze through, so I didn’t move it out further yet. This is a super clever method for reaching wraps!
Forward Send I really expected him to be more enthusiastic about this. He has a nice opposition reflex typically and has no problem driving ahead to toys. This was 2 sessions, a few hours apart. I was reminded that he is teething, and found 2 big teeth in the carpet after we were finished, so I think his mouth is ouchie. You can see on the last rep, he didn’t go for the toy at all, which is unlike him, and he dropped the toy a few times, also not typical for him. Now I feel bad 🙁Here is our Pre-Game 2, as well!
