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Hi Fei,
Looks good! Yes, I would agree that she likes the running start much more! You could tell that she was interested in the bird for quite some time before the run. The good news is she came back to you and worked!!! The reason she missed the second jump on the last drill was because you were late with your cue! Otherwise, good energy and speed from her!
Nice work!Hi Charmaine,
With the 2o2o contacts, I would not worry so much about the number of strides, but more about is the dog driving to the bottom of the contact and understands the behavior? I have my “in person” students backchain the contacts. It is something that I learned when teaching the running contacts that really helps with the dog driving into 2o2o position.
Here’s the thing, I believe that dogs that creep down contacts do not understand the behavior and we humans are 100% responsible for that!!! What happens is we say our contact word (let’s use “touch” for example). If I am at a trial and get in a hurry and say touch, but the dog does not drive all the way to the bottom but gets released, then we have just muddied that behavior and reinforced wherever on the contact that the dog left. Meaning they really don’t know where the 2o2o behavior is and what it means. Think of it in terms of a down. Down means dog’s bottom and elbows are touching the floor. If I ask for a down, and then the dog doesn’t go down all the way and I release them, then I have muddied that behavior. The dog will then not really understand that down means lay down with the elbows and bottom on the ground.
I have a great drill for teaching the dog to drive to the bottom of a contact. However, I am traveling this week and do not have a way to send you a video of what I am talking about. I will get it to you next Monday (PLEASE send me a reminder here)! The hardest thing is for YOU not to get in a rush and to maintain criteria. Meaning, it is important for you to make sure that the dog drives down into position and in training and local trials, you can pause and take a breath!
Does that help?Okay, I think you will like the drills for this week and feel free to use 4 poles rather than 6 for a while and reward often!
Hi Melissa,
Good to see you again!
LBG, this looks great! She is very excited and really starting to look for the obstacles.
The drill was great! You spent quite a bit of time getting her excited and happy about the run (yay)!!! She was fast and happy!!!
Have we talked jump heights? Is her normal jump height 8″? She really looks great at 4″. I know you said you’ve been working some grids, have those been at 4″ or 8″? She seems to be flattening out at 4″ and not over-jumping so much?
Looks great! I think you will like the drills this week for the weaves. Let me know if you have any questions.Hi Fei,
Congratulations!!! You have worked REALLY hard with this course. I want you to rephrase that paragraph and say “I am excited that with my new tools, this WILL become the new norm”!!!As far as the trotting, yes when she starts trotting, give her a second and see if she will speed up, but if she looks around and looks distracted, this is where your verbal “ready” and find a line off of the course. When this happens, make some notes and see if there is some consistency in what makes her start trotting. Is it a noise, is it an obstacle, is it a certain environment? This is how I discovered it was Jack’s house mate barking that caused him stress in the ring. If I had known this earlier and discovered it earlier, I would have been able to put him in the car at trials until I could spend some time working through it at home with the two dogs. Once you discover what it is (maybe it is too many runs or she does better running every other day) then you can work through the stress.
Great questions!!!
Hi Stacy,
I will post lesson 6 tomorrow and answer posts until probably around the 26th.
As far as the toy in hand, I would play with all of the above. I think it is important to be able to have a toy on you and to teach your dog to drive to a toy. Think about this: does she like the toy in your hand because it is more fun and easier to access? Meaning do YOU drive to the toy on the ground with her and REALLY play like you would with the toy in your hand? It is much easier to be exciting with a toy in your hand than on that the dog drives to on their own. The other thing to do is to have two toys. One on you and one on the ground. In other words, keep doing what you are doing!
Does that make sense?1) Week 1, you mentioned: “In the protection sport world, they use this idea a lot to create food drive. Once the dog has food drive, they will taper off (or at least that is my understanding). ” You begin to chain more behaviors together and so that the dog is doing more, then with-hold the reinforcement longer. For instance, think of it like when you are teaching a dog to first do agility. You do tunnel – cookie, tunnel – cookie. As the dog gets more comfortable and understands that the tunnel gets a cookie, you add the jump – tunnel- cookie and so on. Here we are wanting attention and motivation. You withhold the reinforcement longer and longer as the dog stays motivated for longer periods of time (though it is fun to surprise them once in a while and vary your reinforcement. Honestly, I still jackpot a lot and give lots of reinforcement through training. After all, I wouldn’t expect to work the same job for 20 years, and get paid less over time…..
2) In your professional opinion, is it better to give 10 tiny treats or one big (the equivalent of the 10 tiny treats) treat? Depends on the dog. When I started training, I was told to give lots of little treats so that the dog doesn’t fill up. When I went to the protection sport training class, the first thing the trainer pointed out was my treats were too small and that the dog needs to feel like he is getting something worthwhile. That being said, if I have a food driven dog, I am going to give them small pieces, if I have a dog that needs to have interest in food, I might give them something big and yummy. If I am working something that I toss the cookie on the ground, I will always use something big and easy to find. I really don’t want to reinforce sniffing.
3) I overlooked this when you first replied. You asked if I know “other versions of the bang game.” I only know one, where we prop the weighted end up, so the other end would be a few inches above ground, then ask the dog to bang that end. Is that the one you were referring to, or do you have other(s) in mind? If so, I am not familiar with the others and can you tell me what those are? Yes, that is one, a step before this is to have the dog near the teeter, and just before you bang it in the ground you drop cookies so that the dog is getting something super yummy when the teeter hits the ground. Make sense?Hi Fei,
I am so proud of you both! Great work!!! I know I have some questions to answer, but am getting on a plane, so I will answer them tomorrow. Keep up the good work!!!That’s great!!! Here is the video I promised!!! Sorry for the delay, I had some travel unexpectedly moved up!!!
LBG looks good! You can certainly praise this game verbally!!! Just keep building on the game! Great work!Hi Charmaine,
Yes, negative self talk is super easy to do but kudos to you for your diary!!!Sorry I didn’t answer your question about the weaves. Yes, you want 3-4 obstacles into them and you can work on crosses into them or after them. Does that make sense?
First of all, don’t be so hard on yourself!!! Meaning, “which I guess is good I haven’t stressed him out with them yet”!!! It’s a process and weaves take A LONG TIME to train and proof!!! But, if he learns to love them, the proofing stage is easy (take that from a person who taught Jack to hate the weaves because I did too many too soon and he had to be right all the time for the reward). You will get them!
Yes! I would definitely put a verbal on your 2o2o. Wait until he understands it well before you take it to agility.Hi Kathy,
Both of these look great! A couple things I would like for you to do. On the forward focus game, I would like for you to reward sooner (as soon as she looks forward) and I would like for you to RUN over to her and engage in play with her after she gets to the toy. The sooner you play, the more exciting the game will be.
On the LBG, do you do obedience with her? If so, with the way you are holding your arm, she may think you are doing obedience? Not that I thought this was bad by all means! I actually thought it was very good! I think you might get a little more independence if you are more natural with your arms. The other thing is, LOOK at the obstacles and not at her. I think this is going to help substantially with building more obstacle focus and less handler focus. Nice work!!!
