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So this is entirely up to you 🙂 I like the reward stations (personally) because I have seen the leash toy backfire on folks depending on where the leash is placed at the end of the run. However, it is a great motivator to have in the ring and one that is always present. The reward station is right around the corner, but not quite as accessible. Personally, I like to use my toy at the reinforcement station (it is right out the gate), but I know many VERY successful people that have taught their dogs to tug with a leash. (But on that note, I had a friend get eliminated because her dog was tugging on the leash as they were exiting and the judge eliminated her). Most judges won’t but there’s some that will.
SURE! Here are a couple ways I teach my dogs to back up (the xpen is the best – in my opinion 🙂 )
4. Backing up. With this exercise we are warming up the muscles in their hind end – hamstrings and the glutes and increasing rear-end awareness. Some key points are: In the beginning it is especially important to reward ANY weight shifting backwards. Then ANY foot movement backwards. One of the big mistakes handlers make is to ask for too much too soon, reward the little steps/parts. When I say reward, I mean mark then reward. That said, MARK WHILE THE DOG IS MOVING BACKWARDS and better yet, reward while the dog is still in motion (cookie placement in a minute)!!! For years, I was rewarding my dogs when they would take 4-6 steps back, then stop for the cookie, so I was rewarding the stop. They got VERY sticky!!! Which brings me to reward placement. I try to throw the cookie in between the dog’s front legs to generate a few more steps backwards.
• Try to reward on the ground rather than from your hand. In the video, you can see a distinct difference in the dog’s head position (translating to other parts of the body) when I reward from my hand.
• Right now, I am not concerned with whether my dog is backing up straight (I can fix that later). Your focus in this lesson should be in teaching the dog to back up in proper position (head NOT positioned up and arched back).
• Remember to use your nose touch and/or reset cookie to reset the dog if needed. Or you can bring them in for a game of tug!
As I mentioned, there are several different ways demonstrated on the video. You can try them all if you want 😊 but find one (or more) that works well with your dog and then go from there. The video cut off and in the end with the x-pen set up. You will want to move your target further back to fade the x-pen out and just have the dog back up to the target. Please let me know if you have questions with this and I would be happy to post another video.
Video: https://youtu.be/EVHLmQ_wDV8Hi Fei,
I like those tricks/warm ups! I think they are perfect!!! Yes, a totally agree that more active tricks are good. You can teach her to back up, jump up, hand touch, weave between legs. All those are good range of motion exercises for your warm up and also good active tricks! Hope that helps!Good Evening!
Yes! I liked the blinds in both the speed circle and the course that you ran. One thing that I really want you to note it when you are training, you often (in the videos) throw the toy and don’t spend a lot of time interacting with your dog. I would really like to see 20-30 seconds of your undivided attention on your dog at the end of the run. Really race through the finish and then spend some time really rewarding Callie and playing/treating her. I want you to tell her she is the best dog ever!
How does she feel when you touch her? My aussies love it. I would really interact with her before you take off and run. Does she know a hand touch? I would get her to touch your hand, spin left, spin right, ask her if she is ready, then take off! Fun, fun, fun then RUN!!!I am SO SORRY! I scrolled down to the bottom of your page and read the last post not realizing that there was more to it! WHOOPS!!!
First video: this was good, I do notice a bit of a difference in his stride when you talk to him vs when you are just running. He really seems to like the “good boy” or “come on buddy”.
Second video: For the reinforcement station, I was totally impressed you could call him off of the treat box 🙂 I would like for you to do something a bit different. I would like for the treats to come from the container rather than you picking up the container and feeding him. It defeats the purpose of getting him to focus on running to the container. At that point, you could just take cookies out of your pocket. If you reward him from the container, then we are building forward focus. If you reward him from you then we build hander focus.
For sure more the the LBG!!! I think this will help him seek out jumps and be more obstacle focused!
HE IS SO MUCH FUN!!! He really like it when you go into “play mode”!!! This was great! I think you can certainly work him most of the time at 12″ and then do one or two reps at 24″. One think I would like you to do is add more space between obstacles. You have a TON of room there and I would like to see about 24′ even up to 27′ between jumps. This will really open him up and get him moving. More running for you, but I think he will enjoy it!
As far as your time with agility. I think what you do is great and am glad that you aren’t spending a ton of time with agility. I think “people” have a tendency to overtrain their dogs. Great work and so sorry I missed your videos!!!Hi Fei!
That sock tugging video made my day!!! That was crazy cute!!! How about taking a jump in your room and getting her to tug, jump, tug in your room? That’s exactly what I would do to help start transferring the behavior. I would also do the same thing with the “go, go, go” You can be outside already and have your husband release her while you run out and have her do 1-2 jumps then go for the walk. Start interjecting agility (or a jump) into the things she finds fun.
As far as Pepper. We did some counter conditioning with food and bubbles of all things. We would set up situations where my kids would intentionally be noise and just before they were, we would make it rain cookies. Then we discovered that she is psycho when it comes to bubbles. So they would be noisy and we would play with bubbles. I also paired the word with it and at my finals runs at USDAA and AKC nationals, just before I left her on the startline, I asked her if she wanted her bubbles (this gets her bottom jaw quivering and pupils dilated)!!! Added much excitement to our run 🙂Hi Jamie,
I will comment on the videos as I watch them. On the first video, when sending Callie in the tunnel the first time, you really didn’t’ address the tunnel. If you rewatch the video, you will see that she is in handler focus (we will talk about that in week 3 in-depth). Also, when you released her, because of the lateral lead out, you were actually stepping towards the other end of the tunnel. In the sequence, I thought you might try the blind? Looked like you were going to for a second, then you did the rear? From the video, it looked like you put too much pressure on Callie’s line and pushed her off the jump. Right at 0:31, your hips are already rotated towards the tunnel. Rears can be tricky because you can’t put too much pressure on the dog’s line and you have to be patient 🙂 Around 0:48, do you have some tricks that Callie knows? I would work on tricks to get her engaged with you. Notice how she is still sniffing when you send her in the tunnel? This is like having a very important conversation with someone while they are typing an email to work. Meaning that when you are asking a dog to play agility, we want them to be focused on the game and not distracted. If they are, then we have just devalued the game of agility and inadvertently reinforced the behavior of sniffing. Because now the sniffing is part of the behavior chain we are asking for in agility. Still on the first video, I think the blind (with this set up, would have been ideal). As a handler (any handler), you will always be faster with a blind cross than a front cross. The rear at 1:37 was much better!!! You stayed off her line and were patient with the cross. The last front cross was much better!!! You were a little more lateral to that jump and were able to do the cross a bit sooner! Nice job!
Second course: this was good! You video coach was correct when she yelled “keep walking” lol!!! Move on through the last obstacle. 🙂 The second course was perfect!!! Nice work! I really liked the opposition reflex in the beginning!!! Very good. Overall, I thought there were some really nice things! Have you done much work with blind crosses?That’s fantastic!!! Good for you for recognizing what he needed and giving it to him! Wish it was on video. Also for your startline routines at trials, you can always start filming when you start getting prepared to go in the ring so that I can see what you do.
Great! I also think Tails would benefit from the Lazy Bastard Game. We will talk more about it in lesson 3. I am also going to talk about my favorite startline game (which we have discussed) there too.
YAY for the blind!!! Nice work! Speed circle looked good here! Looked like she had fun too. I think the startline games will really help. You could’ve also sent her over the jump behind you and had her wrap the wing then into the tunnel. She questioned the first jump out of the tunnel at the start simply because you were a bit behind. She read the blind VERY well though! Nice job!
Hmmmm, I am not seeing a video. When you upload your video to youtube, you can “share” the link. Click on that and copy it, then paste the link here and the video will work. You can also copy the link in your browser and paste it here too. Hope that helps.
So I went back and watched the first videos you posted and think there have been some really positive changes!!! How about you?
Hi Annelise,
I really like the toy work!!! Food was good too, but she did look at you right before you threw it. So you can start adding your “go” now. This was good, I would like for you to keep working it. Once she is consistently looking forward, you can add a ready, steady if you want. At that point, you can add a jump or a straight tunnel. The whole idea is to get them to look forward (forward focus) when you want them in obstacle focus. I LOVE HER ENTHUSIASM with the toy!!!Hi Kerrie,
That was one of my favorite sessions!!! You two were really PLAYING!!! She was super focused (even when there was the distractions of the other people AND DOG – she handled that super well)!!! I loved it! She was super animated and you could really tell that she was having a good time! Lovely!
The only thing is that when you play the it’s your choice game and she gets up, just stand straight up (rather than go back to her – unless she moves). This way if you do this in competition and she gets up, she will understand the stand up (from you) simply means I need to sit in order for the game to start again. Make sense?
I like your ideas about the startline. I think those are all good “active” games!!! Great work!!! That was FUN!
