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We’re back up in Washington for a UKI ICE trial for Ripley. I’m trying to be much better about actually working on my homework when we’re on the road. So here are probably four different short sessions over the past two days working on the bounce grid, beginning to angle the jumps, and using a dragged toy. We also did a quick session of the zigzag part two with the bar. These little jumps already have a connecting bar, so we started with just that, and then added a little locked in bar at about 8 inches. The weather here is a bit chilly and Vibe is a little bit excited, so I did switch to food at one point because I did not want to lose any of my valuable fingers.
Yes, it was a super fun session. I love that our kids are looking alikes. 💗
So, full disclosure, I literally could not remember how to do a blind cross on a wing wrap so had to go back and watch your video. Major brain blip. LOL
Even after that I still did a reverse spin on my first try today. Apparently I’m just a spinner. I did work it out and we also did a bit of Get Out work in a short session.
Today was more just about letting Macklynn play at our place so I didn’t really review any content for Vibe ahead of time, but tried to fake some of the Diamond stuff I vaguely remembered from watching that video earlier this week.
We had Macklynn play first after some acclimation to my yard and agility area (with Vibe and my other pups secured in the house). She’s met Vibe once before at the facility Danielle usually goes to but he was young and obnoxious and she was just entering teenage hood and was not a fan of him at that age. 😝
She did great on her turns today. I brought Vibe out for some no real interaction with each other causal leash walking around on the lawn and then he did his little turn while Macklynn watched from the lawn area on the other side of a fence. Vibe was really good about just focusing on his own work and we let Macklynn just watch a bit without trying to correct for any excited barking but letting her have some space. Then we let Macklynn repeat the stuff she had just been successful at on her earlier turn with Vibe on the other side of the field just chilling and chewing on a Greenie. She wanted to be aware of where he was but was super good and engaged during her turn even with him off in the distance.
Afterward we took the kids for an off-leash walk/swim on the levee by our house. They were so adorable and I think she’s Vibe’s newest look-alike girlfriend. She ended up doing some cool herding dog stalking/walk-up/chasing play with him and it was adorable.
We did some bounce grid work today. Will start to angle the jumps next on this one next.
Danielle and Macklynn are gonna head up to our place tomorrow to train together. Any suggestions on things you think would be good for us to work on together since we’ll have more freedom to move things around than she’s had at the facility she’s been using for some of her sessions. I can check her thread for your recommendation so I can get stuff set up ahead of time if you wanna share info directly with her.
Our last 2 sessions at agility camp included some of our MaxPup1 style counter motion games and a bit of layering very similar to the new exercise that posted today.
We’ll be home and hopefully starting to catch up on our actual MaxPup2 work on Thursday. But here’s some of that related work in the meantime.
Just one fun session with Jordan today. “Confidence and Motivation” again because I was hoping it would be some concept games and flowy sequencing if we did any.
Started with a cute problem solving find your toy game that doubled as tunnel/toy verbal discrimination. Then a more advanced version. Them some flowy lines driving to the dead toy then ignoring the dead toy. He has the mostest fun. 🥰
We miss having you teach here. I remember how fun it was to get to run with you in person after having done online classes with you when Ripley was a puppy.
Vibe is definitely having a great time. He did one session yesterday and one session today. I tried to pick some classes for him that were really foundational and just jumps and tunnels to avoid any weirdness with obstacles we don’t do yet. I’m letting each instructor know my goal is for him to have fun and think he’s perfect even if he gets anything wrong and that we’re not really here to learn new skills as much as we are wanting to just create super happy feelings. They’ve been very supportive so far.
Here’s a short clip from a session that was called “Agility Foundations” with Stephanie Theis and then “Speed lines for confidence” with Stacie Kwik. I didn’t sign it up for the speed lines one due to lack of confidence, but just because it sounded like something that would give nice flowy sequences and let him go fast without too much super technical handling that we’re still building towards. She did have some nice layering options, and so we tried those and he did great. She was really thoughtful about backchaining through the sequences, which worked really well for Vibe and let him have a really high rate of success.
Okay, we did some fun collar grabs and reinforcement switching today and Vibe had a blast. I did tape some serp stuff but looks like I never added it here so I’ll go hunt it down. There is a point at which Vibe becomes too aroused to respond to some cues and kind of freezes (not just in this session) when that happens it usually helps if I switch to high value food reinforcer instead of toy/hose stuff and/or play cheeseball ping pong pattern game. A hand touch is still usually something he can do so I’ll sometimes try for that first.
Found the serp stuff I forgot to post yesterday. We head to Run Wild tomorrow for agility camp and Vibe has his own schedule of baby dog sessions so wish us luck. 😊
Just a bit more zig zags. We did a few reps of the serp stuff but I forgot to move the camera so it just missed us.
Yes, he’s getting the ick from collar hold so we did break and do come in for gentle collar grab, treat toss, gentle hold treat toss, gentle hold ready/steady treat toss – etc. – all away from the equipment.
On set point, we did also do lots of treats behind, break to toy with start lines but he is just too smart for me and he knows that “the game” is the agility equipment and the other stuff is just me trying to distract him from the real fun.
Again, he fascinates me, so a lot of what I do is trying to avoid annoying him and giving him the ick so that I don’t build in any conflict for the actual game or conflict with me in playing the game with me. Training him is much more intellectually challenging than most other dogs I’ve had but SUPER fun and I’m having the best time trying to figure out what’s going to help us reach our full potential as a team.
We did some of that when he was younger but the last few times I tried he wasn’t really into it (as far as drag toy toy races).
We used the practice ring at this weekend’s West Coast Cup for some find the jump regardless of the line stuff and some push wraps, wing wraps, threadle slice, push slice stuff in short sequences and he did really well. He seems to be starting to understand his job is to find the indicated side of the jump and amount of squaring up and take the jump. No video since my tripod was by the real rings to get Ripley’s runs.
Home again and did some drag toy set point work and some verbal discrim on mini pinnie. I think he did well. We’ll work on this for a bit. We can’t do pillbug right now – ordered tunnels about 3 months ago from Canada and they are just now arriving so I’ll aim for some of that before we stake them down on a new course.
We have been trying to have others drag the toy for me but he’s just not really liking it. He tends to want to come in to me for reinforcement – tug mostly or get the thrown or dead toy and then bring it in.
When I’ve had Nancy Gyes drag the toy in his last puppy class last week or Taner drag it this weekend he just turned to me. Part of the issue is people’s tendency to say “Get it, get it” which is his LSM for a thrown treat and he’s kind of literal about his LSMs so when they say that he turns to me to see where I’m going to throw the treat 😝. His grab the offered toy from hand is “Grab it.” So, we’ll keep trying and try to train helpers about that a bit more but right now it’s not really a good target or super reinforcing for him.
I did create a much bigger hol-ee roller type toy (it’s called a Spheroll that Clean Run sells for $10). He was getting his jaw stuck in the regular bigger hol-ee roller I was trying to use as a dead toy to avoid him needing to slam his little face into the ground and this new one has different sized gaps plus I stuffed it with mop chenille fabric pieces they had for sale for $2 each and then shoved one of my old padded handle tug toys inside it to get a nice handle (the Spheroll has a nice little opening that stretches to let you shove bigger things inside). Anyone that’s the toy I’m using as his dead toy now so its much bigger (almost 6 inches), doesn’t get his jaw tuck, and still allows some hand safe tugging.
Here’s some clips from day 1 in order of his 3 turns. I forgot my tripod so a friend is videoing. Watching it back that day and now I can see some of the subtle to not so subtle behaviors he was exhibiting that seem related to my handling but also related to spatial pressure and some very mild correction from a stranger. That, plus just being a puppy in a new place being asked to perform some new skills. I do think Taner made some adjustments to the ask over the course of this first day that were very helpful and obviously day 2 was a whole different “Vibe” 😜.
Hi Tracy,
We did take a couple of days off from training at the end of last week. It helped that it was very hot out so we just did short walks while it was still cool in the morning.
Vibe did the morning session with Taner Dogan on Saturday and on Sunday at the seminar. It was the jumps and tunnels fun session. Taner is great and knew Vibe is just a baby and I was careful to tell him first thing in the morning that my primary goal was just for Vibe to have a lot of fun and feel good about himself and feel confident and not feel stressed. I let him know I’m not doing lots of startlines in new settings right now as I feel they are creating a bit of conflict in Vibe and I want to build more positive feelings for them elsewhere for now so preferred moving starts and Taner strongly agreed with that. I let him know we have very few sequencing skills so far and have mostly been working on barrel and wing wraps and tunnels and some very very basic baby skills to get him started. I let him know I didn’t really plan to run the sequences as numbered if he would be willing to just give us appropriate smaller sets of obstacles to do and he was super willing and agreed with that approach. It was a mixed session of some older teenagers and experienced adult dogs so the actual numbered sequences were way above our pay grade.
Taner was awesome and instead of having us run the numbered course would give us very very short sequences like 2 to 3 obstacles with baby friendly paths. I let him know we don’t really have good threadles yet slice or wrap, but that we do have really nice wing wraps and nice backside push wraps and Taner made the most of that. Day one was still very interesting and I started to see that Vibe’s tendency might be to flank jumps once he started to get some speed towards them so we worked on some specific drills with him on Saturday to help him rethink that approach. Taner has also worked with Vibe’s aunt who is a dog in this area and so was aware of some of the tendencies that dog had developed (like flanking) and was really careful to help me avoid some of the same issues.
Sunday, which was day two, after some apparently amazing latent learning, Vibe was really good. He was fast, confident, loved playing with his toys. He started to really understand the concept of taking more than just two or three obstacles in a row, never got distracted, no sniffing, no leaving the area even on a big grass field with no fencing and dogs and people just off camera on the side. He was able to play with his toys, play in the hose without leaving the course to go play in the hose, and was overall just a super little guy. His aunt (his mom’s littermate) was actually in the same session and it was cool to see him now and a bit of what he’ll look like in a few years.
We had a lot of fun and Taner continued to lean into the skills that Vibe did have, just pushing the envelope a little bit here and there without over facing him. I’ll share a quick video of a few of his little sequences and then we’ll get back into training again in the next day or two once he’s had a little bit of downtime with just some decompression type stuff. I really feel like his MaxPup foundation helped him be so successful and happy at the seminar. So, grateful for you and this series. 💗
