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I’ll set up the spider grid and try all of this. I really appreciate you finding these videos.
This has been a really great class. I’m looking forward to next level starting next week.
Thank you for all of your great feedback and content.
I really love your positive and supportive teaching style. 😁💗
Hi Tracy,
Looking forward to the next class starting. We’ve been working on some of the other stuff I’d been waiting on beginning until he got to that around 12 months mark. He turned a year old on 2/18/22 so we’re slowly building some other obstacle skills – especially baby weaves, running contacts (ground work with the mat) and teeter.
When I saw Ginger’s thread I realized I hadn’t done much with jumping drills for a few months and that the last time I was doing setpoint I didn’t let him jump more than I think 12″.
So today we set up a set point at about 5′ between the jumps and went from about 10″ graduated oxer 10″ wide to about 18″ high on the back bar and about 18″ spread. I just wanted to see where his jumping form was at since I’ve been keeping everything so low for so long.
I like your suggestion to Ginger to drag the toy and walk. I do feel like getting the head down and not having it rise too abruptly at the end of the second jump in anticipation of stopping is hard with the dead toy or treat.
I wasn’t planning on posting this – was just taping for myself to see but would love your feedback. And, check, check on minimal “jumping days”.
Okay, I think I just screwed up the link. This one is working for me incognito so hopefully it’s good. If not I’ll try a cut and paste.
https://cdelany.notion.site/c790bbbc62fd4f52ad4a193abd34863e?v=675fc356192247b5bd1aa38bc4ec9704
We’re back after post-neuter recovery time. We did dust off some calm on the mat and some control unleashed pattern games – thanks for suggesting that. We weren’t able to do the ones with leg lifting since it just made him want to bug the healing area but we’ll try some of that now that he is healed up.
He’s a bit hyper here and I brought the wrong treats out so threw cheeseballs and then switched to toy.
I’ll plan to catch up before class officially ends at the end of February.
Looking forward to class tomorrow. 😊
Busy work week (so no video of our quickie training sessions) then I neutered Ripley yesterday so trying to keep him chill for at least a few days.
Wondering if you have any ideas for low energy, low motion stuff to work on while he heals up.
I’m thinking mat work (which he’s already decent at but using a flat mat with no edge – not our regular hop up on cot) and a bit of working on reacting less to dogs barking (kind of a new and intermittent thing) but figure some DS/CC to it can’t hurt. We could do some stays but I like him to pop up out of them so not ideal. We’ve got hand touch, fist bump and chin rest that we can refresh and add some more duration to.
Most of the other stuff I think of is higher energy, faster, moving stuff and trying to think of other things. Open to any suggestions (classmates too feel free to chime in here). 😁
Okay, just a little bit more tunnel threadle and a little bit of backside wrap with new “beep, beep” verbal. My LSMs are not as clean as I’d like. I just need to do a bit more of a walk-through of what I’m training with the verbal cues, body cues and then LSMs in place all before I start the exercise with him. I go out there knowing the behavior I want and how I want to get it but need to do more planning of all of those details. This pup is very smart and needs me to get as much of that right as I can to help him do his part without frustration.
Work in progress!
Backside Wrap “Beep, Beep”
Tunnel Threadle “Chute”
Did a short session of this week’s tunnel exercise. I am wanting to change my tunnel threadle cue from “through” which I’ve used in a few sessions but found myself not loving, to “chute”. That was my word for the cloth chute tunnel in the old days before that obstacle faded away.
I just decided this during breakfast so the words are not coming to me easily and I’m mixing up through, silence while I try to think of my new word and chute.
He’s a bit distracted by the neighbors’ screaming kids (but he’s hanging in there so we worked through it).
The non-flipping arm cue here is new to him and me so not quite fluent but he seemed to be picking it up pretty quickly
Okay, here’s some teenager-level Reverse Retrieve (just a few reps, got to get into a Zoom meeting – darn work cutting into my puppy training time 🤣).
Good feedback and nice next steps. On the verbals – “Push” is definitely our backslide slice verbal. “Back” is his back up verbal on the flat and I don’t really want to change it. “Beep Beep” is fun, cute and nice to say. I’ll put it on my short list. It’s like naming a baby, you want to get it right.
Also, huge LOL on the silent running. We definitely used to play that game with our dogs in class, even though we were also doing a lot of distance work since the place had a bit of a NADAC focus (kind of contradictory when you think about it). Anyway, thank god the dogs are so smart and basically figure out what the hell we want. I’ve always laughed thinking thank god we, the humans, aren’t the ones running full speed and expected to listen and respond to verbal cues and positional cues and do the thing, all without decreasing speed, dropping bars, missing criteria and while also ignoring all of the distractions. It would NOT be a sport. 🤣
Hi Tracy,
Thank you for the feedback on the last videos and we’ll incorporate it into our next training on that set of skills.
This morning we worked on backslide wrap with the barrel (I almost forgot this was in the lecture and exercise demo video but went back and watched and realized I hadn’t done this one yet). I don’t yet have a cue for this and really need to come up with one pretty quick here I think. I’ve got “Dig, Dig” and “Check, Check” for left and right normal wing wraps. I’ve got left and right for take the jump and make a softer turn. I don’t want to use “Wrap” since it sounds too much like “Rip” which is what I call him when I’m running sometimes. I really like verbals with a short vowel sound and some sharp consonant sounds in there since they seem to come out quicker and crisper for me. I’m open to suggestions and will also keep mulling it over (and will add it quickly to my Ripley Glossary once I come up with it – we are at 74 cues/LSMs/obstacle names so far 😝).
You’ve got all of our reps here, just cut out some tugging between reps. The Swissy is talking a bit here once things got exciting but Ripley is okay with that. I did have to put the 13 year old Border Collie away in a bedroom where she couldn’t see us as she could not stand the excitement of us tugging and she DOES distract Ripley when we are training – we’re working on that (on his end, more than hers since she’s earned some leeway and he’ll have to get used to dogs being excited in the real world) – baby steps.
Also did some Reverse Retrieve – but full disclosure I haven’t watched the new lecture yet, just remembered doing some of this with him a few months ago in your Reinforcement class so did what we left off with (and what we do when we go to new locations to help him enjoy the new places). I’ll watch the lecture and do it for real in the next few days.
Also did a little of pivot over a jump bump for hind end awareness and core strength and worked just a bit on him keeping his head lover (mostly just using hand position and treat delivery vs totally retraining his pivot since I still want the head up and focus on me one when we are out and about for moving through crowds and his lineups – not for “real” obedience so much).
Hi Tracy,
Here’s some follow-up of working on this week’s content. I feel like we get so much done during the live classes with your real-time feedback that we get through a lot of the basic +/- advanced versions in that time (which I love).
So, here’s Backslide Slice, Threadle and then Head Turn. This is pretty close to the full session – about 2-3 minutes per exercise with some editing to take out any treat searching, tugging and when he needed to go bark at a vulture overhead. 😝
Backside Slice
Threadles
Head Turn
Hi Tracy,
Great class last night (as always). I really like how you focus on concepts, split things and make sure the dogs work at a really high ROR. It suits Ripley’s learning style AMAZINGLY well.
I saw the Pivot game pop up this morning and so went ahead and did a session on that. Ripley has worked on pivoting before – when I was teaching him a left (Close) and right (Side) line up. He’s even done 1 session with jump bumps around the pivot circle before. But, it’s been a few months since we did this with a prop and asking for more precision.
I started out with the upside-down food bowl we used when he was younger but it was a bit too small and slippery (it would be okay, but it has a ridge around the outside that I think he’s trying to keep his feet inside). I switched to one of the cute little kid’s balance “tree stumps” I got off Amazon (they come in a nested set of 3 of different sizes if anyone else needs something like this). I like that they flare out at the bottom so are more stable than things like rubber mark buckets and have concentric rubber rings on the top that make them grippy.
Anyway, here’s where we’re at with this after not doing it for a while and with just 1 jump bump. I can add in more jump bumps next session (I also have some slightly more narrow jump bumps somewhere that I can try to find – I think these are 6″ diameter and I have 4″ out in the mud I could dig up).
