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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).
Here’s that other video. Not sure what was going on today but YouTube went back to making all new videos Private again (for a while it was asking about Unlisted when I would upload and now it stopped). Also, not sure why it’s putting link text instead of the actual video into my post since I did it the same as always and it’s been embedding them. I also don’t have my edit options in the post box the way I normally do.
I’ll try clearing my cache next time I come in and see if it’s something to do with that.
Hi Tracy,
We are still battling mud on our agility field and so I tried using an indoor training place yesterday. He’s been here a few times for Puppy Manners class when he was 8-12 weeks old, but not since then. We are in CA so indoor training is pretty uncommon and none of our shows are indoors.
I’ve avoided using this location for his agility stuff because when I’ve seen more experienced dogs training here I notice they really have to slow down because the floor is slippery for them.
And, it was slippery for him. So, as soon as I saw he was slipping I tried to tone things down a bit and not push him for a lot of speed. He had a lot of fun and his focus was really nice for a place he hasn’t really trained in (and especially considering 2 sexy little girl border collies came in just after we arrived and were training on the other side of the barriers I set up). I had a list of a bunch of games to try – mostly for MaxPup but also a couple of things for his IRL class with Nancy.
In his real life class this week he struggled with 2 things (well 3 if you include the fact that the little girl BC we were training with seemed to be coming into heat – at least according to Ripley). 1 was tunnel threadles. We were using the same set up you have us doing, dog on inside parallel to tunnel and sent to entrance where they have to turn away. I did not notice in the moment in class (I call it the Nancy Gyes effect that I lose about 50% of my brain when I train with her) but the difference was she had us using a threadle arm/tandem turn arm with the verbal send to the tunnel entrance. When I’ve done these so far I’ve just said the verbal no tandem turn arm. We’ve only trained tandem turn arm on the flat to his prop so far. In class when I did that beyond about 4′ from the entrance to the tunnel he literally turned and looked at me like I was an idiot and then jumped up onto the tunnel turned 180 degrees and hopped off on the other side. It was funny/frustrating/embarrassing in the moment but after the fact I realized he was completely doing what he thought I was asking based on what I’d taught him – when you see my arm do this, turn 180 and go the other way. He 100% is a concept dog.
The other issue we had was when she had us work on tunnel commitment (not distance, he’s seen that) but with any pressure on his line as he went into a tunnel (like approaching a rear cross) or a front cross visual as he was entering. Again, he just hasn’t seen this yet and we’ve only done straight tunnels in class before. So, I tried a little of the side and backward send to the tunnel during this session to start to show him what that will look similar to how we’ve been doing barrels.
We ended up doing about 2 minutes of each exercise and about 10 different exercises with calm settle on the mat or in his crate between every 4-5 minutes of training (while I pretended to read on my iPad and had him chew on a long-lasting chew).
I feel like my mechanics are a bit dirty here just because I got a little scattered trying to do so much in 1 session on new equipment in a new place, but he was really good and his focus was surprisingly good.
Here’s what you’ve got:
Tunnels (lots of slipping, made me pretty nervous asking him to go fast)
Turn N Burn, Rocking Horses, Running Contact Mat Work and Serpentines
Resting between Games and Outs (yes, I did forget to not send him out and I’m not always on camera 😝)
Parallel Path and Startline Stays
Thanks for your feedback on that last post. I’ll incorporate it during our next barrel session.
Weather here is still challenging – our agility field (which is normally dirt) is very deep, sloshy mud, I can’t even walk a few steps out there without becoming 3-4″ taller as the mud cakes on my shoes. Front yard is also pretty slick and sloshy and I worry about him slipping (growth plate worries mostly).
So, we tried just working in our actual driveway (by driveway I mean really large asphalt coming up and around the drive of our 5 acres. I’ve never actually worked him out here – we’ve just used it to get in and out of the car on leash because we live on a country highway with lots of traffic plus have the livestock (draft horse, 3 miniature donkeys and 2 bactrian camels) at the far end of the drive a bit across some grass and I don’t want him to bug them. I was worried he would be too distracted but with the front gate closed to make it safe figured I would give it a try and put him on a long line if needed. He did great (helps that the camels are down at the far end of their pasture right now).
So, here’s some “Out” to target in a new location and adding some lateral distance. I’m not asking for a ton of speed here since I don’t want him to abrade his paw pads but they are pretty toughened up so not a huge issue.
P.S. Sorry I’m out of frame from about 0:35 to 1:20. I thought I was good until I saw the video.
Merry Christmas! Hope you got to enjoy the day.
1. No, I was not able to tire him out. This rain and mud is definitely testing his patience. 🤣
2. Today we did a couple of sessions on Rocking Horses.
I’m trying to incorporate your feedback – switched to toy, trying had to give “bite” get the toy LSM first and then the praise chatter (better but not always doing it).
Trying to really get that rotation in sooner and adding some distance to the sends to build his commitment.
First session felt really good but when I watched it I saw I wasn’t turning as early as I thought and I wasn’t opening up the connection after the FC immediately after the forward send so that he would see that kind of side/backward send as he passed me. I really had been thinking about it but it wasn’t showing. I think partly it was due to the toy in my hand.
Second session a couple of hours later I really tried to just focus on the little dance move in the middle of step forward, step back and open up into that backward send picture. At the end of that session I tried to add in a little accel/decel picture but still get the forward send cross in quickly. It’s harder than I thought to get all of this in.
Fun class last night.
It was cold and raining all day and I worked till pretty late so Ripley was VERY bored. I left my furniture cleared out to be able to do more indoor training until the weather gets better.
So, we worked on all 3 games from last night working up to more advanced levels from the games where he was ready. This was a longer session than normal since I’m kind of trying to tire him out but only about 3 minutes per game.
This is:
1. Rocking horse – forward sends with more distance, then rotated sends, then rotated sends leaving earlier. My other 3 dogs are all in the sunken part of the living room so he’s a little distracted by them but I want him to be able to work through that so just kept the ROR high for working. We did focus more on mechanics and ignoring distractions not speed or getting too amped up since that makes the other dogs a bit louder and then he loses his focus more. We’ll use toys and up speed and arousal another session.2. Out to prop.
3. Serp application trying to use our Pet Tutor. We haven’t really used it in training before (he’s only seen it to play the game where the Kong Wobble toy triggers it to dispense food as a game). It’s jamming a bit and not always delivering food (I think I used semi-moist and kibble and it’s not thrilled). So, sometimes I’m clicking it a 2nd time to get it to dispense. I’ll find a better treat mixture before we use it again.
Thanks for all of the feedback on those last 2 videos. Sorry to post so much at once that time.
Here’s a quick session of tandem turn to prop from tonight.
P.s. I do actually wear different clothes everyday, I just always throw on this grey dog training sweatshirt (or the black one) with tons of pockets when it’s time to train and it’s cold out. Plus, I always wear one of my pairs of my many pocketed cargo scrub pants during the winter when I have a puppy. Looking back at my videos I see I’m looking slightly lacking in clothing variety. 🤣
I’m a few days behind on posting just not having time to edit and post what we’ve been doing. So, here’s a couple of days of work on – running contacts mat and box, Startline stays, retrieve and tandem turn.
We have intermittently worked on baby level of running contacts working up to a rubberized plastic target mat for that so I’m using that here (so he doesn’t think I want a lie down settle on something bigger). I think he’s only seen the PVC box prop in 1 session before if that (I can’t remember).
I can do some of the bring me the thing retrieve to hand if you want to see that but we did do that a few months ago starting with dropping items into a bowl.
Running Contacts Early Work
Startline, Retrieve, Tandem Turn
