Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Great feedback to my last post. I’m on my iPad hanging out with the pup at a show so won’t quote and respond to each point but all things I’ll incorporate. I’ve used a nose target with my big dogs for a long time and do like it so think I’ll just go back to that for my teeter 2o2o. If Nancy fusses at me I’ll survive 😁
This morning before heading to the show we did some quick backup stuff. He’s seen this intermittently over the past few months but we haven’t done tons of it with super specific criteria as far as speed, distance or straightness.
Here we did backup to his Cato board flat, then to his wobble board with the edge propped on a low step then to his wobble board at a steeper angle. Just using clicker and kibble as treats (no toy play this session) since the older BC is right there and I didn’t want her to get all worked up. I do plan to do more polite taking turns in arousal but today is not the day. 😝
I totally feel this pain! But yes… I recommend 2 separate backside send verbals – the push is for the slice or any similar exit. And a separate cue for the complete circle wrap (360 degrees around the entry wing). This is especially important with the bigger dogs, because the approach to the entry wing is completely different fr a slice versus a wrap on the backside.
Okay, sounds reasonable. Now I just have to come up with the words. So, in context is it a compound cue with “push” and the backside left or right wing wrap verbal – like “push” + 1 of those 2 or is the new cue all inclusive, meaning, go to the backside of the indicated jump and continue in a wing wrap and chase me down the line?
…all of the puppy training practice has embedded it into my soggy brain LOL!!! So it turns out to be not as hard as I thought it would be, because by the time they are running courses, I have been practicing for about 18 months.
Here’s to hoping. Got my fingers tightly crossed I can get this stuff deeply embedded into the right neurons so it comes out when I need it.
And I remember congratulating myself for being able to run full courses silently hahahaha oh my, how times have changed!
Yep, we used to play that game too, can your dog just follow the handling with no verbals. On the other end we did enough NADAC when it was first a thing that we played with just standing still and giving the verbals for a whole course or most of it. Now you’ve got to have it all, right – verbals, handler motion, distance, plus be able to run like heck. 🤣
I think you can shape the grip by having it dangle until he is opening his mouth to reach for it, then bring your other hand over to help get the strong grip, tug a bit, back to one hand, etc. So basically the will learn to come in hot for the dangled toy (which is a really useful reinforcement procedure) but also get a really strong satisfying grip on the toy for a good game of tug 🙂 It will take quick mechanics and connection to see what he is doing – but based on what I have already seen you do, this is going to be easy for you, you have great mechanics.
Hmm…I think you overestimate me. We will definitely keep working on this. I am also trying to convince him the udder tugger is amazing since he’s able to get a bit of a better grip on the first try without me presenting it with 2 hands (and I find it easier to carry in my cargo style scrub pockets). I’ve been pulling it out more often when we train, including today’s training session, and I think it’s working and he’s starting to feel it has value.
So now the next step is to be stationary (or fade your movement if he has trouble with you standing still) and let him offer moving the board.
We did a little of this today before starting on better tug form and plank games. He’s fine with it, I just need to let him know what he’s being CT’ed for. That’s mostly on me since I didn’t really have any concrete criteria in my head when I tossed the board down, so he was offering some various positions and movement.
You can get the toy even lower, elbow height for him, so he really leans back. A game I play is the “I’m gonna pull you off” game where I gently and slow increase my pull on the toy – if the dog leans back enough on the wobble board, then I will let him win the toy. If he moves forward off the board, I win the toy 🙂
I have been trying to reinforce more weight shift back lean back tug with him since he’s pretty happy to do a more passive, head up tug or a shoulder/neck killing (for both of us) thrash. We worked on this on the wobble today and it went well. He does have the weirdness of not really wanting to “win” the toy so instead for the most part I just continued the tug game with him if he stayed on when I tried to pull him off (which is what he seems to want) vs becoming more passive and or moving the toy away when he came off the board. He caught on quickly and started getting himself back on the board and we got more and more nice, weight shift back steady tugging. Yay!
And if you are not already doing this – you can add in cued position changes on the wobble board (stand to sit, stand to down, sit to stand) because they are great for balance and also a bit of turning around (not too fast though, it is too hard to balance when they spin really fast.
Yes, we’ve done a bit of this position change stuff.
I also like wobble board road trips where I move it to different surfaces so there are difference noises – tile, concrete, wood, mats, etc.
We have done some of this gradually at first but he never showed any worry so we pretty quickly went to pretty loud front porch tile with him slamming the board around. I can do and video more of this to post if you want.
One note on the mini teeter, looking ahead to the future:
If you are targeting at the end with the 2o2o, I would put in a target for him to move (depending on how you trained the position initially) to so he is not locking onto your feet or the stopping of your motion. Eventually you’ll want to be able to run by the end of the contact while he stops (like a 2o2o on a teeter) so we put that concept in as soon as the dog is asked for the stop, so it is always completely independent of your position.So far we’ve just been using a 2 front feet off the object behavior with the cue “feet” without an actual physical target involved. In the past I used a nose touch target for 2o2o but in his current puppy pre-agility she’s having us not use a physical target for the teeter and we’re working on running for dog walk and a-frame. So far for teeter we’ve just been doing bang game in class and some very early up plank stuff at home (some of that is in what we did today for planks). Until growth plates are closed I’m not rushing to get the board moving a lot or very far.
Today’s sessions we did some wobble board, some tug on wobble and lots of planks – mini plank, middle of dog walk on the ground, middle of dog walk about 18″ off the ground and then just teeter up with no tilt.
I think this one (from backing up game) is set to private:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YATrf1–SRg
And this one maybe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-NvLZ6jsug
And also the Nacho one – all from that same lecture.
Sounds great! So the next verbal wrap to choose is the backside circle wrap verbal – soooo many words LOL!
So, I’ll use my older dog’s “push” for backside in general. Would I use “push” “check check” for push to the back side and then wrap the wing circling to your right and “push” “dig dig” for backside with wing wrap to his left? OR – God Forbid – do I need even more words? First of all I’m seriously running out of clever/natural/easy to remember verbals. I literally have a “Ripley Glossary” in my Notion with 70 words (everything from behavior cues, to LSMs to agility verbals). 😲 Second of all, I seriously worry that in the moment I’ll pick the wrong one (even if I walk the course saying the words to myself, what if something changes and suddenly he’s going a different direction or something unexpected). So much to think about vs the good old days when we used to just run in straight lines until a tunnel turned us around for the most part. 🤣
He will LOVE cued wraps. I know from the times I’ve aimed a foot at a thing and he’s wrapped it. Hopefully we can do that next session.
My only mechanics suggestion is to leave the toy in the hand it starts in – that heartbeat of switching it delays the blind a little and also rehearses an unwanted mechanics habit. You did leave it in the same hand like at 1:04 but your other hand really wanted to get involved so sometimes it ended up 2-handed, which can block the new connection a bit.
So, on this. I’ve noticed that with this toy (and it is his favorite) he can sometimes have a hard time getting a satisfying grip on it when I just let it dangle in mid air. Sometimes I’ll drop the hollee roller part down on the ground as I’m going and that makes it easier for him. Sometimes when he’s really coming in hot and I don’t want him to have to deflate on the toy grab I’ll hold it with both hands leaving a central place for him to grab and then let go of 1 end when he’s firmly on it. He likes this a lot when we’re doing stuff with more movement. I bet I could do that but keep the onside hand/arm really low, offside arm up higher but really rotated across and get a safe, clean grab without losing the connection. What do you think?
This morning we just did some wobble/teeter board stuff for our goat games with motion and noise. This is NOT his first time on these objects and has been doing at least some of this since he was little or I would not let the objects have this much movement and noise this quickly. I let this session go just a couple of minutes longer than I might normally since I needed to tire him out a bit before hopping into a Zoom work call (so about 2-3 minutes on each of the 2 props instead of just 1-2 minutes each).
Sorry to be spamming you with posts today. I just got behind on getting stuff edited and up here so am trying to catch up.
Yes, for deciding what verbals to use on wraps. I was going to use “Wrap” and “Check check”. Then realized “Wrap” sounds too much like “Rip” which is what I call him for short. So, going with “Dig Dig” for him turning left, “Check Check” for him turning right.
I think he would like cued wraps to a toy at this point. Either just a step to the thing +/- a verbal. I think he’s ready for either. I don’t really think he would like it with me like kneeling next to the thing at this age/stage of his life. That seems more frustrating for him since when he’s tugging he wants to really move around a bit more. I know he’ll offer a wrap of an object with any kind of step to it at this point (+/- the verbal) and feel I can easily play, indicate, play. Does that sound okay?
Here’s a short clip of some baby blind crosses. This is from yesterday afternoon at the same fun match in one of the little exercise/potty yards next to the ring. I did alternate the blinds with some no blind cross reps just to make sure he was actually listening/looking (just so you don’t think I’m crazy if there are any of those in there).
He’s really good at offering to interact with props and will typically interact with toys on them too. We’ll put taping that on our to do list for the next few days.
Here’s some stuff from this weekend. We went to a fun match to hang out. We were also able to go in the ring and just tug and play reverse retrieve while the participants were walking their JWW course. He was awesome, had fun and had no interest in the walking people (it felt like we were just playing in our living room 😊). When they were walking their tunnelers course we did some tug plus some line up behaviors (away from the tunnels) them some Startline stays but not facing any tunnel entrance – like at the midpoint of the tunnel facing away or near an opening but facing various directions. He was super good and had lots of fun. I also got your Startline stays course for my library and we’re working through some of those exercises.
This video is shaped wrap at home on various objects. Started where we were in the live class – starting back at the beginning with a super quick review of the steps we did to where we ended up just to remind him of the concept. Then at the end of the day at the fun match once the dogs were done with their runs we shaped wrapping some trees and other objects outside the ring.
Hi Tracy,
Busy work week and COVID booster Friday left me doing training sessions but not editing and posting the past few days.
Here’s some “Goat Games”. I am a HUGE fan of this stuff. I feel like it not only helps them learn to shape in arousal the way you have it designed in this course but really helps build a lot of confidence and optimism with surfaces, elevation, balance, movement and noise that is not only great for agility but carries over really well into real life.
Ripley is a big fan of shaping and pretty confident in general, but I still like to really encourage him in that area after my last dog that was so lacking in confidence (mini poodle Mighty Mouse).
I’ve always encouraged him to put his front paws on objects +/- jump all 4 on. The past few weeks he’s been offering more movement on and around the objects (like big rocks at parks or horizontal trees). I think it’s due to feeling more comfortable in his body now that his growth is slowing down.
Anyway, here’s some goat games in arousal at home on various objects + some offered goat games in the wild (more like parkour). I don’t love that his long line is on on the outdoor stuff and we should be able to take it off in the future now that I feel pretty good about his recall.
Here’s a little quick and dirty session at the park this morning of “Focus Forward” and “Decel with Turns” from this week’s lectures.
Because he’s a little older than some of the pups and does have some foundation behavior stuff I think my goal is to work through the exercises and see if we can get to the Advanced versions in most cases. Also, where possible I’d like to keep in mind things to add in like speed, distance and location where it seems like that’s the best next step for him.
Busy work-day so we bundled training with our morning outing to a park. This is a new location for him, his first time actually off-leash at a park like this (he’s usually on a long line) but this area is pretty well fenced off.
We worked on “reverse retrieve” and “catch” as well as some “cheeseball ping pong.”
Goals for reverse retrieve were from your feedback – to get him lower and driving into the toy versus bounding toward it like a little deer.
On catch we were just looking for some more engagement and excitement/fun – instead of just dropping it where he was and looking at me like I was crazy we wanted him to bring it in to my feet before dropping it and/or engage in tug after catching it.
Cheeseball ping pong is just his all-time favorite game that I love as an acclimation test and reinforcer. We play it everywhere we go once he’s shown me he’s comfortable with the environment. I like it because it’s kind of a combo toy/food/action game, starts to build some distance and some counter motion stuff. Plus, cheeseballs, bonus points if I’m hungry and need a snack myself.
I did a high speed edit – just trimming to these games but not actually playing the video in real speed with audio. Praying I didn’t drop any f bombs or similar at any point. I think I got a little bitten at one point because the toy we are using here is smaller, harder for him to grab (tennis ball on a rope) but we used it since it throws farther than his hollee roller on braided fleece. We have been working on more accurate bites and he’s doing well but this was another level of difficulty. Apologies for anything inappropriate in here. 😁
Hey Tracy,
Super fun class last night.
I think the LMS has the live class recording labeled as Dec 1 in the week’s content list.
Cindi
Thanks for the feedback. 😁
The target in hand looks good too. A suggestion on changing mechanics a bit: the target was in your right hand, so that hand can stay stationary out to the side, elbow locked. After he touches it, the left hand can come over and deliver the treat to him at the target (then move him away with a get it toss). That will speed up the delivery (you can have the treat in your fingertips of your left hand before you present the target) and will change the placement to get the target hand super valuable and also so he doesn’t face you while waiting for the treat in front of you. It will make more sense when we put it in context (cliffhanger!)
Just a super short hand target session with first treat “at source” where the target is to build value. A bit fumbly between target, clicker and treats, gonna need a 3rd hand I think. 🤣
See you in the live class this afternoon (pacific time). 😊
When rewarding the out, try to either have the cookie already in your hand for a decent amount of time while continuing to tug, to ask for the out and dig the cookie out afterwards – the verbal and the hand-to-cookie-pocket were happening close enough in time that he might be pairing the movement of the cookie as the cue to release the toy (I have done that by accident in the past and the dogs learn very quickly to keep a grip on the toy until we reach for the cookie LOL! Oops!) I don’t think he is doing that at the moment and we want to avoid it.
Good point. I am a bit fumbly going quickly between food and toys. Half the time if I have treats pre-loaded in my hand and a treat in play I end up throwing them instead of the toy or just dropping them everywhere. 🤣
Two of my youngsters are frisbee-obsessed and I am lazy, so I taught them that the friz drop needs to be at my feet in order to get the next friz throw, and that has helped ( same with the tennis ball :))
Yes, I think I specifically/unintentionally or not taught him not to come ALL the way in so that the 8 lb mini poodle, Mighty Mouse, would have the space closer to me and not have to worry about getting trampled. So, poodle gets the spot by my feet, Ripley got the middle distance and the 13 year old got the farthest distance (her preference).
Toy races (and the collar-no-collar moment haha) look good! You can let the toy be ‘dead’ for gradually increasing amounts of time before driving to it. so that raises the value (ping pong the timing of letting him drive to it though, so it is not only all dead, all the time – sometimes the toy is moving, sometimes it has been dead for a few seconds, etc.)
Will do, sounds like a good plan.
One other thing – I don’t think he loves it when you let go of the toy during a tug game and he has to follow you with it – his body language is interesting there. I am just getting to know him, but in those moments early in the video when you let go of the toy and moved away, he did follow you with it but with an expression/posture of “what just happened?” and not a “heck yeah, game on!” expression/posture. It is really subtle – since we know that possessing the toy is not his favorite thing, you can maintain the tugging until you cue the out or present something else to do – all of that is valuable for him. Let me know what you think!
Yes, he is not always sure why the heck he “won” the toy since he doesn’t really seem to want to possess it, just engage in the tugging. So, good idea to give him a next cue rather than letting him win. If I just let him pull it away and don’t move at all I feel like he looks even more confused and will either try to shove it back in my hands or will drop the toy, so a next cue to get a nice chain will probably make more sense to him.
Hi Tracy,
Here’s some combo play – toys and food – from yesterday AM.
Sticking with his hollee roller on fleece tug here since it’s just the easiest for all the things and he does love it.
Using cheeseballs for any thrown food and just his puppy kibble for any hand to mouth delivery (takes too long for him to find it when I throw it on the ground and harder for him to catch out of the air).
We do take all of this on the road and play at this at agility shows where we go just to acclimate to new environments. He is able to take treats and play with his toys in those environments so far. Maybe just a little more need to sniff, especially as I think his hormones have kicked in a bit recently. 😁
I think catch the toy (vs heads for cheeseballs which he loves) is his least preferred. I think it was taught with a frisbee between throws when I would play a 3 frisbee game with him and 2 other dogs so he would catch it then immediately drop it to get his next throw (which is what I taught them to keep the 3 dog game in sync). I think if I turned it into a catch then immediately tug game he would like it more.
Also, he wishes I was smarter – at one point here I give his “collar” cue to put his collar in my hand and he’s not wearing a collar. He gave me a “you’re stupid” look 🤣.
We worked a little bit on the pre-games tonight. We’re a little sloppy and tired here after socializing at a couple of trials over the weekend but figured we should tape something to get feedback in case we need to clean anything up before Tuesday.
Hope you had fun at UKI US Open. I caught a couple of your runs on 4Legged Flix’s livestream and plan to go back through the recordings to catch the rest of yours and my friends who were there.
Looking forward to Tuesday’s first live class.
Question – How much space do you think I need for this week? I can use the room I taped this video in +/- the adjoining room where the other dogs are here. Or, I can set up outside on my front lawn (I’ve got lights for when it gets dark) OR if ever needed I can also probably use a friend’s covered agility arena.
Pre-Game 1 – object target and Pre-Game 2 – nose touch hand target
