[dashalin]

We played more today. I tried some of the things that we had had less success with before and today was a new day. For stuff with crates, I got a bigger crate for JJ to use. She started going right in to the crate with all 4 feet.
Interestingly JJ almost always turned the same way when going inside. She started from the beginning offering time when she got in the crate so we played with that. JJ and I only had one mishap. I waited just a little time too long at 1:16 and JJ made a quick decision to get back in the crate. Interesting how her mind works. :-). https://youtu.be/F356nP6dmDk.
In the second session JJ offered a sit so we worked with that. It was also an interesting session. Many times she seemed to need to keep her head out of the crate even though she was in, but when she sat, her head and body was all in the crate. https://youtu.be/QYoG5EIv3WU

Later we played Find my face. JJ loves this game….Lots of cookies. She also loved crate work for the same reason. I did get a new kibble that worked great in the MM today. We felt through lots of kibble bags and talked to the guy at Pet Smart and decided to try the Redford Naturals, Limited ingredient diet, Salmon and Oatmeal recipe. The kibble size worked perfectly with the MM. https://youtu.be/UIb3i-3VBdM.

In another session we played with the Wing wrap work. The first video is just the warm up. I had a hard time getting the tuggy back from JJ. I started cracking up because I have never had a dog that would play tug before, and I could not get it back from her. I guess that would be a great place for a second tug toy, but i do not know how i would ever coordinate doing that. https://youtu.be/U7vR5IAqDtg

In the next session we did some of the different levels. https://youtu.be/BHov1CXGtBs. At one point I got lost in what I was doing. At 1:31 I did an unintended post turn. Even though I knew that was coming up, I did not plan to do it here. At about 2:00 I lost my connection with JJ twice. I saw my body language changing to geep our connection, but i do not think that is what I should have done here. Any help you can give me on this would be appreciated. I want to do this activity next time in a greater space so that we can add some turn and burn at the end.

We also played with Adding Motion to Serps and Threadles. Here is one on doing serps to motion. https://youtu.be/D0G0dizMD-A. I am hoping that my form is looking a bit better here, but I am still open for your input to make this smoother. Switching sides is also a challenge for both me and JJ.When we switched sides at 1:14 I did not look at my hand and JJ didn’t either Same thing at 1:33 and then almost again at 1:50. (Note to self remember to look at my hand). I did see my arm go down lower at least once in this clip. More practice will help this to improve.

For motion to Threadle https://youtu.be/SuuVWiYrq_E. I had to laugh. This is the first time we have seen JJ jump the bump jump. the first side went smoothly. Should we try this with the other hand, or continue with the same hand used for the serps? When we switched sides, I had a hard time getting JJ to go over the jump. I tried a lot of different things on the end of this clip as you can see.

I have a second clip where I did some additional attempts at figuring this out. I changed the angle that JJ was sitting at for this session and it seemed to help.
Let me know what would have helped for this session. https://youtu.be/vlnLqQrQy98.

[dashalin]

Argh. I did not like looking over these videos. I need a mirror when I do these clips to see what I am doing. I have two videos of motion with the serp and one with the threadle. I do not think that I can effectively feel what my body is doing and where the parts are heading. I thought my arm was up and in place rather than low and also thought my chest was facing the bar, but in looking at the video I do not feel like this was well executed at all. JJ did not seem to remember the hand as the target for this so we did go back to some trials with the target in hand which helped. I need to get your play by play eval here so I can clean up my own work. The MM was also having a few possessed moments where it went off for no reason, and then it kept getting jammed (hence we went to the pet store tonight to get new treats to try in the MM). These malfunctions (especially when no treats came out) made JJ want to go back to the MM rather than follow the hand. I have included video from each side here. https://youtu.be/-TxMlO06d5s. and https://youtu.be/K8bOMhw4k2g

For the Threadle practice, again my hand is super low. At about 2:00 I feel like I pushed J to the other side of the upright and then at 2:30 I did the same thing. I need to know my mechanics better so this does not happen. https://youtu.be/_BH7V_0n76k

[dashalin]

Resilience: Handling Unexpected Events With Your Puppy

I meant to ask you about this. When JJ did her CGC test, and they dropped the chair for a noise distraction, JJ was really startled. She did recover, but it wasn’t immediate. Unfortunately, when they do the testing at the club, they set up stations and two big open rooms. Because of this, the dogs are exposed to the drop in chair over and over even though they have moved onto the next station. It was really disturbing for JJ. I was thinking I should probably bring her to the club and try to desensitize her to this. Should I instead have tried to remove her from this?

[dashalin]

Mom and Dad are moved, although there is still a lot to do to get everything set for them in their new apartment. JJ stayed home during the move so she did not get as much training time as I would have liked, but we are ready to get back on track. We played around with a few of the things that do not take a lot of space constraints and I have a couple of videos for your perusal.
For Flyball Foundation Fun: Ball Retrieves And Toy Trades I thought that this session went really well. JJ is retrieving a disc when we play outdoors (semi consistently although not to hand) and toys in the house (more often to me although not perfectly to hand like on obedience). She seemed to really like this game. I am not sure how you were able to play tug with the ball in your dogs mouth though. I did this without food, because I thought it would be a better fit for this game, and still think that was the case. Food makes her focus only on the treat and not on the game and retrieval. I also saw her side choice come clear in this particular game always turning to the right. https://youtu.be/2_aDHqSyVCM
For the crate game, I really struggled with this. JJ loves her crate and will willingly go there without being asked at night. She also goes there when I leave the house without any qualms. I was surprised that she did not go there when it was just offered. We took video of this on multiple sessions that looked a lot like the video here. https://youtu.be/OtHv8fcYRM4. I did not bother to include all of these clips. JJ had no idea what I wanted. I did see that your video was intermediate level, so I was not sure what preceeded the dog making the choice to go in the crate. (By the way I also think my crate was too small for this activity). Later I chose to treat when she showed interest in the crate and things started to happen. We finally got a consistent two feet in the crate during the end of the session. https://youtu.be/m_28eE5UJH4
I appreciate any thoughts you have on these two games.

[dashalin]

I also meant to ask if there is a follow up class to this one and if so when will it be offered.

[dashalin]

I will admit that we are behind on our games this week. Last weekend I was judging scent work. The cool thing about that was that JJ earned her Advanced Buried title and her overall Advanced Scent Work title for AKC. Monday night She earned her GCG title (last week at the practice she was awesome, but on Monday she was a little less perfect).

This week we are moving my 94 year old parents. It is a 2 hour drive away, and I am up there most days trying to help before the movers get there on Saturday. I am going back up on Friday through Sunday with out JJ. Sigh. I will get to as many games as possible when I am home with her. I hate getting behind. The club is an hour away in the opposite direction and I have taken 3 weeks off from teaching so I have not been there for the past two weeks. The weather here has reduced our outdoor time because of storms, or poor air quality.

The tab ball has been a huge hit with JJ. I love the glow in the dark one. They make them both ways. I just happened across the Giant Yard Pong game. I had been looking for additional barrels. The game comes with 6 barrels. You never know where you can find cool dog training stuff. I will get some video up as soon as I can.

[dashalin]

We played one more time with a bit of catch up. I was not really sure how this game should look. This was the arousal management/volume dial game. I tried it two times …once with a toy for tug game and the second time with treats. https://youtu.be/ec1YSevdAWA. and https://youtu.be/dd1wsmyS72c.
I think that she was in a greater state of arousal with the tuggy although I would not have guessed this. I also was surprised that I could not think of the tricks that she does while trying this… or that the tricks that she does are not that exciting to dial up her arousal (sit, down, stand, shake, feet up, etc)..
Let me know what you thought of this experience.

[dashalin]

We had time for another couple of games today after JJ’s rally class and my PT. I have 3 videos here. The first two are Backslide slice. I forget what cue you give for this, but did not use a verbal cue yet for this. I tried to keep my eye on JJ and my hand back to open my chest to get her around the barrel. We had not done this since our try in the online class where I found it a bit frustrating. JJ definitely has a better side here for this and i think that we never got to trying that side in class. She was much better for this than I had expected. Latent learning? Any way. I tried the difficult side one more time after the first video. There was still a bit of an issue, (probably me with my body language), but I am looking forward to hearing your input and getting a reminder of a possible verbal cue to use for this. I saw that at 32 seconds and then again on that side my straight line was not that straight, probably trying to put pressure on JJ to get around the barrel. I also did not get any distance from her towards the center in this direction, but did in the other direction. https://youtu.be/CLyBpenvikw

In the second video I tried the tough side once more. https://youtu.be/faPaQenJFu0. My line was straighter for the first time and a bit more to the center. I then tried to over do moving away from her with out success (remember Holly to do this by baby steps!!!!). You can see her trying to figure things out in the last try. I think that she actually needed a break which she got, but she did work through the puzzle successfully first.

In the 3rd video we did “get out”. https://youtu.be/y-43wxH491Y. We had not done this for a long time either and I found it a bit frustrating the first time we did this. I changed out her prop to get something that did not slide as easily and was not as 3D. Jj worked hard to figure out when she should be on the straight path and when she should get out. Seh again has a better side, but I learned that I had to turn my body for the second direction or the treats seemed to end up off of the deck and in to the lower garden. Unfortunately at 1:02 one of the cookies got stuck i the crack between the boards in the deck. The biggest disadvantage of working in this area. J was back to the lost cookie at 1:29 lol and her last try was not as successful so again time to give it a rest. I feel like we should always end on a good note, but when I see her mind getting fatigues, I think it is probably better just to end at that time. One quick question. On the first time I stopped when I threw the treat, but thought that looked a bit weird. Later I moved through. Which is the right choice for this game?

[dashalin]

Just two short videos tonight. We did work on the head turn for a tight wrap. I am not sure if my hand movement, but JJ seemed comfortable with this tonight on both sides. We had not practiced this since the live class. https://youtu.be/9E5ys9aF6-s

The second video shows some definite learning overnight for the perch work. Still a work in progress, but there was definite progress. https://youtu.be/3O9K4aTL6AA

Let me know how to move forward on these.

[dashalin]

I meant to ask. When we are working on the head turns for tight wraps…in the video it looks like you almost flip your hand up and the pups on their head turns almost appear to look up on their turns….am I just seeing something that isn’t there, or is this the way we should work the hand flip? We will be working on this after my class. If I do not hear back before then no worries, I will just play it by ear. Thx!

[dashalin]

Argh… long days at an agility trial as head course builder again deleted my time with JJ. We did work on the perch game again trying to go to the higher level. This was met with a bit of a disaster. Like you had suggested, we waited a couple of days to revisit this game. I taped the additional bars to the ground so they wouldn’t roll around. The noise they made still bothered J. They also seem to make her not want to turn in a circle like she had before.
I wish I had a mirror in front of me to see when her feet actually move. I see in the video sections that her feet were moving sometimes when I did not know it, and that created a less effective session.
There were a couple of things I tried to get her more comfortable with this. One thing I tried, was to learn her head almost around my leg, which forced her back in to move but I’m guessing maybe that wasn’t the right choice. You can see me doing this on the short clip video at the end. Before I even had video going, I had zero success, getting her to move over the bars on the floor. I guess what I’m saying is I really need help breaking this down for her and making it something she can be comfortable with. I look forward to your feedback.

I also caught myself thinking and using the word “reset” rather than “get it” for a reset. I need to see and hear what I am doing as I go along, not when I watch the clips🤪.
PS I did review what I did on the earlier videos with her first and that went pretty well. Maybe she is just not ready to move on yet, or I need to do more with just one bar on the floor.

[dashalin]

Strike a pose part 3 was our focus tonight. I tried to alternate between SERP and Thredle. Then I switched sides. I am looking for ways to make this a smoother attempt at this activity.
Should I alternate sides for each type of pose, or do both on one side. Is there a way to use the treat and train for both while alternating. I tried it in the first video, but was not sure if this was a good idea. I also see that I did not always strike a good “POSE”.and needed to be reminded to do so. https://youtu.be/3Wl7p3mym2U
I liked using the mat for JJ to start on. She has a better more consistent sit then.
On the second video JJ did not always do the slice. I was not sure why and tried to do a little altering of my position to help. At 2:07 she came to my hand for the cookie not the target. https://youtu.be/HOlOoGPpVMQ
In the 3rd video I changed sides. https://youtu.be/vhCbwUy77Q0 Any suggestions are welcome.

[dashalin]

We do Perch Work already. I start pups on this for rally obedience and rear end awareness for obedience. The perch that I use is a bit higher than the one that you see here and I love it because it is a rubber feed dish for poultry or other animals. Being rubber it is not slippery and it does not move on the floor. I did not use it for the videos, because you said you wanted us to use something only about 1-2′ high and it is about 3-4 inches high. I forgot to include it in the video to ask about using it. You can see that even the rug I used is a bit slippery.
The first video that I included here is just showing JJ putting her two feet on. I have a cur for this and it is “Feet”. I had a hard time seeing if she had both feed on the disc or not. I am not sure how to check that out better. Neither of my other dogs are black in color and I do not remember having as much trouble with them at this kind of thing. I realized that I wished I had a clicker for this so I stopped the video to get a clicker.

In the second video I started with the clicker and then sending away to come back to two feet on. Once she was doing well with the clicker I added the return to center shaping by tossing the treats behind me at about 47 seconds. She seemed to do well with this too. I do not hear me saying “get it” though. https://youtu.be/RfCTkfObBXk

In perch work #3, I added body pressure. https://youtu.be/Z4R-F3ujddQ. JJ definitely has a preferred side for this. We work on this, but with the cue “front” for rally and obedience. I did not include that cue during this practice. It is really important for me to expect a good perfect front from the pups, but I did not think that was our goal here so I did not want to include the cue word (We also do this work in the heal position). At 14-24 seconds JJ gets frustrated no understanding what i want from her, so I toss a cookie to allow her to reset. When she got back on I waited her out for a shift of her back feet. It took a fee more seconds that I would hav liked, but I can see that these pauses are going to be totally worth it. A few more on that side and then we switch to the easy side. The next switch to her tough side yielded more success at a quicker rate.
In #4 we did alternating treat hands. https://youtu.be/CC21iBvdP8s. With another short of that in #5. https://youtu.be/PdkETgkbLps

I will show you the rubber dish I have used in the past. If you think that we are ready I can add in the bars to go over on the floor.

[dashalin]

I forgot to tell you that I loved the section called Resilience Game: Decompression And Completing The Stress Cycle. I do not have video of this, but I am now letting JJ have these moments and have also spoken with some of my students trying to get them to allow decompression especially in their younger pups. I love feeling like I now have permission to let JJ have the decompression time she needs.

[dashalin]

Thanks for the feedback and the ideas of how to deal with JJ and her lack of even use of her hind feet. We worked on that a bit tonight and if I get some video of our attempts I will send it out to you. It is really tough to get her to isolate the hind feet, but I had a few successful attempts (not one right after the other though, and one side is definitely easier for her than the other). I did want to send along an updated tunnel work video. The first clip got interrupted so I am sending both copies. Let me know what you think and how we should proceed. I worked her a bit on inside an and outside and close and a bit further back. In the second video you Cana even see someone walking the course I had set and JJ does not even seem to care. Thank you MM and food treats 🙂
Thanks.

[Author]

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