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Hi Jordan! I’m glad it worked out that you could offer some more video review time. 🙂 We continued training for a couple weeks (easily 5-6 sessions) after your last reply but I’m only showing our latest session.
I really appreciate you taking the time to run through our general game-plan with your last post. I definitely have a road map in my head for where we are going, so questions for today are just about how quickly I should proceed to our next step.
You can see in the video that Soph is still hitting the most consistently with her pounce and despite increasing her speed with the full DW she still slows down to collect herself to get this style of hit. I know you’ve said they end up switching to just RF when they get more comfortable going fast but knowing Soph (and her serious aversion to being “wrong”) I’ve been wondering if I need to put more effort into shaping the alternative style or if I should keep moving forward with her doing the slower, more thoughtful pounce-style hits and just wait and see how it changes over time. For example we’ve just been working on straight exits and 90 degree turns with the full, lowest height DW for 6-7 sessions now because I didn’t know if I should start adding height with her style of hit not changing at all.
For this reason I was experimenting a bit in this last session with rewarding alternative hits (like one front or rear foot) to see is it encouraged her to shake things up a bit (this was easy for the turns as she’s not super solid on them yet with the pounce).
Is this a valid strategy to use to try and change her footwork? Or am I just going to cause more problems with her turns if I’m not consistent with my criteria at this stage?
In general, am I causing an unnecessary plateau in our training right now by nitpicking over this? Should I start increasing the height of the DW with our next session or keep working on turns/footwork at this height? Thanks!
This is officially our last video for the class. 🙂 I think we ended on a good note (my sloppy as heck marker mechanics aside lol)! Your advice about shifting the wing position to help her wrap the correct way was spot on. I was also pleased to see her not slow down much at all to fix the few mistakes she made.
Since this is our last post for the class, are there any major changes you would make to the progression of the course material knowing what you know about Sophie? Following the course directly the game plan would be:
– next session: continue working right and left turns to 1 wing from the middle of the DW
– start adding the verbals to the turns + straight exits pretty soon (within the next week/2 sessions)
– try the 3 wing game to test our verbals/handling
– start doing the full 1/2 height DW with 1 wing and 3 wing game
– go to a full height DW (starting midway) with 1 wing and 3 wing game
– do the full, full height DW with 1 and 3 wing game
– add tunnel and jumps after DW
– test understanding of complete behavior with additional discriminationsBut knowing I could have more access to equipment if Soph was doing a full height DW, could I “cheat” and start working on height before proofing all of the turns (or even the full length)? Or would that just be a recipe for disaster? Second, at what point do you recommend removing the mat?
Lastly, could you tell me a little more about continuing to work with you after the course? Whenever you decide to run this class again I will likely sign up (since there is always another dog/puppy to train 🙂 ) but I’m expecting I might need a little more troubleshooting help with Soph before then. We have a summer full of trials coming up and though it’s ambitious I would love to start using her new RC as soon as possible (even if it means we haven’t finished testing/proofing all of the different discrimination). of course, I also don’t want to do more harm than good by testing it in a trial setting too soon. I guess I’m wondering at what point do you start using the RC in trials with your own dogs?
Thanks so much for all of the help so far!! All of my complaining aside, this class has been a lot of fun and I’m stoked that I now have a basic understanding of how to teach a running DW! 😀
Jordan, I just need to say, thank you for being so positive and supportive. 🙂 My stupid perfectionism has made our progress slow (poor Soph) and led to me feeling a bit overwhelmed/frustrated about how far we still have to go despite all the work we put in so far. But reading your replies always helps bring me back down to earth (because you’re right, I really don’t care about collection exits at this point, there are always things I can go back and teach later once we have the behavior trial-ready), and makes me realize this is as difficult a learning process for me as it is for Soph so I should be more forgiving to both of us.
At the risk of getting too far into the sappy stuff…. Here’s our latest session. 😀
This was the first session since our last video so I started with some warm up wraps onto the DW on both sides, then added a wing for her to go out to, and finally had her try starting at the top of the down ramp to go out to the wing. Straight exits only. I know she started wrapping the wrong way when on my left side at the end but I decided to keep rewarding her hits regardless.
Thoughts? Next steps? As of this week I will be able to use Kim’s DW twice a week (tomorrow night is our next session, so if you see this by then I can make any changes you recommend). Otherwise my plan was to start adding some soft turns to the left and right with the wing and do more reps with her coming down the entire down ramp.
On that note, I’ve decided to cut out all of the extra plank practice we been doing recently because Soph has been sloppy with it (her motivation goes way down for the plank vs the actual DW) and that just leads to frustration on my part. I figured we could keep everyone happy by focusing on quality vs quantity when it comes to our sessions. Of course, you tell me if there are skills we should still be practicing with the single flat/low plank, or if this plan sounds ok!
Hi Jordan, we’re back today with the last 2 weeks worth of work on the Lesson 4 material.
Adding new challenges (i.e. collection exits and height) to our basic flat work has been tough! I included all of the sessions from the past 2 weeks with the full sized plank/dog walk even though there are a couple sessions I’m not super proud of. I know Sophie is moving pretty slowly in some of these sessions, but at the same time I recognize the issue is she’s just being super careful since being wrong is very aversive to her. I can tell she is still unsure about the collection exits and as soon as I started adding significant height to the plank/dog walk she lost confidence in her hits. Kim recommended I try some of the troubleshooting advice you mention in Lesson 6 an by the end of our latest session on the low dog walk I think she was feeling more comfortable. Right now I’m totally fine with her focusing on adjusting her hits then gaining speed later when she is more confident, but I’m definitely open to suggestions for how we might proceed.
Unfortunately I don’t have access to an adjustable dog walk more than once a week though I recently gained access to a full sized plank at our club’s practice field. So I’m expecting our progress to be slow. 🙂 At this point, do you think it would be useful to move onto the one wing exercise (Lesson 4)? I was thinking that having another obstacle to focus on might encourage some more speed, at least when working on the plank only.
Can you remind me when the last day of class is? Will you be teaching this class again soon? I’d love to continue working with you if possible, once this session is over.
Hi Jordan, long time no post. 🙂 Even though it’s been a while since your last feedback I wanted to say that your explanation made total sense and really did help me better understand the criteria I’m looking for, especially now that we’ve moved to working on the plank/DW. So thanks a lot for that!
Some updates on our progress: the last three weeks we’ve been working on the Lesson 3 assignments (no Lesson 4 or 5 stuff at all yet, but hopefully you can tell me how far from that we are after seeing our video). Because Sophie’s elevated target/box work has been going so well I decided to just go with the flat mat when we started the plank work since it’s easiest to keep from moving around. With today’s video I’m showing just plank work: 1) our first session of the mat on the low contact trainer (straight exits only), 2) our first session of turns on the flat plank with just the mat, and 3) our more recent session of turns on the flat plank (3 sessions after the second clip).
My main question about the plank work is: is it ok that I am just using the 6 ft plank on the flat for now? I know we will need to start using an actual dog walk soon but in the meantime, when I’m doing the proofing exercises I just want to make sure I’m not negatively impacting her striding with such a short plank (it’s the only one I personally own and only size that fits in my car lol).
Regarding the striding advice you gave me before, right now my biggest challenge in all of our sessions is maintaining the nice pouncing behavior she has with the elevated target/box. I should note that using the elevated target on the plank works REALLY well (I didn’t include that video but could show you if you want). However, I wanted to get away from using it exclusively since I’m concerned it will be hard to switch to just a mat the longer I use it and it’s also harder to keep from slipping around on the plank vs the mat. When switching to the mat I did do a couple sessions of just practicing the mat on the flat to generalize the pounce to this “new” target and she did catch on quickly to the idea. What you will notice in the video is she tends to slow down a lot if she makes mistakes i.e. if I try to not reward for a mat hit that isn’t a nice pounce she will start questioning herself and either carefully walk the target until she hears the marker OR go to a 2o2o position until she hears the marker. In the last session in the video she also starts walking through the target because she’s getting tired so I’ve made more of an effort to stop sessions early to avoid that particular issue. I do still have a tendency of accidentally triggering the MM for bad hits before realizing it so I know that hearing the mark but not getting rewarded has confused her a bit.
My main question regarding this is: how would you prioritize the accuracy of the hit VS speed/motivation for her at this point? Previously I’ve been rewarding sub-par (i.e. not pounce) hits and jack potting pounces. But it just feels like we aren’t actually improving our overall % of nice, pounce hits from session to session (with the mat on the plank specifically). I know the end goal is nice, deep RF only hits but we RARELY (if ever) get those at this point so I’m sticking hard to the pounce criteria. Like I mentioned above, the problem is I tend to get FEWER pounces the more times I force her to repeat a rep because she becomes so hesitant. Our last session (done after the 3/14/21 clip I show in the video) I tried switching back to the elevated target when she started walking through the target in an effort to get back to pounces as quickly as possible but she was already in her weird mind space and just walked through that too.
I don’t want to start the Lesson 4 materials since you mention we should have a very high rate of success with the ideal style of hits. My current thoughts are, it would be easiest to go back to working the elevated platform exclusively (on the plank and DW) since that gives us the highest % of pounce hits. My concern with this is if I continue too long with the platform will it be super difficult to wean her onto the mat later? Is it possible to just go from the platform to the DW without the mat as a target in between?
My other option is to go back to just the mat on the flat and work hard on only rewarding pounces and nothing else so she better understands the criteria. This feels risky though since I know from experiences she will easily start having yucky feelings about a behavior if she is wrong too often. On the bright side it would probably also help me clean up my marker timing so I’m confusing her less overall.
ANYWAY, any thoughts you have on this issue are welcome haha. Obviously I love to overthink things. 🙂
Ok apologies in advance for the long video :). There are clips from a bunch of different sessions in here (in chronological order so hopefully it shows us getting better haha). We haven’t started any Lesson 3 stuff yet, still on Lesson 2.
First is our work with the inverted target. We started with a big plastic tub session 1, then I went to the smaller cardboard box in session 2. After the 4th session she still hasn’t figure out that I still want the same pouncing movement with the box that she does with the elevated platform. I’m wondering if this box is a good size to use or too small?
Next is the B&F game with motion. We are making steady progress so I plan to use the smaller target for the next session. Should I be working up to running in the opposite direction before releasing her with this same set up OR should I move onto more of the lesson 3 distraction proofing at this point?
Finally we started the straight exits with turns. Lots of questions about this: I can tell she is being much more careful now about hitting this medium sized target with all 4 feet but you talk in your lecture about starting to shape the 2 feet hits. First off, how do you choose which “style” to use? I feel like when Sophie makes mistakes she is much more likely to miss with her FF vs her RF. Does that mean I should choose RF because she’s more consistent with those or FF so that she has to try harder and really think about the correct behavior? For the straight exits exercise specifically, should I start using a smaller target to encourage hitting with just the chosen 2 feet? When we are doing the inverted box or elevated platform work should I also start focusing on just those 2 feet hits? I’m a little concerned about not keeping my criteria strict enough for everything now that I think she better understands the behavior.
Last Q (I promise haha)! I notice in your Lesson 3 videos you use the inverted target for all of the exercises except the plank work. Do you find it better to use that vs the elevated platform? I guess I’m wondering if I can get away with the elevated plats most of the time since her hits with the inverted target are not great yet.
It’s been a while since we’ve posted but we’ve been practicing our target work almost every day! So here is an update of where we’re at with the B&F game + MM. For a few days we were struggling to get good energy with just the MM until Kim F gave me an idea for a really high value reward to use with it…. cat food! 😀 You can see the results here. In this session I also started trying to add some handler motion for the first time. This is our most difficult distraction. At home we’ve been practicing ignoring a food distraction (shown at the beginning of the video) and with that she is GREAT. Let me know if there is anything you want my to change with these particular exercises, otherwise, we’ll just keep chugging along!
That new plan sounds great. I am definitely way more comfortable working with just the elevated platforms right now! We’ve had a couple more really good sessions since the last post. At first I missed your comment about working the straight across and b&f in separate sessions so in the video it shows me doing both. Also, I added in a few reps with a toy at the end. Toys are still a little but of a struggle with her sometimes. When I raised her it was before I had any knowledge of how to teach cooperative toy skills so we still have some (*cough* a lot of) conflict when it comes to tugging. In that session I tried rewarding with a tug at first but she wasn’t feeling it. Squeaky tennis balls are her favorite though so I got a handle of reps in with that. At this point I’m planning to start adding in the medium sized platform with food and keep using the toys to keep building up her speed + accuracy with the bigger platform. Am I on the right track with those ideas?
Finally, I tried a short session of b&f game using the manners minder (not shown in this video). She definitely has way less energy with it vs with tossed food or a toy (walked back and forth from the platform). Is the goal with the MM right now to just introduce them to that reward procedure or do we need to build up a similar level of energy for the b&f game when using it?
Yes, it makes sense! My space inside is definitely limited so I tried a couple more sessions inside (with more space for tosses but a less ideal layout i.e. she has to run on the tile) and one at a park. She had more speed at the park BUT is still pretty much just trotting across the platform. Is this a case where I should be practicing more of the back & forth game with the elevated platform, where I toss the cookies back in my direction so she is encouraged to turn and push off? Or is the goal to get that “pounce” motion with her going straight across?
I’ve also finally included more of our mat work, this time our most recent park session with the back and forth game. Honestly I’ve been a little embarrassed to show our at home practices (even though we’ve done 5-6 sessions at this point) just because I’m SO ridiculously inconsistent with my marking/criteria. I know we want to be strict about hitting with all 4 and getting that nice snappy turn, but I find most of the time I either click for a good FF hit or good RF hit (because apparently my brain can only keep track of 2 things at once) and then in the process of turning she is missing with some of her other feet. At the park we had some better all 4 hits because she had a little more speed but even then there were a bunch of “mis-clicks”. I guess I’m wondering if you have any advice for which feet I should prioritize watching at this point, if you think I just need time to train my eyes/reaction timing haha, or if I should be setting up the exercise a different way. I can tell her main problem is she only wants to hit the front edge of the target so sometimes I try standing closer to it so she is forced to move out farther and hit a larger area, but then she just walks over it and I don’t get a nice snappy turn. Thanks!
Thanks! All of your advice makes sense. I did a session in between posting and your reply where I just kept the platform super close and she was very consistent. Then today I tried moving it farther away while tossing a little straighter on the right side to get her lined up. I know it doesn’t look like it’s super straight but I swear in the moment I thought it was an improvement haha (moral of the story is I need to figure out a new set up so I have more space to throw the food :D).
She did great with the large & medium platforms both close and farther away. Then when I moved to the smallest platform things pretty much fell apart. Crazy number of mis-timed clicks aside…. especially when the platform is close, she really doesn’t want to run through it, instead she wants to stop, look at my hands/food, and then only moves when I click/toss so we get a lot of turning. I was going to try tossing behind and to the side of the platform next session to see if that helps push her farther out but if you have any other recommendations I’m all ears!
Here is our second session with the mat shaping and first session with the elevated target I’ve used the mat for stationing in the past so she already has some value for it. I wasn’t being strict about her hitting it with all 4 feet this time but I’m guessing I should move to that criteria next session?
With the elevated target she was consistent with 4 feet going to the left, but not at all with the right. Left me know if you think I should have handled her mistakes differently.
Finally, we have tried 4 in a box before but never progressed the exercise past a certain point. This time I was curious to see if she could start her at the box size we stopped on last time we practiced. She was rusty for sure haha.
