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Hi Tracy –
– in the first video here you will see me doing a FC at Jump 5. Our first attempt he went really wide – not sure how much of that was me being too late, and him just not attending to cues. The other attempts were better, though i think you’re still going to say that I didn’t have enough connection on the tunnel exits. Funny, it really felt like I had connection, but when I watch the video, I can see that my body and head are not really turned toward him as much as they should be.
– in the 2nd video we are attempting RCs for the first time. I was surprised at how well they went. The turn the R was working, no problem, but the turn to the L was a little harder. We attempted it twice with a turn the wrong way – then I put the toy down as a target, and that showed him where to go, and he did it correctly a couple or so times after that. Then we finished off with another turn to the R.
The 3rd video shows our attempts at the BC – this also went better than I expected – we did the first rep with a BC before a wrap to L with post turn. Then tried with the spin, with a bar down – then did that again with no bar down. Lastly we did the opposite direction, with wrap to the R and a BC with spin. We stopped here, as it was humid in the building, and I thought he was getting tired and hot.
Tracey – thanks for your feedback – we’ll work on your suggestions later this week. Later today, we worked on the rest of the Wk 1 games:
Mountain Climbers – this was the first time he had climbed to full height. I thought he did well, except that he did jump off a couple or so times – he didn’t care, but probably not good for him to jump high too often. It didn’t help that the treats seemed to fly all over the place – I was using mozzarella cheese, which sometimes stuck, but sometimes didn’t….
Wingin It – Not sure if I was sticking close enough to the tunnel for this.
Lazy Games Pts 2 and 3 – How did we do? – was my connection good enough?
This video shows the Wk5 Retrieve game. Arrow already retrieves a frisbee for me when we’re outside, and he usually brings a tug toy back to me if I throw it for him, but I like the idea of shaping a retrieve, so we followed your guidelines. He did quite well, but not yet bringing it to hand – I feel that he still needs to learn the concept of “holding” the object until I can take it from him. We’ll keep working on it.
This video shows 3 different games.
First is the Parallel path commitment. I thought Arrow has the hang of this – I hope we were doing it right.
Next is a short clip of the Rotated sends exercise – its short b/c I forgot to turn the video on at the beginning – so we had already done the other side.
Last is the running contact foundation. We had already started the baby part of this a while ago, and he has progressed to a smaller mat (I just got this fancy blue mat from Mark Bills). This will be my first time training a RC – although I did do the mat work with Yowza. I gave up when I couldn’t distinguish the back from the front feet hitting the mat – so this time I am following Euan Paterson’s method, as his criterion is TWO feet on the mat – can be any 2 feet – that seems to work better for me. Your feedback on how we are doing much appreciated 🙂
Tracy- thanks so much for this feedback on the Stealth and turn n burn games – we will be working on it. However, I think you might have missed my prop games post just before. Would it be better if I posted all my videos in one post?
Stealth game Wk 3 – I started off this game with a similar set up to your demo (not in video), but I found that it wasn’t “neutral” to Arrow, as I guess it has high value from all the pivot work he has done on the feed bowls – so I switched to using an old tunnel bag that he had never seen before. I thought this game went well, once I got the right prop. I tried to make sure I tossed the cookies on the ground, rather than rolling them – to avoid getting him over-aroused. He was able to ignore the tunnel bag, as well as the bag of treats that I placed on top of it, which I opened for the last reps.
Turn and Burn – I found it difficult to coordinate myself for this game, but Arrow did fine :). For the first reps, I forgot to turn on the video, so you won’t see the worst of my bumbling. Finally, I figured out how to do a FC after the wrap, and I think I went the right way, and managed to switch toy to opposite hand to present as I was running away.
I hope you got a chance for some R&R on Thanksgiving, as I see you were busy answering posts in the morning – thank you!
Here’s our repeat attempt at the Prop games – this time I moved further away laterally, and I slowed my pace down to a walk. I thought the parallel path exercise went OK, but during the Counter motion game, I think I inadvertently taught him to target my hand before hitting the prop with his paw – thus on my send cue, he jumped up to hit my hand, and then ran to the prop. I think this was probably b/c I have previously taught him to touch my hand with his nose, and so he sees my raised hand as a cue to nose-touch it. So I tried sending him with just a step forward, which was better, but he went more slowly – I think b/c he was unsure – so I only got a couple of reps in with counter motion.
PS – I am terrible at using different reward marker cues consistently, especially when we’re doing something new. My worst habit is using “good” instead of “get it” (which I think you pointed out in previous feedback). “Good” is supposed to be my duration marker (room service) when dog is rewarded in place and expected to continue behavior. “Yes” replaces a click and dog should be rewarded immediately from my hand. “Get it” means get the cookie or toy on the ground. And I’ve just introduced “bite it,” following your example – but now I’ve now changed to “take it.” “Dish” means get the reward from the bowl. I did have to clean up my cues for the obedience training we’ve been doing, but I’m finding it’s going to hell in a handbasket now that we’re doing agility foundations again 🙁 – I guess I just can’t take the excitement!!
Our attempt at RCs went a little better this time – I made sure to start crossing over immediately after he had passed me.
Prop games 3 – running a parallel line – he had fun doing this exercise. He sometimes missed hitting the prop with his paw, but he always immediately went back to correct himself. He was good with the countermotion game, and he did well with the RCs also, although he did turn the wrong way.
Backing up – Arrow already knows to back up on cue – although maybe not quite fluent yet, as he did a bit of complaining in the video. I taught it to him with a mat for him to touch with his back feet. Lmk if you think this is OK.
At the end I did some “cookie rolls,” which is like your pattern games – I usually do these before and after most of the exercises. During this session, I had Yowza in the pen, and Matrix was supposed to be on his bed, but he did relocate himself closer to Yowza.
Trying the stealth game with the bowl further from the cone. I thought this went well, although I felt like I was “helping” him quite a bit to get the correct side of the cone to circle it before going to the “dish.” I added a short clip of him going the other way.
We tried plankerobics again – also in a different place. The planks were elevated, and we did some tugging after a few turns. He definitely found this challenging, and you will see he almost fell off, which scared him a bit, and he was a bit reluctant to get back on – but he did after a little bit, and seemed confident again, but I didn’t think he was ready for spins, so we just did the turns at the ends – where I noticed that he seemed to prefer L turns over R.
So we tried Goat tricks again – this time in a different place, and this time I made sure to keep the treats low. I thought Arrow did well – he was good on the mini teeter, and he managed to do position changes on the discs. Also in this video, I practiced “give” and then “bite it” or “get it.” You will see that he took off with the toy when I said get it, but I was pleased that he did bring it back when I called him 🙂
Plankerobics – Arrow already knows to spin to L and R – so I started this on a wide platform, and then we switched to a regular plank. This was Arrow’s first time on the plank, and I thought he did quite well – he quickly figured out to keep his feet on the plank during the turns, and I think with a little more practice, he will be more consistent.
