Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi Tracy,
Week 3 – Minny Pinny and Zig Zag
First, we did a quick follow-up session with the Sends & Serp. The bar is lowered from 12″ to 8″ and the jump is angled a lot, at least 45 degrees. Success rate: 6 out of 7!
Minny Pinny: Here are some reps from our 2nd and 3rd minny pinny sessions. Ellie is doing great when she’s on the outside. I don’t think she really knows right/left yet, so when she’s in front of the wings I’m helping her either by angling her toward the correct direction or by waiting until she is looking in the correct direction before releasing her.
Zig Zag: Ellie did really well with the zig zags. I’m loving having a dog with a stay! I can’t remember how far apart I put the wings, but we made it up to 4 wings total. Four was a little rocky and I felt like I may have been luring her too much rather than just pointing, but still I was pretty happy with this.
Jen
Hi Tracy,
I’m having trouble with the Send & Serp. Ellie and I had trouble with the Strike A Pose games in MaxPup 1 too when we got to the part with the bar. She kept running around the bar. I thought that was partly because she didn’t have a stay and because she was having trouble figuring out the footwork for the slice.
Now we have a good beginner-level stay and she will look directly at me and take the jump when I start with the stay. I’d say we are 100% successful on that, but when I add the send to the wing we are below 50%. Usually she runs around the jump and I don’t really notice her looking at me after the wing.
In class I’ve noticed that Ellie is very focused on running to her reward and I’m not sure how much she is really taking direction from me after I release her and send her on a line. She watches me really closely as I lead out though and has great eye contact when I look back to release her. Usually the instructor throws the toy for her at the end of the sequence or places the toy on the ground after the last obstacle. I wonder if I should work more with food for a while to get more focus on me or if I should be patient and happy that she will drive to the toy.
Jen
Hi Tracy,
Thanks for the feedback on the set point moving target. I’m so glad this week was better. I’ll plan to use the sit for grids and down for start lines. Can I raise the height of the bars? Both were locked in at 8″ this week.
This post has 2 new games plus some bonus footage. If you prefer to have one game per post, please feel free to let me know.
Week 2 – Pill Bug
I remember this being hard with Mason last year and it was still hard with Ellie. We started out great with the single tunnel and the dog on the outside. Having the dog on the inside was less successful. For the blind crosses, we were able to do the blind, but right after it Ellie always caught up to me and we couldn’t ever make it around the wing circle. We gave it a try and I didn’t break any legs, so I’m declaring victory and moving on. 🙂
Week 2 – Tunnel Exits
These went really well. I think the smiley face game helped us prep for these sequences. The race track to the right took a few tries to work out the bugs, but we finished strong with the rocking horse sequence. I think Ellie is starting to know her wrap verbals, but I really doubt she has any idea what left and right are. She and Mason both went wide on the right turn out of the tunnel, so I’m curious if there is something I’m doing to cue the drive forward out of the tunnel when I really want a right turn. Could it just be that I threw the toy after that tunnel a few times?
Bonus footage of Mason!
No feedback is requested, but I wanted to show off Mason’s reps. He isn’t doing agility training of his own due to over-arousal issues and the lack of a start line stay, but he’s having fun teaching Ellie the MaxPup games. Check out his great sends and wraps! He totally remembers his wrap verbals.
I can’t decide which dog to work first. Having Ellie first avoids her tiring herself out from screaming in the house during Mason’s turn, but having Mason first gives me a chance to figure out my handling with a dog that isn’t learning things for the first time.
Jen
Hi Tracy,
Here is the Set Point with Moving Target.
I’ve changed the setup from Week 1 based on your feedback.
– Jumps 6 ft apart instead of 5 ft.
– Gutter/bar locked in at 8″ instead of 10″.
– Start position a little farther back so Ellie isn’t leaning over the bar as much.I varied the start position a bit for each of the six reps.
1: Sit
2: Sit
3: Down. Ellie’s toes are at ~16 inches I think (the end of the tape measure).
4: Down. A little closer, but feet are uneven. Her left foot is probably ~10″ and the right ~16″. It’s hard to set her up precisely because she doesn’t have a good foldback down yet.
5: Sit
6: Down. This is the closest start position of the down reps, maybe 10″. She ticked the gutter/bar 1. I’m not sure if she was too close or if she was getting tired. We did a previous session about 40 minutes earlier, but I forgot to start the video (again). Assuming the audio is synced correctly with the video, it sounds like she hit the gutter with her back feet.Let me know if you think Ellie is pushing off with her rear more than she was in Week 1 and if her head position looks better. I think it looks better overall, but I can’t really tell how much she is lifting with her front end.
Week 2 – Set Point with Moving Target
Jen
Hi Tracy,
Week 1 – Wrap Proofing
This is our 5th session of the wrap proofing game! It turned out to be really hard to get Ellie to take the tunnel. The tunnel has lots of value and she definitely knows the verbal. I think it was just really hard to move away from the toy when she could simply wrap back to it.
Unfortunately I forgot to start the video for the baby level, so all I have is the two reps of the tunnel->wrap combo. My tunnel was too short for her to send back into it after the wrap. The entry was too hard for her and she kept running around the back side of the tunnel, so I just skipped that one.
I’ve posted the whole 1:49 of video so you can help with my session mechanics, from leash off to leash on. I really want to clean this up since it is the source of a lot of Mason’s frustration. Ellie’s leash off/on went better than usual with the addition of the cookie toss. I didn’t get jumped on or bit. Yay!
Also, she wasn’t running around taking tunnels or wraps on her own, which is nice. When she’s excited she tends to race around wildly — like taking 3 laps around the kitchen table and running back and forth between me and the door 5 times as we try to go outside to train. I’m ok with her wandering around a bit in the training area while I’m getting organized at the beginning of a session or when I’m changing the setup. I just want to keep her from mindlessly grabbing obstacles or being out of control and jumping on people.
Thanks for the tips on the line-ups. They were a lot easier this time around, although not perfect. I have to think about how many treats to have and where to throw them. I’m also thinking about not accidentally lifting her up by the collar at the start.
Jen
Hi Tracy,
Thanks for the feedback on the Wind in Your Hair Game. We played the Smiley Face game this morning. The video has 2 warm up reps, 2 smiley face reps, and 2 race tracks. The first 1.5 minutes is unedited so I could get your help with getting the toy back. Ellie is trading for a liver treat, which is fine for now. After I get the toy back though, she jumps back up at my hand. This happens every time. Is there something I can do to clean this up so I don’t have to keep carrying band-aids in my pocket?
I’m back to starting with the collar hold. I can’t tell if I’m lifting Ellie off the ground or if she is leaping, but it’s not my intent to strangle her at the start line. I’ll try to pay attention to that in the future.
I think I did better with the exit connection this time and Ellie isn’t watching the toy even though it is in my hand. We had some snafus and I mixed up my words a few times, but all in all I was pretty happy with this.
Week 1 – Smiley Face
Jen
Hi Tracy,
Thanks for the set point feedback. It’s a good thing I signed up for a working spot because I actually thought I would get more hind end push-off by raising the bars. For the moving target set point next week I’ll definitely adjust the setup as you suggested.
Week 1 – Wind In Your Hair
Denise Fenzi recently posted about trying to eliminate reps that are preceded by the thought, “I wonder what would happen if …”. I thought that was a great idea when I read it. And yet … For the Wind in Your Hair game, I wondered what would happen if I just skipped the wrap verbal pre-game and tried the full game instead. Lesson learned – you get a bunch of refusals.
This session was a little disorganized because I kept making changes on the spot. I started out with a sit, but quickly switched to a down. Also, I started out tossing the toy for the first 4 reps and then switched to having it on the ground about 15 ft or so after the jump. I’d like to be able to have the toy on the ground more often to keep Ellie’s focus off my hands and to give me less to think about. Plus, my tosses are always late or a little off-target.
I don’t remember why I ditched the collar hold. I suspect it was because I thought she needed me to help her more with a physical cue. Later in the day I actually did play the pre-game with the collar hold to help teach her the wrap verbals.
The jump is about 14-15′ away from the wing. At the end I was able to add a few steps of running. I wasn’t ever able to leave early enough though to get past the jump.
Questions:
– How does Ellie’s connection look? I don’t ever really notice her looking at me. I noticed in the video that sometimes I also forgot to look at her.– Any advice on the refusals? Should I change something or do you think these are happening because she just doesn’t know the verbals yet?
– Do you notice any difference between her turning right vs left? In general, she prefers right. Btw, my verbals are “Say Say” for left and “Check Check” for right. The ipad can never hear the “Say Say”.
– Any difference in her jumping with the toy toss (1st 4 reps) vs having the toy on the ground (reps 5-8)?
No rush on the feedback. Enjoy your weekend. I’m moving ahead with the rest of the Week 1 games now since I have the time. That means you won’t see the results of your feedback until Week 2 even if you do rush. I’ll plan to give some of your tips a test drive on Tuesday at Ellie’s group class.
Week 1 – Wind In Your Hair
Thanks!
JenHi Tracy,
We did the Set Point game today. I introduced this game to Ellie a few weeks ago and worked the stay/catch, so this was a nice game for us to start with.
The jumps are about 5 ft apart and the bars are locked in at 10″. I’ve decided I’m probably going to use a down at the start line for Ellie. When I put her in a sit she almost always lies down as I lead out, so I decided to just go with the down since that seems to be her preference. In the video I’m using the sit because I wasn’t sure if doing a down would defeat the purpose of the exercise. Plus I had no idea where to set her up.
The full session is included in the video since I didn’t do that with Mason and I remember you said it might have been helpful since he was having arousal issues. I did edit the last two reps just to remove the extra time it took me to get the toy back. I forgot to bring out the high value treats to use as trade bait. Let me know if you would rather have me do more editing in the future.
I’m curious to know what you think about these jumps. The takeoff for the first jump looks weird to me, especially for the last 2 reps with the toy. Do you see any difference between the MM and the toy? I heard her tick the first bar for at least the 2 toy reps and maybe the one before that. I don’t know if the toy had anything to do with that or whether she was getting tired or maybe I set her up too close.
Week 1 – Set Point
Jen
Hi Tracy,
Mason and I have been working really hard on stays ever since the end of MaxPup 1, but they are proving to be super hard for us. We even took a whole online class on stays in March. I’m starting to wonder if there is such a thing as a dog that just can’t learn them. If I worked half this hard on stays with any of my previous dogs, their stays would have been amazing!
For this post I’ve put together a few videos from the lateral lead out game. We did about 6 or 7 sessions of this game before this. I’m using the platform because otherwise Mason isn’t able to stay at all when we’re outside of the house. I think you said in the Zoom class that we could use the platform, but I didn’t go back and double check that.
Lateral Lead Out #1 – Sits on Deck
This first session is of sit stays on the deck. This is the whole session. I have the platform sideways because it was hard to get Mason to sit at the end of the platform when it was facing the long way. If there was room in front of his feet he couldn’t seem to notice that he was stepping forward. This session was the first time I saw Mason actually try to think about putting his front foot back on the platform after stepping off of it. He was thinking soooo hard about this, but he did it!
Lateral Lead Out #2 – Sits in Yard
This next session I moved the platform to the yard and added the jump. This is a huge increase in difficulty, but I felt like we might have had a breakthrough in understanding on the deck. The first rep worked!! He stepped off the platform though for all of the following reps (all are included in the video). We almost got a good one at the end, but I waited too long to release him so I missed it.
Lateral Lead Out #3 – Downs in Yard
We took a break after the “sit in yard” session and then tried the same thing with a down stay. I’m curious to know if you think this has more potential and whether I should focus on the down instead of the sit — at least for a while. One thing he often does in front of a jump, but didn’t do this in this video, is that he raises his butt like he’s doing a play bow. He’s starting to know his hand signal for a down from a distance (for rally), so maybe I can correct the play bow if I notice it after I have led out. Or maybe this is just going to be the down-stay version of stepping forward from a sit and it will also be hard to fix.
A couple disclaimers: We’re still working on down posture. I think I can clean that up pretty easily though. Also, I watched a podcast about start button behaviors for agility and the trainer was using her arm and leg back as the start button. I tried it and it worked! Mason came to my side! I decided to stop using it though after a week because I couldn’t tell if Mason was actually choosing to work or if it had turned into just another cue. Anyhoo … I couldn’t do the arm/leg back for the lateral lead out game because Mason still remembered that one week of start button work and the arm/leg back would cause him to run to my side. Sigh. Sometimes he learns things too quickly! 😉
Jen
Hi Tracy,
Accordion Grid – Session Structure
I have a 6 minute accordion session video for you!! I know this is crazy long, but I picked this game for an overall review of a training session because I figured you would know exactly what was planned for the session and that might make the review easier. You can skip through the parts where I move the jumps (jump start times are listed below) or play through those parts if something catches your eye.
I had to modify the game since Mason doesn’t have a stay. Instead of the stay and lead out, I had him sit beside me in front of the first jump. I held his collar lightly, gave him a treat, waited for him to look forward, then released him to take the jumps. I practiced this first in the hallway earlier in the day without jumps so that he would have an idea of what I was expecting from him when we went outside.
The spacing to the last jump in feet is: 6-9-12-9-6
The start times for each of the jump reps is:
1:57, 3:04, 3:45, 4:23, 5:02Since I had to start with the collar hold, I don’t know if you can still review Mason’s jumping form. If you can, that’s great, but I understand if you can’t. Something about the first rep was awkward and I wanted to retry it, but I didn’t because I knew I only had 5 reps max. Otherwise I thought he did a good job. The striding seemed ok to me and the bars stayed up (8 inches, moving to 10 inches on May 1st).
As for the session structure, it thought it well overall. Mason stayed engaged, didn’t pull any grass, and didn’t run away. There was some jumping at my hands, but it wasn’t that bad. My plan was to walk out on leash, do a bit of pattern games, give a treat when the leash came off, give a couple free treats from the MM to reduce the anticipation of the MM being in the picture, then walk to the start line.
Everything went to plan except that I wasn’t expecting Mason to keep trying to take the jumps as we made our way to the start line. Jumps kept getting knocked over, leading to some frustration for both of us. Looking back, I probably should have kept the leash on until we got to the start line.
I also had some trouble getting Mason to sit in the perfect spot. Noticing how long this was taking, I tried to diffuse the situation by tossing a reset cookie for each reset. Unfortunately, I forgot to click the MM on the first couple reps and this probably was a little frustrating for Mason. I usually give him a couple clicks of the MM for each rep since the treats that work well in it are pretty low value. I can see now though that the uncertainty about how many rewards there will be could also cause some frustration. He did recall pretty well off of the MM each time though.
All in all I thought this was a good session. Mason seemed to be having fun. He had the option to run off and not come back after I finished moving the last jump, but he chose to come back for another rep each time. The session was 6 minutes long, which is longer than we want, but we didn’t really get started until about 2 minutes in and the last rep was at the 5 minute mark.
I was feeling pretty good about everything and then the next day Mason didn’t want to walk by the jumps which were still set up. We were just out in the yard so he could run around and sniff. We do this every day. I was wandering around pulling weeds and Mason was following me from about 10 feet behind. As I approached the jumps (not even paying any attention to him) he flopped over onto his back and wouldn’t continue walking. 🙁
I lured him up with a cookie and some happy encouragement and then he followed me past the jumps. Once we got past them he seemed to have forgotten about the whole incident and he enjoyed the rest of the sniff session. I really don’t know what to make of this. He has done this many times over the past few months. He seems to enjoy training, but he definitely seems to feel pressure when he’s near the obstacles, even if we aren’t doing any training.
Jen
Hi Tracy,
That’s a good question about the source of the frustration. I really don’t know the answer so I like the suggestion of submitting a whole session on video.
I suspect the frustration comes from a mix of things. Sometimes I think it’s from too many failures. The tunnel threadle session comes to mind. Sometimes though I think Mason is just very intense about things and he can’t handle the anticipation. An example could be at the start line of rally class yesterday when he wouldn’t stop frantically grabbing at the leash. He wasn’t tugging in a playful way. Instead he seemed overwhelmed to the point of wanting to destroy something. If we had been outdoors this would have probably been expressed as grass pulling. Other times the frustration may come from a lack of clarity on my part.
Mason definitely seems excited about training and he willingly participates. I can’t say though that he looks like he is actually enjoying it and I really do want training to be fun for him.
What I can’t tell is whether I’m making all of this harder than it needs to be for him by asking him to do it when he’s not really ready … or if he actually is ready and the best thing to do would be to work through any issues now.
Let’s see what we find out with the videos. I might pick the easiest game and the hardest game from next week and see if there are any differences in how he handles the two sessions.
Jen
Hi Tracy,
Thanks for the tips on the hand touch. I’m trying out the high hand and I’m already getting some actual nose touches.
I was wondering if you have a ballpark estimate for when the MaxPup3 live class will be offered again after this summer? I see glimmers of greatness in Mason, but I’m also seeing a lot of frustration. It takes us 4 or 5 sessions to split each game into manageable parts and then put it all together. This has me wondering if he would find all of this a lot easier if he took the summer off and picked it back up in the Fall after he’s had more time to mature a bit. He’s almost 13 months old now.
I don’t want to miss out on an instructor led course though because without the feedback I tend to get stuck early on in the self-paced courses. I’m open to other ideas as well for Mason. I just want to do what’s best for him. I’m not in any kind of a hurry. If he wants to be a late bloomer, that’s perfectly fine with me. 🙂
Jen
Hi Tracy,
I’ll try some more backchaining today. I forgot to include this question in my original post: Should I shift my focus from the dog to the tunnel entry when I want him to turn his head for the threadle entry? I don’t remember seeing you do this on the demo video, but I did it accidentally a couple times and it seemed to help. It may be too much for me to remember and get the timing right to do it on a real course though.
Also, way back in MaxPup1 Mason was hitting the Strike A Pose target with his teeth. He still does this with hand touches. He doesn’t bite down on my hand, but I feel teeth on my palm or my hand gets licked. At the time you said this was actually really easy to fix. Do you remember how to get the dog to change to a nose touch instead of a tooth/tongue touch?
Jen
Hi Tracy,
I split the videos from one session into separate files for turning left into the tunnel vs turning right. We had a much easier time turning left into the tunnel even though Mason usually has a strong preference for turning right. I’m really not sure what the difference was, but on the right he kept jumping at my threadle arm. It kept getting worse, so I figured I would see if you had any suggestions before trying this again.
Tunnel Threadle – Turning Left Into Tunnel
Tunnel Threadle – Turning Right Into Tunnel
Jen
