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Standard course two
I’m sorry for blowing up this thread with a bunch of videos. I just didn’t want to get too behind with the travel!
I left more raw footage in here
Still fighting some distractions in the beginning of our runs. I choose not to fix the missing of the jumps because he eventually gets on a line.
He was doing so well, I tried to do a back lap with him- why I’m not sure because it’s not a skill I’ve put time in. I did try to convince him he was right there but he was skeptical. He didn’t want to take the toy. He didn’t want physical affection (he’s not a huge fan of that when we are working but he is my dog child and tolerates it) he did offer a jump so I kept working and he seemed happy.That long line closing killed me. I should have been more excited and rewarded better but after screaming “fuckkkk pass pass” I was apparently using all my mental energy on thinking how out of shape I am.
Standard course 1
Much better attempt here. We did have to fight a little bit of a distraction with the pool guy in the yard. Like WHO SAID HE COULD BE AT FEVERS POOL WHILE WE WERE TRAINING AND WHY AREN’T WE MORE CONCERNED? For comic relief I left the 2×2 WIDE OPEN and you can see him smoke me every time. He is sending to them beautifully and independently and had zero failures.
His DW does not look great here. He is most successful when we constantly work it. Unfortunately while I’m trying to train all of the things, it’s not been consistently worked in about a month. His middle plank striding here is what’s causing him to not hit. He usually is more extended. I suspect it will be just as beautiful when I go back to working it regularly.
Verbals with arousal (I’m labeling since I’m in the middle of a video dump). I’m out of town Thursday through Sunday so I want to get as much done before I leave.
First I asked for way too much because I forgot what I was doing. I recover and get better. This session got much harder because there were a few fireworks and it just shut him down. For the first one where he melted, I got Callie out and they played group frisbee. He recovered pretty quickly. I tried to transition to working with the frizzer. He was doing okay but not really taking it as a reward like I would like. I then did some just close work for food and that was great. Looking back, I should have just switched to food.
The walking and place and planning tricks for him made my brain hurt 🤣.
I don’t have a ton of marker cues. Get it means the toy is available for reinforcement. Search (as used in my other video) means foods on the ground and you can get it. Scatter is food is placed calmly on the floor for you to get. I tried a face cue when he was a baby for toy is being thrown to you to catch but he was awful at catching.
I should likely add more for clarity but I really struggle with my words sometimes(using them/saying the correct ones). On a spectrum of importance, would it be better to use clearer words but late versus use a word that means reinforcement(but maybe not as clear as to what the reinforcement is)available promptly? This question could keep me up all night debating internally.
Transition to trials!
This was a fun one that was nice to work first in a familiar place without either of us getting too hot.
Only question I really have here is that you will notice towards the end that at there are a few times where he doesn’t pick up the cookie from the ground. I’d like to your thoughts on this. This can be an issue with thrown food. I joke sometimes that it’s tainted because he just doesn’t want it. He did take it here when I picked it up and gave it to him but that isn’t always the case. I’m not certain if this falls under the border collies are weird, magical creatures with autism thing or something else.
He will refuse food when over threashold but I do not think that’s what’s happening here.I don’t have any trials in the next two weeks to work him in a trial environment and there’s no training places that I can go to so I might try this at Carrie’s with Roulez screaming for the next level and then a park 🤔.
This training session just wasn’t great but I’m posting anyway because they can’t all be great.
I added the 2x2s. I find myself getting frustrated with his weaves because I don’t feel like there coming together. I felt we had done a pretty systematic approach to them. I did show them to him before running and he did three successful reps through them.
We lost some engagement with the failures so I did some focused healing work with him.Second session, phone is on the tripod. The view is pretty bad, sorry. There was a storm coming in and I was rushing to try and finish. I should have just stopped, but I tried to push through. Ultimately it’s a few not so great reps. You can see me do an awful blind and Fever working so HARD to not take me out at the knees. What a good boy. That apparently really stressed him because he didn’t want to take his toy.
Most days I can handle all the limitations of not having my own training space but today I felt super rushed to try to get everything done and should have been better for Fever.
Awesome feedback here
giving more connection to his eyes and you might even need to use the outside arm or motion towards the wing to get it
Since my last seminar with you (a long 16 months ago 😭), I’ve made an effort to keep my chest open for backsides and feel like that’s helpful. Before I was so bad about rushing the wing and motioning with my arm and totally closing connection. In what way can I best utilize my outside arm while still keeping connection?
So that is a great opportunity to just take a wing and send him around a wing, with all of that pressure.
We moved the girls but left the jump intact because we could see it was too much. In a scale of pressure in training, was that making it too easy to quickly? Should I drop to a wing first before removing more pressure (ie moving the screaming Roulez)
So back to the other thought: he often has a bar down after you praise him or celebrate
I love how politely you managed to say unless your cueing or stopping to reward, STFU Jamie 🤣🤣🤣🤣
You and Fever did a really lovely job on the ending lines in each segment! He was finding his tunnels, finding his jumps, making the turns – all really well with speed and independence! And you are dong a great job with your connections to show the lines. Happy dance!!!!
This made me happy cry into my coffee. Thank you
Also… I was today years old when I realized your course progression is by difficulty and I probably should have started with course 1 🤣😅
Happy Fourth of July!
Carrie and I built this course in the middle of the day and it was warm. I only had it in me to run one course after and we started with the third one
There were random fireworks going off and they terrify Fever. I wasn’t super strict about my contact or stay criteria given this. I was very happy that he was resilient enough to push through the scaries. His DW is usually much better. His Aframe can be sketchy sometimes but it’s still in progress. We had to sub the teeter.
I didn’t make any effort for him to do the weaves, although he found them loosely most times.I missed a chance to reward when he took the front side instead of the backside at 8- I just sent him to a tunnel and started again. Overall happy with his work here. I didn’t fill carrie in on what course I was doing so we had action agility shots a couple of times.
He was slicing the tire more than I cared for. Not sure if it was the course build or how I was moving down the line that ended up setting him up that way.
Interestingly the #8 backside was hard. It was much easier when I shot him from the tunnel versus the end of the weaves. I tried it with Callie as well and couldn’t get it in the first try so it leads me to believe it’s my handling. I thought for her a blind between seven and 8 to get the other wing might work since in theory I could leave her if there were 12 weaves. I felt from the tunnel I had better connection with him.
Does the dremeling contribute to the over-arousal?
We most commonly get it after eating. He got a ton of cheese for doing nails so that may have attributed.
The stopping the mounting like that also serves as a bit of a negative punishment, right? Withdrawal of access to reinforcement – which suppresses the mounting behavior. But if we use that, it becomes especially important to reinforce those incompatible behaviors so the dog can make “better” decisions or have reflexive responses to the arousal that we prefer
I love non compatible behavior ideas, thank you!
Some more transition to trial work here. His leash tugging was better this go round and I feel like he’s understanding that with me means walk to get the cookies.
Couple of questions here. I feel like he’s also targeting the box that the treats are on with his feet sometimes. I am not sure if I captured any in this session. I did another brief session after and it happened twice. Should I pick a different object or just be okay with the targeting behavior. He’s got a lot of value for putting his feet on stuff.
I would like to incorporate him jumping into my arms into our eventual end of run routine should we ever get trialing. At what point should I start to introduce the behavior? Jumping in my arms is already heavily reinforced for both food and toys and I’d like to keep it very valuable. He’s still super stimulated by other dogs moving and has a high prey drive so I want a very quick orient back to the mama after you run skill and for it to be second nature.
I tried to do another small session when it cooled off because this first one, he was super hot. I had just dremeled his nails for cheese and he was mounting my leg with over arousal so I saved you from having to view that footage and it would make the video too lengthy. Any suggestions on how to modulate arousal when that happens. I tried to ask for calm stationary behaviors- like a nose touch and didn’t really have success. He could do more active behaviors which then led to more mounting.
thank you!
>>I also thought about serping the 13 to a landing side blind but still wasn’t in a place I liked.
I didn’t see this on the video – did I miss it or did you edit it out?My plan was to do this around 2:03-2:06, I started to attempted but ended up not in the correct position to get the blind.
On the video:
Overall, I think your connection and line driving was great, and he was SUPER speedy and doing exactly what you asked him to do. Good boy!He has made SO MUCH progress in the last few months. We really really really struggled with him checking out and sniffing or just trotting during our training sessions. His speed is really coming along so I feel like my handling isn’t quite as good as it had previously been because things are happening much faster. I am so happy with his progress but want to keep getting better. I overall feel very frantic running him right now. Which is also how I feel when I run Roulez for Carrie- difference being that Roulez gets super angry when you’re in her way whereas I feel Fever is a bit more forgiving.
The better line for the backside at 2 is the natural entry line (where the #2 is on the course map) rather than turning him on the tunnel exit and then pushing to the other backside
I’m glad you brought this up because I had a hard time seeing this line past the backside. I do feel like it’s the best line but couldn’t figure out how to get out of his way from 2 to handle the rest. Would you recommend dog on left for the opening the whole way? I felt like I needed to be on the right near the tunnel to get the blind at 5 in a timely fashion.
It’s looking like rain for the next several days (actually forever hopefully the forecast is wrong). Any recommendations for smaller space activity to visit/revisit on a partially wet yard?
These long straight lines with turns and avoiding tunnels are a weakness I didn’t know we had 🤣. We did the third jumpers course (which is really the second and I got off count). Opening went smoothly. I’m late both times on my backside push. We spent a majority of our time trying to work the closing.
What I felt like I was struggling with was getting the jump with turn and not the tunnel. I really tried to make the blind work but bombed my position every time. I even tried it with Callie and still couldn’t execute it well.
I also thought about serping the 13 to a landing side blind but still wasn’t in a place I liked.
I feel like there’s too much I’m trying to control here. I’m worried about him extending to the final jump, controlling the turn, and preventing the off course which unfortunately is taking too much mental energy for me to handle well.
We did some extension running to the toy here. I finally got the turn at the last rep but didn’t do anything after and just rewarded.I also added his left verbal coming out the tunnel.
When they go wrong, what happens? Does he end up on the wrong side of you? Or…? Let me know and we will sort it out 🙂
I have learned that to do a blind cross, one must first be ahead of the dog.
I don’t always feel like I’m far enough ahead. Some of that will improve as independence and commitment continues to get better. I haven’t had one that’s gone wrong per say because the fear is strongAwesome feedback here!
Since this was a low rate of success session, the next session should be set up to get 100% success – so I recommend opening the poles and putting the MM out there. That will simulate what he is very successful with at home and help him generalize the skill in a new place with new distractions.
Unfortunately Carrie does not have channel weaves. She has a set of 2x2s. Should I just avoid them at her place for now or just use 3 slightly open 2x2s?
That 12-13 line is a great place for a blind cross because you can finish it sooner (no rotation of feet!) and get the connection, without ever running backwards there.
Blinds are still really hard for me to get with him. I get away with a lot of crappy blinds with Callie (which I am really working on). Keep pushing me to use them please! If he sends well to an obstacle, I will usually utilize them more but when he’s sticky, I get too nervous to use them. I’m still learning how to run a fast, big striding dog. He keeps getting faster (which I’m so thankful for, but feel like my timing is poor). Although he really respects my body- notice how he didn’t barrel out of the tunnel when I crashed it.
ended up running backwards to ‘catch’ him… and backwards motion is same as forwards motion
zero awareness of me moving backwards ever… unless I fall
to bug you about here and in general: you can be more specific with your verbals. You were generally using obstacle names (jump, tunnel, etc) and his name
not sure if you caught the best verbal vomit I spit out last night which was “wait! slow down!”
You mentioned left and rights.. I haven’t spent a lot of time training them. We did the stuff in your previous course but haven’t spent a great deal. He also knows turns for circles on the flat… Should I just start incorporating these? I need to get better about utilizing his wrap words more on course.At 1:38 he wrapped and you told him good try, but it was the same handling as what he had just been rewarded for so were you trying for the slice there (I think the slice is the best line to the closing line).
This is a great example of me using my wrong words. Pass means backside slice… I should have said seek seek if I was planning to get the wrap. On the last one, I said zip zip cueing a threadle wrap which was also incorrect. I’m working on these. I agree that the slice sets the best line but my movement was cueing the wrap.
Reviewing your handling hints for the jumpers course one
“Super Independent 1: Set the line to tunnel #4 so you stay on the ‘backside’ and blind cross to handle
5-6 on your right side.”
I cannot visualize how to end up handing 5-6 with dog on right. Would there be a different way you would handle the opening to end up with dog on right? When I blinded, I ended up with him on the left.thanks for pointing out the need to reinforce more. I did edit most of it out, but he probably still needs it more often.
Today we endeavored to try jumpers. There were some great parts and tricky parts. We augmented the course slightly to fit Carrie’s yard- it changed the start jump for the second course.
Fever didn’t want to weave tonight. I pushed it WAY MORE than I should have but I was hoping I’d see a successful rep. Interesting, off camera, I weaved him the opposite direction with no error the first time. Roulez is here singing the songs of her golden people in the background.
Course 1: really challenging for me to get that final turn and not the tunnel.
Course 2: I am wiser and start using decel to get some turns.
Our very first attempt, his energy level wasn’t where I love it to be. I let him swim swim before the rest of his turns and got a much better effort out of him.Question: what is his teeter criteria? 4on?
I was so hesitant to post this teeter video because I knew this would end up in an accountability for criteria discussion 😅🤣. He was originally trained in a 2o2o. I’m not the best about holding him in a stop like seen here. We haven’t done a ton in full on run but he’s been offering a stopped 4 on. He’s such a fragile soul sometimes I’ve worried that somehow a butt bounce in a 2o2o might traumatize him so I haven’t pushed the issue. I originally trained by back chaining and then uses the MM at the end, which I should probably revisit.
I can plan to continue to work the obstacle commitment in general. I find he is more of a handler focused dog than obstacle focused. It has improved a lot because we used to get a lot more rub byes and flanking.
because of his stride length, you’ll need to decelerate when he lands from the previous jump
Going back to the obstacle commitment, I think I underuse deceleration with him. One because I don’t really need it with Callie so it’s sometimes an after thought, but mostly because it will usually result in a refusal and orienting back to the mama. And I mean man can he stop on a dime when I defer. I often think I’ve done too much decel in the moment, but when I video review it’s usually appropriate decel and he’s just super responsive to it. His stride is rather large so I do think it’s something I need to start utilizing more/better because I do see him trying to adjust in the air and landing to accommodate my handling.
Oh soft turns! Hmm 🤔
I don’t really have a soft turn cue in my toolbox at the moment. Left and rights are on my list of training goals that is ever growing. I find the tone which I say jump can cue collection versus extension and I do tend to try to decel with him for soft turns.I am not recalling zigzags
Carrie and I were working on my timing 🤣. Unfortunately we didn’t get her in film saying “you need to do that again because you were late with your cue 😜”
