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How’d your startline routine go? Definitely I need to play around with when the leash comes off, before or after setup? He can’t consistently tug on the way into the ring with a toy yet and we’ve still got aways to go with his leash in the trial environment. MORE than happy to do it on home turf and getting pretty comfortable with it in classes at AK9C but the trial environment is still very much a work in process. We’ve got a lot of good tools now and are making some real progress. 🙂 The really good thing is that once we get setup and I start to leadout he’s “all business”….
Short session today with some remote reinforcement and LOTS of distractions. We had done some dogwalks earlier and just off screen on the right is the dogwalk and in the corner (sort of behind him) is his MM. Plastic bag with treats in one of the chairs between the jump and the tunnel. Just did the 2 reps……
Congratulations on 10 years of AgilityU!!! This is another long video, 4+ minutes. It’s the whole session. The plan for the session was to start to meld some remote reinforcement with start line routine, leash tugging as he’s getting really comfortable with each individually. The leash is now a top 5 toy! I think one thing I need to work through is the pieces from when I ask for the leash to when he sets up between my legs and I take the leash off…
Hi Tracy,
Hope your seminar and all the travel went smoothly!“I love the Behind Ya cue!”…… Thank you! Just came to me in the moment and it’s going to be an easy one to remember….I like easy to remember 🙂 And thank you for the compliments on the Pairs videos that Helen shared. I do love the change to Combined Pairs and also love the “Covid” baton (or no longer baton) exchange – SO much safer all the way around. 🙂 I was thrilled with how well Sly was able to focus when he ran 2nd!!!
Catching up on the Week 4 games, the time has sure gone quickly in this class – I’ve had a couple of folks that take lessons from me ask if you are going to offer it again? So, I thought I’d ask? And do you know what your plans are for other classes you’re going to be offering this winter?
Hope to get a couple of leash tugging and some remote reward sessions videoed for some feedback. I’m pretty pleased with how they are going but am sure I’m missing some stuff!!!
Today was one of those days where all the little pieces started to come together 🥰🥰🥰 Ran at the last BARK USDAA trial at AK9C, lots of great pieces but the 2 biggest were an FEO run where Sly was able to tug with a toy at the start line and after he gave it back to me he immediately offered his setup position between my legs, a HUGE step!!!! Second one was a Pairs run where we were 2nd dog and he was able to stay calm and focused while Helen Connell and Nuptse ran first. It was one of the new Combined Relay classes where you get to run twice with the same partner, switching sides. I think Helen has video that’s she’s going to share where Sly and Nuptse smoked their 2nd run winning the class 😊😊😊
Now back to training…. two short sessions from yesterday, our first session with turning back for the reward. Decided that our cue will be Behind Ya…. Easy for me to remember. Second video is the wing wrap with a toy from Week 2. This time I sat on the floor and just as you suspected he quickly understood that this was a shaping game 😊
Distractions:
1) Anything unexpected or that surprises him.
2) Going into a new place/space, or even when he first goes into a place he’s been 1000 times before. The distraction starts as soon as he leaves where he’s been… think “been in his crate in the crate area at a trial, pretty comfortable and relaxed as long as passing dogs don’t get too close but as soon as he comes out of crate to move to new place becomes distracted”
3) Some loud noises, again I think the underlying factor is he didn’t expect it
4) Fast, barky, lots of movement dogs in the ring
5) Hollee Roller
6) Other toys and a ziplock bag which usually has treatsWe’ve done a LOT of the Get It Pattern Game with food (our go to treat for this is the Fromm CrunchiOs but we do it with pretty much whatever food we’ve got) and he’s able to refocus SO much quicker. We did a short session this afternoon entering my training center obviously a place he’s been a million times to give you an idea of what we are doing. I’m for the most part incorporating this pattern for entering the room if we are getting ready to train. Sometimes we go over and he and Mags just get free run to wander and be dogs when I’m cleaning or moving equipment or whatever…..
Yes, I was really pleased with how the leash was just another toy in this application 😊
And I think I finally “get” the value of having that 3rd cue for chasing the toy in my hand … another 😊 I think some of my hesitation with it was also that I was going to need to come up with another word that I was going to have to remember and use but I pretty consistently say Woooooo now so if that works I think it’ll be pretty easy for me to use …..another 😊
So is my next step in continuing to make the leash a top 5 toy to continue using as a toy in applications where we’ve already done a lot of toy reinforcement?
Oh yeah! I can “geek out” over this kinda stuff big time. It’s just SO fascinating watching and trying to figure out how their brains are working 🙂 And then to figure out what I’m really doing and what I really want to be doing. 🙂
Video of a “formal” session of building value for his leash. Started with jump, tunnel, tunnel which he LOVES and we’ve done in some version with a wide variety of tug toys and thrown balls for a long, long time. A tunnel is also our “go to” reward spot when we are training in the ring (mostly because it’s an easy spot for me to reward when in motion and no concerns about what to do if he drops the bar), so far I’ve only done it with one of his favorite toys in the ring.
Question: I was using my Get It cue not Yours (which is the same as your Bite). That’s the cue I’ve used “from the beginning” because I didn’t have a Yours and now I’m wondering if I should swap cues. In my head my Yours is more of an I’m more stationary and the dog drives into a toy that I’m holding more or less still. Get it as you’ve described it is move away from me to the reinforcer, right? The way I’m using the toy here seems like kinda some of both. The toy is “attached to me” but not “on me”, does that make sense? And it’s moving so he has to if not move sometimes toward me and sometimes away from me to get it. Would it be OK for me to continue to use Get it when reinforcing in this fashion? Or is that going to be confusing to him? Next step with his leash as a reinforcer?
OMG! Love your insights! I was feeling kinda bad about submitting such a long video but now I’m SO glad I did. You are 100% correct that he learned shaping with food VERY early on….like maybe starting with sits the day he came home 🙂 And you’re right in that we haven’t shaped much with a toy as I was thinking about building the value of toys as a behavior in and of itself. And I never would’ve picked up on the fact that my “position/movement” was a big piece of the not understanding to “offer” when the toy was involved. But it makes so much sense, food is shaping, toys are sequences! I was totally stuck on thinking that he didn’t know what to do unless there was food involved, which is right but not for the reason I was thinking. This is SO cool. I’m going to play with this again, probably with a “get it” wiggly toy first as that’s a pretty strong reinforcement procedure for him, me sitting down ……
I spend about 4 1/2 hours in a car every Wednesday….to AK9C for class with Lo and back. I usually listen to the new lessons but today I listened to one of Sarah Stremming’s podcasts where she and Megan Foster talk for over an hour about reinforcement procedures. It was fascinating! Thanks again! I know I say it almost every post but I am LOVING this class!
……..My Contraband is underwhelmed by the MM, so for a bit the loop was behavior – eat from the MM – frisbee.
Oh I like this and I think Sly will too….eat from the MM and throw the Hollee Roller! He’ll think that is a blast!…….Just be careful that the vibration of the DW is not triggering the Hit It board beep, as it does with Hot Sauce LOL!!!
Ooooo…. I don’t think this is happening but thanks for the heads up, I’m going to pay a little more attention to make sure. What I’m trying to do is trigger the MM if I hear the mat beep so he gets some reinforcement while I’m figuring out the foot placement of what I just saw and whether or not it’s “jackpot worthy” and if it is I’ve been running in and adding better treats to the MM, but I think I’ll try throwing the Hollee Roller. Me running in and adding treats is creating him standing there for a bit waiting to see if more are coming. I’ve been sorting through a cue to let him know that it’s “all done” and that helps but I think throwing the ball will help with that and he likes it so much…. Also I can probably play with ball/more food depending on what his arousal level is, right?Here’s video of the Week 2 Wing Wrap exercise. It’s really long, like almost 5 minutes but it’s one of those sessions that I thought would be really valuable for you to see the whole thing. When we shaped wing wraps when he was a pup it was with food. It was so interesting how the change of reinforcer totally changed his understanding. LOVING this class, learning so much!!!!
“Get it” to the Manners Minder….. He likes the MM but doesn’t LOVE it….dispenses the rewards too slowly for his liking so I “preplaced” some kibble so some was there when he arrived 🙂 Would it make sense to do a few reps like this to start each DW session? Also realized that I need to pay better attention to the order of the way things happen – cue Get It and then “click” the MM. So far I’ve worked some turns on the flat and am just starting to play with them with him in his “sweet spot” at the top of the down ramp. I’m using Katarina’s mat method and I’ve put my mat on top of a Hit It board. I finally decided that I was driving both he and I crazy with trying to see and reward good split rear foot hits, couldn’t consistently see them in time to reward well. So I put the mat on the Hit It Board and decided that if I heard the board to reward. It’s helped a lot!!!
And thanks for the explanation about starting to turn his leash into a valuable toy. Yes, my “Yours” is the same as your “bite” – take the stationary toy from my hand. We’ve got a Get It – which is go get either the thrown or stationary toy (or food). Can’t wait to play around with this some!!!
Here’s the other post….. I’d really like to establish a routine where Sly can tug/play with his leash on his way into the ring. We’ve got lots of little pieces of it but not ready to put it all together, especially in a trial environment. One of the missing parts is that I need to build more value for his leash as a toy. It didn’t make our list of 5 and I think if this is going to be my go to toy at a trial it probably needs to be #1 or 2 or at least make the list! The other piece that was missing and we are now working on is our “Yours”. I’m thinking that I’m going to go at this from 2 directions.
First: Continue to establish a strong “Yours” with toys on our Top 5 list but start to add in a rep with his leash?
Second: At the same time (or maybe I should wait until the Yours is a little stronger?) work through the steps in Building Value for Toys. My first question is what would you suggest for a Reinforcement Procedure? The behavior I ultimately think I want is for him to grab his leash on a Yours cue and tug with it as we move around (eventually walk into the ring to the first jump) So I think I need my reinforcement procedure to be something not involving Yours – is that right? One of his most favorite things is to chase either a Holey Roller or one of his tugs – Get it…. could I use one of those? My other thought was to use something similiar to what you did in the video ….jump, tunnel, Yours with one of his favorite toys, but that would have the “yours” as part of the Reinforcement Procedure, so not sure that would be a good choice? He already is quite happy doing this with any of the tug toys on our list. Thoughts?
Good Morning! Yes, nice quiet Thanksgiving here too….way too much food but Hey! that’s part of the fun.
So for adding the verbal it’s the same principal as it’s been for a long time now, add the word when you are 99% sure that you’re going to get the desired behavior. So much is changing in training these days that I guess I wanted to make sure that I hadn’t missed something in this regard.
With the Dogwalk…. I would then first establish the reinforcement procedure of Get It – and be sure that if I cue Get it that he’s always going to drive the MM, right? Then I’ll add in the Verbal, so if I was working on Left it would be Left, Get it? Of course there’s all the “stuff” that goes along with whole running DW, understanding of hitting the mat, etc. etc. etc We’ve done a bunch of this as part of Katarina’s classes but I don’t think we ever really established the reinforcement behavior first so I’m going to back up a bit and do that. I like your flyball jump, I’ve got a small 6′ tunnel which is what I plan to use.
I’ve also got some questions about building value for his leash as a toy. I’ll put that in another post
Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. I’ve been rewatching the Week 2 videos this afternoon…and had to laugh when you talked about planning our sessions especially in light of your feedback on our session a few days ago. I really wanted to get some video for you and didn’t do a good job of planning, didn’t have a toy that we had been doing “Yours” with only the one that I usually throw ….. and there I am hanging it out in the air trying to figure out what to do with it! AHHHH!!!!! Anyway….finally figured out that I could use a tug toy as a “Yours” toy – somedays I’m pretty sure it’s a miracle that my dogs put up with me at all 🙂 We’ve been playing with the Week 2 games – he loves Catch….I was thinking that we’d play it in front of a tunnel as well as it seems that tunnel starts are pretty common these days.
I had a question about the Placed Reinforcement application. In the video you are using Get it – your reinforcement word. When/how do you swap to the verbal that you are using the placed reinforcement to help teach? I’m guessing you’re going to be talking about that in one of the next couple of weeks? One of our winter projects is to get serious about our various verbals for turns off his dogwalk. I’m planning on using his MM for a lot of it so this class is perfectly timed 🙂 Our straight exit is looking pretty good and fortunately in Novice and Starters the DW exits are usually straight 🙂
Captured a short session this morning. We’ve been doing a lot of sessions, some specific to training reinforcement procedures, but lots of sessions with me trying to be more aware and cleaning up my mechanics when I’m reinforcing in “normal” training. Wanted to capture a session for feedback… so here it is. Lots of places where my mechanics are not very “clean” but trust me, MUCH better than they were 2 weeks ago 🙂 You’ll see that we’ve started to work the new cue “Yours” and I’m actually quite surprised (and pleased) with how quickly he’s understanding it. Now to watch all the new Week 2 videos 🙂
