Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Thanks Tracy. I was just tickled with this run 😊 I wish AKC allowed FEO in more than just T2B and FAST. I get it that it can add significant time to a trial but it would be great if they would offer it as an option at least at the Novice and Open levels….. anyway…. Fortunately we’ve got a USDAA trial in a few weeks and my plan is to run at least one and depending how things are going more runs FEO.
Played with the Layering Game today. Things went really well so we ended up doing 2 sessions about an hour apart.
1st session: https://youtu.be/QhgmlEIiMq82nd session: https://youtu.be/XZAhS9oIm0Q
He is a funny little guy. I think he was remembering that for the last several sessions it had been all about the individual verbals at the jump….didn’t really do any tunnels during that time…and he just couldn’t believe it was OK to do the tunnel again 🙂 Had to smile when I saw the course map for the Biathlon Standard course, it was all about a straight tunnel under a contact. And it ate teams alive! Did an AKC trial yesterday. Thought you might enjoy our JWW run, still getting comfortable between the gate entrance and setup but once he’s set he’s all business!
Did several really short sessions of just each jump cue; jump, wrap and back the last couple of days and then late this afternoon pulled the 3 jump cues and the tunnel all together. Kind of quickly and didn’t have anything to throw. Intentionally “helped” by virtue of my position, but tried to use no motion. I just love how his little brain works! I think we need to take a break from these brain exercises for a couple of days and back to something where he gets to run! Really enjoying this class….seems pretty timely looking at the Cynosport courses!
First session with the Tunnel/Jump discrimination. I’ve GOT to remember to give him reset cookies! He was a very good boy trying to work through this but looking back at this I really did ask a lot and the rate of reward was too low. I’ve GOT to get better at recognizing that in the moment.
Recognized pretty quickly that he has no idea what the word Jump means, could be because I don’t use it much and have never taught it! Since he was offering Back and it’s a word he knows pretty well I decided to use that which in hindsight made this pretty hard (should’ve moved the obstacles farther apart). And probably should’ve used his Wrap for the jump instead of Back, that would’ve been easier for the discrimination I think. And it’s word he knows pretty well too. This is a great exercise.
Question: He’s currently got Wrap, Back and Flip as words associated specifically with a jump. And he’s getting pretty good at Go. How do I teach a specific word that says take the jump “normally”? I don’t want to confuse it with Go?
Had to set something up for this week’s classes…and everyone wants a dogwalk so figured I’d stick a tunnel under it and play with it. Made things easier with the jump closer, lots of preplaced toy. He thought this was pretty fun 🙂 Did a little “left”, easy ones, theoretically. Tried to remember to reward on a bit tighter turn out. And yes, verbals early…and often are definitely helpful for him. In the video before this one while editing it I noticed a couple of times where my verbal was really late (like after he was well in the tunnel late) and he’d come out much slower and sort of “waiting” to hear what to do. It was pretty cool to see that he was trying so hard to hear the words 🙂
Would it be OK to do some of this with a shorter tunnel? I’ve been using a 15 but I’ve got a 10 and a 6.
Thanks! He really does love his teeter 😊❤️😊
A short session yesterday with some distance games. Wrap means take the jump you see and come back towards me. Jump is about 15’ away to start and then it’s about 20. We’ll probably get a chance to play with this again later today and I think I’ll focus on me hanging back and not going past the middle of the tunnel. Does that sound like a good next step?
Played with the Independent Tunnel games a bit today. The boy does love his tunnels 😊 The first video is finding the entry, driving to it and Go! The 2nd video is a little bit of Left and Right. We’ve done some Left and Right previously but not much in the last several months. I think we are both at a place where we’re ready to really work on these verbals now. At the end of the 2nd video I stuck a picture that I thought you might enjoy. It’s a screen grab from a video so not very clear, but it kinda gives you a feel for where his teeter is 😊❤️😊
Thank you Tracy! Sly and I had a blast and learned a lot. I know we’ve been kinda MIA for the last couple of weeks, needed a bit of a reset after loosing Jackson (our 13 year old Cocker) a little sooner than we had expected but the family is all good now and we’re looking forward to the seminar on the 11th!
My plan for tomorrow’s one run…T2B so plan to do it FEO with a toy. Stay outside gate and go in at last minute, stay connected on the way in but don’t ask for any tricks/behaviors… no hand touches, downs, etc? When we get to our start position I’ll stop in my position where he can choose to setup between my legs but if he chooses something else like sit or down take it and say good boy, wait and short lead out, release and go. I’ll plan a short course with lots of fun lines but if we miss an obstacle just drop his toy and let him chase it while I figure out how/where I pick our course back up. In that JWW run all that contorting was really about me thinking I really wanted to be able to restart at weaves first because I kinda wanted to see how he did with them in an actual trial setting and also because that’s how I had planned to get into those last two lines to the tunnels that I was pretty sure he’d love. So… plan will be tomorrow anytime I need to think just run and let him chase his toy. Anything I’m missing?
I debated a front or blind at 9 to 10….blinds are my “go to” choice most of the time. I find them so much easier for me to do than fronts. I think the reason I opted for the front here was probably because I was stuck thinking Mags, who would have definitely needed me to front and almost shape the turn a bit for her. I need to remember that Sly’s stride is smaller and he’s very happy to turn on his own when given the info.
And yep…that’s kinda what I figured about the start. I set him up kinda sloppy and although we’ve done some take the jump training as you said he’s young and I’m asking him to process lots more stuff all at the same time in these sequences than we have been. I decided to restart here because we were on home turf and could reward. My plan in a trial setting would be first, do a better job in my walk through so he’s setup well but if I mess up and don’t do that then just keep going. My question for a trial setting is though what if I am sure he’s setup well and I cued it well and he doesn’t take it? First of all I’d be shocked if that happened because he’s such a good boy that way that my inclination would be to assume that even I though I did everything right I must not have so just keep going.
And yes, I need to make the leap to walking at speed both for Sly and for Mags. You’ll laugh but one of the things I frequently say to the folks that take lessons from me is that I’m really good at this in slow motion without my dog! I’m going to make a real effort to get at least a couple of walks at speed in all my walk throughs for both dogs tomorrow. Sly’s just got one T2B run so it’ll be fast, fun and FEO
I didn’t bother to post the Sequence 2 Walk It and Run It videos….they really were a mess and the thing I learned was to not try and do all the verbals all at once and as you said prioritize! Which is what I did with the 3rd Sequence. Here’s our Walk It and Run It videos for that sequence.
Yeah, I did feel like I was a little overhandling/helping in the first loop. It was a pretty wide loop and I think the most jumps he’d ever done “in a trial” before either being rewarded or being sent to a tunnel and I wasn’t sure just how good his “look for the jumps in my path” was in that setup. He was great! And yep I got “in trouble” at :41. My line after the blind was little off and I thought he was going to come by the jump with me so I pushed when I think he had already decided he was supposed to take the jump (good boy) and as you said he definitely thought rear cross 🙂 After that I got a bit discombobulated trying to get back on track for a “good” entry to the weaves and I was 100% confident in his ability to run those 2 fast lines from the weaves to the first tunnel and then to the 2nd tunnel. Overall I was really, really pleased with how well he was able to focus..and once we got going I think he was comfortable and having fun 🙂 Another day of AKC this weekend. Can’t remember if there was a T2B class or just JWW..or maybe there was both. Anyway, he’s entered in at least one class, maybe 2. Any suggestions on things to change, do differently?
Two days of AKC at American K9 Country on Friday and Saturday with Mags. I wanted to try to get some “ring time” in for Sly and he’s been doing REALLY well in Lo’s classes there so gave it a go. In AKC the only two classes you can run FEO are Time2Beat and FAST, neither of which were offered on Friday so I entered him in Novice JWW with the idea that we’d play it by ear depending on how focused he could be in the environment. He was great upstairs in the crating area and outside the ring, standing in line..could do all his tricks, wasn’t concerned about the other dogs nearby (that is HUGE!), had a little trouble focusing when we were on deck as the dog right before us was VERY exciting but he was able to do hand touches and setup between my legs before we went in so we kept going. Really hard for him setting up at the start line but once we started he was “all business”. We ran just the one class on Friday…and then just T2B, FEO on Saturday. Course we chose to run was 2 jumps to a tunnel, 2 jumps to the seesaw (which he rocked), jump and play. He was able to tug all the way to where his leash was. Unfortunately no video from Saturday. But here’s the JWW run on Friday. This was our first time in the ring without a toy….
OMG! And that would be why I have been hesitant to add a lot of verbals!!!!! We did the 2nd sequence several days ago and as nice as this first sequence was the 2nd one was almost equally ugly. I tried to make sure I got some verbals in in the walk through and I didn’t have as good of sense/plan for the connections and the course flow and it’s kind of a mess. 🙁 I’ll get the video edited tomorrow I hope. I also ran the 3rd sequence today because it looked fun and I’m really learning a lot about myself with this exercise and I needed to take the setup down and put up something new for classes this week. This time I decided to just focus on getting one verbal done well……. and this seemed to be an improvement over trying to do “all possible verbals”. Anyway…..I’ll try and get those videos edited and posted tomorrow as well.
Changing subjects sort of…I’ve signed Sly and I up for a working spot in the one day Engagement seminar. Looking forward to it…besides when I got the email from CleanRun announcing it and the picture in the email is one of Snoop and I from many years ago how could I not sign up? 🙂 Hope you had a nice weekend. Videos tomorrow……. I hope.
Well this was interesting 😊 I actually consider walk throughs to be one of my strengths… but wow, the distraction of doing it for video really threw an element of pressure that really made me much less effective and I ran out of time. Anyway, this is a great exercise and I was totally thrilled with our first run 😊
One and done!
