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Hi, thanks for the feedback. Yes, I hear you on doing too much and limiting train time. I got carried away with having the weekend and wanting to get as much in as possible before class time is up. And I am likely misreading his speed/effort at times – on the Smiley Face / Tunnel Threadles I figured he was going slow because I was going slow, which I think was a tip from the video, but that may not have been the case.
On The Accordion, yes, stationary food reward for this first session. Will work with moving target next.
Thanks!
Hi! Keeper turns 1 today, by the way!
Here’s a little more of The Diamond:
A first attempt at Concept Transfer: Rear Crosses:
A first attempt at The Accordion:
And Tunnel Threadles:
More Rear Crosses and Backside Wraps. Once I actually thought to do it, I think my quieter verbals helped on the rear crosses.
More Layering Foundations. No problems on the first side, but the second side was something else, which surprised me after yesterday’s session.
The Diamond, Baby Level:
Zig Zag Part 2 with no gaps:
Here’s a little more of the Tunnel Exit Turns trying for better timed verbals. Watching this back, I realized that all of my verbals were shouted, so will work more on different volumes for different cues. So many things to think about!
More Strike a Pose / serp vs. threadle work + trying out our treat hugger, which he really seemed to love – flying cheese! I think this may be the cause of that one broken stay.:
Layering Foundations. OK, I might have done this one completely wrong because I was going from memory and didn’t review the video/instructions beforehand. I thought it was going well in the moment, but I skipped a few steps and wasn’t really using the Go verbal…
He was really amped up for this! And tonight I used a different toy for each exercise, which I think helped keep him really interested. This one was the squishy ball.
>He seemed to have an easier time of it here in terms of ignoring the class. If the distractions are really hard, you can use a ball reward.>
I think that might be a slight misrepresentation due to editing for time. I cut out a fair amount of the distraction. It was an international skills class, and the other dogs were moving fast and pretty high energy and barky, so it was actually really hard for him. He rounded behind the tunnel to the fence line a couple of times to try to get involved. I was happy when I was able to get him back and working, but it definitely seemed harder than the other night and we took longer breaks in between reps when activity level was especially high on the other field and just worked on not getting involved in the excitement. It did seem like it got easier as the night went on. The class was still going on during the Serp Proofing, and you can see him looking over, but I was more easily able to get his attention back on the game.
I began our session with toys, but one thing I’ve noticed is that when other dogs are around and he is really stimulated he starts losing interest in the toys, but he seems to be pretty responsive to cheese, so I started using that more toward the end.
>On the first side, you used dog-side arm and the 2nd side you used opposite arm. The dog-side arm is generally easier to run with (less twisting for us humans LOL)>
I tried the opposite arm on the second side because I thought it might help him to have a different visual cue than the serp – it seemed like it helped, but then I tried one more time with the opposite arm on the first side after I turned the video off, and he still wanted to come over the jump instead of to the inside. He did well with the MaxPup 1 serp/threadle game, but that was with no movement and the positioning on the jump helped a lot. I’m curious, when running, is it just the verbal that cues the threadle if the arms are the same?
Tonight we worked on Advanced Level Tunnel Exit Turns:
Advanced Level Find the Jump (Again with class distraction – though this one was a bit more distracting for him.):
Another try at Serp Proofing with more / faster motion, and I threw in some threadle tries at the end, but especially on the first side this was not coming back to him right away. I may need to look back at the MaxPup 1 game before we try again.
> One suggestion for the rear cross:
Use GO verbal for the straight line only, not the left or right turns – if you say GO then left/right, it delays the info for the turn and he will go straight. >I only realized I was doing this once I watched the video back! Will definitely try to reserve “Go” for straight ahead. And setting a timer is a good idea. I got caught up in trying to figure it out.
Will work a bit more on Rear Crosses and Backside Wraps and move to next steps on Find the Jump and Serp Proofing.
In the meantime, we worked on The Get Out:
And the Zig Zag Part 2:
Hi! We’re back from vacay as of yesterday, so here’s a little more we were able to do while away, as well as some stuff from tonight when we were able to get back to the field for more tunnel games!
Feel the Wind In Your Hair 2 / Rear Crosses and Backside Wraps:
Advanced Level Sends N Serps trying for more speed and angling jump:
These two are on the back field at the club while there was a class on the main field, so I don’t have Keeper’s complete attention. But I’m pretty happy with how he did, especially considering the distraction.
Find the Jump (Baby Level):
Strike A Pose Proofing For Serps And Threadles (Baby Level):
Sorry in advance for the poor camera work.
Advanced Level Sends N Serps:
Beginning the Ladder grid with jumps locked at 8, more attention to starting position + Advanced Level:
For the previous Shaping Collar to Hand, I was using kibble, so that might have had something to do with the enthusiasm level. I tried ball rewards to start this session, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work for this. He seemed very interested in the balls, but not so interested in returning. I switched to cheese, and I think that went well, especially when I started throwing the cheese further away.
Thanks!
Finally finding some time to get organized. So here is a second attempt at the Baby Level Tunnel Exits from last week that I didn’t get a chance to post before we left.
Today’s Beginning the Ladder Grid:
And Shaping Collar to Hand. I cut out some wandering away and one moment of intense barking at a passing dog, but overall I was pretty happy with this, and especially with how quickly Keeper seemed to recover and return to the game after the barking.
Hi, Keeper and I are out of town for a couple of weeks, which is why there’s been a slow down. And, sadly, I’ll be without access to tunnels again for a bit, but hoping to get going with the ladder grid here in the next day or two. I just finished watching the video and wanted to clarify whether I should be doing the moving target with this game, or something less exciting – stationary toy or food target – to start?
This Pill Bug Games video is from the other day when I submitted the first Tunnel Exits video. I thought it went OK, but I had a couple run ins with objects and I think my reward timing was probably a bit off, and Keeper seemed to be herding me a little or cutting behind me, so I thought I’d come back to this one once we’d figured it out a little better. Well, tried again this morning, and it was not an improvement. I had very little buy in from Keeper. So will definitely be returning to this one again, but figured I could use a little feedback first.
And more Left/Right proofing with the Minny Pinny from earlier this week:
More Serps N Sends, trying for better shoulder positioning. Keeper was much higher energy on this try, and maybe he’s decided that the squishy green ball (a pea from the pod) is the ultimate reward. I had it in my pocket to try to switch off with the toy on the ground that I thought he would drive to since it’s the toy we’ve been using for that sort of thing (rabbit bungee), but he was obviously looking for the ball on all of these. He looked pretty sharp to me, but I’m sure that the reason for the toy or treat on the ground is so that he’s not looking to me but driving ahead on the right line, so not sure if we quite achieved that here.
And here is some Left/Right Proofing with the Minny Pinny. I left in a little more toy play between reps as I was really working on being more engaging with the toy, and I think I learned some valuable things from this, which is to say that I think I often give up on the toy if he does not immediately seem interested, but on the reps where I played with it longer even when he seemed sort of iffy at first, he really got into it, which is what I think you’ve been trying to tell me.
Looking ahead to this week, is there anything I should hold off on in the weeks 2, 3 or 4 games based on things you’d still like to see first in the other games we’ve been playing so far?
