[k8marie]

Hi Tracy – greetings from cold (a relative term), foggy grey, and damp California. Jazz spent this morning with me at my older fella’s coursework class. She does great while the other dogs are running, with focus exercises, short retrieves, toy grabs and tugging. This afternoon we revisited the Wind in our Hair game. I’m really pleased with how she’s progressed.

I’ve left a lot of “in between” video time in as I wanted to give you an idea of her behaviors during our sessions. I did edit out most of the time that I let her run around with the toy (decompression activity). A light bulb moment for me was seeing the difference in her commitment when I don’t use my arm to send; like you’ve been saying, stronger commitment when I connect by looking at her.

She wasn’t that interested in the dead toy. I think next time I do this I’ll try tugging with her in the drop spot, getting her excited and then see if she’ll leave the toy. I would think she might be more interested in it then. Here’s the video.

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
Adolescent brain day!! Was really looking forward to returning to the tunnel exit game – now that I have a clearer understanding of how best to approach this to be successful. Jazz had other things on her mind – such as LEAVES! Wrapping wasn’t in her vocabulary much less tunnel entries. Would start to wrap and then get infatuated with a leaf, would start heading to the tunnel and a leaf would call out to her. After many unsuccessful attempts I chalked it up to Adolescent Brain and played fetch (her rules) with her. I’m not including that video here. Let me know if you think it would be helpful and I’ll add it.

Decided the shadow handling would be good for our afternoon play so I have a video of that here. She is so fast, or maybe I’m so slow (LOL) that I seem to always be rewarding her too late. I think we got in at least one somewhat timely blind cross. Should she be running parallel with me, or should I be encouraging her to pass me? If I’m working on her running with me, I’m too late with the reward as she had already passed me, or was jumping up. I only have these two tunnels so I’m not able to set this up for the more Advanced Level. Enjoy!

Kate

[k8marie]

Hello!
We revisited the set point exercise. I wanted to make sure and reinforce the stay when the toy was moving. Glad you reminded me of that because, as you can see, she thought it was time to go! I let her have two “tries” and then reinforced the stay behavior with treats. After the reminders she was solid. So… should I do a few reminders before the set point, or test the waters and then remind if necessary? Seems like I need to start with reminders at least for now. I usually do 4 of these (2 on each side with reminders thrown in) but only did the one as she worked really hard to hold that stay. Let me know what you think.

I also played with the Tunnel Exit Games. Really liked this one, but think I made it more challenging for us as I had her wrap the first wing which meant I had to rear cross her tunnel entry. Not only was that challenging for her, but it put me behind so we never really got the far wrap after the “go”. I should have watched your video to refresh my memory; layering would have given her a more obvious tunnel entrance and would have given me better position. The positive is that “magnetic fingers” really do help with connection – her entries are much smoother when my hand is back until she has passed me as opposed to me trying to point her into the tunnel with my DS hand. She clearly had had enough so we didn’t do the other side (probably a good thing since I was making it more difficult than it needed to be) and finished with some toy tosses. Look forward to doing this one again!

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
This is really a blooper kind of video. Tried running with H20, but realized that I always seemed to have it in the wrong hand – plus Jazz was very interested in the water (as you’ll see).

The real blooper is that I realized (when I was watching the video) that I was trying to wrap her away from me, rather than towards me. I will be using the hampers from now on as I get too fixated on the “correct” side on my stantions.

Ended up doing reverse retrieves to improve on the retrieve… first two went great – she dropped the toy right in front of me for a treat. After that she had to take 2 or 3 victory laps – which meant I was running around the yard in the opposite way.

Hope you get a few chuckles out of this one.

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
I really appreciate your detailed feedback, and thanks for the reminder about rewarding her stay when the toy is moving. I’m sure she would figure it out pretty quickly that moving toy means release is coming.

Played with the “Wind in Our Hair” exercise this morning. My wing jumps have a very defined jump side vs back side. I’ve been trying to set these up so that she will be wrapping from the “front” vs a back side wrap. Some set ups work better for this – wondered if it makes a difference at this stage of our training.

Concentrated on keeping my arm and focus back toward her till she passed me. Not ready for H2O yet, but we seemed to do better. I think it helped that I was using a toy reward and not food. She drives forward more with the toy. Review of the video it looks like I need to throw the reward sooner, and miss the wing when I throw! Still working on her lack of retrieve (left video in for one of the tosses so you could get a sense of what she does). We didn’t do this with the placed reward – I want to get smoother before trying that.

Here’s the video: https://youtu.be/oStfYLjle7Q

JFYI – I submitted the private lesson form this morning and got an email confirmation. Hope it came through as I had received a confirmation for the one I submitted in December that didn’t seem to make it. Noted on the form that I would like to work on behavioral things – bitey behavior, hesitancy to leash up, and lack of retrieve.

Thanks again! k8

[k8marie]

Hey Tracy,
Thanks for the video links! Both approaches will be helpful. I probably won’t run with the water until I have my magnet fingers working. When I do move on to the H2O I’m definitely not risking my coffee! Haha!

I wanted to show you our Set Point with a toy. I devised my own fuzzy holee roller toy (head of pink piggy stuffed in the ball then tied in place with the arms. What a difference. Amazing that she held her stay with pink piggy out there. She’s so fast I can’t really tell how her jumping form looks. Let me know what you see. I left a “swifter” tug in the video cuz she is so dang cute!!

Thank you!!

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
So for the “Wind in our Hair”, I should be rewarding any time she goes over the “jump”, but not if she comes with me and goes around it, correct? I didn’t try the more advanced distance, or staying behind as I want her to be a bit more solid with focus forward while paralleling my path. We’ll keep working on this one.

Here is our “Smiley Face” session from this morning. She surprised me! I was just playing with her and she was so into it I decided to give it a go and video. I really thought the parallel path between the two wings would be confusing for her (given the previous exercise), but she was like “Got it K8!” I think my spacing for the wings in relation to the tunnel may have been off. Didn’t seem like a great line for her, but she got it. I also noticed that I’m still blocking the wing and pointing. I’d like to smooth it out; looks like I kind of race to the end of the tunnel and then step and point for the wrap so there’s a lot of stop and go. What’s the best approach for breaking that habit? Not sure if you can tell but this was 2 separate “runs” with play in between. I tossed a toy around :15 but edited out the victory lap. Here’s the video:

Thank you!!

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
Here is our first run at the Wind in My Hair exercise. Her wraps in both directions have come along really nicely. The challenge for me is being able to see when she first looks forward (at the jump) and then being timely with the toss. She was really good when she was wrapping to the right – we had a harder time with the forward focus when she wrapped to the left. Really kept focused on me. Should I try this side with a planted reinforcement (MM or toy)? Not sure if that would be counter productive. Here is that video.

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
I’ll try and remember to keep the bitey behavior in the video. Since she was being so mouthy I quit holding on to the harness at the start and worked on getting a connection without holding on to her. She wears the harness all the time so she should be quite used to it. When she is in the house it has a short (4-5’) light rope attached so that I can manage her behavior better. I’m thinking that the shaking could have been a result of her “tugging” behavior – dragging around belly to the ground on the tug toy.

Her set point jumping doesn’t look that smooth. Do I have the jumps to close/far apart? She hasn’t been that motivated by the MM so I tried some with a food dish as the target. Reviewing the videos I think she looked smoother on the second MM jump so I’ll continue with the MM. I was very pleased with how she held her stay! Especially with the food dish down there. Let me know if we need to adjust the spacing. Looking forward to trying the “Wind in our Hair” exercise! Also I’ll resend the lesson request form in the next couple of days. Thanks so much! Great to be back in class.

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
Had fun with the Wrap Proofing this morning. Still working on the bitey behavior – more on that later. Overall we did pretty good. Couple of things I noticed:
1) On her sends to the tunnel she has some hesitation when my motion to the tunnel stops. Need to work on sending her from more of a distance and with me being still.
2) She went wide on some of the wraps; I think that is because I was throwing my arm up and she thought I had tossed a treat. Need to work on low arms/hands.

Look forward to hearing what else you see here.

So… in terms of the bitey behavior I wanted to schedule a private lesson to work on some of the behavior patterns that are developing. The most pressing are: the biting; her reluctance to come in certain situations (not leashing up unless I have treats and can lure her to me); and lack of retrieve. I sent in the online private lesson request (from your FB post) in late December. When I didn’t hear back I figured you were on break and I’d hold off till class started up. I’m still interested in working on these with you so let me know the best way to get on your schedule. Thanks and hope we can work something out!
Kate

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
I couldn’t wait till the formal start of the class to begin posting videos. Here is a quick glimpse of the moving target pre-class game. She did really well with this. Jumped the gun a little bit in one of them so I placed the toy down, paused and then tossed a treat to reward the stay. Then she held it like a pro!

I tried a stuffed holey roller, but she ignored it and went for the fuzzy handle so we just used the long fuzzy tug toy.

Looking forward to getting back in the swing of things with you!

Kate

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
Chiro didn’t really have a sense of what might have caused the soreness; could have been jumping off the bed (hard to keep her from doing that), playing hard or just generally being Jazz. Chiro said Jazz would self monitor her activity level on her own, so no need for me to confine her (thank god). She’ll have a recheck in early January. I went over her pretty thoroughly when I groomed her the other day, no indication of soreness, and given her exuberance and high level of play etc I decided to go ahead and “work” with her again. Played with the Tunnel Wrap Rocking Horse exercise. She loves this one!

Really clear to me that I need to get my verbals out sooner cuz I can’t outrun her. Still working on her retrieve – hopefully we’ll get that when we repeat Max 1.

Curious how you know Randy Rainbow???

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
I’m glad you suggested having Jazz evaluated by our chiropractor. Since our last session went so well I thought that maybe the challenges (release and tugging) from the previous session were due to her losing one of her canine teeth (top ones have been really stubborn to go even though the permanent ones are coming in).

Saw the chiro yesterday. Severe pain was noted in the right LS area as well as moderate to severe tension and pain in a number of other areas. Recommendation is that there be no undo stress on the LS joint until she is seen again in a month. No sits, no turns, no tugging, no perch work… basically working on the parallel path is the only option till recheck. Based on the way she runs, tugs and plays I sure wouldn’t have guessed that she was in that much pain. Anyway – no videos from us until the Fast Track Max 1. Happy holidays!

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
I’ll test the decel/wrap theory with a tunnel tomorrow. Sounds like fun!

We have been doing reverse recalls outside with food; tugging before and between recalls. She’s into it! Great speedy returns. We’re not able to do these outside with toys as she still would rather play chase than return them to me. Working on this with toys in the hall.

Perch work is coming along. I know this perch is probably too tall, but I wasn’t able to find the right size wood block and wanted to keep working on it and feed buckets is what I have. She seems to move more easily to her left, but does pivot both ways.

Thanks again!

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
Hope things are getting back to “normal” for you. Different pup for this mornings session! Was a bit worried when I couldn’t get her tugging at first – let her sniff around the yard for 1-2 minutes and then she was ready to play! Edited tugging breaks for time. Warm up wraps with toy, and then switched to food for the deceleration turns. No hesitation with release – Yeah! Made sure my chest was turned toward her for the parallel path, and tried to be patient with my leaving on the deceleration wrap. Ended with toy reward on her turn to the left and more tugging. Really pleased!

I plan on registering for the Max Pup 1 Fast Track. Does that seem like the best fit for her? She’s not quite 7 months.
Thanks!

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