[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
Morning session with the Zig Zag Jumping game went well. I’m thinking yesterday may have been due to tired pup in the afternoon.

She read the lead changes really well so I went ahead and added the third wing. She did stall out a bit on our first run, I think she was expecting a cookie, and when that didn’t materialize she trotted on through. She read the rest of our “runs” really well. As usual, I’m not sure about my timing with the line change cues; waiting too long, using the “wrong” arm, out of position? Let me know if any of these need to be adjusted.

Here is the video:

After a short play session I also “reviewed” her wraps from a stationary position about 3-4 feet away from the wing (no video). She had no problem with these to the right or left – just did one in each direction and then more play. She does see a chiro on a monthly basis (first or second Tuesday of the month depending on Vet’s schedule). This is a mobile unit that comes to the training center once a month so it can be a challenge to get in on the off weeks. Our next visit will be in early Feb.

There has been major improvement with leashing up (clipping leash or line to her collar or harness). She now sits, and waits while I clip on the leash/line and waits to be released to a cookie. No biting or backing away (at least for now). Still working on putting on the harness without the cookie lure.
Sorry to be so wordy but wanted to bring you up to date. Thank you!!

Kate

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
Thought we’d revisit the Wing Wrap Proofing game with the tunnel curved for a clearer entrance. Since she did so well the first time around I thought she’d nail it this time around, especially with the more obvious entrance. Not this time!! I don’t know what was up with her… a lot of sniffing, jumping up and also stalling out. Could be because I had an appointment in town this morning, so instead of having our usual morning session she spent the morning racing around the yard with the poodle boys while my partner did gardening work. Chalked it up to her being tired and just not into it. Let me know what you see.

Had to exit the online class early as I have class with Jack on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday evenings. Will watch the recording with coffee in the morning.
K8

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
Fog burned off so we have sun this afternoon!! Really helps my mental health!

Thanks for the reminder about having the tunnel entrance more obvious for the tunnel exit game. You gave us the same feedback for the wrap proofing exercise – I guess I don’t generalize very well (haha).

I think she likes the pill bug game – great exercise for working on my timing. We did pretty good – I wasn’t as late on the BC as our previous try although the first time I tried the double blind I had to abort that mission as she already caught up to me before I even started the second blind. Challenging for me when the blind put her on the inside track and I was planning on circling as she would continue forward motion. I was worried we’d have a collision so I kept going forward. Timing got better for the DB and I left a few “swifter” moments in there for you. We had a lot of fun with this – helps when the sun is shining.

[k8marie]

Hi Tracy,
Tough day as I try to make sense of the current events. Have to motivate myself to continue to do the things that bring me joy – hard right now – way to much anger in me. So… worked on the Tunnel Exit game.

This went much better than the previous session so the few days off helped her regroup. I am still stalling out on her tunnel sends, which make it hard for me to be in a helpful position for wrapping the barrel. I think I need to work on having more distance with the send to the tunnel so that I’m not racing to show her the tunnel entrance. Hard for me to know when she is truly committed. Also need to revisit the left/right exercise from MaxPup 1 as she doesn’t appear to understand these directionals. Started the session with Set Point and rewarding moving target stays (she was awesome on all of these) didn’t video. Here is the tunnel exit video.

Had her at the trial yesterday with Jack (who went 2 for 2 for a second place overall in the Biathlon). Had to brag a bit on him. Still working on focus with Jazz – mostly I let her explore things on her own (leashed) with some rewarded recalls, redirecting, and interacting appropriately with other dogs (seemed to be a lot of puppies there today – got to meet Vibe, Cindi’s pup.) Still working on tugging in that environment and getting her familiar with the measuring stand. (She really doesn’t like it moving over her.) Was pleased to see her wrapping a trash can to the right and the left!

Still digesting all the information from our lesson – thanks again.

Kate

[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

[Author]

Posts