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Sorry for the slightly long video on this one as I left in quite a bit of the resetting. It was us doing the smiley face game, and she definitely caught on quickly, after some initial confusion about the tunnel being under the a frame (just where it happened to be). But it’s the first training session I’ve done where I really noticed the stays being a bit of an issue and also setting up had her sort of wandering and offering obstacles (hate to say it, but like a BC, terriers don’t do that!) I think there were two more reps at the end of this that I cut out that were very similar: trouble setting up, a few breaks, me rewarding the stay a few times before finally getting to do the sequence. Guess I’d like to prevent this from spiraling any further?
Couldn’t really do the gentle turn on the jump wing to other jump wing on this set up as the dog walk was in the way. Oh and there is another tunnel under the dog walk about 15’ out of view to the right, plainly visible to her past the jump wing on that side and she didn’t try to take that even once, so a tiny bit like the discrimination exercise.Ideally, yes I’d want the other dog further away as well. He nicely minded his own business pretty well until then and when he did come over, pretty sure it was to ask for treats and a food scatter. From his training perspective I didn’t necessarily want to reinforce that action prompt. I’m pretty sure if the session was to go longer, he would have returned to doing his own thing and I might have tried to step in and reinforce that. Come to think of it, the other day I was using him as a distraction for an exercise (out in the training yard, but not doing agility) with Roots and I was encouraging him to come in close to add some pressure (which Roots can handle just fine from his brother), so that might have been why he was being a tad pushy on this one.
Just a little wind in her hair game. A bit more distance (and better footing and handler path for me) than in the live class and she did well finding the jump. I’m not overly concerned, but I think she is one that will need to be taught jumping form given her “dock diving” style on one of these reps. I also tested out letting my old guy be free to watch, he’s usually employed with a bully stick or scatter feed to keep him out of the way. She’s a tiny bit afraid of him since he’s a grump about being bumped by a clumsy puppy so those last few reps where he was quite close to her running path represents quite a bit of pressure for her. I’m not brave enough to try this with the other two that she isn’t afraid of though as there would at best be toy stealing or at worst collisions or chasing.
At last! This was a good one to end this block on! We only did it from the very easy starting line, not even on the landing side of the jump, but she seemed to finally understand. I’ve done quite a bit of the strike a pose game indoors without the jump bump with the toy on the ground and it seems she finally gets the concept! And when she broke her stay a few times, she wanted to default to the wrong side of the jump, which to me says she is actually following the cue when I do release her. Hurray!
Here is the second video. iPad was definitely acting stubborn and glitchy yesterday about copying and pasting the links so no surprise it messed up.
And I’ll try adjusting her setup distance to be closer for the minny Pinny next time. One of my other projects is teaching a line up at my side so I can be more precise about setting up without so much luring.
Balmy but still snow covered today. Set up the minny Pinny exercise and added the jump bumps. I thought in the session that going left looked pretty good, but to the right she was having a hard time figuring out the striding, but watching the video back she wasn’t always bouncing going to the left either. Don’t know if maybe I should try making the pinwheel a little smaller next time? I’m also not 100% certain I see which “jump” is the 90 degree turn as each is a 90 degree turn and by the end they’ve done a 270. Or is that the goal? Do 3 90 degree turns in a row, and later we can gradually expand it out into a real size pinwheel?
Then we did some more with the spins and added the forward send without the spin. I was pretty happy with this session until I noticed how much she was sliding around. This section of the yard is all pine needles, which is why the snow is melted, but pine needles don’t make the best surface for doing tight turns. So might have to limit what exercises we do here going forward.
And the birds were just as active today, but I think she seemed less distracted simply because the exercises were easier. I think she’s an “if I know my job, distractions don’t matter” kind of dog, but if she’s unsure about a task, then she will find a distraction to displace onto. Which is good information, if she’s distracted then she probably needs some help figuring something out.
Not exactly perfect footing but figured anything she did in a training session wouldn’t be worse than she’s been doing playing in the snow on her own.
Finally made a little progress on the tunnel threadle turning to the right. What finally helped was being able to do it from a sit stay, sort of whispering the cue (which is already a low “shoo” noise), then releasing with the full verbal cue when she looked at the tunnel. We’ve done some work indoors with a focus forward cue while maintaining a stay which I think helped her understand to look forward without releasing. Started very close to the tunnel, and worked back. Then the double whammy part went much better. I marked a few times when she turned the correct way and she pulled out of the tunnel, but I was still pleased with those reps.
Threadle wrap on barrels I thought was going to be a breeze, since she’s really made those seem easy indoors in a small space, but she said otherwise. I never even got to working on the harder side as this session was quite a bit longer than this edited video: I cut out a bunch of her just offering to go around the wrong way over and over regardless of what I did. So I guess threadle wraps are just going to go on the list of things we aren’t going to figure out before the end of this class. 😞 This part of the yard is a bit more distracting and we dont work here often, but it was the only snow free area. In hindsight I don’t think it’s any less slippery with all the pine needles and pine cones. I don’t think the distractions or the footing was any part of why she was struggling so much though.
Rocking horses with spins went well. Waiting for the cue to start is overrated in her opinion though.
Unfortunately threadle slices for the manners minder are still not going well. She still does not seem to understand. Even that first direction that went fairly well, she really didn’t want to come in to the hand and does some avoidance. This is probably our third attempt doing this with the MM and it’s not getting any better. 😔
I think the part of it that’s she struggling with is the cookie toss to dead toy with no motion from me. She can go cookie toss to toy in hand or toy on the ground that I am racing her to. She does see me place the toy (and seeing me place the toy is actually starting to get her excited, in a good way, ears up, looking at me, no collar hold needed unless I’m throwing it, not getting stuck staring at the toy), but then the connection to the toy is lost with the cookie throw. Not sure her stay is quite good enough for this, especially when it’s an exercise that I think has some stress tied to it at this point. And same with throwing the toy, since there’s some stress here already, I’ll probably get some jumping on me. I think I like the idea of changing the picture and doing it with the manners minder and just taking the toy out of this exercise until she figures it out and then bringing it back when she’s fluent. Thanks for the ideas!
Another sort of new place: the office at the arena we’ve been visiting. I taught a fitness workshop and stupidly rented the arena for myself immediately after, but the workshop ran over and I lost my arena time so I worked in the office instead. The person renting the arena at that time had a very vocal JRT who I think also had a squeaky toy at one point, so she got exposure to working while listening to all that from the safety of the office!
As far as the threadle slices, I’m still not sure she “understands the assignment”. It’s like as soon as I bring out the note pad hand target, toss the cookie away and then present the target, she is like “I have no clue what you want”. Sometimes she will look up from getting the cookie, look right at the target and then walk away and sniff (probably edited out of the video). I really have to encourage her to come to the target and then she needs encouragement to go to the toy when cued. So the reps you see in the video, I feel like I’m doing a TON of work to even keep her in the game compared to most of our other exercises. Back track to doing it without the jump bump? I never really progressed to doing the strike a pose game while having the toy preplaced on the ground.
The threadle wraps she was suddenly better turning right than to the left today. I thought that exercise went pretty well and added movement and a toy right at the end.Tried some tunnel threadle work at the arena today. The banging you hear is the vents blowing open and slamming shut in the wind. Unlike some other noises that the camera picks up, these were indeed LOUD, and when they open very wide they also let in huge patches of day light on the ground at one end of the ring which is what she stops and looks at towards the left of the camera.
As for the tunnel Threadles, turning left went great (easy side for her) but turning right she couldn’t figure out. Do you think more her or me?
This was a warm but WINDY day the other day. I’m sharing it more for the moment half way through when the wind really picked up and she spooked at the small ornamental tree just off the camera to the right bending halfway over in the wind. Not a total meltdown, but maybe because she realized it wasn’t an intruder and was just a tree?
If you couldn’t tell, I’m not a fan of agility tv either, but just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something with not having had a herdy breed before. As you mentioned, a different breed doing that same behavior would be looked at very differently. And as I mentioned I DID find an application for a similar thing with a terrier. I will now be able to feel justified not participating in it.
“I think it is an unhealthy place for herding brains as well. Or any type of brains 🙂 And as far as I know, there is no decompression/reset that is associated with watching exciting things move, so there is not a lot of value there. There is a definite ramp up in arousal associated with it though, but not in a direction that I think is useful or healthy, as you mentioned.”
I guess the one thing that I can see about how I’ve seen it used is that for the visually stimulated herdy dogs, being asked to stay fully engaged with the handler and NOT watching would actually cause more frustration and the level of arousal the handler would have to provide in order to compete with the movement would wind up increasing the arousal too far and certainly be annoying for others ringside and fatiguing for all. So it’s used as sort of a replacement for engaged chill. If you can “chill” and be disengaged, but still engage when I need you, you can watch. The reason I called it a reinforcer is more when it’s used as a premack- engage with me, take a cookie (which the dog would likely not find reinforcing around that kind of movement) and I will release you back to your agility tv. I HAVE used a similar version of this with my 3 year old while hiking. He had a tendency to be a screaming maniac (can we see a theme here?) at the slightest rustle of leaves that might signal a critter to be chased. Asking him to fully engage with me (heads up heeling, doing tricks, pattern game, etc) would be exhausting to do on an entire hike and “engaged chill” (in this instance, just walking with me on a loose leash when the critter is present, he does do a version of engaged chill for most of the walk when no critter is present which is mooch along sniffing the ground on his long line) is just not possible. So I did teach him a “watch tv” cue, meaning he may stare at the moving furry thing all he wants until asked to do otherwise. I may ask for him to look at me or do a simple behavior and then send him back to watch tv. If I do get pulling at the end of the leash or vocalizing, I need to change strategies, but find I rarely need to use these any more as playing this game took the conflict and frustration away. So it replaces “engaged chill” when he just can’t offer that, but certainly just walking with me and ignoring the wildlife would be even better. So maybe that can be a place for it? When engaged chill isn’t going to happen and full engagement isn’t totally appropriate either? But whenever able, engaged chill is better? Because as you noted, I agree about it being a waste of bandwidth and may contribute to depletion (certainly if I have a long walk with an unusual amount of stimulators, my 3 year old’s ability to quietly play this game dwindles towards the end, but it’s either play this or he doesn’t get to walk at all because without it walks are way too stressful for all!)
Had a training party with some friends today and Beat got to hang out while other dogs ran. She’s definitely turned on by watching dogs running these days, but she was still able to do her pattern game, some hand touches, and sending to a Klimb all on leash. Towards the end I even did some sit stays and releases to a thrown cookie with the leash dropped and she was great. So YAY!
I wanted to get your take on allowing dogs who get very visually stimulated to watch the action. She’s my first that has shown interest in watching (other than my current 3 year old who as a 10 week old puppy SCREAMED bloody murder the first time he saw a dog go through a tunnel, and it was over a year before I could have him in the building when agility was going on so NO watching for him). So far with Beat I can see that she does find it highly arousing and she could end up over threshold if I allowed it for too long a duration, but so far she can watch quietly and is still responsive to cues and will happily leave watching to work with me when asked (on leash, I did not dare take the leash off and have her figure out how to push the gate open into the ring). I know people who have actually put watching on cue and will use it as a reinforcer. Opinions on this? With my terriers I have always felt that it just wasn’t a healthy place for their brains, but maybe different for herdy types?
Tried some threadle slice work and she could get it pretty easily on my right but not on my left. Wanted to see what you thought about helping her out with that.
