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I guess a nice little segue into my next question is exactly what you just commented above… yay! I get to practice in lots of different environments. I think I’ve identified a really big distraction for her as being things that enter the environment during a working session. Once she is an a location and has sort of taken it all in, she’s pretty focused. Like the barn aisle I worked in the other day (don’t think I posted it here but on my FB page). Pony heads hanging out of stall doors (which honestly I’ve never seen a dog NOT at least look twice at disembodied, floating horse heads the first time they see them) and she’s running under them like they aren’t even there. But if something (human, dog, bird, etc) enters a space unexpectedly she can’t stay focused, hence why I was VERY careful in the entryway of the training building. I understand it’s totally normal for dogs to find sudden environmental changes distracting. But I struggle a little to find a way to “slice” that practically. I tried tonight to have one dog crated, work her a little, release the dog out of the crate to a snuffle mat, then work her some more but I feel like that is a very different scenario as I am breaking off her engagement, bringing the new thing in, then re-engaging her. Natural environments I won’t have any control over the distraction as far as distance or how long we might be sitting there waiting for something. Thoughts on how to “slice” that safely when I don’t have a class environment? Clearly the middle of the town green from a few weeks ago where she wound up running up to a stranger and jumping up to lick her face (who greeted her warmly right back thank goodness!) wasn’t the right answer!
I sort of call the “get out” the “shower curtain” maneuver, but it doesn’t have any sort of official verbal or visual cue, just make a wall out of your legs and arms to force them to turn away, shout the verbal for the obstacle and pray lol.
Here is some of the strike a pose with a jump bump. Two sessions, one in my yard this morning and the other this afternoon in a small entryway at another agility training facility where I was seeing a patient. (Which is why I had to do some taking her by the collar as other people might have come in at any moment.) Once you get to having the toy on the ground, when do you cue them to get it? They don’t have to touch the target any more, but I also don’t think letting them just take the toy without a cue is good rehearsal either. In the first session she was stepping on the jump bump a bit, which I presume is fine at this stage? She didn’t in the second session but there was also less speed.
Another chilly session. I think we finally have the collection cue in place so she is at least driving in to my side and coming around the correct side, maybe not always the tightest, but acceptable I think. It’s hard to decel any earlier.
Then did the next stage of the rocking horse exercise and it did go better with more distance and motion.
And finally the get out (or push as I’m calling it). Not sure I have any sort of cue for this currently with my dogs? But I’ll give it a go with at least teaching the foundation.
https://youtu.be/HAQNIf1LLMo?si=jqAOlppEV_e27Wkr
I think we finally cracked the wrapping exercise. This was our first try at rocking horse after doing some unvideoed work with wrapping and handling to a toy. I realized on that last session that my position needs to be more visible to her as she comes around and also off of her line more. You can see the first rep of this I forget and stand right in the middle of the objects and if I had tried to sequence these I don’t think we would have been able to have a “hallmark” moment until way too late.
I assume at this stage it’s perfectly fine to just swap hands that you carry the toy in so you aren’t trying to send them with the hand you have the toy in? I feel like ideally we get there, but probably too much for a puppy?
Warm and passably dry today. Here is some work on the parallel path game. The jump bump is 4”, taller than I would have liked, but I think it’s fine. I think I was getting my marker out at the right time. Interesting that the few failures she had were right after restarting after reloading? Not certain why
And this is our second session with a tunnel (first was over a month ago). She had some moments of being not sure about things, not sure if it was the distraction of the other dog mooching around, the arousal of the toy, if she was just tired (did this after the parallel path game above), or if it was just the collar grab part she was avoiding. She had gotten good with that, so haven’t been rewarding lately but… adolescence.
Got to work some collection sandwich in a warmish barn aisle tonight after seeing a patient. There’s an agility class going on in the main arena so you can hear dogs barking, and yes there’s a turkey in one of the stalls that you can hear at one point in the video. And I left in her new trick at the end of the video- first time doing it outside of a training session specifically working on that trick 😉
Seems that she can turn left ok, but turning right she’s finding hard. I don’t THINK it’s a lack of connection on my end but wanted to see what you thought.
Had JUST enough space in the living room for this. Too cold to go out today, never mind the crusting of snow on the ground. I have introduced the basic “follow the magic cookie hand” for the lap turn and tandem already, one of the first fitness/coordination exercises I do with puppies, “can you follow a cookie on your nose and turn your body?” So she got that part pretty quickly. And I think with slightly more space to toss a reset cookie she wouldn’t have gone to the prop so often, I think sometimes she turned around and the prop was just RIGHT THERE. A few times she did see the cookie hand and still went for the prop, but more often she just saw the prop first with no time to correct.
Finally had a handling session working on the rear crosses with the prop that felt GOOD this week. (Had one yesterday on that same town green where she worked so well last time, but this time she left working to go jump on a person, so we won’t be able to work off leash in public any more 😔). I guess still more than two “failures” so I should have done more just going with her on the parallel path?
(You can hear my timer going off at the end, but since we stopped for a play break in the middle I went a little past it)Went easy on myself today and did some proprioception work. I felt the Shpile exercise would be relatively easy for us, easy enough I almost didn’t video. I noticed at the beginning though she actually left food to go to her toy. I don’t think she was actually avoiding the shpile, or apprehensive about putting her feet on the things, but just working out managing her arousal in order to do so? Just wanted to see what you thought about it. She certainly improved through the session, so I’m not worried.
I like the reset cookie for handling errors. I will definitely try that! If nothing else it will give me time to process while not causing BIG MAD feelings! I knew it was a long session, but there was that pressure of “we’re several weeks behind” and good weather days are few and far between so I wanted to feel like maybe we at least made a little progress from our one turn and burn session a week or so ago. Then add in it was just a rough day on many fronts and I probably should have just not trained a dog that day!
As for the noises, yes there were some gun shots, but also there was an agility class going on inside the barn so there was also a teeter banging, which I think sounds much louder on the video than it was in real life.
Not the greatest session today. I think I tried to add too many things at once, feeling so far behind! I have done some (unvideoed) sessions of turn and burn and collection sandwich, so tried putting some of that together in the “handling combos” exercise (which never became combos, we didn’t really even get baby level). This is not our home location, but it is where she learned “turn and burn”, and using the same obstacle. This was definitely a lot for her brain, you can see she even left working at the end to go try to see a friend (who was close to 100’ away and with two fences in between us). Adding the left, right and go on verbals was new for her (and the left verbal is a completely new word for me, chose to keep right “tight tight” which is what I’ve used for all tight turns towards me and left is “ski ski”).
I was trying to leave way too early, to try to prepare to do some combos but clearly she isn’t ready for that. But I still got way more failures than I liked, and at the end I tried to get some easy wins with being right up close to the obstacle with the toy right there as well and by then she was just fried and as you saw she left working, so I quit there. So I guess I’d love hints on how to make progress and keep up without over facing? I struggle to keep sessions short enough and the success rate high and still add even 1-2 reps of anything new.No video, but the sit is going well. One session of doing some sits on a narrow plank got her posture fixed (it was on the list to do, just hadn’t gotten there) and it transferred over to her offered sits with this exercise. I did some judging yesterday and she got to play the sit stay game for a toy during lunch (so people eating about 20’ away) and in the ring while breaking down at the end of the day (so people moving equipment around). Distractions don’t seem to be much of an issue for her once she goes into “work” mode. Thank you to her working border collie lines!
Did another prop game session today. Tried to add in some rear crosses, but not sure she’s driving ahead enough for them. I found myself trying to “help” send her forward since she was stopping when I started to cross a few times, which I don’t think is the goal of this exercise.
Well day 2 with the stays went much better. I guess 3 sessions spaced throughout the day weren’t enough for latent learning to set in, she needed overnight. The carpet wasn’t really that slippery, it’s about as non slip as it’s going to get for indoor footing. I think the sliding was yes, the front feet moving, but also some muscle memory; in the first session when I was waiting for her to offer a sit, she just stood there staring at me. So I moved close to the bed on one side of the room, since she knows to get on there and “switch off” and go into a sit or down to settle there, and the sit is generally sloppy with no core muscles firing, so she rocks back and slides into a down. (When I have a dog in rehab that just wants to round their back, my go to is high feeding, so that’s why I was rewarding that way in the previous video.) I captured a few sits that she offered on the bed and once she caught on to that, moved away from the bed, but I was still getting the “melting” switched off sits. But she figured it out overnight and this session went much better. I still caught myself a few times saying the word as I raised the hand to throw so will now need to make sure I do the pause.
I also tried the stealth self control on the cone exercise again and I think it went better? I think it was the rep at 1:10 where it was really obvious when she looked at the line.
Speaking of reward placement, struggling with the sit stay. Honestly I hadn’t taught her a sit yet as I usually like puppies to have some core strength before asking for that. I had thought that she was just about ready to start it, but maybe not? I usually reward initial attempts with nose nice and high to encourage good posture. This was our third attempt today at this and in the first session I had to have her on her bed since that’s the only place she would offer a sit at all. But she really wanted to down. I was trying in the first session or two to reward the sit with a cookie toss or some sort of release, but I was still getting lots of downs. So in this session I decided she needed some reinforcement of the correct position/posture and used her duration/stillness marker “good”, and even still, if I didn’t give the marker as soon as her butt touched down, she was going into a down. I don’t think she’s so very whippety that she can’t sit, to me it just looks like she doesn’t have enough core strength to maintain it. My thinking is put this exercise away and work to improve the posture in the sit so she can hold it more comfortably before revisiting, or just work this exercise with a down? The concept of holding the position should transfer to the sit.
And a little strike a pose session. Couldn’t seem to remember to get my feet turned the right way. The reward in my hand was some pretty boring kibble.
(Oh, the “it’s so terrible to be you” comment is towards my other dog whining ever so quietly and pathetically in a crate!)
