[Lyndie Carney]

Week 3 – Countermotion with Prop

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 3 – Decel Combo

Here are our first attempts at the decel combo. I wanted to try a thrown toy at the end, so we could cover more distance with him able to easily find his reward in the grass. Switched toys halfway through to one that makes his world go ’round. I might have messed up a bit because I was letting him have a treat at my knee when we made the turn and then throwing the toy, and I realized as I was wrapping up that you might not have been giving them the treat until the end. Should I be omitting that 2nd treat during the turn?

Thanks,
Lyndie

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 3 – Parallel Lines

Here’s a little parallel lines practice. He has done this previously with walking between jump standards to a thrown cookie or toy or Manners Minder. We’ll try the counter motion pieces with our random object in the next couple of days. For the parallel lines piece, do you want our lines to always be straight at this point, or can/should we do some arcs too?

Thanks,
Lyndie

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 3 – SLS and “Catch”

This is the very first time I’ve worked with him on duration for his sit, and I was REALLY pleasantly surprised by how well he did. I tried to add a little motion, or even just a weight shift. As you’ll see, this pulled him out of his sit before I could reward once, but he did pretty well with that too.

As I mentioned in my other post, we were alternating between this game and the toy tug & retrieve game, and I really liked how he transitioned back and forth. When we went from this game (with large cheese rewards for visibility on the rug) to the toy game, he would take a minute to be sure he’d cleaned up every morsel of cheese, then happily engage in the toy game.

Let me know what you think!

Lyndie

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 3 – Toy Play & Retrieve

In this session, we alternated a few minutes of toy play and retrieve practice like what I included in this video with a minute of SLS-Catch training, then back to toy play and retrieves.

We’ve done a bunch of retrieve play before in a variety of settings, including a city park next to a soccer game in progress, etc., but most of our previous play has been with a food stuffable toy, so that when he returns the toy, we pause to open it and give him a treat, then resume play. This has given us a pretty solid retrieve, perhaps at the expense of his tug, since he things he’s supposed to drop that toy in front of me. Hindsight is 20:20.

This session started with me sitting with one of my toy chains, then standing. Later, I’m standing but using a food stuffable frisbee (without any food), to show him that even that toy can be a tug toy and the game is fun without food. Later (not on video), after our SLS-Catch training, we played again with the toy chain. I was really happy with his toy play and retrieves here, given the changes from what he’s done before. This tugging is still not as fierce as what we had a couple of weeks ago, though.

Thanks,
Lyndie

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 2 – Wrapping

Last wrapping video for a couple of days while we let his learning bake. Will pick up next with a tiny refresher of this and then begin to add the Week 3 modifications.

Started sitting with quieter hands. Transitioned to standing. He was doing really well, so I did push the wing out towards the end. Toy games to start and toy games intermittently during the session. He handled the transitions back and forth pretty well.

Your comments about feeding your dogs before training were interesting. I’ve always heard people recommend training a hungry dog, but I am seeing some franticness over the food with WM. With Phyzz, I have the same issue but it is his toy. If I’m training with his toy in my hand, sometimes he only worries about the toy hand and not the rest of what I’m showing him. But I think the same concept applies with respect to their mental focus. So I appreciate your examples from your own dogs.

Thanks,
Lyndie

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 2 – Toy Races and Tugging

No video here. Just and update and question.

I took WM with me to run some errands this morning, and along the way, stopped at some high school athletic fields where we go to practice on difference surfaces (especially metal bleachers), work with distractions, and toy/retrieve plan.

He engaged in tugging with my new magical holiday scarf (a chain of amazing toys) right away. I kept him on leash but dropped the leash to throw in a few toy races. He beat me every time. Then, we climbed some bleachers and tugged on the bleachers.

Today, I used toy breaks to start our training with food rewards and used toy breaks to break up the session. He did pretty well. Not as ferocious as he was a week or two ago, but definitely engaged. I will keep at this.

Do you want to see video of any of this as we do it, or are my descriptions enough? I know video review takes time so I don’t want to flood you with lots of video that looks the same!

Thanks,
Lyndie

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 2 – Building Cato Board Salience for Backing Up

Here’s a quick bit of work with building the salience of the Cato Board as per your suggestion for the Backing Up game. We’ll do more of this in the next few days with this Board and with the mat I was using previously. I’m guessing that you prefer him standing vs. sitting for this, so I’ll work on improving my treat position to support that better.

[Lyndie Carney]

Thanks. This is really helpful. I spent some time yesterday secretly “constructing” toy chains from an assortment of his previous favorites. I have one of these hidden in all of the places where we play/train and I have one ready to join us on today’s errand run.

I was discussing all of this with Meagan S yesterday, and she pointed out that his sudden swing away from toys could be partly a need for more food due to his recent growth spurt. I’ve been so focused on letting him grow into the weight he arrived with that I might have taken that a bit too far. He got a larger dinner last night, and later, was totally into tugging with me in a way that he hasn’t for about a week.

Not disagreeing with your observations and suggestions. Just thinking that there might be a couple of layers to this and I can attack it from multiple angles.

Thanks again,
Lyndie

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 2 – Wrapping

Since we were back indoors, I allowed the talented laundry hamper to serve as understudy for yesterday’s cylindrical patio table. Then, I switched to the actual jump wing. He seems to really have this game down, and he thinks it is amazing (easy money for the starving giraffe).

This video really shows what I’ve suspect all along. Every time I put him in his pen for a nap, he gets an inch taller. So many tree trunks for legs!

I assume the next step is to do this with the wing with me standing. He didn’t seem to notice the change from me sitting to standing yesterday, so I expect that to be no big deal.

Looking forward to your feedback and to what comes next to make WM work a little harder in this game! 🙂

Lyndie

[Lyndie Carney]

Now for today’s session. We’re back indoors because of weather. If you’re at home right now, you know what I mean. 🙂

Since my sense of yesterday’s session was that the mat on board was still not salient enough, I decided to try the Cato Board. He seemed pretty confused, and I’m noticing that when he’s unsure, he just follows my hand in search of food. Logical little boy. When in doubt, try to get paid.

A few self critiques that I took away from this session. In the beginning, I wasn’t placing the treat back far enough under my legs to take advantage of the role of my body position in this game. Meaning he didn’t have to back up to look at me. Later in the session, when I fixed that, he did much better. Also, early on, I got a little click happy and I was sometimes clicking him for going in for the first treat instead of waiting for the backup, which I understand confuses him about which behavior I’m marking. I think I cleaned this up later in the session as well.

So, this starts with Cato, and I really felt that he was resisting back onto the board. So, I pulled the board and went back to an imitation of his very first session with this game which I recall he did very well. And I think he did very, very well with that today. When I put the board back, I got the angled back up again, and this was even after I’d cleaning up my treat placement and clicker timing.

So, great wizard of puppy shenanigans, what next?

[Lyndie Carney]

Oops….here is the link for yesterday’s backing up game. I’m about to send another link from a couple of minutes we just did, so I recommend that you watch both before responding. In my opinion, today’s session answers some of yesterday’s questions.

Sunday session:

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 2 – Backing

This session used the same mat from yesterday over a piece of 1/4″ plywood. Maybe it still isn’t salient enough. If you agree, I can use the Cato board tomorrow.

My sense was that my reward placement was better but that he was still looking for it from my hand like he saw yesterday. We had some really good reps (last one, especially), but some were kind of disorganized.

Looking forward to your feedback!

THanks,
Lyndie

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 2 – Goat3-Plank

This piece has the two DW planks side by side. He has walked a DW plank on the flat and on a low incline several times before, but maybe not for about 2 weeks. I would say we have definitely built value with treats for walking on the plank, which might be why he was so interested when he saw this setup. This was his first time seeing them side bv side. I was trying to give him a wider plane for his turning practice.

As you’ll see, he definitely used the full width to make his turns, and to my eye, there was no side preference in this setup. I started with the planks side by side, then separated and had him back on a single plank. These planks are thicker than my travel plank, but they are still lower than the travel plank in its elevated option.

Monday update: We were just out on the phield for free play. For just a minute, I encouraged him to walk on one of the dw planks, and he did a full 360-degree turn to the right without stepping off plank at all, and he came very close to doing it to his left.

Thanks,
Lyndie

[Lyndie Carney]

Week 2 – Toy Races

This was an interesting session. Before I had WM with me, I had moved the DW and set up the two incline planks on the flat next to each other for the plank games I planned. But his toy-food pendulum has been swinging hard towards food this week, so I wanted to play toy races before I brought out the yummy treats I had for the plank rewards.

I let him off leash on the phield, and he is mesmerized by the planks. Completely obsessed with the fact that I had changed the picture since he was last out there. So much so, that it was hard at first to engage him at all with the tug toy. I included a bit of this so you can see that he actually leaves me and the toy to go sit on the plank. At that point, I stopped fighting his plank interest and switched gears (see next video). Then, after he got plank work and lots of great high value treats, I took him to the storage building and let him choose from among the toys. No surprise that he chose the one with the real fox tail attached. The 2nd part of this video is a piece of our play with that toy. Given what had happened earlier, I was less focused on “racing” than on just engaging him with the toy however he wanted to play. So this is really kind of a mix of toy races and just tugging, playing, etc.

Looking forward to your two-cents worth about this!

Oh, and by the way, after all of this, I went back out to the phield without dogs and packed up the course I’d had setup for Phyzz for the past week or so. So it will look completely different the next time he is out there as well, in case you have suggestions for something I should prepare to do in that situation.

My current plan is to take him with me to run errands this week, and to work on tugging in new and distracting places.

Lyndie

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