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Well, I found myself not trusting Kashia again on the Wingin It: Circle Wrap Ladder 1 drill. Same exact thing I did on the Shifting Connection drill from Winter Camp. I guess I don’t trust Kashia to go around the wing so I subconsciously step back or at the very least lean way back to kind of pull her around with an invisible rope…ugh! I didn’t do it quite as bad near the end but I still did it. That’s going to be a hard one to break. Especially since my older dog commits much less than Kashia does so I pull her off the circle nonstop if I don’t exaggerate way back. I never pulled Kashia off the circle but I also delayed quite a bit by making sure she went all the way around before I started moving forward again.
I did the exercise from both sides, 2 reps each handling technique. I’m pretty convinced Kashia is a lefty. Anytime we go to the right (aka me on her right side) she’s like handicapped and so much less confident and even maybe slower to understand the concept. She seemed the same as she did the last drill I mentioned this on. Very interesting.
<<<It was hard to see your position, but you can make it clearer for her by sitting on the ground or in a chair, so you are nice and close and her head is lower.>>>
So I tried that first because you had suggested it once already. I did not feel like it went well at all. Perhaps I was impatient or doing it wrong but as soon as I stood up, I got so much more motion and offerings (I didn’t try the sitting position once I thought of moving the turf mat under it). I’ll attach the video from last night where I sat in front of it. I noticed again I was delayed on some of my rewards. I’ll take credit for that mess up. I was so focused on two back feet that I didn’t reward her properly for trying. Either way, it felt way better standing. I was standing just out of view of where she was. Was I maybe kneeling too close to the teeter in this video making her feel too much pressure? Sitting just felt like she wanted in my lap to eat the treats and didn’t think about the task at hand. I tried luring her to the teeter to show her what I wanted but that didn’t seem to work well either because she was just following my hand for the cookie and not paying attention/understanding what I wanted. She was trying but it didn’t seem to translate to her little brain very well.
It makes sense dogs would have a stronger side and weaker side, like humans and horses and probably most animals. I’m not sure what her stronger side is. I’ll have to pay attention more. I know the heel side definitely presents more challenges since she’s had so much training on heeling on the side.
Kashia and I played several games today. I decided to be adventurous and try the back up game with the teeter. Teeter Foundations – Back Up. The first attempt didn’t go so well. I videoed it but I didn’t include any of it in this snippet since things got better the second attempt. The second attempt I changed it up and put her turf mat (which I originally used to introduce the game) underneath it and that helped her correlate the two but she still probably wasn’t quite ready for the teeter. I also was a little late on rewarding at times because I got stuck on back feet only when I should have been rewarding anytime she got on it. You could see her thinking super hard about it. She just didn’t like the idea of backing up to put those back feet on it. I think she did an actual back up on only one rep and after immediately putting her foot on the board, she snatched it off like it was hot lava. It was funny. It’s weird to see her so apprehensive about it. Once again, my older dog picked up this game super quickly, in far fewer sessions than Kashia. I make Kashia watch so maybe she’ll learn by visual. lol Anyway, I was proud of her efforts but I acknowledge I probably asked too much of her when she wasn’t fully solidified in the skill on a training plank.
Wingin’ It: Tunnel to a Wing. This game seemed relatively easy and straightforward. I’m not sure I had the best handler positioning watching back but Kashia read it all right anyway. She gives me a lot of grace sometimes! lol My older dog does especially.
Wingin’ It: Countermotion. We played this game again for a second attempt. It went much smoother this time around! Kashia seemed to love it too. She’d start out slow but then picked up good speed and maintained that speed the entire time. I was impressed. She read the counter motion even when I was out of alignment with the jump. Again, she’s giving me grace. Lol I think it’s a fun one for her despite how hard it started out. lol I kind of did random patterns just to see if I could keep her engaged. So we went a little off course from your demo but same exercise.
Motion Override. I included a video just because I think she’s made improvements. I still have to say sit twice but it’s better than the first video. I’m excited to master this at a trot and show you by the end of class! That’s our goal! We work on it a little bit almost every day because it’s one of those that’s easy to do so and she likes it so far.
<<< I think it was just a new concept and she was like WHOA THIS IS HARD. Her brain had to process the “chase the momma” versus the “find the jumps” which is really hard for any dog bred to work. So, you can revisit it and see if latent learning helped!>>>
So we’d already done this exercise once but from the other direction. Are dogs like horses in that switching the direction can seem like a completely new exercise to them? I figured she’d catch on super quickly since we’d already done it once. I did not anticipate the bloopers we had when I set it up as the same course but approached it from the opposite side.
<<<she trains just like my whippet. He did the same thing the first session of me getting way ahead: went nice and fast and took zero jumps LOL!!! >>>
Ha ha ha well I’m glad I’m not the only one with those annoying moments! These dogs keep us on our toes, that’s for sure!
<<<so you can keep throwing the reward to the landing side of the RC or FC wrap jump to affirm that yes, moving ahead of you is a good thing!>>>
I always forget to do this because I get so focused on finishing the cross. So for a RC to her left, I should throw the treat/toy to the landing spot which would be the left side by the jump standard? Will she finish the RC if I do that or will it just be telling her that she was a good girl to jump ahead and bend left as if she was turning around the left standard to come back to me? It seems like I should reward her if she makes the correct turn towards the left but I understand you want me to reward her before that so she knows going ahead of me is okay. I just want to make sure I understand it.
We did the backing up game again today. It’s her 4th session. Wowzer. She is FINALLY getting it! I’m so spoiled by Kashia because she’s so smart that she normally picks up games/exercises/tricks/etc super quickly. Like much quicker than some other dogs I’ve seen or even my own I’ve worked with. She’s wicked smart. So for her to take so long to figure out the backing game was so hard for me to mentally process. I’m just so used to things being quick for her that I could not understand why this one was so challenging or what I was doing to not make it clear to her. Anyway, she did so well today! I did not take a video since it’s not technically part of the class. Once she did well on the turf mat, I moved to our little travel training plank my husband made me for this class. It’s about 3 inches or so off the ground and like 3 feet wide. Even with the step, she figured it out so quickly! She’d jump on the plank and then walk her front feet off. She never offered actually backing onto it……Now that I say that out loud to you I’m realizing she never actually “backed up”, is that okay? I mean she understood she needed to get her two back feet on it only but she didn’t really back onto it except maybe a few reps. Was that wrong? If so, I’m going to be so deflated. LOL I was so excited at how fast she figured out the plank but it didn’t even dawn on me that wasn’t backing up. So I guess I need to know is the concept backing up or is the concept just knowing how to put the two back feet on something?
Either way, I might try the teeter tomorrow to see if she can figure out how to put her back feet on that.
We are still struggling a bit with the motion override game. She enjoys it but she is still having a hard time sitting on the first command and sitting when I do more than a slow walk or walk in place. I was hoping she’d be to a speed walk by now but she’s not so I haven’t sent a second attempt video yet for that exercise.
Thanks for all the help! Happy Monday!
Concept Transfers Attempt 2. This started out interesting. If you can’t notice, I switched sides this time so I was working on Kashia’s right rather than her left like the first time. The first several reps I tried to run ahead of Kashia on the GO lines like you said and she completely bypassed the jumps. For a few reps she’d skip the first jump but do the second one or the other way around. I didn’t include all the bloopers because I was struggling to keep it close to 2 mins but I did include a few so you could see. What was I doing wrong to cause her to bypass the jumps? She did this in Winter Camp too on the straight lines. I want to say it was the same right side but I’d have to verify that by watching my old videos. She figured it out eventually but it was annoying it even happened.
I included some bloopers where I again pulled her off the jump during deceleration. We tried the rear crosses this time and they actually worked out better than I expected. Not super smooth on either of us but she figured out what I wanted so that worked. We did have a blooper with this which I also included. Her speed was great throughout most of it. Watching my full video back, I didn’t realize I had two cats playing jungle gym around us the entire time. Even though I cut a ton of reps out, I think the cats will still appear a couple times. There were a few snippets where they were in the tunnel when Kashia came through or they were at the jump standard when Kashia jumped. It’s like they were waiting to pounce on her but chickened out last second! Ha ha Sorry about that. They are always extremely interested in agility practice!
Backing Up. This is the third time we’ve practiced and she FINALLY started offering some behaviors. It wasn’t great or strong at times but it was there so I considered it a victory. Did we do it right? During the time when she sat, I cut the video off because another dog came into frame but I basically had to reset from that position. So I just made her walk around a tiny circle and then come back to the mat.
When we have those “staring contests”, what is the correct thing to do?
Also, when I try this on the teeter, what kind of indicator will tell Kashia to put her back feet on it vs going up it like she’s used to? Anytime I go near the teeter out now she excepts cream cheese! That one rep high value drill was a genius idea except now she expects that very animatedly and I’m not sure how I’ll translate that to the backing up drill.
<<<Her brain was working hard, so she probably got mentally tired by the end! I swear that on a couple of reps that she looked at you as if she was saying “this is NUTS” hahahahaha>>>
This made me laugh so hard. I’m sure you are right. She probably thought I was crazy doing those. Heck, I thought I was crazy. That was by far the hardest exercise to understand at first. Once I got it, it wasn’t so bad but my goodness I struggled to formulate it in my brain for a solid 15 mins.
Backing Up. I watched your video again and attempted to do just as you did. When I tried to drop a treat behind me and have her go underneath me and then back out, she just did a really tight spin. I never really got her to back out from under my legs. This is probably one of the most frustrating drills I’ve ever done with my dogs. Not frustrated at them, just that I wasn’t getting the results and I didn’t know why or how to fix it. Neither one of them really offered backing much. If I said “back” or leaned into them a half step or so, they’d back onto the mat. But if I should stood there, I didn’t really get the backing offered to me at all. Maybe every several reps with my older dog but not with Kashia. If I stepped into her slightly she’d do it no problem though. I don’t really understand that since the concept is similar to the wobble board. I know backing is harder for dogs but the whole “do this behavior and get a treat, repeat” concept was easier for her on the wobble board. I don’t understand why it’s not translating to the backing up mat. She doesn’t even offer to go on it, front or back feet, unless I give that slight pressure leaning into her and then she’ll back two feet on it.
Teeter Foundations 2. I added some soda cans and a plastic container underneath. She did well with it. My cows came in wanting more treats again. LOL
Wingin’ It Countermotion. The first attempt of this exercise was a disaster. I didn’t even include it in the video. Despite walking it with an invisible dog, I still couldn’t figure it out on my first attempt with Kashia. She had no idea how to send behind me and I couldn’t figure out the body positioning at all. That’s probably the most complicated exercise I’ve tried in a while. I was going to give up but decided I’d see how my older dog could do it. She caught on super quickly which actually made me figure it out as well. I started to catch on and together we got the flow figured out. Now I know to practice with my older dog first so I can figure it out before asking Kashia to do something I can’t even do yet. lol Kashia and I were much better the second attempt once we kind of had an idea of what we were doing. I don’t think I went all the way to step 6. I didn’t want to risk more confusion to end the night so I figured I’d build up to that step. Plus Kashia was losing steam quickly as you’ll see in her gait. I didn’t include the racetracks to save video time but we did them.
<<<<And for the GO lines, you can totally get way ahead of her and see if she can still find the line of jumps.>>>>
So I should actually be running ahead of her and hoping she’ll follow by taking the jumps when I just want her to GO ahead? For some reason I thought I should be behind her sending her ahead of me on the GO line so that’s why I wasn’t moving much. Maybe I was getting too different exercises confused with one another.
<<<Your line of motion, connection, arms, and verbals were SUPER clear so she got the backsides.>>>
Thanks! I’ve been practicing backsides a lot since learning it. It’s fun to do and I like seeing my dogs understand it so well now. It really breaks up the monotony of taking the front side of jumps all the time. Plus I’m just really trying to cement it in my brain by practicing a ton. I’ve found that I can do sequences well but when I move onto a big course, I forget half the handling and just focus on getting the course done clean without applying any of the fancy handling tricks I learned from practicing sequences. This leads to sloppier handling than I’d like so I’m trying to make these handling tricks second nature so I don’t have to specifically think about each one while running a course.
<<<you can start the verbals and decel sooner, when she is halfway between the jumps. >>>>
I’m still trying to figure out this balance. I tried to exaggerate a decel between the jumps since it doesn’t seem like I do it very naturally and I pulled her off of the second jump. So I haven’t really figured out that sweet spot yet. I didn’t include that rep in the video but it was there.
<<<It is not a turn away with arms or anything like we did in the connection class>>>>
Oh. So this isn’t really a “switch” directions cue? That’s what I assumed it was but I guess the way you described it makes a little more sense now. How do you teach the dog which way to turn so they don’t spin after landing? I hate those spins. They seem to happen a lot in rear crosses. I was teaching my dogs left and right but I’m so bad at left and right that I figured I need to take the directionals out. I just confuse myself and confuse them because I can’t think and say it fast enough in the moment. I’d say they still know directionals for the most part but I just think it’s a bad idea for my brain.
Teeter Foundations. Kashia picked this up quickly. We’ve done a wobble board at training class before so I knew that uneven surface wouldn’t be a problem for her. I just didn’t know if she’d offer the behavior without a command. I had to give her some body motion a few times but otherwise she picked it up pretty well. It wasn’t the best makeshift wobble board but it worked.
The backing-up exercise did not go as smoothly. I couldn’t get her to offer the behavior. She’d only do it if I moved around and/or walked into her space. If I just stood there, we had a standstill contest. After several minutes of just standing there, not offering any behaviors, I stopped trying. The first several minutes she did well if I moved my body to assist her. After that, she either didn’t care, didn’t understand, or didn’t want to. In her defense, it was late at night after dinner that we were practicing. So perhaps she was just tired and her brain was off. I’ll try again tomorrow when she’s fresher. Also the “mat” or “board” I used for this was a thin dog bed. So she was being asked to move from a laminate surface to a dog bed surface. It was not a big dog bed that required her to pick up her back feet a lot. It was more of a crate mat type dog bed.
Next Level Look Ahead and Drive Ahead. I definitely was late to throw the toy a couple of times. I feel like I have quite a bit less motion than you. I’m not sure if it’s my set up is smaller or my dog is slower or if I’m just wrong. Either way, she started to look ahead so I was pleased.
Concept Transfer Straight Lines, Four Ways. I’m not entirely sure I did this entire exercise all correct but hopefully I got the concept at the very least. Kashia doesn’t have solid turn aways yet so I didn’t do those with her. I think my spacing was off because I once again didn’t have near the motion you do. I have a bigger arena than this one so I can spread them out if I’m supposed to do that.
Tomorrow I won’t jump her to give her body and brain a day off from jumping. I’m still trying to figure out what I can use to replicate a wobble board so hopefully I’ll start that one tomorrow and keep practicing the motion override game. She loves that one and is already better than yesterday.
I have never taught either of my dogs the skill of putting their back feet on something or offering that behavior. They know how to back up on command but that’s it. I’ll see if I can work on this based on your demo video. Seems easy enough.
Here is our second attempt at Next Level Pup Looking Ahead and first attempt at Contacts Foundation Motion Override. I’m not entirely sure I did Motion Override correctly because I forgot to break her before rewarding her. She actually knows how to do this but in an entirely different way. I taught her when I face her and she’s coming to me, there’s a command for stopping in motion and sitting or laying down immediately. Obviously much different than your exercise but slightly similar concept. Either way, it didn’t translate because she still looked just like your pup. I was fine with it. She seemed to really enjoy the game and I could tell she wanted to learn she just was unsure. I chopped up 3 different segments of the 4 minutes so you’ll basically see the beginning, middle, and end over 4 mins time.
On the Next Level sequence, I only measured the beginning jump at approximately 15-16 feet from the tunnel. The other two times I moved it were just guesstimates. I didn’t keep track of exactly how many feet. The camera is also at a bad angle because it’s hard to see how far I am from the jump. I tried to walk a straight line from the middle of the tunnel without creating too much lateral distance that would cause her to question the jump. We also worked on straight line lateral distance at the arena yesterday so that probably helped with this exercise. I forgot to bring her lotus ball out to the barn so I just threw treats instead. She seemed mostly good with that.
For the teeter game this week, I understand the wobble board exercise but I don’t really understand how I’m supposed to get Kashia to offer her hind legs onto the teeter? I feel like we will both just sit there super confused. I haven’t done the wobble board exercise yet but I watched the video and I’ve done that exercise prior to this class so I’m familiar. I’m just not familiar with how it’ll translate to the teeter. Your dog makes it look so obvious that you want her hind legs on the board but I don’t know if I’ll get that? I guess we need to see but I’m doubting my dog already.
I understand. I’ll give Kashia a few days off. Please don’t think I actually expect Kashia to be like my older dog. I definitely understand they are far different in maturity and skill levels. I was comparing them only to say I was surprised at how well Kashia knows the lazy game but that my older dog does not. And then quite the opposite in the next level sequence. I’ve been working on distance, layering, and going ahead a ton with my older dog though so I’d expect nothing less of her. I was more frustrated at not understanding how to get the result we wanted without throwing the toy immediately. I couldn’t really tell when she was actually looking at the jump so I just threw the toy as a fail safe, I guess. Anyway, I’ll give her some time to think about it. We did mostly contacts and tunnels today and she loved that. I’ll keep the jumps put away until mid week.
Are other classmates able to finish all the games for each week in the same week they are posted? That’s the only reason I was jumping her so much. I was trying to stay caught up with all the games but it’s honestly quite hard to do. It’s a good problem to have meaning there’s tons of helpful content but it’s also harder to stay on track. I feel like I’m falling behind if I don’t try out each game each week. And since I work full time, there’s only weekends where I could even try to get more than one training session in a day but I don’t usually get that.
<<< I have chilled out a lot in my old age here, thanks to the whippet LOL!!!!>>>
You are NOT old! I’m glad you’ve relaxed thanks to your experience level but definitely not old! The lady I learned from is 85 years old and still runs 3 Border Collies. The other 3 ladies in the group of us 5 are 65-72 years old…I’m more than half their ages cut in half. And I’m pretty sure you aren’t those ages either based on your videos. Or you just age extremely well!! lol I have noticed a large majority of agility folks are older ladies though. So interesting considering the running involved in the sport.
Anyway, thanks for the help. I’ll try to be more gracious with Kashia. I wasn’t upset at her. More so the process and myself. 🙂
Rather than doing the bonus sends again, I decided to try NextLevel Pup 1: Looking Ahead. It did not go well at all. I just can’t figure out how to have the same motion as you do in your videos when I have a slow slug speed dog. You’ll see in the beginning I was just walking. I just don’t know how to increase my motion without getting too far ahead of Kashia because she’s so painfully slow to start. Also, I don’t feel like she ever really looked at the jump until I threw the reward. I was frustrated trying to figure out that timing since Kashia still needs so much babysitting. I could not figure out when she was looking at it and when she was looking at me so to prevent the looking at me, I tried to just automatically throw the toy over the jump without knowing if she was actually looking that way. There were two times or so that I was too late in throwing it and she’d already started coming into me which made her bypass the jump to get the reward. That was when the jumps were the farthest out but even still, it didn’t feel like she ever really looked at the jump. Compared to my older dog who did it without ever looking at me until she landed.
I was so frustrated and annoying at the outcome of this drill that I decided to do the lazy game again to clear our minds of the last drill. It just didn’t feel good to me and I didn’t like Kashia’s performance. She aced the lazy game most of the way through. She still had some trouble taking the tunnel without any verbals but she got it several times so I was happy with her. To me, these two games are similar in the skills they are building. It feels like independence and lateral distance. So what’s weird to me is how well Kashia does the lazy game but didn’t do the next level pup game. And my older dog was the opposite. She absolutely aced the next level game but is still not strong at the lazy game. I’m developing some great distance with my older dog but apparently with that distance doesn’t come her independence of finding the jumps. It’s just confusing how opposite they are on each of the games and how similar the concepts of the games are.
Kashia and I did the bonus concept transfers tonight. Her energy level and/or enthusiasm was pretty depleted by the end despite not doing that many reps. I’m not sure if it was mental exhaustion or physical or what. Either way, nothing new for her but figured I’d point it out!
I think she did fairly well at these drills. The first video is the warm ups and the second video is the full course. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to send my dog without putting my arm up and pointing. It’s my natural habit apparently! I swear to goodness I try every single time and it just doesn’t happen. As soon as I slow or stop motion, my dogs question what I’m doing and what they should be doing. I also just can’t seem to grasp the mechanics! I understand it closes my shoulder off to the dogs but I can’t seem to find the sweet spot of using your arm as guidance and not as a barrier.
We had several bloopers. A couple I think I understand why they happened. There’s a couple I’m not sure. I will wait to see what you say.
<<<I moved to Virginia specifically for the weather LOL!!!!>>>
Ha ha I totally understand! I moved to Nashville for nicer weather (and college). It was amazing. Unfortunately, I moved back to Idaho when I went through some tragic deaths….still working on convincing my husband to move back to Nashville though!! It’s been 12 years so you can see how well that is working! HA! They get like 1 month of winter compared to like 9 months of winter where I live. UGH! If I didn’t have covered arenas I’d be in a world of hurt for practicing! Or I’d be forced to build a giant shop to practice in!
<<<And it takes adolescent dogs 3 times the length of time to bounce back to baseline (resilience) than an adult dog or even a puppy. >>>
Wow! That is really interesting! I had no idea! I mean it makes sense and I can think back to times of behavior that track with what you said. I just never thought of it that way. Although I have a friend who has an agility dog (much like Elektra except she’s Border Jack) with wild stress/arousal issues. She’s had to do so much more learning how to manage that. She said it can take days to get her back to normal. She has done all sorts of things and met with all sorts of doctors and behavioralists to help with that. I can’t imagine! Thankfully Kashia was fine once we got back in the house.
<<<I take them on a sniffy walk>>>
Makes sense. I’ll see what ideas I can come up with if that happens again. When it’s nearly 7pm, dark, raining, and cold, the last thing I want to do is spend more time outside “decompressing” my dog. Lol On workdays I practice agility at night after all my ranch chores are done and before we eat dinner. It’s a fine line of being tired and hungry but also motivated to practice and train together. Lol But I’m all about trying to make my girls better so I’ll see what I can come up with! Maybe kicking the soccer ball for her for 10 minutes would have helped bring her back to equilibrium.
<<One thing we do to help get the verbals really easy for us humans is to run the sequence without the dogs, saying the verbals.>>>
I actually do this! Maybe I need to do more repetitions because I still forget in the moment of training. Lol Left and right are just really hard for my brain!
<<<So you can run hard until she is maybe halfway between the pinwheel jump and the wrap jump, then slow down a bit (as you are saying the wrap verbal). >>>
There’s a fine line with this though, right? Because I’ve decelerated too much or maybe too soon and pulled my dog off the jump. I’ll work on this. To be honest, it’s never something I’ve consciously worked on, so I’ll be more intentional about it with these exercises!
<<<The last 2 runs here were front crosses – it is always good to try the FCs but in this sequence, the BCs seemed so much better!>>>
Was I not supposed to do front crosses? I thought you had some in your videos so that’s why I tried only those two reps at the end. They felt very funky and definitely not something I’d do in a course if it had a sequence like that. The blinds were way smoother.
My goodness! Seeing yours and other classmates videos make me wonder why in the heck I live where I do! No sunshine or green grass or sweatshirt weather where I live! I’m jealous of y’all!
Tonight’s session was a little frustrating for me. Only because Kashia got startled when a horse came in the barn (🤷🏼♀️) and from there on I completely lost her drive and excitement. The first lesson she was so happy and animated. She was doing wonderfully! After she got startled, she just lost all motivation. It doesn’t look as bad in the videos as it felt in the moment. I was so bummed too because Kashia was so engaged prior to that moment.
The first video is before she got startled. She did great! After watching it back, I should have used my verbals sooner. I felt that in the moment too but honestly, left and right directionals are so tough for me in split second moments that I get all screwed up when I try to remember which is which (my husband constantly makes fun of me but it’s legit something my brain can’t compute automatically). I think I’m better off just telling Kashia “tight tight” and not worrying about the directional. Even still, I think I could have warned her about “tight tight” sooner than I did. Otherwise, I thought she read it pretty well.
The second video is where I lost her. She got startled when I was working my other dog but for some reason never snapped out of that moment when it was her turn. I probably should have stopped training when I could see her interest level dropped dramatically but at that point I’d only done one lesson and it was 4 reps. I really wanted to get more in before being done. She’s still “cantering” if you will, but it’s much slower and much more reluctant-like. It looks better in the video than it felt, as I mentioned. I got my crosses screwed up a few times. I kept wanting to do like a double cross or something funky. I’m not used to turning to the outside with her. Assuming that was right? I’ll have to watch your videos again. I thought I did it the same as you but sometimes I’ll watch your demo right before and still space on the mechanics once I try it myself. There were plenty of times I forgot to give her the “tight tight” verbal. My brain and mouth couldn’t function simultaneously tonight. She read it right despite my lack of information. She only back jumped one rep which I left out only because I was trying to limit it to two minutes as best as I could and I knew exactly what I did to cause that.
Anyway, let me know what you think! My older dog loved these drills but it definitely tired her brain out quickly. One of my cats did too. He snuck in the tunnel a few times in between the dog’s reps… lol
<<<You can send to jump 2 and when you see her moving past you, stay connected and start moving to jump 3.>>>>
I’m not sure why I’m confused. So once I send her to jump 2 and she starts to go over it, I should be moving (walking) towards jump 3? Do I use any verbals or hand signals? I’m sure I’m over complicating this. I just couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do because the send was somewhat motionless and lazy game in general is very motionless so when it came to jump 3, my body didn’t know what to do. It seemed like you just said go and your dog knew to continue driving forward with you behind him which is kind of another send, I guess. That’s from video recollection anyway, I haven’t re-watched it this morning. I think I was trying to get jump 3 without any verbals, I guess, but I also was late on motioning towards jump 3 with my body, and maybe I was worried about being too far ahead of the dog? Or doing another send which wasn’t in the video? I don’t know. I’m rambling at this point. Maybe it’s not worth all this complication if you think she is ready to move to the next games. lol
<<< but the hand will be low (so she can see the connection) and try not to point ahead of her (that breaks connection too :))>>>
UGH!!!! This is like my achilles heel! I do it all the time even when I think about it and try so hard not to! I just like to point where to go! lol
<<< tunnel value by throwing rewards at the exit of the tunnel when she goes through it. She needed you to really be connected and move towards the tunnel a lot, so it would be great if she would go do it by herself the moment you said “tunnel” >>>
I was wondering about this. Tunnels still don’t hold a lot of value to her. Sometimes she loves them and sometimes she has to really think about whether she wants to go in. I will definitely be adding the treats so we can get more value! Thank you for the suggestion!
Good feedback! Super weird to want lots of connection but to play a game where we don’t necessarily want lots of connection. I understand the concepts. It just seems counter-intuitive in ways!
