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Thanks, Tracy, these all make sense to me, and some of the specific mechanics that you mentioned were things that I had either missed in the videos/PDFs or things that I just didn’t think about. I’ll definitely check out the mechanics lesson. I definitely could use it!
I am familiar with LAT. I’ve taken the online Control Unleashed Foundations I course with Tricia Lude and our in-person Foundations II class starts tomorrow. Ria has extreme difficulty in disengaging from stimuli. I knew about her struggles with disengaging from potentially worrying stimuli, but I had been looking at her engagement with positive stimuli as a strength. For example, her focus on a ball is crazy. Several dogs can literally be trying to wrestle with her at the same time and if I have a ball in my hand she doesn’t even notice the other dogs, even though they’re play biting her. I hadn’t noticed that this carried over to agility, too, but it makes sense that I need to work on that here. I suppose this inability to disengage with positive stimuli is the same behavior as the inability to disengage with negative stimuli. This week has already been a long week. Ria remains super stressed out and has had over threshold barking/lunging events multiple times per day for this entire week (we’ve seen so many German Shepherds this week and so many garbage trucks). This week we’re working on calm. Perhaps I should also add in disengagement and arousal up/arousal down games.
Minny Pinny. This was probably the best game with the most successes this week! We haven’t tried the remaining games yet because Ria was super stressed from earlier in the day when she came across her nemesis, a German Shepherd Dog getting off the elevator as we were walking passed. It took nearly an hour to get her semi-calm again, and I didn’t want to push things with too much agility in one day.
Sends ‘n Serps. Given that Ria disliked the Manners Minder so much, I didn’t use it for this game. I also kept getting confused as to what I was supposed to be doing and kept taking breaks to go look at the PDF again. I think by the last few reps, I had it down. Getting Ria into position is a bit of a challenge that has occurred with a number of the games. She kind of wants to do her own thing and then after getting rewarded with a ball toss, she doesn’t want to come back to me.
Not exactly homework, but related to the homework. I don’t have a Manners Minder, but I just found out that Wholistic Hound had one that I would use when practicing there. I thought maybe we should try it out especially since it seemed like it would be useful for the Send ‘n Serps. Ria HATED the Manners Minder. Any tips for getting her to enjoy it?
I’m a little late with my Week 2 homework, so here’s a video from that week:
By the end of this video I was rather frustrated. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until I was editing the video that we start off camera and then one of the wings is hidden from view by a support beam. 🤦🏼♂️
Struggles: When verbally cuing “tunnel” Ria was avoiding the tunnel. When not cuing anything, she would happily run through the tunnel. Initially, she had trouble driving forward after the tunnel. After getting that sorted out, she would only drive forward and wouldn’t turn. We never succeeded in wrapping a wing after the tunnel.
Follow up comments/questions:
Let’s go with check and dig for the wraps. Now, what is the usual meaning of those?
Didn’t know about ascending angles, but I’ll do it in the future. Yay for naturally good form! I don’t think this was quite six feet so I’ll try that and position the ball further out. She randomly had the opportunity to do something like this at 10 feet but definitely wasn’t bouncing them.
As for the blank spot, perhaps I deleted the clip of the action instead of the clip of off-screen play. 🤦♂️
Overall, more verbals, less pointing, more movement, better connection. I’ll give it a shot!
As a side note, I’m realizing that (other than Ria’s love for the tunnel) most of the time what she does is what I’ve actually cued versus what I was meaning to or thought that I was cuing. I need to work on my own handling!
Smiley Face
Ria loves tunnels! Some of the same issues with her just wanting to go through tunnels here. At the end since I had a jump nearby, I figured I’d throw one of those in there just for fun.
Wrap Proofing.
OK, this was a little tough for me, because I have no clue what my verbals for wrapping were supposed to be and Ria just LOVES tunnels. I guess I probably used them in the first MaxPup, but I just can’t remember. Any suggestions for verbals? I ended up just trying “left” and “right” but I’m not sure that those are good for this.
Set Point
This one seems to have been our best assignment this week. I locked in the bars at 10 inches, so maybe a 9 in jump height. She seemed to get it right away!
Thanks for the suggestion! Tricia knows all about Ria’s struggles and has given some games for me to play with her. I’m also helping as an apprentice for one of her Control Unleashed classes so I do get to see her work with other dogs and learn about more games. Ria is better with some of those things than she was before, but still lots to do! I’m also doing Absolute Dogs nine week online bootcamp where the first three weeks focus on reactivity. Hopefully something will help!
So – Send her to the tunnel on your outside arm (you are between her and the tunnel) then when she exits. Make the big connection so she is on the inside – and stand still til she makes that decision 🙂 One thing I think will also help is using the opposite arm (held across the body) on then threadles (along with the verbal, that was going really well!). That can help her recognize coming in to the new side and also it can help her turn away to get into the other end of the tunnel.
This makes sense. Thanks!
It was noisy – but she didn’t seem disturbed by it when she was working. That as impressive! Many dogs would be sensitive to it and unable to work, but she was great. Is she worried about it when she isn’t working?
It really seems to depend on the situation and the specific noise. I thought that she wouldn’t be able to handle it as I was approaching Pam’s place to practice, but she did great. However, when there were painters in my apartment building’s hallways, the sound of the paint roller on the wall was enough to set her off inside. 🤷🏼♂️
Poor girl! Is something worrying her, or is it just seeing the big dog is weird for her?
She seems to have many things that worry her. Definitely the GSD is a major stressor for her; she goes off even just smelling that the GSD has been nearby recently. Unfortunately this dog lives in my building so we see it more frequently than I’d like. But things like motorcycles, skateboards, rollerbladers, scooters, loud cars, some quieter cars, some bikes, some dogs, people using walkers, manhole covers (yes, that one is really weird…) all bother her. This morning a package cart was just out on the sidewalk and that was problematic for her. She barks and lunges at all of these things to various degrees, and it is very difficult to get her to disengage. Sometimes the only way I can get her to disengage is to literaly drag her somewhere where she can’t see or hear the stimulus. When inside the apartment, out of the normal noises in the hallway, vacuum cleaners (in the hallway), some of the traffic that goes by if its loud, very barky dogs outside. For these she will run to the door or window closest to the sound and bark. She used to take several hours to come down from these episodes, but she’s getting better at coming down. Still, after barking and lunging, she’s in a higher state of arousal than before, and agility, while I think she enjoys it, still pushes her arousal levels even higher, making her more reactive, so she needs some chill time. Having my own yard to play in and keep her away from distractions for a while would be nice, but as it is, I have to walk her through the building to get outside to a green space.
I’m a little late in posting some Week 9 homework. Is it ok to post it now? This one is some tunnel threadles. In the first few, I think that Ria might be on the wrong side of me but it seems that we get thing straightened out a bit as time goes on. There were also some roofers working, so it’s a bit noisy. Ria has had a few stressful days lately barking and lunging at a German Shepherd and being reactive in general, so no practice on the week 10 homework yet. Hopefully we’ll get to it this weekend.
