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Hello!
<<She got mad when you said “yay” at 4:35 and didn’t reward her LOL>>
Haha, I didn’t even notice that. Yes, she totally thought she was supposed to come in and get a cookie for that. I’m lucky this dog doesn’t bite, lol!I worked on the Jumping 1 from Package 1 again with Nox. I probably should have submitted Katniss’s runs for feedback instead, but I was so happy with these runs that I just had to share them! It’s possible she memorized the course by this point, but I’m taking the win, lol. I got stuck after the tunnel again before 15 on the first run. Watching the video, I’m pretty sure I could have made it up there for the blind. On the 2nd run, I tried wrapping her the other direction to see how it worked, and she executed it pretty well. I didn’t like the line it gave her to 16 as much, and that didn’t work at ALL with Katniss, but Nox turned pretty tight on 15 and has a good backside, so she made it work even though she landed wide after 16. I would have considered the German turn you suggested, but I totally misread it and thought you said a German on 15, and it was way too close to the fence for that to safely work. Whoops, too late now to try that, haha! But that does make a lot of sense to get me down the line faster.
<<So even at home, you are getting a lot of movement in the stay, which I can see becoming too much movement when she is more excited at a trial.>>
Yes, I get the same behaviors at home as in a trial. So I can’t just blame the trial environment, lol. But, I actually think that might be a good thing because it’s so hard to work on a problem that only shows up in a trial!
<<Something to try is to dismount, step to the side a little and pause, allowing her to settle into her position. Then remind her to stay and move to your lead out position.>>
This was my strategy for a little while, but it didn’t seem to help. She seemed confused and would think I wanted her to follow me when I started moving again. But maybe I can isolate this picture away from agility and use it to make sure I’m stepping away normally and not all weird. Then I can put it in front of a jump as soon as she is successful.
I got a suggestion to use a PVC “box” that is just 3 small pieces of pipe with elbow connectors so it forms 3 sides of a rectangle and to have her sit in it at the startline. The idea is that it’s a visual with clear boundries for her, and it’s easy to fade because you take off the side pieces and just have the front piece in front of her. I suspect you could even graduate to something completely flat like a thin leash and eventually a string if you couldn’t fade it easily. Do you have any thoughts on this strategy?
Hello!
We worked on Package 1, Jumping 1.
Katniss did amazing on the course up to the weaves, and then she forgot that she knew how to weave. 🤣 She yelled at me about it, and after a couple of tries we skipped them and did most of the rest of the course. I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to do the course because I remember how much Nox and I struggled our first year of camp. What a difference a good foundation makes!!
Nox was feeling neglected, so I am submitting her runs for Package 1, Jumping 1, Round 1. She really struggled with the opening with me being so far behind her even though she did great on the other exercises last week leading up to the big course. I think the difference was that jump #2 was super obvious to her in this course. She is very smart and thinks she always knows the correct answer, and she thought going to #1 was just dumb. It’s clearly a more efficient line to just skip that one. 🤣 The first couple of minutes of the video are working on that opening line. Well, that and chasing sheep. 🙄 After I taught my class, I brought her back out again, so she had a couple hours in between the sessions (distinguishable by the darkness, lol). This was a fun course, but Nox has always struggled a lot with distance from me and with layering in particular. I did not attempt to layer the line to the weaves because I wasn’t sure if she was ready for that, and we already worked so much on the opening layer that I didn’t want to frustrate her. The only other part that was hard for us was the 13-15 spot. I couldn’t leave her early enough at 13 to get ahead for the blind. I then got stuck doing a rear cross at 15, and I’m not sure why I didn’t drive ahead to the front side of 15 for the rear, which ended up working great. I think I was trying to figure out how to get her ahead of me when we were meeting at the tunnel exit. Then I somehow did it correctly on accident when I was actually going for the blind to a threadle and was just late, lol. Oh, she did turn the wrong way on 7 the first time, which also happened both times I ran Katniss on it, so I don’t think I was setting that rear cross line correctly (my nemesis, as you know 🤣).
<<I read this and was steeling myself for something FAR worse – tempers flaring, etc. You stayed relatively calm! Maybe you sent the wrong video 🤣😂🤣>>
Haha!! Although I do sometimes get frustrated when things don’t go according to plan, I don’t ever get MAD when I’m training. The exception used to be when Nox would run away and absolutely ignore any attempt to get her to come back. For the most part, I can just roll my eyes at her antics and go off with a handful of cookies to throw at her while yelling her cue to look for food on the ground. Now, if that doesn’t work and it’s been several minutes, well… 🤣 I think the reason I disliked the training session so much was I can see the stress I was causing her, and that makes me feel icky (technical term!). I always want my dogs to be happy and have fun when we’re training, particularly for sports. I don’t think Katniss was super upset, but she was clearly confused and frustrated, and I was annoyed FOR her when I was watching the video, lol.
I think I need to make sure I’m using all the brain camp and Max Pup arousal games both in training and in more exciting environments. I think I took her easy going nature (at least compared to Nox,lol) for granted and got a bit complacent with some of that stuff. I found that playing the pattern games and playing with a toy on top of warm-up to get her body ready to run was wearing her out before we got to the startline, so I backed off on a lot of it, and she seemed to do fine. However, I think that with all of the things you mentioned (dopamine, adolescent hormones and brain development, frustration, etc.), she’s showing me that she really does need some of those games. Now that she’s older, I think she’d be able to handle more of the excitement without tiring too much before the run. It may take a little while to find the sweet spot with the amount of time and reps I need to do.
I will also play the freeze game. We haven’t done that, but I think she would LOVE it! For the brain scramblers, her brain was pretty scrambled listening to your dogs play it. 🤣 We haven’t played that one before (I don’t think it was in any of the Max Pup classes that I have??), but I think that would help her a lot, too. I’m not sure I can do the 3rd level more than once or twice before the neighbors start thinking I’m murdering her. She has BIG FOMO!!!
Hello!
Here is round 2 of the Package 1 handling focus. I just did sequence 6 again since that was pretty much everything all put together. I included our entire training session since it was 5 minutes total. It was hot, so we did a few reps of startline practice at the beginning and then tried the whole sequence 3 times with a quick review of the whiskey on reps “3ish” and “3.5ish.” Enjoy a couple of bloopers, lol. She’s such a funny dog!
Hello Again!
I’m just dropping this here while I have the chance. We did the handling sequences over the course of 2 days (and multiple sessions since I was switching with Nox in between turns). I would have waited for feedback on the first couple before doing the other set, but I saw the forecast for this week and knew we wouldn’t be able to do much, so I did go ahead and do all 6 over the weekend (finally had time to post today!). Nox did freaking amazing on them and nailed them pretty much the first time with the exception of knocking a couple of bars and having to chase a bird once, lol (priorities!). I am submitting Katniss’s videos for this one.
I struggled to figure out how to keep going after she missed a jump when the tunnel was in the way. In hindsight, I guess I could have just thrown the toy the correct direction she was supposed to go anyways. I didn’t want to send her in the tunnel and reward since that’s what she thought I wanted anyway (at least the coming in to me part). I thought that might be confusing and make it harder to get her back out on the next rep. I know I didn’t support it enough a couple of times, but I still thought that might confuse her. I don’t have an explanation for what I was doing on the very first rep of the first sequence, lol. I don’t think there was any thought process to that except old habits die hard.
Hello!
I grabbed a section of the original video that has the startline struggles in it. I try really hard to not get stressed about it when she breaks, but it’s becoming a “thing,” and it is a source of frustration for me. I KNOW that I am making it worse, and this a terrible training session in terms of choices I made. I use the word “choices” loosely because these are not things I would have purposefully chosen to do as part of a training plan, and if I watched one of my students do this, I would stop them, lol. I guess reactions is a better word. This is not a video I would typically think to share with anyone, and I would prefer to delete it and pretend it didn’t happen, but that doesn’t help me get better, lol. (I promise I didn’t beat her, and it’s not THAT bad, haha.)
I worked really hard on making startlines precise and with proofing me doing weird stuff (stopping and restarting, looking at her and taking a breath before releasing, and other things that happen often on a startline), and she did great as a youngster. But as the game of agility starting getting more fun and she got a little older, it has become inconsistent. She had a great startline at home, at our training club, at workshops, and at FEO runs and real runs in trials. I’m not exactly sure what started the change, but there was one trial I did a few months ago where she got up I think 3 out of 4 runs. I can’t remember if those were FEO or for real runs, but I do not feel any differently about her runs whether they are with a toy or if it’s “for a Q.” I know that she is a baby still, and I still see all of her runs as training. In other words, I don’t *think* that my nerves played a part in the startline issue surfacing. That being said, I am starting to anticipate that she’s going to get up more recently, and although I’m not concerned that it will cost us a Q, I’m starting to worry that it’s going to be a life-long battle that I really don’t want to have. In my head, I’m thinking that every time she gets up on a startline, whether at home or in a trial environment, it’s one more repetition practicing what I don’t want.
I started fixing her feet moving because she WILL turn and face me instead of the first obstacle. She doesn’t always stand up, but her butt will rotate so her whole body is facing me. I was also thinking that maybe she needed clarity that no movement is acceptable so that she wasn’t guessing what was allowed and what wasn’t. Is moving a foot across her body ok but moving 2 feet isn’t? Can she move both front feet as long as her butt doesn’t rotate? Can she do any moving if her butt never gets up? I see your point in having to be consistent about it, though. I guess I was trying to do that but not doing it well.
I have worked on the stay in anticipation of getting her dinner and sending her to her crate. I put her on the startline in front of a jump and throw a cookie or toy at her with a “catch” reinforcer cue. I sometimes let her take the obstacle and keep running (I think she’d be annoyed if I just made her do startlines without taking obstacles even with a reward). I have gone with her food bowl for breakfast or dinner and just had her do one startline and then her reward is the whole bowl of food. She seems to do pretty well with these reps. I assume it is an arousal issue, and I know she is more likely to get up when she’s tired or in an exciting environment. But it happens at home on the first rep of something, too, so it doesn’t seem to just be that. I do not remove her from the startline and leave the ring because I think that would be super demotivating to her and I think it’s kind of mean, haha. I asked you about a start button behavior once in the Max Pup 4 chats. It was specifically related to this issue. I was wondering if I needed to take her getting up as a stress behavior and that she wasn’t ready or wanting to run. Or if perhaps I should think about taking her out of the ring or away from the startline in training to indicate to her that she only gets to run if she holds the startline and that I would take breaking as communication that she didn’t want to run. I don’t think that makes sense, though. Your answer didn’t support that either.
In the video, the first time she gets up, I didn’t release her because I could see her looking at the backside. In one of the other reps that she did the backside, I can clearly see from the camera’s angle that she was already taking the backside, but I didn’t see it in the moment. I suspect that she was upset about being “wrong” and that made her more likely to break the stay on subsequent reps. But again, that doesn’t always explain the issue in other situations.
There’s also a clip from a trial we did back in May where she broke. You can’t see her super well in the beginning, but you can obviously see me. This was an FEO run.
As you can probably tell, I’m starting to spiral on this, lol! Send help! 🤣 So without anymore rambling to my agility therapist (that’s you, sorry 🤣), here is the bad training session video.
Hello!
We finally had beautiful weather this weekend, so I was able to get some actual training done!!
I set up the sequence from Package 4, and we tried the first one. I started with a refresher on threadles, but that proved to be hard still. I think I was just overhandling it?? And I wasn’t connected on the tunnel when I tried layering. I threw that in by itself at the end of our session.
What is the last day for posting for this class? And are there other Zoom meetings? I seem to have lost the dates for those, lol.
Hello!
I signed up for the extended class just in time for the snow, lol! It’s all melted now, but we are going on a mini-winter vacation for the rest of the week. We’ll be tackling some of the games we’ve missed when we get back.
In the meantime, this is a video of our FEO JWW run at an AKC trial this past weekend. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone to video us (the only people left were pretty much just people running in novice, lol), so the video quality isn’t the best. I was hoping you’d be able to see us playing the pattern games and volume dial game before the run, but most of it’s off camera. You can see the very end of the up-down game before we go in. She grabbed a cookie off the floor just inside the gate, which is what she’s chewing on; she was not holding cookies in her mouth or gagging on one that I’d given her. I stood in the ring way too long and made her wait. I thought the judge was going to turn around so I could let her know we were doing FEO, but she started setting jump bars, so it took longer than I thought it was going to. Otherwise, I would have at least asked for some easy behaviors or played with her toy with her while we waited. I was super happy with her forward focus to the tunnel; she was looking at it before I ever turned around to see her on the start line. She did turn her head to face me before I released her, but she had already told me she knew what the first obstacle was. I turned a little too early on the tunnel entry, but I was able to turn her and get her back in there pretty easily. However, that put me behind where I thought I’d be for the line after the weaves since I was skipping those and trying to get to the next jump. I was also completely shocked that she hit her weave entry, haha! This made her miss one of the jumps in the pinwheel because I didn’t show her the correct line, but I kept going (improvement on my part, lol!). We only had one other bobble where I didn’t tell her about the rear cross side change early enough. I think the last rear cross was a bit late as well, but she read it better.
Hello!
Now that Christmas is over, I finally had some time to edit my videos that I took last week!
We did the Remote Reinforcement: Next Steps exercises. Unfortunately, I have a minor strain in my calf, so I wasn’t able to really run, but it still worked out ok. 🙂
She has a new game where she wants to tug on her leash while I’m putting it on or after it’s already on. I don’t mind her tugging on it, but I do want it on cue rather than whenever she feels like it. I do not want her to think it’s ok to tug when we’re just trying to walk normally, and as you can see in the video at one point, she grabbed it off the ground and took a victory lap with it. At the end of the first sequence, she ran over and stole her toy from my bag (which she doesn’t normally do, so it was accessible to her). I had her bring me the toy and after putting her leash on, I took her to the reward station and gave her cookies instead of the toy that she stole. I wasn’t quite sure what to do in the moment, but my goal was to make it clear that she doesn’t get to steal the toy and play her own game while at the same time not making it an aversive experience. She seemed to understand since she did not go for the toy again (other than the leash, but that context is a little different I think since we haven’t worked much with that yet.
I need to develop a behavior for her at the end of our runs I think so that she doesn’t steal toys or the leash. She also ran out in front of me when we were going back to the station towards the end of the video. I think she was herding me a bit, which I also want to avoid so I don’t fall flat on my face, lol. What do you think about a hand target back to the leash or simply heeling (but as a fun behavior, not in a militant sort of way)? I thought about having her go to her leash and sit until I get over there, but I can think of a couple of potential issues with that like her not knowing where it is or her grabbing it and self-rewarding. She’s becoming quite the teenager, lol!
We will be at your young dog workshop on Monday!! I’m hoping I can actually run for real, but we might be working on some distance skills if not, lol. We also have a spot in the January one. 🙂
Finally, here is sequences 4 and 5. I executed a lovely rear cross on the first rep. Unfortunately, I wasn’t trying to, and I probably couldn’t do it on purpose. Seriously, what’s wrong with me?? 🤪🤣 I eventually figured out the timing and handling of the wrap. For sequence 5, I could not get the serp from 4-5. I was either in the wrong place or too slow.
Kat had an upset tummy for a few days last week from some new treats I gave her. She’s much better now, but I wasn’t giving her any treats for a few days until she was back to normal. Because of that, we didn’t play any of the pattern games or remote reinforcement games until I could bring food back into training. We will hopefully be able to play some of those this weekend.
Here is another try at sequences 2 and 3. Seq 2 was supposed to be a warm-up, but she kept going past the jumps in the middle, so we did it a couple more times than planned. For Seq 3, it shouldn’t be any surprise that I messed up the rear cross multiple times. 🤣
Hi!!
I’m going to try this again. It seems that I was logged out of this page due to inactivity in the middle of my post, and I didn’t think to copy and refresh before sending, so I lost it all… ugh!!
<< She did well with the pattern games but was starting to get a bit bored 🙂>>
I was also starting to get bored, lol. I forget how much the average novice dog struggles in the weaves and how many of them will wander off to do other things and how many things people try to fix, haha. It was definitely VERY slow. 😂
<<She did leave the stay a bit early at :30 and almost left when you were adding the tunnel, so be sure you are not getting into a rhythm of connect/arm/release because she will start to release on the arm cue 🙂>>
I’ve started to notice this issue creeping up. I try really hard to always hold my criteria for this behavior, but sometimes my brain doesn’t process fast enough. Occasionally she gets up right as I’m about to release, and by the time I realize she was too early, I’m already moving on the next line and giving a cue. That seems like it might be confusing at that point. I’m really working on watching for this.
<<watch how when you point forward ahead of her with your arm, it turns your shoulders to the front of the jump and she comes right in to the front. >>
I just want to point at ALL THE THINGS. 🤣🤣
I have 3 videos to share of sequence work from package 3. We did these over the course of more than a week, but I didn’t have time to post until now. Please take your time with the feedback! I’ll put them in separate posts to hopefully make it easier and so you don’t get kicked out mid-feedback and have to start over like me, lol.
Here’s the first one. This is sequences 2 and 3. She’s not driving to the MM super well on her own; she doesn’t look for it the same way that Nox does. She will always check back in with me, and I have to send her back to it. In other settings where I’m not so far behind her, she’ll happily drive to it. I realized after watching the video that I was being a bit lazy and not driving past the last jump. Is it just my decel that’s turning her? In that case, I guess it’s good that she’s ignoring the MM since might think I’m trying to turn her? Should she go to it anyway once she hears GO! or Get it!?
I did try sequence 3 once, but I didn’t execute the rear cross well, so I ended the session there to try again later.
Hi!
I have a question about decompression. I’m struggling to figure out what Katniss finds decompressing. She is a really chill dog for the most part, so I don’t notice a difference in her behavior when I try to give her decompression activities. Nox REALLY needed some time out in nature on a hike, which I used to do regularly and then got out of the habit of doing. She was starting to show some behaviors I hadn’t seen in a while (like running away after a run in practice) and was just driving me a bit crazy at home. After going for a 3 mile hike, she has been in such a good mood and is able to function better. Katniss doesn’t have any of these sorts of difficulties, so it’s hard to know what she needs and what’s effective. She likes to shred cardboard boxes (the kind sodas come in), but it just seems to a fun thing to do that she’s done since she was a puppy; I’m not sure that it’s serving a purpose for her any more than playing with a random toy would. What should I be looking for to know if I’m meeting her needs? Would you consider scentwork practice to be decompressing? It uses olfaction, of course, but I would imagine it could have the potential to build up frustration or a need for decompression on its own since it’s a game of puzzles.
We ran in another FEO JWW AKC run over the weekend. I think it went really well overall. I could have started the pre-run games a bit later; the class seemed to be moving rather slowly, which I suppose I should have anticipated for novice.
As long as she’s not right next to the line with the next dog running, Katniss has a pretty decent “chill” behavior. I’m thinking I should try seeing what her natural “engage and chill” looks like in this environment; the cookies seemed to hype her up.
In the moment, what order the volume dial game and the pattern games were supposed to be in. I ended up with some sporadic version of both, lol. Part of this reason was also that I started playing the games too early.
Once I got her in the ring, she did find it difficult to sit on the start line. I unfortunately had not yet listened to the recording for Training Nights 2 and 3, or I might have tried a wrap at the first jump.
Sorry the video is so long(again, I was off in my timing of starting the games)! My videographer stopped recording a couple of times but then started right back up again; there’s nothing missing from the spots where it restarts except I was getting more cookies at one point.
We also did the warm-ups and first sequence for the driving ahead games. She picked up on the GO! pretty quickly, but even after she was driving well to the MM, she would still check in before the last jump, even if it was just a sideways glance with her eyes. We haven’t done a lot with placed rewards lately, so I think this was really helpful for her!
Hello!
<<remember to start it with a regular pattern game before turning away. And also, remember that she does not need to come in front of you or anything… she just needs to be patiently engaged.>>
I totally missed both of those details in the directions, lol. Whoops!
<<I think it was probably too many reps and also reward sooner – they have limited patience with us 🙂 so be sure to do it maybe once on a sequence then move on to staying connected.>>
That makes total sense to only “mess up” once when playing this game. I would imagine this isn’t a game you’d want to play super often so as not to build in too much frustration??
<<She did well with remote reinforcement too! Bear in mind that you don’t need to do this with a bowl of treats on the ground.>>
Yes, I won’t be doing that again, haha! I leave the bag of cookies on the ground all the time, but they are harder to access, so I think it will go well as long as I don’t put the cookies in a dog bowl on the ground, lol.
<<Going close to 5 made it harder to send to the tunnel and hustle to get the BC on time.>>
I totally forgot I was supposed to do the blind until the last second. 😂
<< just be sure you practice your verbals before you run so she hears the correct ones 🙂>>
I definitely practiced them, but I think because I walked all of the sequences at one time before I brought her outside with me, I got the verbals mixed up. I should have walked it one more time as a refresher or at least “walked” it in my head and said the verbals out loud. That’s a good reminder for when it takes a while between a walk through and getting to actually run a course.
<<If you stay closer to 3-4 and use parallel line motion to send to 5 and 6, you can be across the landing side of 7 as she exits the tunnel. And then show her a serpentine upper body,>>
I was attempting to handle 7 as a serp, but I was having a hard time getting there. This makes total sense! It’s been a while since I’ve been able to use much distance (consistently), so this is going to be a big adjustment for me to not have to babysit obstacles. Kat seems like she’s going to have pretty good commitment once she gains more confidence and experience.
<< Ideally you would go up closer to 4 to set the RC line>>
This is why I need a lesson on rear crosses, lol!! Even though Kat and I did a few of them on these sequences, I still don’t think I am doing them correctly a lot of the time. And they are just about impossible with Nox! Ugh!
<<One other thing to consider: giving her longer breaks when running sequences.>>
I’m still figuring out her endurance level, and it seems to vary quite a bit from day to day. I will plan to give her more of a break between things even if it means it takes us longer to get through things. In the video below of the tunnel discriminations, I did take some short breaks with her between reps so I could review the next sequence, and she was pretty quick to come back to work for most reps. She did take a victory lap, but she tends to do that at the beginning of training sessions, not just when she’s tired, so it’s hard for me to use that as a sign that I shouldn’t keep going on its own. I admit I probably should have only done half of the sequences since I did a bit of a review on just the tunnel threadle at the beginning, but I was running out of light. Now that it gets dark so early, I typically don’t have time to train when I get home from work, so I have to take advantage of the weekends for the sequence work. Doing a working spot keeps me motivated to get the work done, but I also feel the pressure of “deadlines.” I’m really bad at remembering to set a timer. I need to get better at that or have a set number of reps planned out before I walk out the door.
