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Hi!
I had started working on the standard course by breaking down the layering elements into pieces. We got through the first section pretty well and I was going to tackle the send to the weaves next. Unfortunately, Nox came down with kennel cough a few days ago, so we can’t do any more work until she’s better. It seems to be a mild case so I’m hopeful she will bounce back quickly. She wants to run and play, but she starts coughing, so I really need her to get better fast, lol.
>>It is 1000% fine to get it on the first try, give yourself a high five, and NOT repeat it.
Does this idea apply to just longer sequences or also to skills (e.g. training a wrap or a backside)?
Thanks for clearing that up about how/where to put the Lotus Ball and how to fade it. Super helpful info!
I tried to use more motion in the subsequent reps (once I remembered after the first couple, lol). It definitely seemed to help.
Here is our video!
I know these sequences are for building the skill of layering, and I wouldn’t exactly call Nox proficient with that yet. Do you think I can go ahead and start working on the big courses? (I had already set it last week when I set the RYG sequence.) I’m thinking it might be a good time to use my MM and Lotus Ball in some select spots if we run into trouble. I can keep working on the RYG challenge if you think that would be a better use of time for us.
>>Practice Makes Plasticity (Not Perfect)
I like that phrasing!
>>Yes, the brain is a crazy creature!!!
To which brain are you referring?? I presume not the cat-sized one in your gut? 🤣 That’s so weird…
>>I don’t think it is more thoughtful… I think the next rep is more cautious, which is different. She added strides and was more careful and slower.
Yeah… I definitely don’t want slow and cautious. But the alternative of fast and scary isn’t appealing either. Ugh!
>>So if there is a jumping effort that goes totally awry, you don’t need to acknowledge it by stopping or marking. If it needs to be fixed for a safety reason, you can do a couple more jumps with more connection, reward, then go back and as you reset the jump – think about adjusting the handling to be able to give more motion and connection support
I will do my best to add this to the list of things to ignore and just keep running!! 🙂
Hi!!
I was hoping to get through all of part 1 for the Raise Your Game Challenge 2 before submitting a video, but at the rate of these storms, we might never finish it, lol. We also ran into some challenges, so I figured I should go ahead and get some feedback before continuing on anyway.
Most of the distance work we’ve done was the little bit that we did in CAMP last year. We’ve been focused on a million other skills, so it’s kind of been put on the back burner. This includes distance needed for layering. Not surprisingly, Nox does not love it when I don’t show her the thing, and she does not seek out obstacles on her own, so this is HARD for her.
We got through the sequence where you turn the dog away from you at 5. Somehow we got it on the first try once we put it all together, but then we struggled repeating it. I watched the video with the Manners Minder you linked in your last response, but my batteries were dead, so I couldn’t try that method (I have replaced them now!). I did use her Lotus Ball, though. I had it more in the middle of her path instead of tucked into the wing. I didn’t think she’d find it there on her own since it doesn’t make noise to draw her attention, which I didn’t think would help me keep her on her line. I also think it would create frustration and barking until I pointed it out to her. I do see the purpose of not having it super visible, and perhaps this is a skill that is missing from our training that I can work on. I only had the toy there for 2 reps before going back to a thrown reward. It seemed to help her understand to stay out on the line.
Is the method I used ok to keep using, or do I need to make changes? I also thought about moving the barrier closer, but since the Lotus ball, worked, I didn’t do that yet. Which is your preference for helping the dog?
Here is our video:
This is the video from the Live Class from Package 1. I included almost the whole training session with only cutting out a couple of reps on reminding her what a threadle looked like on the balance rep of sequence 2. I was super happy with her work here!
I did stop a couple of times for crazy bar knocking. We are working on jump skills still, but one of the things that seems to be making her more thoughtful about jumping is stopping when she plows into it; there is no punishment, just communication that we are stopping and sometimes asking her to sit or down so she doesn’t turn into a barking tornado. I don’t typically stop for just a regular knocked bar (probably handling mistakes), only the ones that look dangerous. On the next attempt, I find that she does a much better job with keeping bars up and not taking off so early. I also often have to reset the bar for safety since it may be several feet away from the jump when she does this early take off thing.
I am not an expert on this at all, so if you think it is completely detrimental to what we’re working on to reduce frustration, I will consider changing my method, but as I said, I’m seeing improvement.
I’m hoping to work on the Raise Your Game Challenges this weekend for package 2, so I need the weather to cooperate! They are calling for possible rain and storms for as many days as you can see on the forecast! Don’t they know I have important CAMP things to do??
As always, so much wisdom here, lol!
>> (Also, when a terrier does that same exact behavior, no one says: oh look, herding! LOL!)
That is a great point…
>>I heard a really good webinar today from Dr. Tim Lewis about the biology of reactivity
If that was the one put on by Behavior Vets, I was thinking of going to that, but then I forgot about it, lol. I wonder if I can still get the recording… I’ll have to look into it.
>>You will probably see better value develop for tunnels if the rewards appear right a the exit.
I did a workshop with Maddie on Wednesday at LUDS, and one of the things we did when I was having commitment issues on some jumps, specifically wraps where I was decel’ing, was put her Lotus Ball near the wing of the jump where she was landing. It made a BIG difference with just a couple of reps. I will be adding this in where we have issues in sequences but also just to build value for obstacles as you have mentioned here.
>>Try to live by the 2 failure rule, even in handling and even if you are training on different days: if she fails twice, even if it is not in a row – change something to get success and then move on.
How have I misinterpreted this rule so badly for the last 2 years, lol?? I thought it was within the same training session and without changing anything. I was changing things and doing it on different days, and there were other things I was able to reward her for, so I was keeping the overall reinforcement ratio high. Apparently that’s not what you meant! I will consider this in our future sessions.
>>You don’t need to run it clean
I need to write this down and read it before every training session! I have been a perfectionist since I was a kid. I would do my homework and spend hours on it trying to get it just right. If I didn’t know how to do a math problem, I would keep working at it until I could figure it out, or I would feel like a failure despite the other 25 problems I had done correctly. This was pressure that I put on myself (not from my parents), and although perseverance is a good trait to have, it can be a problem, too. In one of the sequences from the live class, we did a really good job except for a knocked bar. I actually considered running it again so it could be “perfect” for my video until I thought about it for a second and realized how ridiculous that was. Thank you for pointing this out to me. It’s such a simple thing, but brains are complicated, so it’s really not always simple, lol.
>>I am seeing a pattern: if you decel AND put your arm up, she pulls off. So it can be one or the other, but not both
That’s interesting! I will have to try to pay attention to that.
>>then you were the whippet and just took off running
I just need to channel my inner whippet! Maybe I can get a friend to throw a bunny on the field for me to chase any time Nox messes up. 🤣
Hi! No worries on the delay! I saw your post on Facebook about traveling, so I assumed it was related to that. 🙂 It sounds like it was a nice trip!!
Thanks for all of the ideas about how to stay in motion! It’s so very hard for me to keep going because I want to fix it (old habits die hard!). I am at least more aware of it and realize that I should have kept going (a moment too late, lol) and have some more strategies on how to handle it. I was always taught to stop and fix issues, and competing in NADAC for so long has encouraged it, too. There aren’t any refusals in NADAC, so as long as you don’t go off course, you can get as many sheltie spins and barks as time allows and still qualify. I exclusively ran NADAC since probably 2006 up until I got Nox. I also have recently had 2 sheltie people (very good handlers) tell me that I need to stop her and hit the reset button when she starts herding me because she just gets stuck. All that being said, that strategy has not reduced her frustration (or mine), so it clearly isn’t working, haha!
As I mentioned before, we ran this standard course before getting all of the strategies for moving on, so you’ll see a bit of that. I did make an attempt to keep going in spots since you had mentioned it after the first videos I submitted, but we hadn’t discussed specifics at that point.
*I unfortunately had to mow my grass, so I don’t have this course set up anymore, so I will not be submitting a round 2, but I think this is a course I may come back to at a later point. There are 2 spots in particular that I struggled with. I have given more info below about the 2 problems. 🙂
This was an EXTRMELY challenging course for us. I only ran it all the way through once, which was our first attempt. The opening was easy for us; I think you’ll only see it once in the video because I didn’t think we needed to keep practicing it. After the weaves is where it starts to fall apart (around 1:25, denoted by *** in the video). I could not figure out how to consistently send her out to the jump after the weaves and then show her the line to the tunnel. I felt like the issue was that she was jumping to her right, and in order to get the next jump, she had to change leads, but then I couldn’t get her to change her lead back to get the tunnel. I didn’t put it in the video, but we did that line probably a dozen times with most of them resulting in spinning and barking at the tunnel. I could not get down the line faster because if I left too early, she skipped the jump. I tried back chaining and rewarding the tunnel, but as soon as I added the turn back in after the weaves, the problem came back. I tried a blind cross; one time it worked, but the other times (and there were several not in the video), it put me behind for the next line (1:50).
The other issue we kept having was after that same tunnel (once she got in it, lol). I tried to layer the jump, but she kept reading it as a serpentine line and took the wrong jump. I tried that quite a few times, and I even threw a reward on her line to keep her out there but to no avail. It was very inconsistent.
I hope those questions make sense!
Hi!
I wish I could attend the Zoom sessions live, but it’s at the same time as a scent work class Nox and I are taking. I should be able to make the last couple, though!I did the self-talk activity. I found that the negative talk column was easier to come up with the other ones, not surprisingly! I always try to be careful about balancing positive and negative when talking about things that went wrong in my students’ runs. Even when everything went wrong, I try to find something to compliment, even if it’s just that their dog didn’t go off and sniff something or they made a good decision to reward the dog for their own mistake instead of getting frustrated. I don’t do this nearly so instinctually with myself, though! I am very fortunate to train with a wonderful group of people who will point out the positives even when everything else was a mess. Now I just need to internalize this so it’s more natural than the negative talk!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ts5Hz2er-I9Yycxfwcne4TiS_ZBo25tB80E7RhtbeKM/edit?usp=sharing
I think the theme of camp for us this year is not course trends but rather, “Stop the barking,” lol. Besides the fact that it puts her in a more aroused state (definitely on the wrong side of that bell curve!), it drives me a bit crazy, so even if that’s what we focus on this summer, it would be well worth it if we can take that out of our training!!
>> As strange as it sounds.. just keep going. Note what happened but starting over from the weaves just gets the rehearsal of barking and jumping around in front of you, which is the behavior we don’t want on the agility course. It is a similar behavior to the ones you get in front of a jump or tunnel.
So here’s my biggest problem (besides breaking the habit of stopping), and I don’t know how to get around it. When something goes wrong, she very quickly starts barking, spinning, and jumping around in my path. In the example of the weaves, I would not have physically been able to run towards the next jump without tripping on her. On the times that I am able to not trip on her, she seems stuck in a loop of yelling at me and getting sort of herdy until I make her pause and line up next to me again. This is mostly when we have long lines of nothing (like from the middle of the weaves to the next thing) or when I have decelerated/stopped or left too early. Yes, these are often my fault, but she has already started barking and spinning by the time my brain has processed what happened, and you said I shouldn’t reward when she’s barking at me. So I feel a bit stuck and unsure of what to do. We have been playing the 1-2-3 pattern game a lot, and it helps when walking to the startline and in a situations having nothing to do with agility. I can play that with her, but it’s obviously not ring sustainable since I can’t feed her in a trial. Also, there’s a good chance she will already have been barking and spinning by the time I can start counting, so I didn’t know if that would still reward the behavior I’m trying to stop since I believe the reinforcement is tied into the counting, not just the cookies at this point. Is that something I should try to use perhaps?
As I mentioned before, I did already run this standard course I’m posting, but I tried to stop stopping. We got stuck at the jump before the teeter a couple of times (:30 is the first time). This is an example of where I couldn’t keep going (teeter entry would have been a problem), but I didn’t know what to do. By the time my handling mistake was made, she was already barking, so if I threw a reward, I felt like that’s what you told me not to do previously. But if I did nothing, we rehearsed the barking. And I couldn’t just go to the teeter because of the unsafe entry, but it is similar to when she would trip me or just run while barking at me and not do the next thing either because she’s so handler focused at that point. What is the best thing to do in these places?
My major win for these reps: I didn’t stop when she hit the front side of a jump (3 times, lol, oops…) and missed the tunnel after the teeter thanks to my forward drive!!
Hi!
I have run each of the jumpers and standard courses but haven’t had a chance to edit and post the videos yet. Yesterday was the last day of work for me until the end of August, so now I can catch up! The end of the school year kicked my butt this time around, lol. I will wait for feedback before posting another video, and I don’t expect you to view them back-to-back. 🙂 I just didn’t want you to think I was running everything all in one day, lol.
I am trying to watch her head more for commitment, but it’s hard when she’s so fast and we’re both running! I’m still leaving just a bit too early in places; I’m sure that will be the case for a while until I am able to read her cues for me to leave better.
Here is Round 2 of Jumpers 1. I think I did a better job of connecting after the blind on 3-4 (or she memorized the course, lol). Committing to the weaves was also better since I didn’t pull off early. She did drop out of the weaves the first run, but I think she was distracted by my friend who was taking pictures from the end of the weaves. I don’t know if it was the sound of the shutter (she’s not sound sensitive but does hear everything just like she sees everything, haha) or if it might have been the pressure of a person being there. Either way, good training I suppose! Plus she got a really cool picture of her, lol. I held my position longer for 10, but I felt like it was late since she was heading to the other jump and had to turn hard to avoid it on the way to 11. We very much need to work on blind tunnel entries because that was still very hard for her. I liked the s-turn for the ending better than the wrap, but it was really wide on the last run still. It was nice when I just did 14 to the end, though.
>>Also in the category of “Nox Sees Everything”
Yes!! She totally does see everything! It will probably be super helpful at some point, but for now, it would be great if she could not see my mistakes, lol.
Lots of good things to think about from those sequences! I’m starting to get the idea that Nox might be a lot better at agility than I am, haha. It’s so interesting to me that she understands communication between us that I don’t even notice.
We tried out the first 3 sequences again taking your suggestions into account, specifically keeping better connection and moving forward while showing the next line. I’ve already taken this sequence down, so I’m not looking for detailed feedback. The only thing I was really wondering about is your opinion of my choice to try a blind after 4 in sequence 1. I felt like it allowed me to cue and support jump 4 while staying in motion and getting to the next line. I was hoping it would avoid an abrupt stop from me that would cause questions on her part as well as tighten up the turn to 5 since I could leave earlier (not sure if it the latter really happened).
We did Jumping 1 and had some good moments, but it was quite challenging!!
The tunnel entry at 4 and 15 were probably the hardest for us. There were a few attempts on the opening that I didn’t include because they were similar to the first run. She would either miss jump 3 or take the jump next to the tunnel. I tried doing the blind earlier, but she was likely to miss 3 or knock the bar. I also tried a front cross. I ran into the tunnel and completely got in her way, but she somehow still did the tunnel, lol.
For 15, I was able to get her into the tunnel by giving a “here” cue. I’m not entirely sure what “here” means, though, lol. It’s something I’ve used forever with other dogs instead of specific directionals, and it just slips out sometimes. I’m guessing it’s just a bit of a head check for Nox.
I had a lot of issues with not taking that extra step and got some yelling from her. My brain knows the problem, but I can’t get my feet to do it correctly!
I’m going to try really hard to stop stopping! I’ve been doing it for a VERY long time, so I know I will make mistakes with that. You will see that in the video added below. The first couple of reps were run before getting your feedback; I only had time to edit the first sequence initially, but we had already made an attempt at the 2nd sequence.
When we had time to try it again, I did make an attempt to keep going when I messed up and she didn’t take a jump. I had varying success, lol. There is one spot where you can see me taking way too long to process (1:57). I was thinking, “Ok, she missed the jump, I’m not supposed to stop, but that’s what I’m standing here doing. What does, ‘Don’t stop look like?’ Oh yeah, move your feet!”
I do have a question about your comment from last time before getting to sequence 2 and 3.
>>One thing I see that she needs on course is for you to keep moving towards the next line, feet always facing the next line. Any time you pull away from the line or don’t turn your feet to it, she has big questions (and good questions!) So connection is important but always moving forwards towards the next line is super helpful.
You said to keep moving my feet to the next line, but as you have seen, we have a lot of issues when I start moving to the next line before she’s completed everything on the current one. I’m not sure how to keep my feet pointing at the next line while still giving her the support she needs to prevent those arguments we sometimes have.
Sequence 2 & 3
I responded to you from a post on March 3 above. 🙂 I’m not sure if you get a notification about responses to older posts or just that we posted in general, so I didn’t know if you’d see it.
Per your suggestion, I did a warm-up with the switch aways. I tried showing her the opposite arm a little earlier after the tunnel. I also made sure to do both sides. After that, we jumped into Handling Challenges 5. I was very happy with how it went! If I’m remembering correctly, we didn’t have any instances of choosing the wrong obstacle, and I’m really not doing a lot in terms of handling.
