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That’s interesting to hear Dr. M’s thoughts on fear periods that it’s just part of adolescent brain development. I do a lot of nosework and the trainer I am working with advocates waiting until the dogs are 15 months old before introducing them to odor since we don’t want any fear (or funky adolescent behavior, I guess) associate with the odor. I bet I’ll still see some after 15 months but at least I know not to freak out about it and just try again another day.
Hi Tracy,
Hola and I did the Pregame 2 moving target as you suggested and redid the Wind in your Hair exercise with toy placed on the ground and the single wing 20 feet from the jump.
I’m hoping to get back out and redo the set point exercise in a little while, too. I haven’t checked any other week 1 exercises out yet. I have some tunnel bags to better secure my tunnel but need to put pea gravel in them. Hola hasn’t done a tunnel since the last session threadle foundations that you looked at because I didn’t have any way to secure it better.
Edited to add the set point exercise. Jumps set a little less than 5′ and the Holee Roller ball was set at 15′ in all but the last rep must have been another foot or more since you can’t see it on video.
Looking forward to your comments!
PattiOK, thanks! I feel a lot better about her form now. Will make the changes you suggested.
Sorry about the video, I should have checked. Here’s the video of the 2nd exercise. We did this again this afternoon with both dogs, she was really drivingi to that ball and she let me set it out away instead of throwing!
I’ll do it again maybe Saturday. Volunteering all day tomorrow at a nosework trial.
Patti
Hi Tracy,
Thanks for the explanation, that makes perfect sense and I appreciate your writing it all out.
Hola and I only did the basics of the first two exercises this morning and that’s where we quit until we get more feedback from you before we proceed any further. Some of our blips may be because we didn’t make it all the way through MaxPup 1 and have some holes in the foundation for this session.
On the set point exercise I had the jumps set 5 feet apart and the manners minder was 10 feet away. Hola is about 17-3/4″ tall so I figured that might be a good place to start. However, Hola looks like she’s throwing herself over the jumps.
On the second exercise first rep she missed the jump and another rep knocked the bar down. I had it set at 6 inches (too high?). Fortunately on those jumps the cup is rubber so it gave when she hit it.
She hasn’t done any jumping exercises and she is one of those dogs who throws herself at things. I have to be careful tossing toys/treats when training because she’ll dive, roll, etc. Not much self preservation when excited about something. Somehow all of my girls have been like that in comparison to Topper who was such a thinker. 🙂 Hola also expends so much energy when doing activities that I need to quit after a few reps. We stopped after just a few reps on the set point exercise because she’s not crazy about kibble (in the MM) and I thought she was getting either bored or distracted. I wasn’t sure what I should do to fix the jumping style and didn’t want to do any more until you saw the video. Wondering if I should I move jumps a foot closer? Move MM to about 8 feet away? We definitely need your expert advice on this.
I felt like the 2nd exercise went better but quit because we had done enough already and I wasn’t sure what our next steps should be until we hear what you think about both of these.
I was really interested in your comments last night about the adolescent period. Hola somehow feels more fussy and clingy and then other times can seem conflicted about some things.
Here are the videos from this morning:
Thanks again!
Patti & HolaHi Tracy,
Which arm do you think I should use for the tunnel threadle (or all threadles, I guess). I think I was using my offside arm, same with the backside slice that I tried today but wondering if using my dog side arm back might be easier for me or more obvious? I did the backside slice exercise today and I don’t think my arm is all that obvious and I think I was rewarding in the wrong place or late. I felt like we were on a path to collide into each other. We will try the tunnel threadle with tweaks you suggested and the variation of reverse retrieve another day when it’s not so stinkin’ hot outside. 🙂
I saw you are headed down to Florida! The WEC in Ocala is only about 40 minutes from me. I am actually meeting a friend (also a MaxPup graduate) in Ocala tomorrow for some early morning nosework with our dogs. If it’s not too hot by the time we’re done (since we’ll have the dogs) maybe we’ll take a quick peak inside the expo center and see if we can spot you!
Patti
Hi Tracy,
Below are a couple of videos that Hola and I were able to do the other day. I’m sorry I got so far behind but too many things got in the way. I hope it won’t be too much of an issue going forward with MaxPup 2. Hola does seem to be a quick learner. I’ll try to keep working on some of the things we missed before MP2 starts. I love your new program and the way you’ve expanded and enhanced it.
I wasn’t able to stay on for much of the verbals webinar this evening, but one thing that stood out was I came in on a discussion of Field Guides. Oh, I definitely need that. When doing the tunnel threadle I couldn’t remember if I should use her name when she was exiting the tunnel among other body positions/cues I probably didn’t do correctly. It’s definitely hard to remember everything when trying new things! 🙂
I had the same thing happen with reverse retrieves. Couldn’t remember if I was supposed to use her name or not, so the last 2 reps I did without calling her name. 🙂
Patti
Hi Tracy,
I want to do the Backside Slice Foundation, and Tunnel Threadle this week, been tied up with nosework workshops again. Anyway, were you saying “Back” for the backside slice? I don’t think I should use that since I use that verbal for backing up. Is “Push” another verbal used for backside slice, or are there going to be any additional verbals I’ll need for backsides? My head is swirling with all these verbals, and I have a hard time coming up with these on my own.
Thank you for the commentary on the rocking horse game. I think you were right, the barking was probably frustration on the first round, she likes the speedy games. We did Minny Pinny again last week and she did better with not knocking the bars. Wasn’t sure how to “lock” them in the jump cups.
Hopefully we will be able to catch up on a few things this week.
Patti
Hi Tracy,
I’ve been busy the past 3 days at a local nosework workshop with a trainer from up in Missouri who I started doing online classes with when Covid hit 2 years ago. Anyway, I did get some Minny Pinny done last week, and after my regular nosework class today Hola and I worked on the Rocking Horse. I hope to get back to the tunnel tomorrow.
Much better using food to reposition I plan to do this with the tunnel exercise tomorrow, too. I must have deleted the left turn video, but basically the same.
I think her barking in the double barrel exercises had to do with the fact that we were away from home all day and she had lots of energy to release. But then again, most of my terriers have been barkers in agility. It also seems to be a common trait among agility Kerries (my own and others I know).
In the heat of the moment on this one when sending Hola to the barrel behind me I’m still not sure if I’m using the correct arm.Thanks for all! I’m planning on signing us up for next round, too.
Patti
Thank you so much! This is why I take your working spot online classes (going way back). Your eye and advice are always the best.
I feel badly, I don’t know why I can’t think of some of these things in the moment. I don’t think I broke little Hola but I will do better.Tunnel using ready. Yeah, makes sense. Especially considering the Minny Pinny I’m only saying Left or Right. Duh! I was sorta waiting for her to look forward. I started out looking at her thinking connection, but didn’t feel a whole lot of connection? So I ended up just letting her go after saying ready too many times.
Will try this again playing tug between food reward reps. I do think the MM got boring. She’s more of a toy dog than food although she will work for both in the same session.
Collar grabbing. Yeah, it was pretty obvious to me in the moment she didn’t appreciate it. I wish I’d thought of moving her into position with food and then using a light hold. I will do that from now on. She just didn’t know what to make of it. I’ve done collar grabs as a puppy and usually take the collar and give a cookie. She was WTF you are grabbing my collar with hand that smells like treats but nothing good happening. I felt bad after realizing how confusing that must have been.
Interesting about the MM beeping. I wear hearing aids and a few times I swear I didn’t hear it either but just attributed it to my bad hearing after it looked like she was getting treats, but maybe those were leftover treats from a previous rep??
Will add motion towards the MM, GREAT idea! I felt weird just standing there, like how boring is this and did feel like I should be doing something.
WHAT IS THE VERBAL FOR TUNNEL THREADLE? I was looking for it and I couldn’t find it??? I was using assignment from Week 4. Is this in Week 9 which I haven’t done yet? So should I start doing Week 9 at this point although keeping tunnel at this length until I figure out how to support it extended out more?
I imagine you’ve already said something to me about 2 toys, but didn’t remember to use a higher/lower value. Sometimes I can’t tell with her, she really loves toys, all toys! 🙂 But I will pick something and try it, and also promise to play more between reps when she comes back to me. My bad…
On the Minny Pinny collar avoidance, that’s also where I especially felt bad but didn’t think of reorienting here a better way. When she started noticing other things, it never occurred to me that might have been fallout from the collar grabs. Thanks for pointing that out!
So, will redo tunnels, Minny Pinny and Parallel Path before moving on to some of the other games. My number one reminder is more play and engagement. She is such a fun little partner always ready and happy to go out and play with me. I want to keep it that way. I do a lot of nosework with her, too.
Tracy, thank you again and again and again for your awesome advice, as always. I’m so glad this class came along for me and Hola at the right time.
Patti & Hola
Hi Tracy, I was able to do some of these over the weekend, not all. Will try to get the rest of them done in the next day or two. Thank you so much for giving me advice on next steps. I felt like I was in a quagmire not able to move forward getting stuck trying to finish everything in each week as far back as #4. So I feel much better that we can make some progress.
We haven’t done any of the next steps yet, and still need to finish up a few re-do’s.
Tunnel Shaping – We did this the other day stretched out a bit more, no problemo, except one thing I did notice is that she wasn’t as zippy when going in from the left side of the tunnel and on some of them sort of stopped at the end of the tunnel. I’ll try this again and see if she still does it. When she worked from the right side of the tunnel she didn’t do that. Could that be a factor of turning to her right? Was I doing something different?
One question I had when doing the exercise and I couldn’t remember while out there…should I be looking at Hola or at the tunnel entrance when saying Tunnel! Tunnel! Tunnel! ??
Should I stretch the tunnel out more the next time? I definitely need to buy more tunnel bags, what you see is all I have. 🙁 We also had a bit of an exciting distraction with a horse/rider going by us on the trail which just on the other side of the fence from where we were training. I had to grab her and take a short break until they were out of sight. When I used the toy she had some big runoffs with the toy all the way to the far end of the field, but did a huge loop and ran right back to me. I was happy about that! Let me know what you think we should do next with the tunnel.
On the Minny Pinny I held her by the collar but since I was holding the treats in that hand it was a little distracting for her on some of the reps. I know you said to treat with the same (send) hand which is why I had them in that hand. Should I just keep them in my pocket and try to get one out in time when she comes back around?
For the Parallel Path game the tossing of a treat away first did work better to keep her from looking at me. When I tried tossing treat and using a toy to throw over the jump she choked on the treat a few times because she didn’t eat it first before jumping and grabbing the toy. So on the last few reps in the video although you can’t see it I put a big cone out to send her around instead of using the treat. Should I put a verbal to this exercise like Go! Go! Go! ??
TUNNEL
MINNY PINNY
PARALLEL PATH COMMITMENT
I’m looking forward to redoing the barrel sends and rocking horse game first, then moving on to the next steps you gave me the other day.
Thanks again for your great advice!
Patti & Hola
So I’m not as far behind as I thought! Only 3 weeks and 3 days not 4 weeks! Eek! 🙂 Hopefully Hola and I can get back up to speed soon! I love all of these games!
I need about 4 (or more) hours to sit down and figure out what I need to do next, I’m feeling quite disorganized.
Anyway, these are somewhat skipped around and I know I need to go back on work on some things, but here are 5 games for you to take a look at.Week 4 Tunnel games. We haven’t done this since 12/29, so I basically I started over. I think I can go ahead and start stretching the tunnel out. Next time I need to get it out in the grass, I just didn’t want to carry it down to the field. Poor Hola ended up with a mouthful of sand!
Week 4 Start line stays, just did a little of this today.
Week 5 Rotated sends to barrel new for Hola
Week 5 Parallel Path Commitment new for Hola
Week 10 Left/Right Minny Pinny is also new
Thank you for your advice, Tracy. I definitely think at Hola’s age (1 yr) she needs more exercise in her daily life. She gets to zoom around the field every morning usually, and when we train. I also try to take her on an outing 2 or 3 times a week. Although I mentioned nosework and obedience, we’ve had 8 weeks off from obedience class and in that time we only practice little bits and pieces of it and even when taking class not that often. She does short nosework sessions about 3 times a week for our online class, and that’s mostly sniffing for treats in boxes (fun!). She gets little sniffaris in the yard to find scattered treats pretty much every day. One thing about my Terriers compared to other dogs I see is that they don’t run around the yard on their own unless they’re chasing each other or have a toy to run with. I do let them chase each other but only in short bursts because I don’t want any accidental slamming or rolling to happen, afraid of injury. So they chase, I recall, etc. and they’re pretty good about that. When we start back in obedience I usually take her to a big park nearby for a long sniffy walk after class. All that said, I still think she needs more and longer exercise.
Maybe I should ask about this. I’m planning to take her by some low key outdoor agility trials that are coming up on the calendar. I’ve done this before and now that the season is gearing up again I have those marked on my calendar for outings. Usually I don’t get too near the action and just engage her in toy play with me, walk around at a distance, etc. Should I be doing this or should I be doing something different or in addition when we go?
On the tunnel, stay, toy play exercises now you know why I need your feedback so I don’t completely confuse and screw up my poor puppy! I’ll make all those changes that make total sense when you point that out to me. Poor Hola ha ha!
One more comment on the thrashing. Hola is one of those dogs who flings the toy back and forth so it hits her in the head. I think she likes that for some reason of I guess maybe that’s extreme thrashing. I don’t think that will go away.
I don’t plan to work on the tunnel again right away and will take a look at week 5. Toy play and stay I will do-over the right way, too. 🙂
Thanks again for your feedback.
Patti
PS We went to a nearby neighborhood park this morning for a leisurely sniffy walk and just watching the goings on. She did lots of sniffing and saw lots of things from a good distance. I tossed treats to her when she looked back at me after seeing things or sniffing around. She saw a baseball game, 3 different dogs taking walks, several people walking, a couple of kids on bike and skateboard in the basketball court.
Hi Tracy,
I think Hola needs some sort of energy release or decompression before we do any homework exercises. I think she has pent up energy and needs to release that before she can settle down a bit with more focus required to do an exercise. Since getting your advice several days ago we’ve taken a break and just playing/no training. That along with some searching for cookies tossed out in the field. I do appreciate the advice of limiting the amount of things that adolescents can do in a day.
We’ve done a few more turn & burns and rocking horse in the field but need to get video for you. I’m having some dyslexia on which way to turn myself when doing a send to blind around the barrel. It’s only been about 5 years since I’ve done anything like this, sad to say. I’ll try to get some video in the next day or so. I ended up breaking my phone holder that screws onto my tripod when I closed the back hatch on my van the other day not realizing it would come down right on top of my tripod. Couldn’t believe I did that! At least the phone holder was the only thing that broke and I did get a new one from Amazon today. So today we did some training! 🙂
Today we worked on start lines again and I brought out the tunnel. Hola hasn’t seen a tunnel since 1 or 2 times in puppy class. My tunnel hasn’t seen the light of day in about 4 years since the last time it was out Gingji had wet feet and injured her shoulder again when she slipped. 🙁 In the interim apparently all these huge disgusting Florida beetles took residence all around my tunnel bags and tunnel in the shed! O.M.G. it was a nightmare…and beetle poop was everywhere! I didn’t know beetles pooped! Anyway, I managed to get the tunnel and bags out for Hola today for the basic tunnel exercise. I kept the tunnel length pretty short since the way she looked at it seemed like she didn’t know what to make of it at first. She started out offering things like tapping it with a foot, lifting a rear leg on it (I taught that trick) and jumping on it. I’ve never shaped a tunnel before always having had someone at the other end and calling the puppy through so this was all very interesting. It didn’t take too long for her to go through to the MM. I decided to bring out a toy and found that to be very hard for her because she had to make the choice to go away from me while I had the toy in my hand. What do you advise next steps and what do I need to change? Keep working the tunnel until it’s extended longer? Mostly use the MM or should I use the toy, too?
I didn’t want to do too much so the last few things we did were start line stays and finished up with treat scatters around the field to decompress. I could tell that was more than enough for her.
I’m also including a video of “any toy” and some tugging with treats on the floor that we did several weeks ago but never took off my GoPro until now.
I’m definitely feeling a bit overwhelmed over falling farther behind. I think I’m stuck in weeks 3/4. I value your feedback on the exercises which is why feeling this way. I’m also training Hola in nosework and we’re starting another obedience class on Monday. Maybe I’m overextending both of us. She’s always eager to do whatever but I don’t want to do all the things every day, so it’s taking longer. I do think taking the break that we just had was good for both of us, though. One thing that I miss a lot is having training partners who are still back in VA!
I forgot to mention that the thrashing she was doing in the wobble board video, well that’s how she plays with her tug toys A LOT! Is that bad? She’s always played that way and I’m not sure how I can prevent it or change her tugging/play style. Even when she runs off with the toy she’s shaking it and sometimes spinning. If I make the toy go back and forth in a figure 8 she’s not as able to do it so much, which may be what you have seen before other than the killing/thrashing behavior.
Looking forward to your advice.
Patti & Hola
These are a few of the things we managed to do today. Still plan to get back to countermotion, parallel path, rear cross, tandem, etc. Hopefully over the weekend (if it’s not too cold for us here in FL). 😀
Tried the wing wrap with send to toy. I should have let her have a romp around before we started anything. She grabbed the toy when I set it down for the exercise and spent a lot of time having a party running around the field. Usually she comes back for a game of tug but didn’t do that today. Even with me having a 2nd toy. I was trying to use the more visible toy for her to “go” to and that one was hard to resist vs. the smaller toy in my hand. We worked a few turns around the barrel with “go” to the toy and I decided best to stop there because I was starting to feel a bit frustrated with the run offs. She also flipped herself over grabbing the toy once so I think she was overstimulated and probably should have done something less exciting first like the parallel path or rear cross. I suspect I still haven’t found the right balance of which 2 toys to use, or toys & food (was using 2 toys today) and need lots more work on the retrieve. 🙂
I knew she would love the 2 barrel game and I thought she did well on that one.
Tried to balance those games out with some strike a pose with the jump wings. Practiced without the jump wings first using food. Added the wings and she did ok with food again, but when I tried using a toy she kept doing drive by’s past my target hand. Can you give me some advice on how to work through that? I tried shaking my target hand a little, holding that position until she touched it…but I’m not sure about the right way to get it right.
You’ll also see in the video where she stopped and got distracted by a car turning into a driveway down the street in our neighborhood. I am wondering if teenage sensitivity is in full force kicking in now? She never used to notice things like this and even ran to the fence and barked at someone walking past our house twice this week. Always before she just looked and stuck with me. She seems to be noticing things including noises more than she did before. I could use some advice on what to do in these situations. I know from experience terriers can get hypersensitive about things and hope I can avoid that if at all possible. Hola celebrates her first birthday next week already!
Ended up with some wobble board/tugging. She was a wild little tugger in all her exercises today!
We did some obedience practice earlier in the day. She also takes online classes in nosework and has been doing nosework on primary since she was about 12 weeks old. She does seem to love to get out and train no matter what we work on.
