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Good morning! I love the title card on the video!!! It was giving gold vibes to match a gold ingot with maybe a bit of Life Of A Showgirl sparkle too. Lots of fast & fun sessions here 🙂
Forward focus – this is looking brilliant!! I loved her little squeak on the last rep. Great job connecting with her to see where she was looking! And she had no questions about driving ahead even when you were running.
One suggestion: rather than hold her collar while tugging as you go back to the starting point, I think she will be perfect if you tug back to the starting point without holding her. Then you can tug her into a position next to you, then take her collar and get the toy, then throw it. You can also trade the toy for a cookie and use the cookie to help line her up before throwing the toy.
Since this went so well and you added your running, you can add more distance on throws so she can drive ahead even more. You might need a heavier toy to throw because it is hard to throw the light ones.
Drive to handler – she did really well here too! Nice job with the tug breaks too, so she stayed excited! Because she is little, you can keep your hand close to your leg and just below your knee. That will keep her chin parallel to the ground or pointing slightly downwards, which helps setup the best turns. You can see it when you added the pivots (like at 2:03 and 3:13) – she was able to get nice and tight to your leg and turn beautifully.
Since this went really well too, you can add more distance to give you more room to let her see you moving fast then making a big deceleration: throw the start cookie further away. Then as she is going to it, you can start to jog away. As soon as she eats it and turns to you, let her see you slow down to a slow walk or stop. That will give her plenty of time to decelerate as she drives to you.
The prop sends are going well too! I love the Croc as a prop LOL!!
She had a little question at 3:43, and I think it was because she was reading a variety of things happening: one hand sending with the opposite leg and one hand in the cookie pocket. She stopped to double check the info. Then she sorted it out really well and was driving nicely. Super!
To help her out as you add the advanced level (and you should definitely add the advanced level now) – if it is a forward send, you can send with the arm and leg next to her (in this video, you were sending with the right arm so you can also step forward with the right leg). When you get to the sideways and backwards sends, you can send with the arm/leg closer to the prop. You can also add in a bit of the ready dance before each send – that puts her in handler focus as she engages with you, and then the send challenge increases as you cue her to have ‘obstacle’ (croc :)) focus.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Hi!
Very nice first sessions here!On the 1st video, you might have started off too quickly with the cookie drops, because he was chewing and missed some of the cookie drops. That is why he didn’t quite get into the pattern quickly on the first video. Do you have smaller loud treats that don’t require chewing? LOL! As he gets more experienced, you can got to softer treats that don’t need chewing 🙂
On the 2nd video, you moved more slowly so he was more aware of the treats drops – and that got things going really well! Yay!
He probably needs a few more reps before you go to stealthily dropping the treats or waiting for him to offer. He did best when he could still see and hear the treats heading to the bowls 🙂
I think one more session where you are letting him see and hear the treats will help establish the pattern, and then you can fade out letting him see you place it in the bowl by just moving more and more slowly as you do it. Then it will be easy to put the upright in the middle for him to wrap.
Great job here!!
Tracy
Hi! Your prop sending is going great!!!
Video 1, with the toy: He did well here, leaving the toy and driving to the prop! You can add in more of the engagement and handler focus of the ready dance before each send. You did it a bit at :54 – no need to hold the collar, you can let him bop around like he did at 1:28 🙂
You were a little too far from the prop on the 2nd and 3rd reps – very nice adjustment to get just a little closer to help him out after that. Super!
The sideways sending went well and so did the backwards sending! He had to think about it and he figured it out really well. It is hard for the pups because when we are rotated like that, it is hard to go past us but he nailed it. Yay!
Video 2: treats: the beginning was a bit of shaping reminder with the treats, which was a really nice warm up. Interestingly, when treats were involved, he wanted to stay out at the prop so having the reward near you helped him hit it and drive back. It is possible that he was in ‘shaping mode’ because of the first couple of treats, but he moved out of that pretty quickly when you added more engagement and had him driving back to you for the reward.
As with the toy, he was easily able to send when you were 3 or 4 feet away or so, but the longer distances were a little harder. So for now, stay a little closer and you’ll see that it will get easier to add more distance.
He was great with the sends (fast and snappy!) when you did the ready dance before them, so remember to include it before each send. The sideways and backwards sends were both lovely here too! They seemed easier for him here – maybe it was because it was easier to leave the food, or maybe it was because the toy session happened first? Either way, he did great!
You can revisit this here and there, adding a tiny bit more distance away from the prop at the start of each rep.
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
The wrap session looked really strong! You’ve already got a great start on this game 🙂 And yes, I am sure there are many good variations on how it is played now that is it very popular!
>Halfway through I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to mark her food dish.>
You can (and you were) – and now you can mark it later. You were generally marking when she began her movement or arrived at the upright. You can delay it now until she has completed the wrap.
Since she did so well here, you can add more and more distance between you and the upright (or cone, using it is still good :)) And then you can bring the upright back in near you and change your position to standing. If she does well with you standing, then we can start moving the upright back out away from you. Moving it in towards you when you change to standing is so that we are increasing the challenge on only one thing at a time in the session.
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>Outdoors might work with the toy on a long line. The hackberries are mostly gone now!>
Hooray for those hackberries being gone!!!
This session went really well 🙂
>I’m moving before my find it cue. I’ll try to tighten that up.>
Yes – the hardest part about the find it cues/markers is that ideally we say it *then* move… so hard! The dogs figure it out, thankfully, even when we are not perfectly clean. But yes, try to say it then move 🙂
>I was putting Dot on the cot while I reloaded to change sides.>
I agree! She did great!! The only thing to add is a bit of toy play before and between reps, and I think she is ready for you to reward the pivots with a toy. That might be easier outside when you both have more room. You can take the cot outside and see if she can hang out on it between reps there too.
On the decels straight to your side: she did great! My only suggestion is to lower your cookie hand so her chin is either parallel to the ground or pointing slightly downwards – that will produce better decel mechanics when we add more speed.
The pivots are also looking really strong! One the first couple and last few, you were moving slowly and your hand was just below your knee – perfect! When your hand was getting a bit too high or you were moving too fast, you can see her swinging wide because the momentum was pushing her bum out 🙂 And example would be at 1:00 and you can see she doesn’t turn quite as well on that rep.
Great job here! The next step for this game too would be to take it outside 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! You mentioned that he looked like a lurcher and I could really see it here! I had to scroll back to make sure he was not actually a lurcher LOL!!
Look at that great tugging and toy killing at the start! Yay! He is really fun 🙂 The toy shredding that he was doing towards the beginning is usually a sign of arousal regulation – repeated mouth movements like that are associated with the brain trying to center and balance arousal… and that is GREAT!! It is an expensive habit because the toys won’t last long, so you can also direct him to self-regulate by scattering treats for him to sniff.
But I love love love that he is already beginning to self-regulate. YAY!!!!
Nice transition into the shaping and he got lots of good foot smacks going! Well done! And he got right back onto the toy the end.
Since he had a number of very definite foot hits to the object, I think he is ready for the first prop game.
On the hand touch video:
It was interesting that he wanted every part of that toy except the cool thing at the end. Maybe it was fur and gave him an ick? Good to know about his preferences – he didn’t do that with the toy in the other video. It looked like every time he went to grab the end of the toy, he changed his mind and went back to the ‘boring’ part of it 🙂Great job getting him going with the hand target here – big improvements for sure!! He was a little locked onto the food hand at first (poor starving pup haha!) and you rewarded lots of small approximations to get him going to the target. Yay! He was fabulous when it was in your left hand in the second part of the video – he might be telling us that he has more reward history of interacting with your left side, so keep building value for working on your right side.
We won’t need this hand target game for several weeks, so you can put it on the shelf for now and play some other games. We will pull it back out when we are getting ready to use it.
Great job here :)
Tracy
Hi!
I had to watch this a couple of times because I kept getting distracted by his cuteness LOL! The session went great 🙂 He was cracking me up when he was playing with the tiny string end of the toy and not the fancy fur part LOL!
Fantastic job engaging with him and keeping the toy enticing both during the play, and then after you placed it out ahead. And nice connection, looking at him to see where he was looking. Super!
He is slippery when you are holding him, so adding a harness or collar will help the transition into the forward focus – that way you can add duration without him cleverly trying to start without you LOL!
Since this session went so well, you can add more distance on the toy throws bit by bit – he is so tiny so adding distance will be pretty gradual. And with this game too, we can add getting you off the ground so you can start adding motion soon. You can try this with you standing (apologies to your back because there will be bending over to hold him as you throw the toy). And if he is happy with that, you can add a bit of motion by walking forward as he is running to the toy (then moving the other way to encourage him to bring it back :))
>Trying really had to include a thinking, a motion, and a thinking in his sessions. Or a motion, a thinking, a motion.>
Perfect! That brings a nice balance to his foundation. Depending on what he tells us as we work through the games, you might find times where we tip the balance into more motion or more thinking. At this point, his balance of thoughtful/wild party games looks lovely 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning! Great job with the wrap foundation game here – the training you’ve already done definitely showed and he was a superstar 🙂
You had a lot of hand movement at the beginning (getting treats, moving the little mats, etc) so he was smoother when your hands got quiet 🙂He did a lovely job going around the cone!! Super!!
Since this went really well, we can add a few more things to it:
– you can try the game using 2 toys instead of treats
– you can add in tug breaks before/during the session to challenge him to be able to offer this lovely behavior even when he is a little more excited 🙂
-you can switch out which objects you use, so he learns to go around all.the.things at this stage 🙂I am sure he will be pretty perfect, so the next step after that is start getting you off the ground – do you have something low you can sit on? It can be something like an inflatable donut.
Great job!!
TracyHi!
These games are going well!Looking at the driving ahead/forward focus game:
He had really nice toy drive here!! And he drove to the toy really well. Super!
We can clean up the transition into being held, I don’t think he liked when you grabbed him and picked him up (he was backing away and avoiding a bit).
Since the toy drive looked good, try to tug tug tug then trade for a treat – and as you deliver a treat, line him up at your side. Do all this before you take his collar and avoid grabbing, pulling or picking him up because it is going to cause him to avoid your hands when you reach for him. And that will also allow you to throw the toy for him to drive to because that will get better forward focus as we build up this game.
Drive to handler:
This is where a mat or rug will help him be able to find the treats so he doesn’t get mad about not finding them 🙂
He was super keen to drive to you! As you move away from him, stay connected so the instant he starts moving towards you, you slow down a lot and show him your hand next to your leg. Letting him see the early decel cues will let him organize and slow down to arrive straight at your side. When you didn’t slow down, you can see his bum was swinging wide because he didn’t have time to shift into deceleration.
Wing wrap start: in these early stages, you don’t need to wait for him to offer behavior to put the treats in the bowl – you might have gone too quickly into waiting for him to offer the behavior so he was not sure what to do. For the first session or two, he can see and hear you do it (hard kibble might help make noise and you can tap the bowl so he knows there is a treat there). Then when he is going back and forth very easily, you can start to sneak the cookies in to the bowl so he begins to offer the behavior more.
Blinds: this went really well! He read the blinds perfectly and your connection was very clear. Super! Nice job rewarding across the body! My only suggestion is to make which reward you want to use: on the last couple of reps, the toy was dangling but you fed a treat so he was not sure what to drive to. If you want to use treats, you can put the toy out of sight so he knows where to look.
>The stealth game i am not sure how it different from treat toss – is it that we are not moving. >
The foundation game we are using is basically a treat toss away then a recall for a reward (treat or toy). Easy! But the self-control element is what we add to the environment. We are starting by adding something novel/new and neutral (not exciting or enticing) for him to run past. It seems super simple but his brain will be doing a lot of processing! And it is the foundation for harder stuff we will be adding.
>Wrigged no engagement with me and straight to toy.>
We don’t want to start with something that hard 🙂 For now, using distractions that are not as interesting 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
The treat tosses totally helped him understand to keep moving rather than just stay on the prop. Super! He did really well!
>He is very different than In Synch in that he is much more thoughtful. >
I think he is more food motivated than she was at this age? You can break things off between every 2 or 3 treats to play tug – that will keep him from looking for treats a lot, and help him drive back to the prop more.
And we will want to solve the problem of treats falling through the cracks – that interrupts the training flow and it will frustrate him if he can’t get to his reward. Do you have a large outdoor mat or outdoor rug you can put down over the training area? That can help!
Nice work here 🙂
TracyGood morning!
>We had our 1st puppy class last night & one of the games the instructor showed us was hand touch! Sunnie was demo dog for that since we played with that from the pre games!>
So fun that she is already at the top of his puppy class!!
>I am remote today so I used the extra time at lunch to play with my puppy LOL! >
Perfect! I love that!
>Since my original post, food has become valuable >
Super! You will probably see values shift back and forth for a while longer, that is really normal with pups.
Looking at the videos:
She is SO CUTE omg!! And she was very food driven here LOL! You did a great job introducing the concept then adding distance and forward focus – you can start to hold onto her a bit longer after you get the treats into the bowl, to add a bit of duration to her forward focus.
I think removing the bowl like you did at the end will help you be able to add more distance away from the food – and you can try light-colored treats so she can see them easily. Charlee Bears are very visible and usually easy on the belly. I break them in half for tiny puppies like her 🙂
And since this is going so well, you can add in walking forward after you let her go, to gradually introduce your motion.
> I tried toys first for this exercise but she wasn’t interested
After that I just wanted to play with her so I engaged with her with the hollee roller (she wanted nothing to do with it last week!) I threw in some “informal” FF because I didn’t want to force the hollee roller out of her mouth and I ran out of kibble to use as a trade.>Thank you for including the play video – my question was going to be ‘what did she do when she didn’t want to engage with the toy’ so the video really helps!
The play session was fun to watch 🙂 Playing with her without the toy at first (just using your hands) got her really spicy! Then throwing the toy got her right onto the toy 🙂 Then the trying to kinda of wrestle it out of her mouth totally got her into play mode which was great!
At 1:36 she ran away for a few steps and looked forward for a bit – it was hard to know if she thought you had thrown the toy or if she heard something, but you kept thing going by throwing the toy and she got right back into it. Yay!
Maybe when she didn’t want to engage with the toy, she was a little hungry? And after a few cookies along with the play, she got really into the toy. So next time you want to use the toy, start the session just like this and see what happens.
>I am trying to wrap my head around on how to progress >
There are a lot of games and a lot of ways to progress, and I know you will find your flow 🙂 There are a variety of ways to play the games that will be effective – and since we have 2 weeks for each games package, you will also be able to fit in days where you don’t play any games for whatever reason (sometimes life gets in the way LOL!) I like to give each game that I’ve played a day or two off before I try them again, to let the pup’s brain sleep on it because the most learning happens when they sleep 🙂 You can do a new game and a game you’ve already done each day, so there is a nice combination of new stuff and revisiting with feedback. I am betting that most of the feedback you will get is “that was great, here are next steps to try” so you don’t have to immediately implement it (it can wait a day or two)
And adding in new games every day or every other day will be fun because the variety keeps things exciting!
> Probably more for me than Sunnie, so I remember what to do!
I TOTALLY relate to this – I currently have 5 dogs aged 3 and under so remembering everything is a challenge LOL! I use post it notes on the refrigerator and a white board to jot notes down so I can keep track of what I did and what I want to do next 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
Lovely session here! Adding motion was no problem for her here at all. Yay! Her forward focus was great and she was very confidently driving ahead.
You can try running the other way as soon as she gets to the toy, to encourage her to bring the toy towards you now that she is getting really far ahead.
This game can continue to expand with more distance on your throws, and more of your running 🙂 You can also switch gears into the blind cross game where she chases you 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning Ninette and baby Dublin!
These sessions looked lovely!
He was focusing forward and driving ahead brilliantly – he loves that toy!!
Your toy skills were good here! When tugging at the start, you can give him the full length of the toy so his head can stay lower and he can really grip it (it won’t be a problem at all as he grows LOL!)
His tug drive was super strong here (yay!) so you can try mixing in a bit of food to start getting him to drop the toy and line up: using a boring piece of food, trade the toy for the food, then line him up for the next rep and throw the toy. If he has trouble going back to the toy after the treat, you can throw the toy more or drag it for him to chase.
For his next session, add in your movement too: when you release him to drive to the toy, you can also walk forward. If he is comfy with that, you can add more of your speed. And yes, a bigger location would be great!
The decel game also looked great. Well done getting your hand nice and low, and next to your leg so he knew exactly where to go. You can add in you walking forward and then slowing down so he can see more of the change in motion. And you can add in the pivot. He found this to be super easy and did great!
>I did quick session with same toy as the games above and the foot target on the hat. It was hard to juggle the big toy and the hat. >
Yes, you might need 3 hands LOL!
>Got similar stopping after 2-3 foot targets. I will try it again.>
Interesting! Was he stopping and going into that relaxed down? If so, you might be right that he thinks the hat is a small mat, and offering his mat behavior. We can change the foot target prop and see how what happens – do you have a small box? That won’t look like a mat, hopefully.
Let me know what you think! Nice work here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>we can’t use a cookie to release the toy and then go back into toy mode yet. That’s not his current preferred order of operations, but we are getting closer.>
You can make it into a bit of a wild game, where the cookie gets the toy back then you toss the toy again for him to run to or chase with you dragging it. With a lot of herding breeds, we insert food in as part of the game then a lot of movement to the toy because the movement of the toy dragging or flying gets the pups back onto the toy pretty quickly and without conflict.
> So, we’re using a bit of a Chirag Patel “drop it” means treats are going to appear so that treat gathering is more of a cued behavior which is where I think his mind works best. >
Chirag Patel has great stuff, and if my memory is correct he also competes/trains in different dogs sports along with his work in the behavior field.
>On that big fluffy thing he’s surprisingly not actually shredding it. >
Interesting! It might be repeated chomping? That is still a good thing 🙂 and a less expensive habit for decompression 😂😜
>We do always end with a treat scatter and then a snuffle mat in his x-pen after training with puppy nap time.>
I think that is a terrific way to balance him after the excitement of training and great for long term health/arousal management.
> I’ll keep an eye on that decompression cycle during and after arousing play. >
We have found it to be helpful through puppyhood and adolescence (ok, especially adolescence LOL!) and the interesting thing is that one of the indications that adulthood has arrived and adolescence is over is when the dog no longer needs or asks for these in-session decompressions.
>The first week I got him the over-arousal biting was pretty impressive (my hands are just now healing from that week) but he’s getting much better about it the past 2 weeks.>
Chompy!! Great job redirecting it into play because I would not have guessed based on the videos.
He was a superstar in the send to prop video! Yay! Nice job keeping things exciting with talk and interaction, and using food rewards in a fun way. And very nice transitions from the ‘woohoo’ chatter of engagement into the quiet clear sends. Super!
He seemed equally strong in both directions so I don’t see a side preference here. Did we ever figure out a side preference for Ripley? LOL! We might not see one and that is fine too of course 🙂 He was rounding the line to the prop instead of going directly to it – he might have been using that to get a bigger peripheral view of the full info, and he will get straighter when he sees the game again.
The next step would be to get a little tugging involved, even if it is at the beginning and then you use treats as rewards. The goal is to eventually use a toy for the whole session, but he is really young and time is on our side so there is no rush. The is usually a bit more arousal regulation with food in these early stages, so we can gradually add the toy to maintain his lovely work here.
The toy trade for treats at the end is going well! He was happy to find the treats of course 🙂 My only suggestion is after he eats the treats, you can make the toy more active so it breaks through the treat odor – this toy is perfect for throwing or dragging, and the chase fun can help bring him right back into play.
Great job here! I am really remembering why I loved the Koolies so much!!!
Tracy
