[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi again!

I think this is going well and she is beginning to give you great play with the frisbee!!!

A couple of ideas for you:
Using a smaller space is more likely to get her to bring it back, and she did pretty well here. You were able to reward approximations where she brought it pretty close to you. And, adding movement will help – give yourself enough room so that you can move away from her when you are asking for her to bring it back, as that will get her chasing/recalling to you, which is more enticing than you standing still and facing her.

Having her retrieve in training sessions with the sequencing like you did below will help too – she seems to want to run the sequence (hooray!) so the faster she brings it back, the faster she can get back into the running 🙂

Using the treat when she brings it almost all the way back is good – you can use one of your treat procedures to get her to bring it closer: for example, having her come all the way to you to get the treat is going to make it more efficient for her to bring the toy closer and closer to you (rather than stop 10 feet away). So, when she is close-ish to you and before she decides to drop the toy, cue your ‘out’ and when she drops it (doesn’t matter where she drops it as long as it is after the out cue) – present the cookie from your hand as close to your leg as possible (snacks!).
You can then shape things over time so that she brings it closer and closer to you. The mechanics are the tricky part to make this happen – you can be moving away but don’t move the cookie hand til after you say the out cue, or she will be watching the magic cookie hand the whole time LOL!

>>When I added the leash to the disc, we did a bit better, but since it was a leash, when the metal part reached my hand, it hurt to keep holding on>>

The leash on the toy helped make it more of a tug toy, which is also really valuable – but yes, that HURTS especially when your hands might be cold. I have a bunch of long, soft tug toys that I attach to the frisbees with strong knots 🙂 Much easier on the hands! And when I am tugging on the leash, it is also a really soft leash and I duct tape over the metal so it doesn’t hurt and so the dogs don’t accidentally bite the metal.

A lot of folks have been asking about leash work as part of this, so I have been videotaping that this week – more specifics coming on Monday!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! Lots of good work here on these videos!

Th wing wraps and back-and-forth on a jump are really good for getting things going here! She is going to offer the behavior easily, which makes things easy for you!

The big question:
In these sessions, you were using yes, good girl, yay when she was correct on the wing and the jump… but I couldn’t hear any other markers about where placement of reward would. It is possible they were really quiet – so if you did have markers going, making them more salient (louder LOL!) than the praise 🙂 And if you did not have the markers going (like get it on the tosses, for example), add them in on this stage, with the easy behavior.

I personally had to retrain myself to use the markers (which provide great info for the dog) and stop saying “yes!” for everything, because that was causing my dogs to look at me in situations where I did not want them looking at me. So use these easier sessions to get the markers to be really clear for you and her.

Onwards to the next installations!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

>>Tugging on the leash is only a problem in a trial setting, everywhere else no problem

He might need to see the leash as the reward at the end, by specifcially using it in training. Stay tuned for videos to outline that specifically. And you might need to shop for a brand-new tug leash, so we can start this as a blank slate.

>>Like I said, the mat and a T ball are the only things he will reliably play with outside the ring. But if I bring a toy into the ring for an NFC training run, then all is good, he will play. Have not figured this one out yet.>>

It probably has to do with the pre-run nervous energy that we all feel – and then when he realizes the run is a training run, he can relax and play. That is my best guess 🙂

>>Going to try “inserting the leash into the mat play. I’ll start with the mat and a bit of play and then add the leash on the mat. Have a CPE trial this weekend where I’ll play with this.

If you have time, work this at home first: basically showing him what this looks like, how the leash will be the toy and associated with the mat, etc. Then it will be more recognizable to him in a trial setting, where distractions are much higher.

>>I also use ball play at the end of sequences, but I’ll have him sit, I throw the ball and then release him after the ball stops moving. Is this actually rewarding the sequence or is this just some fun play?>>

You raise a good point here – I am not sure that toy play at the end of a course or sequence rewards anything specific about the sequence in most cases. I think it rewards general engagement and running the course with you, and also makes being in the ring super fun. Now, don’t get me wrong – that is really important! Engagement and having the ring as a good place to be will help everything else!

>>This video is how I primarily use ball reward
– catch while in position
– get it after the ball stops moving
– get it to a placed ball
– catch at a weave exit, tunnel exit

He did really well here on the video! These are good uses of the ball reward. I do have a question, though, and it might just be because I can’t hear exactly what you are saying:

When you were working the A-frame – I think you were saying catch there after the praise on the first 2 reps, then tossing the ball back to him. That it is a really good application of the catch reinforcement. On rep 3 at :30 , I think you said ‘catch’ as he was coming down the frame and then tossed the ball forward, kind of a proofing moment – then praised & released with the get it. So my question is… what does catch mean, exactly? It can be different for each of us, as long as it is clearly defined. For my, ‘catch’ means: good job, reinforcement is available now and it is being tossed back to where you are. So there is an element of release to it but also the dogs are aware that the reward will be coming to them. On rep 3, the catch would mean something else than it did on reps 1 and 2, so we want to be super consistent.

Now feel free to completely ignore this if you were not saying catch LOL!!! It was hard to hear 🙂

The use of the ball at the end of the poles was good too, and it will be even better when you work up to driving way ahead – picture yourself being 10 or 20 feet ahead while he is still weaving, then you can reward the poles by using the catch procedure and tossing back to the 12 pole.

Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
I am glad that Tori was such a good girl in class!!! Yay! I am not surprised though, she really is doing so well!!

This was a fun session to watch – I *think* your catch cue implies retrieve, as in ‘whenever I throw a toy, you retrieve it to me’, yes? And yes, he totally forgot and was really enjoying that toy (flinging it around was ADORABLE).

>>I liked at the end where if I followed him in so I had room to move away from him I got closer to what I wanted.

100% yes, that really helped! He needed that little bit of help because the context alone was not getting the behavior, and a subtle movement cue was totally helpful for him. I totally chuckled at just before 2:00 when he looked at you and a lightbulb appeared over his head and he brought the toy to you. Priceless!!!!

The other thing you can do is warm up the concept with a few reps with a toy that has a long history of him bringing it right back to you, then switch to a toy that might be more entertaining to play with alone like this one was. Maybe warm up with a more boring toy LOL!!! And yes, feel free to help – my mantra is to help as much as needed, but as little as possible 🙂 So moving in to give yourself room to move away a little was great.

Nice job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

>>Remote start in my pocket….shut the video off at a critical part!😢

Ugh I hate when that happens! But you still got a lot of good stuff here on the video 🙂

>>I notice that I’m looking at her when I run. But I should also be focused forward at toy, right? >>

Actually, you are fine to look at her a little as you are running – that simulates the connection you will need when running courses (I am sure you have been told to connect, connect, connect LOL!!!!!)

It was interesting to see both videos here – she is doing SUPER well but I think she is stronger on your left side than on your right side.

Looking at the first video – all of the left side reps look good with the distance! You are both hustling! Wheee!
The right side reps are harder for her – she was distracted by the toy in your pocket on the 2nd rep and had questions on the last 2 reps which were both right side (she was looking at you more than she was looking at the toy.

On the 2nd video, you started off with a shorter distance first and she was great as a warm up – longer distance on the next one which also really helped her.
Those were on your left – the right side rep (rep 3) had a bigger distance and she didn’t drive as well so it is either a right side weakness or the distance is too big then you won on the right side – better on the last rep!
So – keep going with the bigger distances when she is on your left. Try to do short distances on the right side reps with fast releases as soon as she looks the toy, to build the right side up to be as strong as the left side. It will balance out pretty quickly.

Great job here!!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
She is picking this up really nicely – backing up to the target is easy for her.

Note how she is looking really high at you. That is because the food is in your mouth. Because everything between the click and the food delivery gets reinforced and built into the behavior, you are getting the high head position because she sees you reaching for the food up high then handing it to you (it causes her to lift her head and look at your face, which then gets built into the behavior). We ideally want her head down below her topline for this game, so a little adjustment: have the food in your hand, 4 or 5 cookies so you don’t have to reach up for it. And, either bend over or sit on a chair so you don’t have to bend over and hold your hand nice and low, ready to deliver the food but don’t move it til after the click- that way your food delivery is super quick and low, so she doesn’t look up at you.

I think the looking up at you is causing her to not be straight – the gates as a channel certainly help! The lower food position will definitely help too. You can use the gates but they will need to be faded, so maybe use them for one more session while you get the rewards nice and low, then fade them out 🙂
Nice work!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
She generalized the back and forth to the cone very quickly – yay!!!! You added in working up to standing really well too – she noticed but then went back to her wrapping. This is perfect because we are building on this with new fun stuff tonight! The next step on this particular behavior is to replace the cone with a jump wing (at some point soon, you can do the next series of games on the cone). And it is a good game to take to new places to help transfer concepts to new environments.
Stay tuned for the new games coming tonight after the live class – she is in the perfect spot to move forward with them!

Great job 🙂
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
I understand about wanting to stay indoors when it is cold!!! I am definitely a warm weather lover!

And I am so excited to hear he is having a blast with the toys! Your space here is plenty big enough for blinds, the blind looked good and I love the toy play… but he is speedy and you will need a bigger head start 🙂 He did a good sit here – will he be successful if you lead out more before the release? If yes… COOL! Give yourself a few more steps, so you have more time to do the blind. If he might break, no problem – we will be building up the stay behavior separately and you can do a cookie toss to start him or, if the cookie will interfere with toy play, have someone hold him so you can do it like a restrained recall. Now, do it with people he likes – and if he worries about people holding him, have him on leash so they don’t lean over him but rather just hold his leash for a few seconds.

Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! That is SO COOL about the fitness course! I bet you are great at it, too!!!! I only know bits and pieces of it, which is why I send everyone over to the experts after the initial introduction of the equipment LOL!! Where did you take the class?

The wing wrapping is going really well! The pop up crate worked with no questions, he immediately started the wrapping behavior. Yay! And hi Emmett! He is always good to see 🙂

Since it was basically perfect here:

>>Based on what you are seeing here, how would you recommend I proceed or tweak? Maybe stand up with it flat, or open the crate up and try sitting?>

You can pop open the crate and get the behavior rolling, and then go to standing up (which will probably be super easy). And, you can also go to a cone or a jump wing. We are starting to get fancy now, and tonight we add in more to this game – it will get really fun! I moved up the next steps to start tonight because everyone is doing so well. Stay tuned for when it gets posted about 9pm after the live class 🙂

Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Talk about quick reinforcement and placement, I had to watch this twice to see it all – fast is good when it comes to reinforcement here!!!
Great job setting up the session to be able to ‘get’ the behavior – you got it immediately and with his head nice and low. Yay! Nice mechanics too – low hand for the cookies and super quick placement so he never looked up at you and never had any questions. So now, you can start to ping pong the # of steps you get before you click: some of the clicks should come for the first step or two like you did here… and you can mix in some click/treat for another step or two beyond that. And keep going with that nice low hand! It really helps him keep his head down and use his feet independently.
Great job here! See ya tonight!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! So much good work here, and it was fun to see the whole family involved (the BC watching Mike’s plank session was hilarious and the Papillon at the top of the frame during the toy races was cracking me up!!!)

Plank work: he is a confident dude on these! Very nice! Both of you can stand still more 0 he did better offering when you were stationary. When you were moving, he was looking at you both more. So you can just be stationary and let him hop on, then you can cue a hand cue (or step over the board) to turn around, then release to hop off.

You can both use tug toys for this too as it will be more stimulating and a good challenge: can he still think about his body when he is more stimulated? Then you can release and tug or throw the toy.

Based on his success here, you can raise the plank now or go to a longer plank (also elevated) if you have one.

Driving ahead – also looked great! He is a speedster. When you throw the toy, try to have it more parallel to your running line so he doesn’t cut in front of you. If it lands in front of you, move away a little so you are running parallel then converging in towards it when trying to win the race, rather than him curling in front of you.
Speaking of trying to win the race… have you tried cheating to win yet? Since there are two of you: Karena can hold him as Mike throws, and then Mike can take a head start before Karena lets go for the race (and vice versa). You *might* win. Ha! I like to win sometimes because it brings out a whole new gear of speed and the dogs learn to really feel the wind in their hair 🙂

His response to the blinds is strong, super fast reactions to the change in connections! Yay!! One suugestion for the reward arm: As you finish the blind and have the reward presented in the arm across the body, keep your forearm against your belly as you make the new connection. This will get great connection by dropping your dog-side shoulder back so he sees where to be, and you will also be able to run faster. Having the arm away from the body tends to over-rotate us, which slows us down 🙂 Plus, having your arm touching your belly allows us to begin fading the arm-across-the-body reinforcement now that he is so good at reading the new connections.

The double blind at the end was so funny – he got to you really fast LOL!!! You can give yourself a bigger headstart and do the first blind sooner, keeping that dog side arm tucked in like a sprinter – that will give you more time to do the 2nd one and having your arms in tight to you will make the blinds even quicker (like figure skaters bring their arms in tight to turn fast)

Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Right! Keep an eye on how she develops, with a focus on balancing the reinforcement strategies without avoiding any one or the other. Build the toolbox so you have a full set of tools for whatever the future brings 🙂

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!
On the planks, she is looking really confident getting on, off, turning. Nice!

>>She definitely has a preferred way to turn.

Yes, we see that in most dogs – so be sure to work it slowly and put yourself on both sides of the plank, so she turns that directin towards you and away from you. But overall I like what she is doing here! Can you raise the plank more?

>>alternating chase and strike with some tugging to try to get out of our rut of only using those toys for chase.>>

I am glad she likes chase but I think in training sessions you can do less of it as the first toy interaction, to help create a conditioned response of “we drive to play with da momma unless told otherwise” in training. That can help get her away from the stickier behaviors but just looping in more of the play style that will help us in training and also makes the session more efficient. So for this it would be:
– cookie on the plank
– release
– strike
-chase (which rewards the strike)

And eventually the chase gets faded because it is not efficient placement in the training where strike (tugging) is far more effective and efficient.

>>At the end of the session, she is hopping up and turning around with the toy in her mouth.

That was so cute! I loved it!!!

>>We did some more backing up – I’m trying to get upright. The erratic bouncing of the treats is not helping at the moment – the treat never seems to end up in the correct place.

Backing up is going well! Because the hand is the cue, I am not sure you can get any more upright than you were here, so no worries about that. We are going add a destination back into her backing up (wobbly things) so that can help you not have to use a physical cue (bending or arm) because the context provides the cue (which will also strngthn the verbal. Since her form looks really good, I am not going to worry about having you be fully upright – the form is more important than anything else right now.

Wing wrap –
There are a zillion ways to get dogs to run around cones 🙂 and in fact we add one tonight! I am not worried about the tight turn behavior – so this is more of a way to sort out reinforcement procedures in shaping with her (more important than running around cones but less fun at first LOL!)
A couple of different strategies:
Because stationary food is still in the blah category for her, you can insert toy play into it more: cone – food – tug tug tug – cone – food – tug tug tug. This would involve a toy in each hand and she already has a back-and-forth procedure for that.
Or, you can just do the shaping with 2 toys (standing if needed)
Or, insert food movement:
cone – toss the treat to the side – cone – toss the treat – tug tug tug.

I personally work this shaping a behavior of motion with all of the reinforcement options: stationary cookies, moving cookies, toys, etc. That gives us a strong reinforcement platform to build from.

As with the plank – Try not to have the chase as your main toy play because it moves her further from the desired behavior, not closer. The option for moving toys that I see is to toss the toy back behind you (not forward away from you) so she brings it back and ends up in a better reset position to offer going around the cone again.
Nice work here!
Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>I’ve played two toy games. But, she won’t play if she’s distracted. I’ll keep working on that.

Having a foundation in the games is perfect! The next step is to find the threshold of where the distraction takes over… and work as far from that as possible with as many high value toys as possible. Then gradually moving closer to threshold.

Toy races looked great! You won a couple and that caused her to go faster on the next rep (PERFECT, good girl!) Yes, a little choking was happening, sorry Sprite!!! I also use these toy races as a way to get toy play in distracting environments, even if I put the pup on a long line to have more room to run. If you have a helper/holder, you can do them as restrained recalls (which are intensely valuable in helping her learn to ignore people while still loving them). In an environment where she might not be able to play tug with a toy in your hand, I bet she can do toy races to a thrown lotus ball (to jump start things) and then to a throw favorite toy.

Another way to cheat-to-win without choking is an air cookie. I think one of the demos with my blue merle pup involves a total air cookie – I tossed a fake one, said “hey look!” and then took off. It worked a total of once, it is completely a schoolyard tactic – but totally entertaining and he was super engaged LOL!! So feel free to try the air cookie cheat 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Only 7 miles LOL! Lucky dog!!!! Sounds like fun 🙂

On the video, the games are all looking really good!

The distinct sends are getting snappy! I like when he bursts away to the prop 🙂 He did well wit the forward and sideways and backwards sending. YAY!!! There are so many applications of this for future turn cues on jumps.
A couple of small details: “things” were better when he was on your right than when he was on your left. I say “things” because it might be that your mechanics were better on your right, or he is more comfy turning to his left, or both. When you were indicating the prop on your right, your connection was clearer (you were looking at him a little more and less forward to the prop) and that manifested as your pointing hand moving more with his nose and less ahead of his nose. When he was on your left, you were pointing sooner/faster which was more ahead of him, which can be disconnecting so the cue is not as clear, so the behavior is not as clear. So when he is on your left, you can try to move your point hand with his nose more (your leg was great on all reps!) Let me know if that makes sense of if you need a visual – it is really subtle.

When you added toy play before the send, he was more excited but the sending was still lovely! You can also reinforce with the toy (bite! or whatever your marker is).

On the backwards sends, don’t forget the ready moment to help him be ready and snappy- at 2:15 when he got super creative (which was ADORABLE) there was no ready moment so he was unprepared and lost his chain of thought for a moment.

2:32 was HILARIOUS when he missed the prop and then REALLY hit it LOL! Good eyes on your part to be able to see the hit and no hit.
We build on this tonight in a couple of different ways 🙂

>> This is a non-slip silicone type potholder.

Perfect!! For the games that get added tonight, we can widen the playing field by putting it on a kitchen towel or something bigger (it will make more sense later LOL!)

Backing up is also looking really strong – when clicking, you can add in waiting for 2nd back foot to hit squarely on the board – this session had some one-footers and also some hits on the very edge, so you can successively work up to both back feet fully on the board (this is also really helpful for future running dog walk work if you plan to use the rear foot targeting method)
The dish procedure was working well but also because all the reinforcement is forward and off the board, it might have been contributing to the feet hitting only the edge. So with the dish marker, be sure feet are solidly on the board. And you can also use a catch procedure here too to really get being at the wobble board and away from you to be very valuable – it is more of a rolled treat so his head stays down, rolled between his front feet to the base of the board. Then you can ‘dish’ to reset the loop for the next rep 🙂

Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

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