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Hi! This went well with the girls, no problems at all that I could see!
With Nikko you can really see the focus forward understanding, good girl and nice countermotion! The more you leave early, the more you will want to toss the toy to the landing to really help maintain that beautiful commitment.Sole also did a great job – she has lots of focus forward and commitment so it was easy for her.
When you added distance away from 1 at 1:24, be sure that she is moving towards the jump before you take off – you twitched too soon so she didn’t commit. That extra heartbeat at 1:26 made all the difference and she committed perfectly. Being that far away puts you in a great position, so you can afford to wait for that extra heartbeat here.
She is a little wide on the exits here, not quite digging in as much as we want her to – so unlike Nikko, where I recommend tosses to the landing side as you leave, I think for Sole you should get a long rope to attach the toy to and then drag it along the ground so she chases you out of the wrap. That will get her to tighten herself up really nicely 🙂 and kick up the dirt chasing the next line.
Presto did well! You made it a little harder for him by doing it at full height so he had to make his decision really early, which he was basing on positional cues more than verbal because that is what he saw first.
He started off well! At 1:44, the position started to change a little – you were center of the bar with him and moving a little so it looked like you were shaping a rear cross – your arm position was good but your feet looked like they were together – so that paired with standing on the center line, did look like rear cross pressure (note how he offered that in both directions, so it was not just a side preference thing).
At 2:16 you were on a rear cross side of the jump, so any motion looked like you wanted the left turn there.
Look at the very last rep (2:21) – you had your left leg Definitely forward pointing to the wing, along with your left arm – he was perfect. 🙂
So a couple of things to try – you don’t need to do only one direction, but you will want to be careful of your positional cues on the start. He can be on a more severe slice line and also try to have your arm and leg clearly forward to the wing you want like you did on the last rep. Start by having your position more on the wrap side to help cue the wrap you want. I think standing up more will help too – leaning over and moving presenting some subtle pressure into the line, which he reads as rear cross when you are center of the bar or past it on the RC side. Also, start with just a wing, to get him in the groove of the wrap, then add back the bar.Let me know if the ideas for Presto make sense! I think he will read them really well.
Nice work here!
TracyHi!
We all do some wrist flicky thing, that is how I knew to look for it LOL!!!!! I am a total wrist flicker haha
This was a great non-wrist flick session LOL!! I think when we trial we accidentally pair motion into the release, so definitely keep revisiting the value of ‘don’t release til the word ‘ 🙂 After the release, though, he was a superstar – totally reading the lines on both the FFC and the threadles. Yay!
You can leave sooner on the forced fronts – as soon as he is close to the wing, you can leave for the next line (probably about a foot from the wing). Same with the threadles – as soon as he is within a foot on the entry wing, you can leave – he is reading these really well too! I especially love that he is turning to look for the bar and not just following motion GOOD BOY!!!! You were a shade early at 1:33 – he was many halfway between 1 and the backside wing and you stepped forward, so he almost took the front. I think eventually you will be able to do that, but not quite yet.
Now, looking at when you want to use the FFC versus the threadle – I think the threadle produces a tight turn on the exit, similar to the throwback. And since the throwback requires extra motion and timing, might as well do the threadle which is easier to cue. The throwback will have applications mid-course, so we can look for them elsewhere.
The full FFC produces a wider turn on the exit, so if you need an extension line and not a wing wrap on the exit of the backside, the FFC is a good choice!On the wraps – when starting on jump 2, we don’t want him to release the instant he sees the cue, so you can do something similar to what you did at the beginning by showing him the wrist motion and body position – and then release. His mistakes right at the beginning were because he was trying to go as soon as he was released, and hadn’t quite processed the cue. He figured it out nicely after that!!
And starting him from jump 1 was also helpful because he had a lot more time to process the cue: hand, verbal, position. His success rate was nice and high, especially with less motion (processing is much harder when we run LOL!)So, next session: more balance reps 🙂 front side versus backside slice, and then separately front side versus backside wrap. Eventually build up to slice versus wrap! And then eventually we can add more speed/motion to it, but for now it is more about differentiating. I think starting him on jump 1 helps him because he has time to process between landing of 1 and commitment to 2.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Great job with the weave-tunnel turn away – both of the skills you worked are skills we are seeing on course nowadays (tunnel-weave, weave-tunnel). Super!!! You can add a jump straight out ahead, so you can balance with going straight on the exit of the weaves or tunnel, versus turning away to the weaves or tunnel.
And your feet were great! I bet as the verbal gets even stronger, you won’t need feet much at all but what you did here was spot on.Nice work!! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>> I just checked your video as to when to begin the motion out of the In-In. I was waiting until Nuptse was turning to the bar before moving. You began as the dog came around the wing.
Ideally, we start to move away before the dog gets to the wing, but that when the commitment is super solid. For now, you can move when Nuptse was turning to the bar – that motion affirms his good decision!
When you are standing still, I don’t think you need as much hand shaking anymore – the value is shifting to the bar now (hooray!) and so the hand staying in motion is actually pulling his attention off of it a little.
The timing of adding motion here on the last couple of reps was great! Yay!
So, the next step: going back to standing still, but no reward on the ground – no motion, just standing there and as soon as his head turns to the bar, throw the reward (with whichever hand feels better – I throw with my threadle hand).
Then eventually add in some motion. The high rate of success is really helping to solidify things!
And you can give the skill a couple of days off in between too, to let latent learning work its magic 🙂
Great job!
Tracy
Good morning!
I think you are totally getting what she needs, this went well! A couple of ideas for you:About the turns on the jumps:
Jump right works well! And later on, jump left works well too!
Good timing!
(And you can also work the turns on the tunnel exit rather than carrying out to the jump, I don’t think you did any of those but that are a good balance in this game)One thing to add: you can mix the reps up more so she doesn’t see/hear any cue more than twice in a row so she is not patterning 🙂 Also, you can differentiate the verbals with physical cues as well – you can show the physical cue between the wing and the tunnel and then she can finish the job without you.
So what I would suggest is the following in terms of the space between the wing and the tunnel:
As she is exiting the wing wrap, cue the tunnel:
– if you want the GO, also accelerate and start the go so the big loud verbals are supported by a few steps of acceleration
– If you want the turn on the tunnel exit and not the jump, start the verbals early and also show a physical cue after the verbal– For the jump after the tunnel, you can cue the jump and then face forward, turnin to the right or left after she is exiting. This is what you were doing here (especially on the lefts) and it looked great!!
Hearing the verbal then seeing the supporting physical cue will really help solidify the verbals. You are definitely on the right track and this is looking good!!!
Let me know what you think! Great job!
TracyGood morning!
Hooray for Breeze using his leg! I am so happy to hear that he is doing so well 🙂
Promise did really well here! She had a really lovely balance of commitment, tight turns and SUPER FAST 😁 She seemed to do really well with both options for this!! The backwards send gets the super tight turn and the forward sending gets a slightly wider turn, which is great – you can choose based on what the sequence requires.
Start on more of an angle for all of these, so it is almost a severe slice – she is ready for more challenge on the line up position 🙂
One other thing to add: Throw the reward do that you can leave even sooner – you started doing this later in the video, but for a baby dog I recommend doing it more like 75% of the time 🙂 She is very excited to get on the line and very fast, so we almost want to over-balance the reward on the landing side so she always maintains this fabulous commitment.
One thing you can add as you throw the reward is always be moving away. So you cue, move away, but throw the reward to the landing spot (yes, you might need a third arm haha!). This will get even more commitment and get you to great spots on course (she is FAST!!!!) and it will also bubble over into excellent commitment on sends and wraps 🙂And of course you can mix in rewards for stays on the board – I left one of my stay rewards in the video but I reward at least 5 or 6 times for the stay in every session 🙂
And no worries about the tunnel out in the distance LOL!!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
This was an interesting session with both, and also very helpful!!
First up, River:
The GO is strong in her LOL!!! The value of the jump is very high, and that is good 🙂 So we need to help convince her of the tunnel turns and also when you want the jump and not the tunnel.I don’t have any problem with your cue timing – this is more about helping her process the cues 🙂 Your cues were timely and clear, and when she wasn’t getting it – you made them clearer 🙂
Here are some ideas to help her sort it out:
Helping her with the physical cue for the left was the key. I think also the tunnel is so long that it is possible that she processes the cue then forgets but the time she exits, so maybe a shorter tunnel? That way the time between the cue and the tunnel exit is much shorter so she can retain the cue better. You can probably squish the tunnel up for now, and then gradually extend it again when you see that she is getting the turns.
Also, when you do add the jump – for now, an additional cue might help, Iike a jump cue then the left verbal. I don’t think you will always need this, I think it will be useful for now to help her differentiate. Then eventually you can just change the timing of the cues.And for the go, since we don’t want to lose it – for now, have your go cues always supported by big accelerated motion. That way any non-motion cues will, for now, help get her attention for turns.
Two other things that can help:
You can also place the toy out at the end of the tunnel or even the MM on the line for the soft turns after the tunnel, because the jump is such a big distraction: it is fine to be a lure for now, because it will help get the behavior and then it is easy to fade 🙂
And try a head’s up name call before the tunnel – RIVER! Left left left 🙂 Rather than a tunnel cue!I know these are a lot of ideas, but I bet you can play around and see what gets the behavior – then we can easily add more as she gets the idea 🙂
Color me surprised… Chief is similar! I thought because of his shorter stride that he might not have as strong of a GO… I was wrong, he also loves his go 🙂 Both dogs do the Go lines with their heads up, looking for the reinforcement – which also tells me that they are great at learning through reward placement, which is why I suggested placing the rewards in advance for the tunnel exits, then we can fade them.
So with Chief, I would try all the same things you can try with River! It is pretty darned cool to see him finding the big lines!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
I hope they at least waited til folks were awake before they started the tree trimming! LOL!
Both dogs did really well here! Some ideas for you:
For Kaladin: He did better exploding to the obstacle when you held his collar and said the cue til he demanded you let go of him- very dramatic head tosses on one or two reps LOL!!! At this moment, the jump seems to have more value than the tunnel. With that in mind, it might be time for Operation OMG TUNNELS ARE AMAZING. He is similar to my Elektra – jumps have a little more value, tunnels are fine but not terribly stimulating, wings are stooooopid. So, since I was too lazy to work that hard on tunnel sends, I did a bunch of sessions of only tunnel sending with amazing rewards. And in the discrimination sessions, I only did tunnels and rewarded the daylights out of them LOL! So the tunnel value increased and now it is nicely balanced with the jumps (although I would be fine if she turned into a tunnel sucking beast for a while haha). And a nice by-product is that her speed overall on course has increased – something about the joy of racing through the tunnel has ‘clicked’ and now she races everywhere on course. For whatever reason, the jump value didn’t produce the same thing – and I think Kaladin is in the same boat! He understands all the things, he prefers jumps… so now let’s make him completely insane for tunnels too. LOL! I promise he won’t lose his mind 🙂
On the angled backside, he was thinking really hard – he knew it was something with the jump but not sure of which side. So to help him out, you can set up his position so he only sees the backside and the tunnel (move to a spot more center between the 2). That way he doesn’t end up with a 3-way discrimination, having to differentiate the backside from the threadle from the tunnel. When you added a little step, it totally helped him as well, so the easier angle and a little step will smooth that all out and allow him to add back the speed (and 80 zillion rewards for the tunnel LOL!
The session with Min and the PT went well, she seemed to have zero questions about driving to the PT (I think she had questions when you first tried this, if my memory is correct?)
For her, she totally said “I GOT THIS, HUMAN!” so now we can add challenge: you can move the wing wrap further back and/or further off to the side (left side of the screen) so you are moving into it with more speed: especially from the angled start, the handling looks similar for the tunnel or jump – the verbals will make the difference and she is totally ready for that (And I am guessing we will see this at the US Open).Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Both dogs did really well here! I love that Chief is getting to play too!
I think we can take them to the next level now, where the physical cues are less important and the verbals are more important. They were both looking for physical info, so we can make some tweaks to help the verbals have more strength.
Some ideas for you:
On the first video:
When starting with just the wing and tunnel, holding her collar as you start the verbals then letting go was pretty effective for her – you didn’t hold her in the beginning so she had some questions, but then you were holding her a bit at 1:09 and later and that allowed her to process for a moment, and you let go when you saw where she was looking. Waiting til she processes and looks the right way can help her solidify the verbals even more.When you added the wing wrap, I think she was relying on your first step after the wrap, rather than verbals. Plus, if the first step was towards the tunnel and you wanted the wing, she is unlikely to cut in front of you to grab the wing.
So if you want to use a step, be sure you step perfectly to the corrct obstacle 🙂 At 1:35 you stepped right to the tunnel and she is unlikey to run across your feet to get the wrap, for example.
Chief did something similar at 2:25 where you had a step right to the tunnel – if you freeze the video on your first step after the wing wrap at 2:21 and 2:25, the physical cue is identical so he was reading that as the cue and it overrode the wrap cue. Similar things happened at 2:37, 2:47, 3:04 and 3:15: you are having to have perfect foot steps and that is overriding the verbal – when your feet are perfect, they get it beautifully. But, since having perfect footwork is a pain in the patootie and also we want to strengthen the verbals, two ideas:– You can start closer to the wing wrap and just walk up the line (no send steps) in t he general direction of the obstacles
– or you can send to the wing wrap and stand still – no steps, only verbals. Wheee!
Both can help the verbals gain power so you don’t have to worry about your feet as much.
Did you bean Chief in the head on the last rep?? Poor guy LOL!!!
On the 2nd video, I think the footwork was also coming into play when the dogs had questions. Because the 2 obstacles were really close, if your first step had any sort of direction towards the tunnel, they both headed to the tunnel (like at :25, :53, 1:17) they did take the jump if you were more stationary, but we can also tweak this so that you can do minimal handling and just use verbals 🙂
You can move the wing wrap over closer to the white building, so when they exit the wrap they can see both the jump and the tunnel basically on a straight line. And all you have to do is move forward and say the cue (no steps or sends needed). Or you can stand still and say it 🙂 That way they can look for the line without waiting for a foot send or deceleration.Because the AAC requires such difficult gamble skills, I recommend you do both standing still and moving forward (not at the same time though, hahaha!) because you might be stuck behind a gamble line and not able to show any motion.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Yay, this went well! He was really starting to independently look for the bar which is exactly what we want (he is super smart!!) I think the only thing to change a little is the size or type of reward – he was having a little trouble seeing the reward on a lot of the reps so maybe use something more obvious (bigger?) and not quite as far around the wing. He got better and better at looking for the reward as the session went along, and it also looks like you got a little further away. You can repeat sessions like this, gradually adding more distance and then getting close to the jump again and very gradually adding motion.
>>During that session, his only fault was when I stood on the left side of Jumps 1 & @, and told him to jump, he skipped jump #2.
Looking at when he did the backsides on 2 at 1:29 and 1:38, it looks like he was reading your rotated body position: Your shoulders were fully rotated, arm way back, feet a little rotated, lots of connection, and a bit of pressure to the center of the bar at 2 when you released… so it did read like an independent backside cue 🙂 I think it you faced a little more forward and and were moving forward up the line to the wing closer ot the tunnel, he would take the front side (this is what you did when you were on the other side getting the front of 2).
Great job here!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Potter did a great job stepping in for his brother! And it sounds like Breeze is improving every day, thankfully!!!
Potter is of the generation where the release means take the front, which would explain why he took the front of the jump when you used the release word LOL! Good boy. So you can do these by starting with a cookie toss so he is chasing a cookie and not in a stay – that would also be the reason this sequence made more sense to him when you added motion: “Break means take the front, mom!” and also “IN is not my release word” LOL But in motion, he was much better at reading it!
When you are playing with this on one jump, for now, one way to do this is to be in position and not moving up the line to show him this – movement means take the front, especially when you are not past the jump yet. He did a great job when you were past the jump, like at 1:14 for example and also when you set yourself up to be ahead after the tunnel sends. And if he struggles when yo uadd more motion, you can have him come touch your hand and get a cookie, then take the jump
Also, he is good about giving feedback on your footwork (which is nice, because footwork on threadles is helpful :)) When you kept your feet moving forward up the line he was great (like at 1:37) If your feet were moving towards the jump, he would take the wrong side. You got better and better with your feet moving up the line so he got better and better at finding the threadle side of things. YAY!
When you added the tunnel: his name really helped bring him to the threadle side and he did well finding the threadle side of he jump!!! The wraps were harder for him so you can stay there at the wing a little longer and move more slowly so that he can make the complete wrap. When you moved away quickly, he read it as a slice.
He had a little trouble committing to the jump bar when he arrived at the threadle side (backside) of the jump. So to help him find the jump after he comes to the threadle side, you can leave an empty food on the line on the landing side – it will be a target to toss the treat or toy to, which will help him look for the jump and turn away from you. And because it is empty, he gets no prizes for running directly to it from the tunnel exit LOL!!!
Remind me how old Promise is now? We can tweak these games to make them puppy-appropriate so she can start learning threadles too 🙂 I don’t do a ton of threadley stuff with baby dogs, but it is useful to show the concept a little.
Great job here!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Lots of great stuff here! And so many good obsessing opportunities, I am in my happy place now haha!
>>IN – threadle slice
FLIP – threadle wrap
I have worked the FLIP much more than the IN, when approaching from the landing side of the jump with the dog between me and the jump (as week two’s exercise). The IN I have mostly worked with a traditional threadle and in place of a forced-front. Therefore, the IN is more difficult in this setup, from the perspective of “what he knows”. From the “what he likes” perspective, a slice is always preferred over a wrap. >>All valid points, I agree! I think working your ‘flip’ is useful because it is most definitely a fashionable trend nowadays. The threadle slice scenarios you have already worked are very useful and also pretty common lately. I am seeing the threadle scenarios evolving to now be more of these weirdo scenarios on course LOL!! Backside threadle slices, offset threadles, etc. They are beginning to make their way into Premier. (I don’t think they are legal in regular Masters/JWW but I have run across threadle opportunities when courses are set tight or at odd angles (which we see in all venues, like it or not LOL!). The only applications I have seen are the tunnel discriminations which are similar in many ways.
>> I was at a seminar this past weekend where it was suggested that I accept Enzo’s somewhat wide turns and stop torturing us both trying to get tight backside wraps. It was very welcome advice (since we are both sick to death of drilling backside wraps) but I’m not sure how “good” it was. >>
Ha! Torturing! My question is: have you ever quantified how the wider turns compared to the tighter turns? Since you are able to handle him and control how tight or wide the turn is, your answer is in quantifying it. It is possible that the wider turns are faster (that is so often the case!) so as long as he knows where he is going, letting him do his thing is far better than trying to tighten the turns. Based on the tons of timing we have all been obsessing on in the past few years, those pretty turns that are nice and tight are almost always slower 🙂 As long as he knows where he is going, the dog is faster being slightly wider. So I am totally on board with leaving it alone and as long as he understands the skill… let him rip! The only way to know if it is good advice or not is to time the difference.
(Also, who was the presenter? I am trying to get my butt out to more seminars with the 3 youngsters and am always looking for good people to work with, especially when they give permission to stop torturing myself haha)
I had this same conversation with Jenn Crank about my Hot Sauce in June – we compared what it was like to get the pretty turn versus just let her drive her lines and as Jenn said, “She is smarter” haha! Turns out that Hot Sauce knows how to set great lines for herself and is faster on her own lines without my ‘help’ making them tight. I just tell her where she is going then get the heck out of the way 🙂 I have timed her a lot this past summer, and also compared her runs directly to my two large dogs who can post very competitive times. When I let her rip, her 15” tall self is right there with the large dog times.I have also found that on almost all courses – the wrap is not the best choice, the slice line is almost always better. So since he likes slicing – you are in great shape!
>>I am using quite a bit of body language to support the verbals but I think that’s fair.>>
Agreed! I think it is very fair to help the dogs with physical cues. He totally reads your positional cues as well, it was really great to see how early he could read those and set up the line (more on that below). At some point in the future we can proof the verbal without the physical support but that is not needed now.
On the video: You were paying attention to your feet on these, and it makes a big difference for him. The first little oopsies were really you just getting the footwork going then after :16, you had the feet pretty darned solid! For the slice, you had your feet facing forward then turning to center of the bar. For the wrap, your feet stayed forward the whole time – big helps to him!
On the flips at the beginning, I think he was waiting for praise to complete the turn. He is kind of hanging over the bar, halfway between the slice and the wrap, until you praised him (:35 is a good example) So, wait til he completes a choice then praise him 🙂
When you switched sides, like at 1:26, you waited longer to mark the behavior and he had to complete the choice – and so he read the wrap and that is when you praised… perfect!NICE difference in feet at :46 between the flip and the slice
On the next 2 reps, you had a little upper body help too (shoulders turning to the slice line) and I think he really appreciated that – it was really subtle at :56 but also effective. So nice!Looking at positional cues (your running line after the tunnel) – On the flips when you pulled away from the line a bit as he was thinking about how to turn – he found that very helpful and turned better (1:59 and 2:06)
Then compare it to your feet/line on the next rep at 2:12 – a big difference and he found the slice easily. The difference was that you were driving to the threadle positional cue (entry wing of the backside) rather than pulling away – that use of position a BIG thing for him! And being close to the entry wing on the slice is important – you pulled too far away from it at 2:56 and he didn’t read it as a threadle at all (your line of motion took the jump out as a threadle possibility). Compare to the line you ran on the next reps (3:03 and 3:18) – nailed it!
He seemed to have a harder time on the right turns than on the left turns on the wraps. The left turns just looked a bit more fluid for him here, which can also inform your handling choices – he got it tight on a right wrap at 2:43 but he slowed way down to make it pretty.
The balance reps looked good, and also he is making my point about finding the slice lines -when he was on your left doing the threadle wrap on the line after the tunnel, he was doing it but it was hard. When you pushed to the other side of the backside to set up a push to a slice… fast and tight!!!
So if this is still set up and you feel like quantifying, you can take that wrap to the right (like at 2:43) and compare that sequence (tunnel, threadle wrap, last jump) to 2 things:
– wider line on the threadle wrap, like the line he ran at 2:52 which was not as tight but certainly really nice! You can decelerate and crank down a little to get the really tight turn versus more motion and less cranking down to let it be wider, and compare times
– pushing him to the other side of the backside jump after the tunnel and slicing it as a serp or German (I would time both, because I am obsessing on this now hahaha)And time all 3 (ok, all 4) 🙂 On Tuesday we have some independent backside push work coming so that getting the backside push after the tunnel in this situation is easy!
Because obsessing is my favorite thing (especially over morning coffee) I did a quick hand-timing of the super tight wrap versus the wider wrap at 2:43 and 2:52 – the wider wrap was about 3/10s faster from landing of the jump before the tunnel to landing of the jump at the end of the line. It lends some credibility to the wider is faster theory and also I would want to compare it to pushing him to the other side of the jump for the serp or German.
Now, sometimes the threadle wrap is indeed the best fastest (and sometimes *only*) option – we can help him set up a better wrap on these without obsessing or torturing. More experience with seeing it on course will help, and using that pulling-away positional cue also helps. But he can set himself up better physically (the later reps in the video were pretty different than the earlier reps, he got much better at setting the threadle wraps up!). One option is to just use a wing there so he can think about the mechanics – then add a bar back in. You can also do a double wrap sometimes – where he does the threadle wrap then another one on the same jump, back to back. That is not my favorite thing but can be used sparingly to help the dogs set up their weight shift and turn. And the other option is to angle the jump more, so the slice exit wing is closer to the tunnel and the wrap entry wing is closer to the last jump. That creates a visual where the slice is MUCH harder and the wrap is much easier, so he is going to find it easy and maybe even fun to do the wraps 🙂 Right now, I think the slices are easy for him (and perhaps fun too LOL!) so he prefers those (understandably).
And the bypass balance was easy peasy for him, he never looked anywhere other than at the line you were setting. Good boy!
Great job on these! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
You can send her around the wing from either direction – but be sure you know what she is looking at when she exits 🙂 Depending on how it is lined up, the jump might end up being a threadle so be sure it is a relatively easy line to both the tunnel and the jump.Tracy
Hi!
I think part of the timing stuff is that it is very dog-specific. One of my demo dogs (Hot Sauce) can hear the right verbal in the tunnel and will apply it to the jump. Tulsa is more like my other dogs, who would apply the right verbal at that timing to the tunnel exit. So it is perfectly fine to noodle around a bit and see what works best for the dog 🙂 I reward all the responses because it is basically like asking the dog what she needs and when she needs it 🙂Tracy
Hi!
>>Made it back from TN last night and sort of managed to focus on work today. Kaladin got to sub in for Min in her international skills class so she could take a break. He rocked all the fancy skills in the course (minus the DW and a-frame), did 2 sets of 12 weave poles, and decided the new Galican saloon-style tire was no big deal.>>
Welcome home from a kickass Cynosport! Congrats on your massive successes. Time for you and Min to rest and recharge a bit.
Good boy Kaladin! Yay! I am sure the young man was happy to step up to the big leagues. Super!!!!!>>Questions on the week 2 Backside trends/course openings. So I should use my “come” threadle slice cue when doing the threadle handling for the opening? But the forced FC handling “cue” is just releasing him over the first jump?>>
I use the threadle slice cue for both because the dog’s behavior is the same (get in between me and the jump, and slice). And based on the line up, I do release the dog over jump 1 because the dog is facing it and my release word means “take the jump you are facing between me and you” then as he commits: switch to the threadle.
I don’t release with the threadle cue in that scenario because in theory, the dog should threadle jump 1. (Disclaimer: my dogs are NOT that well-trained and there is no way they would threadle 1 haha)
>>I’ve been using the off arm for my threadle wrap and the inside arm for my threadle slice. In this opening sequence threadle handling, it looks like the off arm would have more emphasis and be clearer, but will that be confusing when I don’t normally use the off arm for a threadle slice?>>
Ah, threadle arms… just had this discussion with Anastasia Egorova (sp?) the Russian handler who taught a seminar locally that I took the youngsters too. She made excellent points that I agree with:
– mainly, whatever you choose, be SUPER consistent 🙂 – so if you only every use the dog side arm, that is the cue, always. For my bigger dogs, I use the outside arm up high as the threadle slice cue – always, at this point. I used to have the dog-side arm for some types of threadles and outside arm for others… but that was a little inconsistent and plus the situations where the dog-side arm was used were few and far between. And for threadle wrap, it is both hands, lower, and used differently (shoulders used differently too). However, that up high threadle slice arm is really not all that visible for small dogs like Min, and they might have to look up to see it which we do NOT want them to do. So if I had a small like Min or I was running one of the Papillons, I would train the dog-side arm like you are mentioning (Anastasia also has a small dog and she said the same thing, which was nice to hear!).
Kaladin is same size as Hot Sauce, so he can see it if you want to use it.– and train the dogs to understand rather than rely on handling (you are already doing the training, no problem there)
The Russians are phenomenal training, so it was great to hear her thoughts on it. She uses the cross arm for her big dogs and the dog side arm for her small dog.So if you want to continue with the dog side arm threadle slice like you have been doing with Min, you can make it more salient with a shoulder-dip to get your hand low and even shake the hand a bit. That is what I have my Papillon students do and she is a little bigger than they are, but not by much. When I was running Nacho in agility (he is 11.5 inches tall), I used the shoulder dip successfully and dog-side arm. Thankfully, there are no threadles in flyball hahaha (one of the reasons I enjoy flyball so much :))
Another disclaimer – with US Open in a couple of weeks, don’t change what you are doing with Min 🙂 If you want to play with the shoulder dip and shake hand, that is very much what you are already doing so try it out. But if you want to use the opposite arm up high for threadle slices, that is cool – but do it *after* the Open LOL!!!! Min is in the middle of her BIG EVENT SEASON so I would change nothing. Just keep the skills sharp!
Let me know if that makes sense!
Tracy
