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Hi! I think she did a lot better holding position and you had a clearer upper body position on the serps and threadles before the release! And you can totally throw a reward back to her as you move to help maintain the stay.
I also think she was a little excited and a little distracted, which is why she had some errors in the first part 🙂 When she settled down a bit, she did really well!
So an idea for you:
Because she might get excited and the tunnel gets more tempting, you can have her come in and touch the target in your hand like she did back in the original strike a pose 🙂 The difference is that now you can get her wilder with tugging and being outside, and the tunnel is nearby. Adding the target back and rewarding that will help her remember to drive in to you rather than the tunnel – and then you can take the target back out.
Start this without motion and you just standing still in serpentine position. And if it is still really hard, you can take it away from the tunnel at first, and start it with her just being really excited 🙂
As soon as she can do it when she is a little wilder, then it will all be much easier 🙂Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! This was an interesting video but I think it will help the handling a lot! The tunnel here turns her strongly to her right, so she will keep turning that direction unless the handling tells her not to. And then, because she is small and low to the ground – she needs more connection when she exits the tunnel. On most of the reps, your dog-side shoulder was forward and even if you could see a red blur 🙂 she could not really see you or the connection – she could only see your back or what might have been the shoulder turn of a blind cross.
So at :02, :07, :17, :41 for example, she was completely convinced she should go to your right arm. When you ramped up the connection at :11 and :34, she got the wing 🙂 And at :59, your motion was really good! Adding in more connection will help that too. So because she is little, think of connecting more down towards her, you might even dip your shoulder downwards. And have your left arm alllll the way back – magnets on your fingertips to her nose) so that when she exits the tunnel, she can totally see the connection. That should help her find the wing 🙂Let me know if that makes sense 🙂
TracyHi!
By cementing it, I mean latent learning: during breaks between sessions, her brain and muscle memory are really embedding the learning. So the success of the first session might not show up til the next session in a day or two 🙂>>And “short to the jump”. Do you mean the one she is coming off of, or the one she is going to? I think I see her closer to the one she just jumped. Do you want the stride right in the middle of the two jumps?>>
Yes, ideally she is right smack in the middle. By ‘short’ I mean that her front feet are landing just a little past the bar she just jumped, rather than in the middle.
Let me know if that makes more sense 🙂
Tracy
Hi again! Another great session here, you were great about continuing to move and not reaching for rewards until after he had clearly chosen to stop. And it was just the right amount of motion to challenge him but still set him up for success – he did a great job. So on the next session:
– begin by keeping the same amount of motion, but be further ahead of him as you are moving towards the tunnel. That will challenge him to hit & hold position when it will be tempting to chase you to the tunnel 🙂If that goes well? Onwards to gradually adding more and more of your speed 🙂 This game is coming together VERY nicely in time for the teeter to get added after the tunnel 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Great job here!! He started off really nicely but the big moment was when you added speed from the wing. He was SO FAST across the board! And the other big moment was after you did your countdown and dropped it… would he be stressed and need a bark/run around break? NOPE! He was very happy and ready for more. That made me do a little happy dance here 🙂 I think we are on the way to accomplishing the goal of driving across the board! So cool!
So for your next session: As you drop the board after the countdown/target cue, start to add your motion by walking forward to see if he can hit & hold target position. Start from a stay and if he is fine, add in the wing again.
If he is very successful like he was here, I think you will be able to go to the Elevator 4 (adding the tunnel :))
Wheeee!
Great job!
TracyHi!
>>Six straight poles! (using 2x2s)
Wow, that did not take him long at all LOL!!! He is also striding really well and is very zippy 🙂 Super!!!
>>Ignoring the tunnel entry to go to weaves is HARD! Starky wuvs da tunnel.
I would say that the handling of the wing was also might’ve perhaps just a little (ok more than a little) presented the tunnel LOL! You were doing post turns with a little bit of a threadle arm so it really could have been a send around to the tunnel from that direction. Also, I don’t think you were using the wrap verbal? Which actually brings me to the weave-specific question: what is the weave verbal you want to use? Now that he is striding, you can use it – unless it is the noise you were using here, then carry on, it was perfect LOL!!
Looking at the session:
>>We had some misses.
– I had to take a big step to support a hard entry turning to his right.
– I had to slow down a couple times with straight entries
– I had to open the poles a little a couple times with entries on his left>>Yes, all normal stuff at this stage – it is a pretty hard game and those straight line entries are actually harder than the look, especially when you are running fast too. This Find Em is deceptive… it looks simple but it is not LOL!
Now that many of the dogs are weaving straight poles, I am getting to be more of a stickler for success rates and number of reps – I literally sit here and count on each video LOL! He was at about 58% rate of success here and had 19 reps. So, let’s flip that: increase the rate of success (I look for a solid 90% for at least 2 sessions before moving forward) and decrease the # of reps (to more like 10 in a session on 6 poles). Raising the success rate involves dialing back a variable for now: the variables are the speed of your motion and the tightness of the poles. So, if I get a vote (I am giving myself a vote hahaha):
Next session, open up the poles a bit so he is striding but it is easier to stay in the poles and you continue to run with connection like you did here (and use the big step if needed, that is easy to fade out). If you get 2 sessions of 90% success: then we can tighten the poles back to straight or mostly straight.The other option is that the poles stay straight and the variable we change is your motion: you just do fast walking for the whole session. Now, we may want to do that anyway when we tighten the poles but I think starting with more motion and slightly open poles will be better and possibly you don’t need to dial back the motion when we change the variable of the poles tightness.
Let me know if my plotting makes sense LOL!! Great job here!
TracyOuch, poor guy! Glad he got the adjustment and we will pick up next week 🙂 There is still plenty of time in the class 🙂 Thanks for the update!!
Hi! Tracking this session, 2 ideas for you:
first, throw the reward sooner and be less exciting when you throw it 🙂 You are praising and you are exciting and then throwing the toy… but that is causing him to look up at you. To help get his head lower, as he is finishing the poles, throw the toy out straight or even away from you – all so he doesn’t look at da momma 🙂 It is a bit of a risk to throw it that soon (he won’t be quite finished with the last pole) but it is fine, we can dial it back if he pops out 🙂 But the main thing is to not get too exciting til after he has gotten to the reward, let’s emphasize the focus on the reward for the lower head (I had to actively work to keep myself quiet so the dogs don’t look at me LOL!!!)
second – he is pretty successful with the high speed motion on the left side sends, 100% on this session I think! Yay! So keep going with the speed and motion here, adding in harder angles.
On the right side sends, the success rate drops to about 45% with both his speed and your speed – that is pretty normal, and usually it is because the dog is just stronger on one side versus the other. So, we dial back one of the variables: if he was seeing his speed AND your speed, we reduce one and see how that changes the success rate:
because the struggle was in getting the weight shift & bend to get into the poles, I vote that you take out YOUR speed but maintain the challenge of his speed: start him pretty far away, get him really excited – then send him and walk fast up the line. If he can put together success rates closer to 90% with that challenge, we can add in your ‘motion’ by doing things like pumping your arms, bending forward and also actually moving faster LOL! But we don’t want to do that until we have 2 sessions in a row at 90% success on that side. Otherwise we will move forward to quickly (pun intended haha) and we won’t get the same level of understanding.You can separate the left side sends and the right side sends into different sessions, because they are in different places in the progression. Again, totally normal, all of the dogs are in this stage at some point 🙂 Focusing on the variables gets them through it pretty easily 🙂
Let me know if that makes sense! He is doing really well!
TracyHi! He did really well here!! Both sessions looked really good 🙂
Channels –
This is really good session – super high rate of success (the one error is fine, he fixed it immediately), additional handling challenges and a really nice reinforcement procedure. You can move ahead with this setup:
Tighten up the poles more here and also do the Find ‘Em game with the 3 wings to add his speed, your motion, and mini sequences. I believe he is ready for the poles to be tight enough that he starts striding, so approximately 1&7 on the angles 🙂The solo 2×2 session was also really strong – even the errors were good attempts! He made some wicked hard entries AND was thinking about them too. AND you were moving fast. The success rate was about 85% if you count based on accuracy, or a little over 91% if you count based on cookies because I think you clicked the MM on the first error LOL! No worries, that first error was actually a REALLY good attempt.
So yes, you can add a little frizzer into it because that variable has been really successful in other sessions. Great job here!! Let me know how he does with the tighter poles 🙂
T
Hi!
>>Oh and yay for saving breath with 12 poles…
Yeah, breathing is VERY useful hahahaha
>>building distance for weave entries what’s reasonable you seem closeish in your videos but maybe it’s further than I think?
I try to vary it – when it is hard or new, I am close, maybe 6-10 feet. But then I end up more like 12-15 feet away. The Find ‘Em games are all very tight in distance because the other obstacles are distractions 🙂
>>Took a peak at 6 poles what are you throwing at your mm?
It depends on which dog I was training 🙂 The 3 things I can recall throwing are frisbees, giant chunks of cheese, and a tennis ball (a small one for the smaller dogs).
T
Wow that was really windy!
He did well here, especially on the reps where you were moving – he does a lot better when you move, as long as you resist the temptation to help him with body language.Most of entries you tackled here were easy for him. Super!!! He has trouble on the 9 o’clock angles (9 or 10, that area) so two ideas for you:
line him up facing the entry more, give him a moment to look at it – then send him. He did better on the reps where he was lined up. When he was kinda facing downstream and not looking towards the entry from that angle, he missed the entry and went to poles 3-4.isolate that entry by having poles 3-4 further away, so it is a more obvious thing: either choose 1-2, or choose 3-4. Having poles 3-4 close to 1-2 is fine for the entries that are easier for him, so you can move poles 3-4 closer to the pet tutor just for those entries 🙂
He also did REALLY well ignoring the videographer, only visiting after he had those 2 errors. But overall, good boy with the big distractions of the person, other people in the area, and the WIND!
When you get a chance to do the next session, if you are outdoors: add the Find Em game with the wings! I think that will be fun and useful for him. Don’t tighten the poles more than they are here for that game, because it adds the variable of more speed 🙂
Great job!! Stay dry, hopefully it won’t rain as much as forecasted!
T
Hi!
Oh yes, she was thinking hard here – that is good!!! It sounds like poles 3 & 5 were tightened a lot, so that is probably as much variable as she could do for that session (moving in pole 2 as tiny bit was probably barely noticed :)) She did well here but was definitely thinking, so do one more session starting where you left off here: if she dives right in and gets than all correct to the tune of 90% success or better… then move pole 4 in a little bit. That should not be done in the same session though, it should be 2 separate sessions. So you can do 3 minutes just like you did here. Then give her a break (a play break then a nap is useful for letting her ‘learn’ between sessions) then you can try the next session later on. She might be able to do 2 sessions per day (some dogs cannot, but I think she will be fine with it). Then we try for 2 sessions with that 4th poled moved in with 90% success or higher. Then we move in 3 and 5 to center on the session after that.
Let me know if that makes sense! Getting to 6 straight poles is the hardest part of the whole progression – then after that, 12 is pretty easy 🙂 So try not to change too many variables within a session, instead do multiple short sessions to help her solidify things with a high success rate.
Great job! Let me know if the plan ideas make sense 🙂
TracyHowdy! No worries about the sound hahaha
This session looked great!!!! I liked it better when he did a jump before the weaves – more speed and drive, no trotting to the weaves. When you did the harder angles on the left side without the jump, he was trotty but he ran like mad when you had a jump there… so let’s use the jump as an accelerator! My only suggestion is that as you run to the jump after the poles, throw Nemo back to him for the exit of the poles. That can maintain the excitement but also specifically reward the poles. My concern is that if he gets all the reward on the jump after the weaves, that jump takes on too much value and he might skip out of the poles early to get to it. Rewarding by throwing the ball between the poles and the jump should help keep the balance.
I am trying to decide what the best next step is… do we straighten out the poles more, they are almost straight? Or do we leave them there and add poles 5-6? Hmmmmmmmmmmm I think because he is so much like Hot Sauce that we should just add poles 5-6, leaving 1-2-3-4 where they are for now. You’ll be able to quickly get 5-6 to a tight angle and then we get him bouncey bouncey in his striding… then we finish closing them while maintaining the striding. The poles look to be about one inch or less from being straight here, so I think we are good to go, in terms of adding poles 5-6 🙂 Let me know what you think! When we have 6 poles where we want them, 12 is going to be pretty easy 🙂
Great job!
TracyHi! For some reason, there was no sound here, so I will assume all markers and such were pefect 🙂
Really good session here! He does NOT like slamming himself into the poles so he is already sorting out the striding in the entry and then later in both poles when you angled the 2nd base. Good boy! Great job with your motion. He only had one question, early on, and he fixed it on the next rep (although he did take a minute to give you THE LOOK when you did not click the MM on the miss LOL!!!! Very funny)
Since he did so well with poles 5-6 angled AND with motion, I think you can go to the next steps:
Find ‘Em game from the wings (with the poles at these angles)
then after that is fine and dandy
Poles 1-2 go straight, then poles 3-4 go straight 🙂 We will be keeping an eye on the striding but it looks like he is already figuring it out.Sorry for the boring feedback LOL! This went well so now it is really all about moving forward 🙂 Yay!!!
Tracy
