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OMG Snow!!! No more snow!!! You are braver than me, I hide when it snows LOL!
This is a good session for telling us what she needs – the toy plus motion is stimulating a ‘run out’ behavior and that is good to know at this point. It seems to one be difficult when she is on your left, the right side entries seem pretty much 100% with the motion and toy. Throwing the toy early is not a problem, she is a good girl and stays in the poles. Yay!
So based on this session, planning for the next one: let’s work on the excitement that the toy plus motion brings on the left 🙂 Don’t tighten up the poles yet – she is striding really nicely and we want to work this left side skill before we make that harder. Focusing on the left side entries, starting with simple ones: get her really excited before each rep (tugging, dancing around, being crazy) while you are holding the toy: then cue the poles and move slowly.
That should stimulate the internal arousal with the other variables being not that difficult. If she is successful on the easier entries, keep doing it and adding harder entries on that left side.
Do that for a full session and if she is at 90% success or better… the next session can be all the same except you get to move faster 🙂 Wheeee! So it might take 2 – 4 (or more) sessions to teach her to hit and hold left side entries when the toy plus motion are in play, but as soon as we have that: BOOM! We close the poles and she will be an expert weaver.
Let me know if that makes sense! She is doing really well!!!!
TracyGood morning! This is going exactly according to plan, which is highly unusual in dog training hahaha!!! I am sure we will hit a detour at some point, but so far this is spot on! The only thing I noticed is that on the early reps when the weaves were after the tunnel, she slows on the tunnel exit. Interesting – could be any number of reasons or no reason at all, but I will watch for a pattern.
So, next step:
4 poles/2 bases, open enough that she can still go fast but closed enough that she can stride a bit. Maybe 1&7 on both sets, starting them a couple of feet apart them moving them together? And keeping them in sequences. Now that there are 4 poles, spread the distances out so she has 15-18 feet between the previous obstacle and the poles, then another 15-18 feet after the poles to the next obstacle. We are still working on getting the conditioned response of RUN so if she gets “thinky” at any point and slows down going to the poles – make it easier 🙂let me know if that makes sense!!! Keep me posted 🙂
TracyHi! He really like that ball!!! Definitely worth a try to bring it into training 🙂
>>Curiosity when the dog and the toy don’t come back how do you respond to that?>>
If I can’t get the dog to trade, I will go get him and then plan for the next rep to be on a line so I can shorten the distance between him and me and get lots of reward in for bringing it back 🙂
T
Hi –
>>1) should I be using the real cue when we’re experimenting with how to get the bounce or just leave it for narrow channels until we get the bounce more reliably on the 2x2s
I think we are getting enough bending that you can use the real cue.
>>2) any issue with trying to get the striding in another environment or better to get it at home and then take it on the road?>>
Only change one variable – so if it is a new environment (locaiton, new people/dogs, etc), then no – don’t make him multitask to go for striding. But if is it home or a very comfy environment like the place you’ve been renting? Go for it!
>>3) Both sets of 2x2s open a tiny bit or just the 2nd set? A few weeks ago he was doing great with me running when the first was straight and the 2nd was around 1&7 but nearly straight is a lot harder.>>
Both a tiny bit open – so the 2nd base won’t be 1&7, it will be more like one inch offset from being straight (and the first base will be one inch from being open). My 2×2 bases are fairly think, so I used the edges lined up to do the angles (there is a photo of it in the video).
>>And I did notice the lack of eye-rolling on the wing wraps. I think it also helps that we’ve been in the 40s & 50s all week so it’s kinda brisk out. Plus running for Nemo is always a favorite>>
Yay! Glad he is having fun 🙂
T
Hello again! She is doing really well here too – the different angles were not a problem 🙂 The only suggestions here are the same ones as above: show her the connection and arm positions separately from the release cue, not all at once.
And on the threadles, work to have her take the jump on her own without you needing to turn your shoulders or use an arm to cue the jump after she comes in. Keep moving forward, with the threadle cue going – then when she turns her head away and looks at the jump: big party 🙂 She had that question at :19 here, so that extra layer of understanding will help her. And then you can add more motion. Yay!Great job on both of these!
TracyGood morning!
Yay, Sport! It was fun to see her make an appearance. She looks great!!Really nice session here! A couple of ideas for you for the next sessions:
As you move into position, show the serp or threadle arm and be connected as you move into position then release. Two reasons for this:
– first, I think she was releasing on your reconnection and the arm movement, and we don’t want her to think that the motion or eye contact is the release (only the verbal is the release :))
– second, if you show it to her for a few steps before the release, she will have more time to process it and will have an even higher level of success 🙂You might feel like a total goofball walking out with your arm up and shoulders turned 🙂 but it will help her read the difference and help you add more motion too 🙂
The other side looked really good today – no distractions. YAY!!
One other little thing is about threadles: she is coming in beautifully but she is not as sure about going back out to the jump and I think she is relying on you to help cue it… and if you are not perfect (like at 1:38) she doesn’t take the jump. So for the threadles, stay super close to the jump and keep moving with the threadle arm out, shoulders rotated, til she turns herself away to take the jump. That is the ideal meaning of the threadle cue: come in and take the jump 🙂
She is great with the tunnel cues – she really loves it and I think it shows a lot of self-control on the other cues!!
Great job here! Onwards to super advanced next 🙂
T
Good morning! Nice work here, I love that he was able to get into end position while being super confident with the movement of the board. Yay!
You mentioned using a tab or harness a while back – let’s get those incorporated, so you can get him right to the end of the board, get him excited, then cue the position. Starting him right at the end will help him engage his rear more to explode onto it (and we are all about getting him to use his hind end on this behavior at the end of the board :)) And plus, it allows you to hold him and get him pumped up to start the game: that allows him to focus on the position and explode into it, more than the transition from the cookie bringing him into it does. He was super confident with the motion, so I am sure he is ready for you to add the challenge of starting right at the end of the board and more excitement in the form of you holding him and doing a little ‘ready… ready…’ before the target cue 🙂He did well with you adding motion and your releases were also super clear. In your next session, continue walking past but don’t stop moving until you have done 3 steps *after* you are completely sure he has stopped in position. Dogs are brilliant at reading our changes of motion, so we want to be sure he stops no matter what you do 🙂 Those 3 steps can be very sloooooooow but that will help make sure you don’t get into the rhythm of decelerating and stopping as he is stopping because we don’t want him to think that is part of the cue.
Then you can either toss the reward back in position, run back to deliver it, or release forward.Great job here! Let me know if the ideas make sense 🙂
TracyGood morning! The neighbor dog cracked me up! And the wind was WILD, we had some of that here too this week. Eek!!
>>I tried to just let her be successful on a tunnel.>>
I think that was perfect, helping her out to add in a success 🙂 This game is wicked hard, in that we are asking her to process 3 different cues (that look pretty similar) AND ignore the wind AND ignore the neighbor dog LOL! She was a VERY good girl!
It was interesting to see how the value shifted from the tunnel at the beginning… to the jump by the end.
>First attempts I did not open up my chest enough >>
yes – good assessment. In the face of the delicious tunnel, you can be closer to the jump, point your feet to the tunnel like you did and exaggerate the rotation of the upper body – almost like the center of your chest is rotated alllll the way to where she would take off. This was especially important on the early reps where she was sitting parallel to the jump and facing the tunnel 🙂 On the serp reps where she was angled a bit more and facing the jump more and the tunnel less, she had an easier time with it plus your cue was really good 🙂
And because the tunnel is sooooo tempting – as you add motion to the serpentine, you can also shake your serp arm a little to help catch her eye 🙂The threadles looked great! No problems here! You can add more motion to those and also add your threadle cue instead of the normal release.
And at the end, when she was all about the jump and couldn’t find the tunnel – that was just a value shift, so you were 100% correct to help her out 🙂 You can be on the takeoff side of the jump to help like you did at the end, or you can reach over the bar to help her – feel free to exaggerate 🙂 Any time the value shifts, we can exaggerate the opposite cue to help get the behavior (and the value is going to swing back and forth like a pendulum for a while as she is learning here 🙂
Nice work here!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi there! These are looking strong, just a couple of suggestions to move forward to the next steps!
On the bang game with motion: one of the things that I like to do is look at the math of success rates when there are repeated errors, and also to let me know when I can go to the next step. I aim for 90-95% success rate for 2 sessions in a row before adding variables. And if I am working at a lower success rate, I will change something to raise the rate of success.
He was working at about 70% rate of success here, which means we can change something to get into the 90-95% zone. I think 2 things can help:
– first, get 2 complete sessions at super high rate of success without adding more to the motion or more excitement. This is a relatively ‘new’ behavior for him, and I am conjecturing that because of the running dog walk (which he already has been trained on, right?) we are also working to shift the conditioned response of running on a board when you run. So there is a little bit of history to change up.
– second, based on the elevator game which did NOT have the MM out front… if it possible that the MM is eliciting the RUN response (because he runs to it when weaving, and maybe you also used it during running dog walk training?) . So with the MM out front, you are trying to both train the new behavior AND countercondition the response to the MM especially with your motion. That might be toooooooo much for now and the source of the errors.
So, simple answer: take it out for now 🙂 Just continue your ‘catch’ rewards as you move past, throwing back and low. He is more likely to stop when you do that, and I am not worried about where he is looking at this point because his understanding of the end behavior is really blossoming 🙂On the elevator game: Great job with the mechanics needed for holding, counting down, dropping, rewarding, etc. Yay!!! He did really really well here – and no MM out ahead, yes? (Or if there was, you did not use it). One little tweak for now: always reward in position for now, putting the reward on the target (the scratching was FUNNY and also perfectly fine to do LOL!)
There are 2 reasons why I think rewarding in position is better for now:
– first, it builds even more value into the “stop there!” that we want at the end and will also help your bang game 🙂
– second, when you reward by throwing the reward, the mechanics are really hard: you are moving the cookie hand to toss the treat, he starts to move… and then you were saying the release. That might accidentally cause him to think the release is when you move! And that is what we are asking him to NOT do…. so better to reward in position right now. If you watch the reps at 1:25 and 1:36 in slow motion, you will see it clearly 🙂
So after a reward in position – say the release cue, then wait for him to move or tap the ground to encourage him (which is fine because it is such a distinct motion we would never use on course, hopefully)… and then reset for the next rep.And, with rewarding in position, you can move to the next 2 steps of the elevator game: adding more height (but with you still staying next to the board) and with a little less height: starting to slowly move forward after you cue the target and drop the board. I think he is ready for that!
Let me know what you think! He is doing really well so we are just obsessing on tiny details 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
>>Regarding the blinds…just checking that I need to turn in the same direction as the send around the wing and then blind.
Yes – turn away from her, not towards her. Moving towards the wing will help that – sending and not moving will cause your muscle memory to want to do a spin.
>> Because I really want to send to the wing and reverse spin, it seems like much less work, tighter turn, with the dog ending on the same side as the turn with the dog and the blind.>>
Actually with the blinds here… there is a side change. For example on the spin, if I start her on my left: she ends on my left. But on the blind, she starts on my left but ends on my right. And done at the right time it is just as tight or tighter 🙂 It feels like more work because it is a bit weird LOL!!! Most of us use front crosses for side changes on tighter turns but there are times when the blind is a better/faster/tighter choice 🙂
>> I have experienced the turn in the same direction as the dog results in the wider path (perhaps because I am late). Sorry, my head just goes to that answer as you tell me to start my blind as she is entering her wrap>>
That is why we are starting the tight turn blinds – it is more handler training than puppy training 🙂 Blinds can be wider-than-desired due to timing, connection (or lack thereof), or the line the handler runs (or all of the above, I’ve been guilty of being late, disconnected, and on a poor line all at the same time haha!!!! The same can be said for front crosses and spins, but blinds are probably the least comfy for us humans. But when you get comfy with them – wow! So useful!!! And keeps us getting to amazing locations on course in front of these little speed demons 🙂
Let me know if that makes sense 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! These games are going really well!
On the elevator game – the mechanics are looking good and he did really well! One suggestion: let him finishing licking the hop on reward before the countdown – he was fully engrossed in the licking so didn’t multitask the target cue that well LOL!! So you can do the tiniest bit of hop on cookie then wait… and when he kind of looks up, then start the countdown to the target cue.
You can add in motion now: as you drop the board, also start to walk forward to challenge him to hold target position as you add motion. It will also get rid of that curling in that he was doing when you were rewarding on your left side.
Separately, add more height on the board – lift it a little higher as he hops on.
I think he will be fine with both of these so if he is… you can do both: higher board AND adding motion 🙂Bang Game: Yes, this went REALLY well!!!! Having to balance on the moving board might have helped, plus the 8 million rewards at the end of the board on all the games help too: he is getting conditioned to stopping at the end without having to think about it much 🙂 Also, there was no MM out front as a distraction and not a lot of motion from you. So building on this success: keep adding your motion by just gradually moving faster and faster, then toss in a front or bind cross. If he is happy with that, we can add in a MM out front (8 feet away or so) as a challenge, but no need for that right now – we can just focus on motion.
Great job here!!!
TracyGood morning!
I am super excited by his progress here!!! He is right on track to be in the perfect place for the next games coming Monday. Happy dance!
Bang game fading the target: looks fabulous.
I don’t think he was really using he target so I am glad you faded it, and and he looked pretty much the same without it. Super!
Maybe one little tweak: Have him line up right next to the end of the board to challenge his balance and strength jumping on, rather than a running start.
I think the next step of this game is to see if you can take it on the road anywhere – in new places, the target can still be visible. Any other locations with teeters that you can do a little field trip to? If so, start with a low tip and a visible target, just to begin generalizing the behavior.Next up: downhills to ground – also great!
I think the main challenge here was something you noticed too – it is hard to jump on because the board is so high. Will he enjoy being picked up? You can pick him up, cookie him for that, then place him on the board. If he will hate being picked up, you can put a table next to it to act as a step to help him get up onto the board.
If you get a chance to play this again in the next few days, I think he is ready for you to fade target out on this one too now. Do it exactly the same way you did the fading with the bang game, that worked really nicely!!Elevator game: Also great LOL!
These elevator reps had both challenges – height and your motion: WOW! He looked so strong and confident here. YESSSSSSSS!!!!! Not much more to do with this one yet other than only suggestion: try to convince him to start with his feet first at the end of the board. I recommend a cookie placement to get him there right before the countdown – as he hops on, place the hop on reward just past the edge of the board so he steps forward to the edge (then do the countdown and target cue.You did a great job on these staying in motion (running!) until *after* he was for sure getting the end position. Yay Sly! That is hard and he was great.
And he cracked me up at the very end of video 3: He didn’t want to release at the end LOL! Ha! Good boy.
These are all going well – the elevator game can also go on the road if there are other teeters available, starting with the very first part of it.
In your home base, you can start to fade the target on the elevator game too, dialing back some of the height and motion at first til he is solid without it.Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>I also think I’m still throwing my toy too early.>>>>
I agree on the need for more patience with the rewarding 🙂 You can wait til he is entirely out of all 4 poles and then throw it, even if he looks at you like “WHERE IS MY TOY” lol! Better to have a little looking at the end then reinforcement for missing poles, because then yes, it does get confusing for him.
(Side note: why does one reinforcement build a behavior that we don’t want and yet it doesn’t build a behavior that we do want? Case in point… running dog walk. I can reward poorly ONE TIME in training and the dog will repeat that behavior for the rest of his lie. I can reward beautifully 100 times on the RDW but yet…. LOL! OK back to weaves)
>> there was one where he missed the straight entry that I had to watch the video a few times to see that he missed it because he got close to the poles and collected. >>
Connect more especially as you are ahead (that is where he struggles the most, more on that below) so you can see if he is in and what his striding is, delaying the throw until you are sure he has gotten both sets of poles. And by connect more – specifically I mean to stare at the base of the weave poles so you see something red crossing the bases (reward!) or not (no reward). It is the same as staring at the contact zone or mat on a running contact – don’t watch the dog, watch where you want him to be and see if something appears there (reward) or not (no reward).
>>It’s also so hard for me not to work these every day because more reps equals faster results… right?! That’s how training works 🤣.
Ha! Less is more, less is more. That is my mantra. Plus there is some science about sleep and rest and play and NOT training every day actually cementing the learning in the brain better than if we trained and trained and trained.
So on the video, I think 100% of the errors (even the ones he got rewarded for :)) happened when you were past pole 2 before he entered. Now he did have some successes with those as well! But we can teach him to hit and hold the entry when you are ahead by splitting it more:
– start him in a stay and lead out, walking: when you get past poles 2, release and keep walking
– if he is successful with that, add more of his speed by adding the wing wrap before it (you still walk)
– if he is successful with that, go back to the stay and add more of your speed: jog and when you pass pole 2, release him
– if he is successful with that, add his speed back by starting from a wing wrap with you jogging ahead
– and so on, back and forth from the stay, until you can be running.By “if he is successful”, I mean multiple reps over the course of several sessions – it is not going to happen all in one session 🙂
And if he fails, dial back your motion or make the angles of the poles easier but don’t change your position – when you are at the entry when he enters, he is really pretty perfect. That is good news (yay!) but also we don’t want the cue to weave to have anything to do with you being at the entry when he arrives there. So, focusing on the independence of you being ahead is a great way to add challenge at this stage.Let me know if that makes sense! He is progressing nicely and I agree – very resilient, even when the rate of success is a little lower. Yay! Must be all the dirt roll rewards haha!
Tracy
Good morning! Thank you for the update and video!!!
>>One of my concerns with the one session we did starting to close up the channels was that his striding was “all over the place” so I’ve actually been wanting to do that session again and get video this time for you to take a look at.>>
Yes, I’d love to see it – he might have reached that spot in the progression where we focus solely on striding for a couple of sessions. The distance between the poles might just be in an awkward spot where he can’t quite run but also can’t quite do the bounce striding. I hit that point with Hot Sauce who is very similar in size, and she was doing what I call ‘pattering’ – a combo of extra front feet steps like a fast trot mixed in with trying to reach/swim (she is too little to swim the poles).
When that happened, I detoured into striding – it is all posted as of last Monday 🙂 I used the 2x2s to get it but you can also use 6 channels. It is a normal part of the progression and basically we need to find the sweet spot with the tightness of the poles without making them toooooo hard – plus easy entries and getting him really excited 🙂>> Well it rained today so I “made” the time to catch up on all the games videos and after watching the one about Troubleshooting striding issues I decided to get my s___ together, watched all the 2×2 track videos and incorporate some 2x2s in with the channel training.””
Perfect! The first striding video was Contraband and getting the swim stride, which applies conceptually but the more recent ones are very specific to what we can do with Sly because Hot Sauce and Elektra are just about the same size/length as he is 🙂
>>Short session that introduced the 2x2s…and I think because of the channel work he was pretty quick to pick up “entries” on the 2x2s so we quickly went to angles on the 2 poles. I thought it was pretty interesting how he’s already figuring out how the “hopping” movement.>>
Yes! The sessions all looked really good!!! Because of his channels experience, my guess is that he will fly (or bounce haha) through the early stages very very quickly like he did here. Two thoughts as you progress:
– add movement at all stages for now, be moving right after you send so he sees it before he has to make a choice about the entry (a nice little distraction challenge while things are still easy for him :))
– try not to have any reward delivery from your hands, not even placing the treat directly into the bowl – it is causing him to want to look at you. So either have the pre-placed reward (but that can get slippery as things get harder haha) or a MM or an empty target and throw a ball or lotus ball/treat hugger.For the next session, open up poles 1-2 a bit and add in poles 3-4. I believe you can have them close to start with but if he struggles, you can move them further away. Then work through the angles and let’s see what he does with the striding 🙂
Great job here! Have fun!!!
TracyYAY! Glad to hear that! Will he trade for another toy or treat? Ideally you can use them during the session and not just at the end, so play around with it separately from weave training – throw a ball, let him have a little bit of party, then offer a treat or a 2nd ball to come back and reset for another rep. You might notice I often have 2 or 3 frisbees in my hands, or a frisbee and a stick of string cheese – this is to be able to reward the dog for bringing the high value reward (frisbee) back to me for another rep 🙂
