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Hi there! This was a really fun session!
This is a great start o getting toy play involved with his training! You made it such a fun game: chase the frizzer a couple of times, then you held him then tossed the friz. Since he does not love coming into you, I think you slipped the holding onto him really nicely into the session: he seemed super happy with it! Question: if you wiggle it around more and let him grab it… will he grab it? Will he pull it out of your hands? If yes – you can add in more of the grabbing and letting him pull it out of your hands.
Are there are other toys he really enjoys putting in his mouth? And, does he like to chase balls? I am planning how we can add in more toy play and keep it fun like you had it here 🙂 Eventually it will be no problem hold in him in close to you and letting him drive ahead to the toy then tugging with him.
Great job!
TracyHi! That fun match opportunity sounds amazing – what a great way to get a baby dog into the trial environment!!! And it sounds like he was pretty perfect – excellent choices on what to ask him to do!
On the wing wrap foundations:
Picking up where you left off, he did a great job here!
I don’t think you need the yes then the bowl marker, I think the dish is fine to mark the behavior and availability/location of reward. He was great with wrapping the gate! And had a distraction on the other side of the baby gate and he was fine with that too LOL! But then it was a little harder when the other dog looked out the window LOL! You can add challenge to the gate by extending it so it is a long wing to go around.
He also did well on the upright and was still great hen you moving it away. That is about as far away as we want him to leave for offering (it will become a cued behavior pretty soon), so we can work on other elements of it:
You can start to move the bowls behind you to begin the fading process for the bowls – still toss the treats into/towards the bowls but they will be less obvious.
I was going to suggest something bigger but you whipped out the blue bucket and he did well. Have you tried any of this with 2 toys? I suggest a quick revisit of the entire progression using 2 toys. It folds in arousal early on and teaches the dogs to find commitment even when there is a toy *rightthere* and possibly moving too!And have you started thinking about what verbals you want to use on your jump wraps? That is a whole ‘nother thing to obsess on 🙂
He was great about generalizing to the tree! I love it! Good boy! I definitely think you can get 2 toys involved – the behavior is getting strong and he is generalizing, so we can move forward into adding the excitement of toys.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! We are winding down and I will look at any remaining posts through December 1.
>>I was wondering how things went at the Open? Were you pleased? Wish I could see you and your kids run sometime. We see bits and pieces in your videos for class, and I can imagine how great you must be on a full, challenging course.
Thanks for asking! I was on the management crew at the Open (I was in charge of making sure all 8 rings of courses got built including several 5:15am course builds eewwwwww!), so it was more of a work trip than a competition for me. I ran 3 of the dogs a little bit on the first 2 days – the two baby dogs were AMAZING and Hot Sauce in particular was one butt-width away from the finals in those two events (I was in her way on one line at the very end of an otherwise brilliant speedstakes, and I didn’t get my sorry butt across the finish line fast enough in Snooker so another dog with the same score but a faster time got into Finals and she was the first to not get into finals. oops! LOL! Contraband made hs debut and he was perfect! I messed him up here and there but it was a great debut. And Voodoo, my experienced dog, struggled with the long layoff after Covid and sharing time with the 23 others (they all ran within a few dogs of each other) so he was blazing fast but both of us had errors 🙂 But it was fun and things ran smoothly on the work side of it for me 🙂
Have a great Thanksgiving!
TracyHi! This might be a better angle for it:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Oc3ESj8odL5y6wf2HYzy-RjnNYBUKpuhGPeuz2s8LpM/edit?usp=sharing
Let me know!
TracyHi! Great job on the videos!!!
First up – the wrap foundations:
>>Also, we just worked on an online class where we put control on a dish and did a collar grab to look at us for permission to go to the dish. The send to the dish was on a verbal. So I think that is why she keeps looking at me when I am not putting the food in the dish right away. So I might have to think on this to see if that will conflict with what we are doing there. It’s R+ control games foundations for bitey sport dogs. The setup is different though and I’m not sitting on the floor.>>
It is possible that looking at you is more valuable than the bowls here, but I don’t think it was the other game causing the issue especially if the setup is different – she probably just needs a session or two of you going faster with the cookie drops – do 2 or 3 short, fast sessions (30 seconds or less) of practically immediate cookie drops so she doesn’t have time to look up at you 🙂 and then on that 3rd session, you can start to delay a tiny bit more. She was starting to get it like at 1:02 and 1:27, so I think she just needed a little longer to get into the rhythm 🙂
You can probably do this all in one evening, taking short breaks between each session 🙂>>Can I use a cone for this? We’re doing cone wraps in our in person class and we’re not progressing very quickly so this might help there.>>
Yes, this totally can be the cone! Start with something less obvious at first, like a skinny upright of some sort, then go to the cone. I have personally found this style of shaping it to be easier for the dogs than the way we used to shape the cone wrapping.
On the hand target video:
She gave you excellent feedback about placement of reinforcement and mechanics 🙂 Your mechanics and placement were building value for the cookie hand, not the target, and she let you know LOL!! When you work on this, don’t let the the target hand move. Leave it out to the side with your elbow locked. Have the cookies ready in the clicker hand so when you click, you can then bring the cookie over to the target hand to build value for that – plop the cookie right on the target. Moving her away from the target hand by tossing the cookies off to the side was not building value because the movement of the cookie hand and the delay in the toss and the placement was what was getting the value (as you can see because she would always return to look at your cookie hand, and not at the target And then when you didn’t reward, did you see her go back to where the cookie toss was? She is SMART!). So – no reset loop here for now! Just build value on the spot for the target by marking and putting the cookie right on the target (you can turn the wrist of your target hand up so the cookie lands on the target on your flat palm. When she has value, we can reset her more but for now, build value in position). And if she is stuck, don’t pull the target hand away because it is a negative punisher every time you remove it – you could see she was getting frustrated when she jumped up! Just leave it out there and look at it, maybe eve wiggle it to help 🙂 But I think the change in mechanics and placement will help a lot too.
For the toy play, you can get her chasing the toy a bit more as well to have her come back to toy focus after all the cookies. Having Mazi in the room was a little too distracting for the toy play in this session, so you can do a couple of sessions without Mazi where you stand up, run around, drag the toy, get her chasing you 🙂Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
He was rocking and rolling right at the start here, which caught you a little off guard with the mechanics! Have your cookies and everything totally ready before you put the bowls down so you are clean and quick with the rewards – it took you about 5 seconds to get sorted out and that is a long time in puppy time LOL!
This was a great session, he appears to have gotten the back & forth rhythm – yes, you can break it off sooner because it this behavior is so repetitive. You can do a little toy play after every 5 or 6 treats then go back to the back and forth. Or, you can bring the cone in or use a skinny upright. He looked ready for it here, I think you can do it on your next session – warm up with the bowls like this for a couple of treats then as soon as you see he has the rhythm – get the upright in (send him away to get a cookie using a ‘get it’ and have it nearby so it is easy to put in while Risk is getting the tossed cookie and get right back into the flow).Great job here! I am looking forward to seeing him do this with the cone!
TracyHi!
>>I think you should frame this response.
Ha! I am actually cranky at myself because I thought it all the way through on the long drive home last night but didn’t type it until this morning – and it was not as clear as what I had in my head last night.
I love the question because it made me think about exactly why it was different and be able to outline it.
And also from the Zoom last week when you asked if I trained the go-to-bowl and the dead toy differently (I think that was the question) with different markers and I answered yes. I think I left out the most important reason why: because they are two entirely different behaviors (decelerate to eat from bowl versus grab and retrieve), different functions, different mechanics for the dog to the best latency comes with treating them as 2 distinct behaviors.
>> I am in a reinforcement vortex right now in which all I read and think about is reinforcement, and I “know” less with every second that passes.
I feel that pain 10000% and I am currently in the “the dogs will lead the way” mode and also – we don’t have to be perfect, because dogs also live in that reinforcement vortex and only think about reinforcement. So, they have it all sorted out and as long as we are as clear as we can be, they will be super happy 🙂
>>It is sometimes hard to put a fork in it, so to speak, and just train my puppy, knowing full well that I’m going to break him and then unbreak him.
Ah yes, puppy training paralysis. You have full on permission to be sloppy in some cases and make mistakes as long as the puppy gets a wicked high rate of reinforcement. You know that ‘hand on pocket’ being the out cue for Hot Sauce? Yep, I screwed that one up! But I go with it and sometimes I totally put my hand on my pocket as the out cue LOL!!!! She is happy and successful and still gets a cookie when I do the hand on pocket cue LOL!
>> I could totally relate, as Wingman has a stellar recall on a hand-going-in-pocket cue. LOL.
I don’t think you ever my met Rat Terrier, Rebound – he passed away a couple of years ago at age 16. I was able to shape entire behaviors just by touching my pocket as a marker, like a clicker. Ha! Oops!!!
>>For the “coming in hot” part of the stationary toy reward, I think I’m going to incorporate this into the recall practice in fenced areas that we do every day. Moonshot is accustomed to getting a cookie from my stationary hand at my side when he comes in hot on a recall, sometimes sliding into a sit and sometimes getting the treat immediately. I’ll start using my “yum yum” verbal here to tell him when he can have the cookie.>>
I like it!!!
>And I’ll start having the toy at my side and saying “bite.” I think he will get this quickly, because it’s a small tweak of a game he already loves. Video soon, I hope!>
Perfect! Dogs love to come in hot to toys!
Have fun, and feel free to just jump in, mess up, have a laugh, edit video with a glass of wine 🙂
THello and welcome! 1 year old is a great age! Some of this might be stuff she has experience with, but it is a different process than most puppy stuff so it should work well with things she already knows.
>> these types of exercises are expensive for me – Dellin does not particularly like food, so it’s not hugely reinforcing.>>
This is good to know, and so I think our #1 priority at this point is to increase food value. It is quite doable! We are doing it in our Reward class, so I will pop that video into this class too – several folks are struggling with food value (BC owners, shocking! LOL!) so we can all work on it.
3 of my dogs came to me with no real food value and now they are all piggies, so we can build it up.
And a general suggestion for any/all food use in training at this point:
don’t think of the cookies as a reinforcement, think of eating the cookie as a behavior. So, with the foot touch to the thing: yes you can click then give her a cookie (I personally would not click if the cookie is not very reinforcing) but then after she swallows the cookie, play tug. Do this on a 1:1:1 ratio – foot touch, cookie, tug. She is going to be loving cookies VERY quickly. The tug is the reward for now, the touch and the cookie are behaviors… but both with take on the value of the touch and then the cookie will become a valuable reinforcement.So on the foot touch prop – she had some good touches and some where she was near it but not touching it, so I am not sure if she knew it was a foot hit behavior or a back & forth behavior. And, since she is not a foodie yet, try this:
mark the foot hit with a yes
deliver a cookie with her standing on the thing
then throw a tug toy (or ask her to tug with you, whichever she likes)
then: lather, rinse, repeat until she is demanding her cookies 🙂And same thing with the hand target – we can incorporate toys to build the food value:
She was so dainty wih the target LOL!!! A suggestion about the mechanics of delivering the cookie- leave the hand with the target stationary and extended away from your body, locking your elbow. And then the cookie hand can bring the cookie over to the hand target and reward right there (no ned to click for now). By moving the target away and rewarding from the other side, you can see she is orienting herself to the cookies and not to the target.
Then after a cookie delivery: party time with the toy! Do it on the same 1:1:1 ratio that I suggested above. Yes, you will get fewer reps but they will all be higher quality with the by-product of raising the value of food. And when food is high value? EVERYTHING is much easier 🙂>>Can you do the weekly games in any order? I assume so, but thought I’d double check.>>
Yes! And mixing up the cookie/shaping games with the running games would be ideal to keep things fun 🙂
Great start here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>One thing that you mentioned in the zoom call is that my ready to work protocol may be too boring
Continued engagement is something we still continue to struggle with. He has gotten much better but I still have instances where he will go off on his own and sniff or check out. I suspect continued behavior loops will help with this but was looking for ideas on assessing whether he can work.>>That is a massive complicated topic but basically it comes back to the Yerkes Dodson Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes%E2%80%93Dodson_law). I think the ready to work procedure that you described simply puts him on the wrong part of the Y-D bell curve. Each dog needs a different way to mentally warm up, so trying different behaviors to see where it puts him, and in different environments, is the best way to go with it 🙂 In order to do the relatively complex task of agility, he has to be relatively high – and it sounds like the stuff you are doing lowers his arousal so he is on the left side slope of the bell curve, and we need him at the top of it. Experimenting with different things and tracking what works is the only way to figure it out 🙂
>>This weekend we had a session in Carrie’s yard. Three other dogs and Roulez in standing heat. While this may have been too much to ask, prior to starting sequencing, I had him on leash heeling and walking with me. 100 % engagement, great eye contact, taking food well, and whining with excitement. He was responding to commands without hesitation. As soon as I took the leash of, immediate disengagement and sniffing (pee licking too).>>
I would say it is being on leash is a less complex task so he didn’t need to be that aroused and probably has a stronger reinforxement history. Coming off leash in that context is predictive of more complex tasks coming, so he was showing you a stress-based conditioned response. Heeling and walking, in that context, did not get him ready for the more complex tasks.
>>I was able to get more focused sessions once Roulez and the other dogs left the yard but don’t really know where to begin when faced with a situation like this. Ultimately this left me super frustrated in the moment and after that one session fighting for his attention, I put him up until everyone left.>>
It was better to put him up – I would want to first know if he could handle being around other dogs working before I added in a bitch in standing heat. Did you ask him to play frisbee with the other dogs moved further away?
>>Once everyone left, we swam first, played with strike, tugging on the frizz, retrieving the frizz and adding agility in between. I was happy with his action and attention at that point.>>
It was probably easier because the task was less complex (doing things without distractions) and you had more exciting behaviors going. You will need to work on adding complexity very gradually while continuing to play with what gets him high enough in arousal. I think the much of the dog sport world has moved waaayyyyy tooooo much to towards calming behaviors which is surprising to me because the science suggests that is really doesn’t work like that.
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>> They run behind the gates and bark like mad, she gets higher than a kite.
What is her rate of success in training in this scenario, especially if you do not have food or toys in your hands?
>>If I’m in a class/seminar setting then tugging brings her arousal up much more than if I was using food and a lotus ball. >>
Same question – what is her rate of success with each, particularly if you are not carrying either in the moment? This will help us plan.
>>When I’ve done FEO with a toy, it’s hard to get her back working and off me if I’ve stopped and played. She wants to just keep barking at me. Some of that is the time limit too. I can get her back working and focused if we have the time.>>
I think the installations will really help, because she will have to get right back to work in order to get the next reinforcement – especially installation 1 (the wing work). Establish it first with cookies then get her into increasingly higher arousal with toys and such, over the course of several sessions. The goal is that the first impulse after a reinforcement is to look for work, not to look for more reinforcement 🙂
>>Whenever we have to repeat something, I really get barking at me. I can’t even walk forward without stepping on her cuz she’s right in my face telling me I messed and I’m the reason we are going back.>>
Repeat an obstacle on course? Then yes, she is correct LOL! She is really young – don’t repeat, just keep going and develop flow. The barking in your face is a high frustration behavior – stopping in that scenario is a negative punishment for a behavior that she could not have done successfully, and the punishment bubbles over into barking & frustration. And then being in the ring can get frustrating, so you get more barking and more arousal in a cycle. So – no fixing! Just running. If you are stopping because of, say, she pops a weave pole or misses a contact then I would say that she should not yet be weaving or doing contacts in competition.
>>>I just feel at this point if she skips a pole going back is only going to mess up the rest of her run. She knows her poles and unless something becomes a trial behavior I let it go.>>
Better to let it go but I personally don’t want the dog to skip poles and carry on… so it is a fine line – if I bring the dog back then they get super frustrated, which usually means that they really don’t know the obstacle that well.
>>At home when I need to repeat, I toss cookies on the floor as we walk back to where were starting. That has made the biggest difference in training. By the time we get back she is calmer and ready to listen again.>>
Yes, but it doesn’t do anything to develop flow on course and reduce the frustration you get in trialing. And it might increase the frustration because in a trial, the one thing you cannot do is throw cookies on the floor. So after an error, when she is expecting the procedure of cookie toss and it is not there – I can see she might struggle with that. And I think training her in lower arousal might actually set her up for failure at trials when she will definitely be in higher arousal. So set up the higher arousal and do shorter practically fool-proof sequences. And if something goes wrong, just keep going – get on a line and run til it is smooth again, and then reward.
The remote reinforcement procedures will also really help – how is she doing with moving away from the reward?
TracyHi1
This is looking great! Easy peasy for him! When building up to the new reinforcement procedure, you can have this more literally on his nose for him to follow. Right now your ‘let’s go’ is more of a focal point so for the reinforcement procedure, you can place it right on his nose because it will be used a little differently (stay tuned for next week :)). Based on his response here, I bet he thinks it will be the BEST THING EVER LOL! He clearly has a strong understanding of the cookie as focal point here, the transport and the set up cues both looked fabulous!!!
Personally, because the transport and set up both look so good – I would not change the cues for that. We can add the additional one, and it will seem different to him because it will be right in front of his mouth and not higher up by your ribs.Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
He is so tiny and cute! Great job on all of these, he is a smartie!!!!!He did a great job with the forward send work – check out how he was beginning to set up for the turns by the last couple of reps based on your reward placement. YES! I think it worked better for him when you did not have a cookie in the ready dance hand 🙂 because he could engage with you and be more prepared for the send element. Everything else looked great so for the next session, start nice and close again, warm up with a couple of forward sends, then start to rotate to where you can send him with you sideways or a little backwards – the beginning of the fancy countermotion stuff!!
Blind cross – also fabulous 🙂 One tweak: as you are moving away, you can connect on the original side with just your eyes, you don’t need to lock him onto the original arm – getting him locked onto the fully extended arm is making you late for the blind – by the time he locks on, it takes a while (in dog years) to make the blind happen so you end up being late. So the dog side arm can be tucked into your side as if you are running and that initial connection can just be eye contact – that makes the blind quicker (because you don’t need to bring in the original dog side arm) at which point you can lock him onto the other side of the body. Let me know if that makes sense 🙂
The next step on this one is to move to a bigger space so you can get running! Maybe hubby can hold him for restrained recalls outside? Or, if he likes other people holding him, you can do this game with other people you enlist as holders, so you can get a nice big head start 🙂Cone wraps – super! As a nice by-product, this is really embedding some nice self-control because he has to work away from your magical cookie hands and that is HARD. He gave you some funny looks at the beginning because he wanted the cookies LOL!!! He did a super job here too. One little detail: when adding distance between you and the cone, do it after a little reset moment: toss a cookie away so he doesn’t really see you add the bit of distance. I think he was seeing yu move and that drew his focus to you, so he would have an error on that first rep after every little addition of distance. But if you reset him and he doesn’t see it, I bet he is perfect!
This is going really well with the food. One thing you can do is take the cone to a neutral environment where there is no existing food association, and try it with 2 toys.
And, separately from that, you can work up to standing up and dropping the cookies into the bowls. They might bounce around but I think he will like that 🙂Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Congrats on your new puppy! I am excited to hear more about Changtse! Are all of your dogs named after mountains? Very cool names!
I am glad he is doing well at trials!!
>>AT this trial, although Nuptse could not do any tricks except sit when we moved to the start line,
It is entirely possible that he has turned into an ‘all business’ dog who is focused and ready to run, and tricks disturb that focus. Some of my dogs are like that and it is perfectly fine 🙂 His runs are looking good!
About the weaves –
One thing I notice on his runs here is that he is a bit slower, the further he is from the entry gate/rewards. He speeds up when he thinks he is approaching the reinforcement. You can see a distinct difference in speed when he is back by the rainbow versus the ending line. That is something we will work on with the remote reinforcement – more coming on that in the next couple of weeks. The further from the reinforcement he gets, the more likely he is going to be to get the cue to go back to it. I think the weaves are part of that – they are perhaps the most difficult obstacle so the most likely to fall apart. In the JWW run, I think your motion pushed him out but I didn’t see any reason why he popped out in Standard – so I think working the weaves with more remote reinforcement will really help!Tracy
