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Hi!
>>But I guess he’s understanding the concept well enough and getting enough back feet hits that I should shift my focus to that to help him understand THAT’s what I want!
Yes, you can delay the click: if he *only* gets front feet, don’t click, just reward and praise. If he gets back feet: click and party!
Either way, he gets reinforcement unless he totally misses.
On the video:
>>Using the MM totally blew up his brain and all he wanted was the tunnel for that. >>
Yep – the MM changes things completely LOL!!!! And it is funny, right? You could have an entire side of beef in your hand and tiny pieces of cardboard in the MM and the dogs still want the MM. Something about it being used as part of the choice/reinforcement process must stimulate a certain part of the brain and/or release a burst of dopamine…
He does get bonus points for using the cot as a trampoline! LOL!! And it is a good challenge because it simulates the need to STOP on a contact rather than run run run (say, when there is a tunnel out past the end of the teeter :))
This was one of those sessions that was more about getting the pup to process a cue through the haze of stimulation and he did well! That is part of why I like to play this game at this stage of training: it makes things SO much easier when the dogs are aroused and on course.
I don’t mind that the end that you might have missed letting him go when he looked at the cot – the next step is to start saying the cue before looks in any particular place, and let go before he looks any particular place. By saying the cue then holding them til they look in the right place, we are pairing the word with the destination. But then we need to fade that, otherwise the dogs will just be guessing LOL!! So start saying the verbal as you let go of him, and see what he does! You can start it without the MM but then add the MM back in because it definitely changes things 🙂
Great job!
TracyHi – pretty normal progression! If you see that the food reinforcement you have is not all that enticing to him, you can switch out to a better paycheck 🙂 And he really liked it when the toy got involved, so you can totally get him wild with the toy before asking him to jump on the teeter.
For whatever reason, he was a in slightly lower state of arousal for this session than he was for the last session – so when you brought him up with the tugging, he got going nicely. I think that is probably a good thing to add in general: getting him as wild as possible for a toy and then you can also use a toy as the reward: when he jumps on and gets into position, release and throw a toy. You can mix in high value food, but I think he would love the toy too! And it will keep him super pumped up for the teeter.
And I personally love pizza crust, I would work for it LOL!!!!Nice work getting him pumped up! Let me know how he does with a toy as the reward.
Tracy
Hi!
We have 2 more weeks of lessons:
next week (Friday Jan 29) is a ‘break’ week with some conditioning games
the last week (Feb 5) is one more round of handling and contacts games.Then, in late February, I will be adding a Teeter & Weaves class.
And in March/April, there will be some live online handling seminars.Then the next “big” MaxPup will be in mid- to -late-April when we get more into sequencing and transitioning to running bigger courses 🙂
Stay tuned!
Tracy
Good morning!
He is a great little tugger 🙂 Yay! A couple of ideas for you, before you add standing up 🙂
You can let him win more. What I mean by that is when he gives a nice pull back on the toy, shifting his weight back, let him win the toy and run around with it a bit (in a small enclosed area :)). Start off making it easy to win, then gradually make it harder so he has to pull harder. You might need to switch to doing it on a rug or grass so that he can dig in and not slip.
Speaking of grass: try to generalize tugging by taking it to as many places as possible. Different rooms in the house, outside, different places: bring your craziest tug toys and play for a few seconds in different places.
He seemed to do really well when you offered the cookie! So now incorporate tugging into shaping exercises: tug a bit, then shape a simple behavior for treats and after 3 or 4 treats, go back to tugging. That is great for getting him back and forth between food and toys, and also for teaching him to offer thoughtful behavior even when the tugging is stimulating!
And the other thing, which you started here, is to shape the retrieve. He was really good going to it, so stay quiet til he gets it and brings it back. When you got excited, he got distracted and dropped the toy 🙂
Great job here!
TracyThanks, I will pass it along to tech. Question: when was your last update on the iPad and Macbook (or do you know what they are currently running on).
Thanks!
TracyHi! This is going well – it is a really hard game 🙂 You can separate the may and crate bit more and see if he can do it (with maybe 2 feet in between them – it adds a little challenge but it also will set you up for the next step, which is to not wait til he looks at the correct thing: start the cue then let him go 🙂 You will need a little bit more distance away from both, so you can keep saying the cue as he starts to move and he has more distance to process it. Waiting for him to look at it before you let him go is great for pairing the verbal with the object and teaching the concept. So if he can do one more high success session with a little more room between the two items, you can move further back from them and see if you can move to starting the verbal and then letting him go (keep saying the verbal) before he chooses where to look. Let me know if that makes sense! Nice work here!
TracyOops, I remember reading it but must have only replied in my head… sorry!!!
>>I had been focusing on 2o2o but yesterday I left the criteria lax in an effort to just have fun.
That is fine! He definitely was enjoying it 🙂
>>I am a little concerned of 2o2o and wondering if I should do 4 on? Last I weighed him he was 17 or 18 pounds. Can’t remember.>>
His weight is fine – I figure by the time he is fully adult, he will be around the same weight as Export (18-19lbs) and Karen Holik’s Sizzle (a Sheltie who won all the things many times over). I bring up these 2 dogs because Karen’s Sizzle had a truly amazing 2o2o and it was Sizzle’s teeter performance that inspired my training of Export’s 2o2o performance. Those two dogs had the fastest/best teeters around for their careers, and the teeter performance criteria held up for over a decade. So his weight is no problem, and I can confidently say that with first hand knowledge.
Elektra will be doing a 4on because she is maybe 14 lbs, a little too light for 2o2o.
Now – if you do 4on or 2o2o, that will be up to you. When Hot Sauce was training (same height as Stark but heavier because she has a lot of terrier in her), I fully investigated why so many people were moving to a 4on performance with the bigger dogs, as is the trend lately- and there is no good answer for it. From what I found
* people thought it was ‘safer’ (but that is not the case when a 2o2o is properly trained)* people thought the dog would get flung off the board in a 2o2o (not true if it is properly trained, in fact a 2o2o provides MORE control of the board)
* people thought it was easier to train (this is possible – but the downside is that the criteria slips because there is no really exact “do this” thing and so the dog stops short of the end of the board – which is slower – or leaps as the board hits
* it is faster to do 4on – this is NOT true in terms of getting to the end of the board and getting the board to the ground faster if both are properly trained. Simple physics: the more weight you can get closer to the end of the board, the faster the board drops. What might be faster is ripping the dog off the board when “criteria” is hit, such as in a national finals or something. But then with a 4on, it because very difficult to maintain driving to the end of the board because the dog start to stop short. With a 2o2o, drive to the end of the board is easy to maintain because criteria is very clear.
With that in mind, though, with the smaller dogs we have to do a 4on: so I add another layer of criteria so they drive to the end of the board more reliably. That is what seems to work the best for speed and accuracy although it will not be as fast as the 2o2o if they were physically large enough to do it.
But to get the great 2o2o, there are more layers of training than most people do 🙂
So it is a ‘pick your poison’ situation – to get a great teeter performance, there are many layers – so pick which one appeals to you and go with it.
As an aside: I was originally going to train a 4on with Hot Sauce so I could see what everyone was all excited about with that end position. Hot Sauce, on the other hand, thought it was stupid and decided to only offer a 2o2o – my guess is she had better control of the board that way and also she had a MUCH clearer idea of where to be.So you get to decide LOL!!!
>>I noticed that the other Pizza’s were doing 4 on.
I haven’t watched the others – not sure if Beetle is on a teeter yet and also I am not sure of how big they are. And, not sure they have obsessed on how each behavior is different or what layers of criteria to add. It is easy peasy to train a 4on… but then even the agility ‘greats’ are constantly re-training it after competition starts.
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! You can have him release over it after getting the reward for stopping at the end. I think he would be fine to go over it, but let me know if he feels otherwise. And HAPPY DANCE! for the big breakthrough!!! Yay!!!!
Tracy
Hi! I replied in the other post but will reply here too, in case anyone else reading this is having the same issue. We haven’t heard of this happening before, even with posts with hundreds of replies… so if anyone else is experiencing this, let me know!
And let me know what browser(s) and device(s) you are seeing this on. And is the bump out happening after you hit ‘submit’?
You can try the good ol’ log out, clear cache, log in and see if that helps. And if you can catch a screenshot of what you see when it happens, please send it to support@agility-u.com
Those are the questions that the tech guru will be asking me, so I figure I will ask them in advance LOL!
Tracy
Thanks!
TracyHi! He is doing really nicely here! I like the set up, with the non-skid mat under the perch! And yes, he was really starting to use those back feets independently! This is a good place to keep working this skill and get more precision – no real need to change much yet, because his growth will change the picture. When he is fully grown, we can change things to add challenge. One suggestion to help him out at the beginning of each session: You can feed feed feed feed (rapid treats but no clicks) to get him settled with his front feet on the perch right at the start of each session. Basically we are saying: get on with your front feet and don’t offer any more front foot movement (he was offering different stuff – probably partially because offering is fun and partially because this is a new perch). Then the ‘stoppage of the feedage’ becomes the cue to offer back foot movement or to wait for you to cue it with your motion. That rapid cookie moment will also help generalize it to different perch thingies and it is a good signal to help the pup understand that we want him to hold that position for now (rather continuing to offer, which is what we generally expect after 1 treat). Let me know if that makes sense.
Great job here!
TracyHi!
>>. I am having a lot of trouble with posting, and I think it has to do with the number of posts in this thread that have to load every time the browser refreshes. >>>
Hmmm, that is odd – it might be a cache issue but it shouldn’t be because we have had threads with hundreds of posts in other classes and haven’t hear of any issues. I will pass it along to the tech guru and see what he says (because my tech knowledge ends with “hmmm, that is odd” :)) I know his first question will be asking if you were able to log out then back in and still have the same issues, and also if you could send a screen shot of what happens when you run into the issue (as well as which browser(s) and device(s) it is happening on.
>>OK if I make a new “part 2” thread?>>
Absolutely!
>>Can’t believe how wrong my feet were yesterday! It felt wrong in the moment, but I was worrying about WM and the MM too much to notice, I guess.>>
That is what I figured was happening – trying to make the target hand clear without becoming pretzel 🙂
On the video – he is doing well finding the threadle! The hand cue is obvious (the little shake shake helps 🙂 Feet looked good! and he liked the MM. We can chalk up the previous MM stuff for being too close to the dog walk.
Two little tweaks: For now, keep him in the easier angles (slice angles) so that he is not almost wrong then fix it – that was happening on the first part and less so on the 2nd part when you changed sides,And (and this is the hard one for all of us): don’t move, don’t release position – until he arrives at the MM. The only movement is your MM remote trigger finger LOL! Staying perfectly stationary (for now) is so that he learns the default drive to the jump after coming in for the threadle without you needing to close your shoulders forward at all or point to the bar. And when we do add movement – you will be able to just leave the threadle and he will commit without you needing to cue it (it is a thing of beauty when it happens :))
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
>>because my heavier, powerful dogs end up moving them on my grass field when they push off. I have tried many, many mats and many, many arts and crafts combinations.
I did a trip to Lowe’s last year and got industrial mats with non-skid grips on the bottom for this and for osme flyball uses – let me see if I can see if they are marked as to what they are. They have been perfect for the bigger dogs and also on the a-frame.
>>which today passed the test with both Phyzz and WM. It is two scratchy door mats sandwiched around a heavy dense rubber mat. The scratchy surface grips the grass and gives good traction to the dogs. Bonus, in that I have another of these mats attached to the down side of my DW currently for Phyzz’s training. So, the tactile feel will be the same.>>
Clever!! And a scratchy surface is likely a different depth visual, which will help.
>>No video, but we also did some toy races through the tunnel (WM, not me!) today while just goofing around. And he thought that was pretty awesome too!>>
Wheeee! More motion is AWESOME and it is especially cool that he didn’t lose his head 🙂
He did really well here on this mat!!! There were maybe 2 clicks that I thought were maybe not clickable (:42 and 1:02) but also, it is harder to see on this video angle and you were right there. The rest were all really strong (except the one non-click, which was correct to not click). I *think* these were front foot clicks (again, hard to see it perfectly, you had a better video) so you can shift to back feet clicks (a bigger mat will make it easier). Now if he hits with front feet – reward. If he hits with BACK feet: party like it is 1999. Jackpot!
And you can also add some angles: if he was running back and forth from noon to 6pm here with the mat at the center of the clock, you can start him at 11 or 1, or 5 or 7… then working your way around to harder angles gradually. It might take several sessions but that is fine because he is still growing and those feet are in a different place every time he wakes up 🙂
Great job!
TracyHi! Thanks for re-posting it!
She is doing a great job committing on these, good girl! She is better when she is going to her left and a little less sure going to her right, but she did it. Yay! So now – spread the wings further apart to add challenge.
And set up the sends a little differently so you can start adding more motion. You were sending sideways here and she was great, so you can add challenge now: face the wing you are sending her to and use your dog-side arm & leg to send, then do a FC and connect – and on the new side, send to the next wing with your dog-side arm and leg. When she can do that, you can add more distance and start walking/jogging as you do those! The goal is that you will be able to work up to a pretty big distance and running. Wheeeee!
Great job!
Tracy
