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Good morning Helen and Nuptse!!! Welcome back!
I am looking forward to seeing you two in action 🙂 Enjoy!!!!Tracy
Hi Kristie and Keiko!!!
It *does* feel like a long time since the last class ended! Time to get back in the saddle 🙂 The weather is looking good! How is your Achilles feeling? I am looking forward to seeing you and Keiko in action!
TracyGood morning and welcome! It has been so fun to look at Facebook and see you and Enzo do so wonderfully in the trial ring!!!! I am looking forward to adding even more skills to your toolbox 🙂 Have fun!
TracyGood morning and welcome to you and Team Toller! I spoke to the MN Weather Department and they assured me that the weather would be great until at least mid-December so we are all set 🙂 Have fun!
TracyUpdate! Barb is improving and is hoping to get into the forum today! I will keep you posted. Thanks again for your patience!!
TracyHi all! Just keeping you posted. I checked in to see how she is feeling but I haven’t heard back yet. I will keep you posted as soon as I know more. Thanks for your patience!!! Fingers crossed she feels better asap!
TracyBummer about getting more heat! You’re due for some nice weather 🙂
Great job in this class, you and Indy are really developing into an amazing team. It has been a pleasure being able to see you two in action!
TracyGood morning!
She looked great on these! You had really nice connection and your handling was clear, and that really helped her be successful! On the “no tunnel” reps where you wanted her to go past the tunnel, you rewarded nice and early 🙂 So now you can wait longer to reward – keep moving and reward her a few steps later, to be sure of two things – that your handling remains clear 🙂 and also that she doesn’t duck behind you into the tunnel as you move past it 🙂
>>But when I got to the backside tunnel, she would never take it. I need to start all over with that. She don’t want to take it on a straight tunnel either. >>
That is not unusual with young dogs – backsides of tunnels is a weird skill LOL!! The dogs have to really collect and behind to get into the tunnel and that is so hard. So you can break it down: using a short, straight tunnel, start her on the backside angle but close to the entry, without you moving – and send her into the backside tunnel entry. Then Work your way further and further away from the entry. Then add your motion, just walking. I think the dogs find this hard because we humans are running and they have to collect while we accelerate, and usually we decelerate when we want collection. But as soon as she figures out that she can collect into the tunnel backside, it will be very easy and then you can extend and curve the tunnel 🙂
>>Oh the seminar went good! She stayed with me pretty nice. If she did run to Jacque, I got her back always. It was her first time there, so she did check around a little bit. But not to bad. Boy she was speedy and had fun!!!>>
Yay! So fun! It sounds like she did really well 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Long time no see haha!!
He looks great here!
On the first two right turn wraps, he was sorting out a lot of info (motion, collection, verbals) so dropped the bar on the first one then maybe his breeze dropped it on the 2nd one lol! He was sorting out his coordination well, but just needs more experience with the right turns. Are your jump bars hollow? If so, you can lock them into the jumps but putting the cup inside the bar. That way he feels the nat if he touches it but doesn’t get desensitized to dropping it as he sorts out the turn.
His left turns all look good! He is overall a really nice turning dog 🙂
Only 2 small suggestions for the next session:
When he was doing the collection on the 2nd jump after the tunnel, give him more connection over the first jump after the tunnel as you move to the 2nd one. When he was on your left, you could see him looking at you over that jump before proceeding to the wrap jump, so you can add more direct eye contact as you run to support his commitment. You won’t always need to do that, but it helps the baby dogs.His GO looked great! You can do a ton of Go reps whenever you work wraps (you might already be doing this and edited them out). As you saw from the courses yesterday, GO GO GO is really helpful LOL!! So even if he has more GO emphasis than turn emphasis for now, perfect!
Great job here!
See ya later!
TracyHi! I thought I posted this yesterday but obviously not. Sorry!
Good job on these- I think all of our other handling gets MUCH easier when the dogs can respond to deceleration 🙂On these, the jump height is a little higher than it has been. That was fine when you were sending from the tunnel exit and standing still, because she only had to think about decelerating into one variable (height of bar). Her turns were quite good on those!!!
When there was motion, though- through the thbbel and/or you moving – the bar was too high for her at the moment. She had to think about 2 variables: decelerating and how to do it on a taller bar. So, she chose to think about gettin g over the bar, which is good!!!! But it also meant the turns were wider, no real collection before them. To help her, keep the bars lower for now when there is any motion. You’ll know when to raise them, because her collection before takeoff will match her collection on the sends 🙂
And reward all the things – it was hard to tell which ones got rewarded or not because of quick edits, but we are using the reward as a predictive cue of where to go next. Decel will mean “reward is about to run away the other direction” so she is going to work harder and harder to collect.
So even if you think the turn goes into the “not great” category, reward anyway with the FC and run as she will drive back faster and faster, which means more and more collection on the decel. Also, if we are late with decel, the dogs won’t read it all that well at this stage so we read anyway in case we are late 🙂 I thought you were pretty timely but it is worth it to teach her how to cover you in case you’re late lol!
You might have been rewarding all of it, it was hard to see 🙂
This is the type of thing to revisit maybe once a week, as a general exercise 🙂 I think she is doing really well so far and will continue to read the decel more and more.
Great job!
TracyHi!
I think he is doing well with his jumping for sure, and I am glad he did well at the trial! Yay!
On this video, he is doing really well. I don’t think he is confusing this grid with weaving – I think he is sorting out the footwork. A couple of suggestions to help:
The reinforcement target is too close – in order to jump this properly, he really has to power through it. With the cooler this close, he has to slow down and add strides. Ideally the reward target is one full stride past the extension landing spot – so about 10 feet from the last jump.
Also, for now in particular, have the reinforcement on top of the target and he can go to it. There are 3 reasons for this:
– it will keep him from looking at you. Even with the cooler as the target, he is still lookin at you. With a cookie or toy out there, he will look straight and not at you, which will improve form.
– it will improve consistency of reinforcement because you will end up rewarding ALL the things. In this clip, the reinforcement was a bit inconsistent – for example, on a couple he didn’t get rewarded when he added a stride (like at :39) but then at :44 he did get rewarded for the same striding and he also dropped a bar. So it is a bit grey for him and rewarding all the things will help. I personally don’t withhold reinforcement in jump grids unless the dog is really experienced and confident, and the dog rarely ‘fails’ and I can mark the reason why he is not getting the reward. We don’t want him to get to the end and then be told he is not getting the cookie… he won’t know why. But we also don’t want to spend a lot of time telling him he is wrong if he doesn’t know how to be right. That brings me to the 3rd reason:
– rewarding a LOT builds confidence, and confidence builds great jumping 🙂 In this session, he was at about a 60% rate of reinforcement, which is not high enough to produce the confidence. You can leave the grid open to where it was at :27 so really build confidence with the movement and reward all the things 🙂 with the reward on the target, to keep him looking straight.Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
She did well here too! She might have been tired on the sends at the end, but her commitment looked really good and you can totally reward those anyway – on just about all of the reps, she as collecting before the jump which is exactly what we wanted her to do with the decel. She wasn’t not exactly turning, and that was because we were not doing the crosses – so now, let’s ‘seal the deal’ b havubg you do the cross rather than just the decel. Using the same timing on the decel and verbal, add in the front crosses. If you are doing the decel ahead of her, you can rotate as she is passing you. On the sends, you can send and do the FC just before she arrives at the send jump.
Great job on these! Have fun at the seminar, I want to hear how it goes!
Tracy
