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Hi!
This also went well, and doing it on new things is always great!
The search toss looked good in terms of mechanics. Be careful of using it on a bosu ball or any unstable surface – she is not thinking about her body when she is dismounting, so her back legs are going every which way and she is twisting herself into a pretzel to get the cookie. Eek! I guess that cookie is super high value enough that the chase is very exciting LOL!!!Great job here!
TracyHi!
This was challenging but went really well, she was able to literally run right over the ball and still completed her behavior. Good girl! Both directions looked good too. And she seemed perfectly fine with the new verbal attached! She is probably reading the context as well, and that is great 🙂 So lets think about other ways to use it:
Are there other places you want to use this placed reinforcement? Independent weaves? Independent backsides? You can place the reinforcement where you want it in training or on a course, to help have really great in-the-moment reinforcement!T
Good morning!
Catch:
She did really well waiting for her catch marker and reward! Lovely! This is definitely something that you can bring into UKI (and USDAA too I think) NFC runs because they are happy to allow thrown reinforcement.
One suggestion: don’t proof the stay by waving the toy around or doing odd things with it LOL! Just cue the behavior and reward. The environment provides the proofing at a trial. Dogs are on edge enough on the start line, we don’t need to add possible failure by distracting them. It can add distraction & stress by using the reinforcement in weird ways – it is distracting because the dog (and I) both forget what we should be thinking about (the stay and the course) and start wondering why you are hitting yourself with the toy LOL! And so the dog and I are both now thinking, “wait, what is going on here??” in a moment when we want the dog to be thinking “I know exactly what will happen next”. LOL!
TGood morning!
Lots of good stuff here.
The backing up does look a lot better! Take a peek a StrykR and Kirstie’s threade, she is using a chair and having the pup come pretty far under it, which makes the backing up even easier to produce 🙂
This is going really well – I still think you should aim the toss between her front feet rather than putting it in past her shoulder because it causes her to turn around – your right hand tosses were past her and I think you left hand did a better job of getting the cookies under her. So work for dropping the cookies in under her chest, even if the hand comes in from the side.
Now – let it percolate. This should not be trained every day but rather every couple of days at most, to allow for some cementing and latent learning (no puppy exercise should be done every ay, except maybe recalls).
Wrap foundation is looking good, she definitely has better food value without the food needing to move much! Perfect! One more step before adding the upright – you can do the stealth placement of the food by quickly and quietly putting the treat down while she is eating the previous one, so she is not relying on your hand movement – so you can encourage her to offer going back and forth on her own. She is seeing/waiting for hand movement so we want to be sure she is doing this on her own before you add the upright. So one cookie goes to the lid and while she is moving to it and eating it, the other cookie goes to the other lid and ideally she does not see that happening. And if she looks at you: do not move your hands. Let her make a decision to offer going to the next lid, then reward with the treat.
Driving ahead – she is looking great with her driving ahead and you did a great job by getting there and engaging. Yay!
> I am pretty sure she is going to be a runner if she gets the toy before I can get there>
Yup. So…. this game goes on the shelf for now in a big space. The get it on toys game now moves to the smallest possible space (bathroom with the door closed or a big closet) so you can sit on the floor and play with her bringing the toy to you and not running off. Short get it toss will start the game, then when she grabs it and *does not try to move away* (or move away too far) you can reward that by having her tug with something in your hand, then let her have that toy, and repeat. She doesn’t have to bring it to you yet, she just needs to not try to leave with it (being in a tiny space will help that :))
Wobble board:
>>. I think this is what you are thinking for use her. We did some tugging both on and off the board.>>Yes, she seemed happy to play on it and was offering getting on it really nicely. I don’t see any signs of over-stimulation. Great! Just playing with a toy on a floor that happens to move a little.
>> It struck me that she was shifting off the board on some of the tugging but not all? Not quite enough room on the board or a bit worried?>>
Neither – she is a baby pup and it makes sense that she would want to sort out how to weight shift in tug on a stable surface rather than a moving surface. She did well! At this stage, there is no need for her to have to stay on the board to weight shift, that all gets added in later when the pup is more experienced and more developed.
Blinds – It was hard to see your upper body on this one, and it is an upper body cue – my guess is that she could not really see the new connection so if we make that clearer, the side change will be easier.
I think your timing is generally fine (yes a little late at :56 but also your were a little over-rotated on that one) – try making more eye contact down to her, or dip your shoulder down to make that eye contact, rather than presenting the toy. She might not see the eye contact enough so she is following your feet. The recall element of it looks great so now we need to show her the side change element 🙂Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>> It never occurred to me to incorporate the leash in here until you mentioned it in the zoom call and here. It’s for sure a skill I need to work.
The leash is a big thing for sport dogs! I think almost all of the demo videos this week have the dog on leash at some point. It really helps them transition to trials.
>>We just had a lovely remote reinforcer session. He is sprinting back to the chair when I say let’s go. >>
Super!!!!!!
>>I tend to use go go go on course to cue extension in a straight line. Should i change the remote reinforcer cue? I thought that initially but really couldn’t face thinking of another word 🤣 I have noticed you say “go” paired with an obstacle so I’m hoping it’s okay>>
I have not found the dog to be confused by ‘lets go’ at the end with the GO GO GO GO on a jump line. I think they are really only processing the ‘let’s’ part and we are not proofing it, so there are a LOT of contextual and physical cues built in too. I would not worry about having more words for it.
>>Secondly, he’s sprinting back to the chair and wanting to grab his stuff. He’s showing self restraint. Since he’s already predicting, should I introduce varying what the toy is on or just keep building on the success we are having?>>
Good boy! Build on success. And if you have a chair or something that you bring to trials, or a trial bag – use that. Build on success! It is easy to generalize what the toy is on.
>>I put him on a station while I moved a jump and then whooshed him back for the frizz. He was a huge fan. I had done a good bit of station work initially but have put it on the shelf for some reason.
Yay! He likes clarity. Clarity prevents ubering. You like uber prevention… which means you must provide as much clarity as possible, it is happy-making for you both! Sounds like you nailed it here!!!! YAY!
Keep me posted!
TracyGood morning!
>> I spent so much time with clicker training and trying to catch the behavior and click (and sometimes cue) simultaneously that I’m having to teach myself to pause between verbal and reward on these exercises. I’m trying to cue the verbal, say “one” to myself, then toss the reward. I think I did better on the video I’m posting here.
Yes, the keeping the mechanics clean is difficult especially when we add in running!!!
She did really well here. And you were super clean with the mechanics (when you were in the frame – we will assume it was the same when we couldn’t see you :)) She is getting the idea of the catch! And is literally catching too LOL!
On the start line, she was perfectly happy to NOT move and wait for the reinforcement. This is a great one to use in classes or trials where there are people behind her – it helps make staying at the start line a better place to be even if the distractions are challening!Using this on the contacts is great too. Is her dog walk position a 2o2o or a 4on? The catch came for the 4on but her a-frame is a 2o2o, so I was not sure if the DW was different or the same. I think you used it really well – just be sure on all stopped positions that she is actually stopped and maintaining the stop – check her hind end before you say the catch then throw. On the last a-frame rep, you used the ‘carch ebfore she had really stopped in position, so she ended up all the way off the board. You can wait that extra heartbeat to be sure that sheis fully stopped before saying ‘catch’ and throwing.
>> Keiko has been doing so well with all the indoor sessions, so I decided to try to do the food and toys combo exercise outdoors. Oops! When we’re in our agility field, she is very willing to work with me for food, goes through exercises well, etc. If I have a sequence set up, and we’ve done a bit, I can substitute toys here and there, and it keeps her “up”. When I brought out the toys to try the reinforcement combo, she just wanted to chase, catch, and keep on going – and going and going. ;). I was able to get her to bring the disc or tennis ball within about 3 or 4 feet. She’d drop it, and then come to me for a cookie, but the toy didn’t make it all the way. When I tried starting with the disc and told her to “take it” for tugging, she just looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “No, mama, we chase and catch the disc outside, we don’t tug.” So, any ideas about a clever way to help her want to tug her disc outside, or should I just look for a different outdoor tug toy? We do have quite a history of chase and catch established.>>
This is actually a discussion we are having over the in puppy class too! Ideally, all types of toys are used in all types of procedures. So for example, a frisbee can be a get it, a catch, a bite – not just a thrown toy. If the dogs do something like drop the toy and back up waiting for the next throw when we are asking them to tug with it… then that toy has veen used too much in one type of procedure.
So, that means the toys need to get installed in all the procedures – the flying squirrel can be attached to a toy for tugging, for example. That is a good one to backtrack on with the foundation procedures! And, when training a skill, choose a reinforcement that will fit the moment, for now. So if you are wanting to train something that will work best with tugging reward, don’t use a frisbee 🙂 Use something with a tug history on it, as you build up tug history on the frizbee separately (by pairing tugging on it with then getting it thrown, in a bit of a loop: tug, out, throw, retrieve, tug, out, throw, retrieve, and so on)I might have video somewhere but one of my frisbee crazy dogs started her flyball career running for a frisbee that I punched a hole in the middle of and tied it to a toy. If I can’t find a video, I will take a photo of it – I have it somewhere around here LOL!
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
The Plank wok is going really well! You can add a little plyometric challenge to it: see if she will get on from a standstill at the side rather than walk across it, and turn around in place rather than walk in and out of turning around – that is much harder and on the full 360s, she lost a little bit of balance in her back feet when she had to stay in position. Then, have her hop right off of that position like you did at :55. It shouldn’t be too hard for her with the plank setup you had here, so then you can raise the plank a little more 🙂
And using the toy rally jazzed her up, which presents additional body awareness challenge! So definitely keep mixing that in.
The Toy races look good – what are you saying to her on these? You can be using your ‘get it’ marker or adding a “go” verbal if you want. You ight be saying something but I couldn’t hear it 🙂 This can also balance with driving to you as you decelerate for pivots at your side in the same session.
>>I do have 2 different words – “chase” means I’m throwing the toy and “strike” means she should grab it and we will tug.
Great! The goal is that either cue can apply to *any* toy. For example, The frisbee can be a chase or a strike. If it is only ever one or the other, we start to see undesired behaviors get associated with the toy and that might be happening with some of the toys (where she getting stalky or backing up or won’t tug because she wants it thrown)
>> I am working toward inserting some chase into this game. When she chases toys, she is good about coming back to me and dropping the toy,
Great – chase is good to add in plus it helps build patience and reduce anticipation.
>>but she has a hard time delivering a toy to my hand (I’ve been working on it for a long time and I don’t know if I care anymore if she ever returns it to my hand).
Deliver to hand is a separate concept, that can be built separately. It does not have to be chained in at this point, I am happy when a puppy brings it close enough and we can add bringing it to hand later on. For dogs that don’t do it naturally, I teach it as a targeting thing with some shaping:
Then the target gets replaced by my hand as target, playing with the toy, etc.>>Right now, she is not used to striking the HR and I don’t mind tugging on it, but it’s harder to use than some other toys. I did get her tugging on the bigger round HR.
Attach it to a bungee so it is a longer toy. I don’t want my fingers laced into a toy at the same time I cue the dog to strike it – OUCH!
>> I played around with mixing in the tugging with the chasing the HR again this afternoon and once I throw it, it is definitely harder to get her back to tugging on it. Maybe I should try the game I described above with the HR (and I may need to buy some large HR, lol) to get more reps of striking it with really short bursts of tugging…>>
Yes – I think this might be a case of a certain toy being used with a certain marker… so the association develops and then we can’t get other behavior. So yes to the idea of using all the toys for all of the different presentations, like the double strike game you described,
>I never knew playing with toys could be so hard until I got this dog.
Ha! Also, I think you are seeing a massive shift in emphasis to clean mechanics and toy play getting put into that category too 🙂
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>.I had no idea you could use a target plate for contacts in UKI! That will be seriously helpful for UKI NFC runs!
Yes – you can place things on the ground but not on the actual obstacle. You can have a helper/friend run out and put it down as you go to the line for your NFC run. Be sure to tell the judge 🙂
The target can then be faded by just making it smaller and smaller. He did really well on the teeter here in this session – he got better and better about realizing the catch meant the toy was coming to him, so he was thinking about staying near the target position more!
I see the error you mentioned, at :40 – I think he just lost his balance a little there, the teeter kind of bounced him off the side so it was probably not your acceleration as a distraction. He was great with all of your other accelerations!
He did well on the weaves too! On 6 poles, you can add in trying to be anywhere except parallel to him now – the get it placement remains the same, but you can add in being ahead or behind – lateral seems fine. Accelerating or decelerating are good too 🙂 And of course, you can do this on 12 poles too 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Awww he had a big weekend! And so did you! Sounds like fun. He did look a little tired when he tried to jump on the board the first time LOL!
But even tired, he was really good with his body awareness on those 360 degree turns – it looks like he never ‘lost’ his back feet in either direction. Super! And hopping off was no trouble for him at all. We stick with this level on the raised plank for a little while, just revisiting it here and there as he continues to muscle up and develop. These skills will come in handy when DW training starts for real!
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
>>First, I find it funny jumping between sports how definitions change 🙂 While I agree the last one could have been divided up better so I could plan better…it wasn’t a long obedience lesson 🙂 🙂 🙂 LOL>>
yes, it is totally true that the various sports end up with wildly different lengths in the finished product: in agility, 35 seconds is a long time. And in flyball, 4 seconds is speedy but not amazing. LOL!! But she is only about 9 months old, so we still want to keep things short and sweet as her brain & body mature.
>> I realize I do a lot of remote training with my dogs, just no cue, because I’m lazy 🙂 🙂
Ha! Not lazy – just forward thinking. 🙂 Putting stuff up on the bed as a normal part of training is great!
She did really well in this session!
Nice engagement to start!
I think the grabbing of the toy off the bed had to do with the length of the transition from the tugging into the game – she was engaged, then the transition took a while (in dog years) and had some disconnection, so it is possible she thought the training was done. A quicker transition will help, so the session starts as soon as the engagement ends and you don’t need to get the treats out, etc – they are already there. Or, you can ask her to stay on a bed or platform or something during the transition, so there is a clearer “we are still doing a thing” built in. Transitions serve to be cues to the dogs in a lot of ways, so I think a clean fast transition will really help her know where to look, what to do, and to not grab the toy 🙂That toy is very high value so you can also put it down, give her a treat pretty quickly for NOT reaching for it, then build up from there. She was catching on really nicely! And so the next step would be to see if she can offer engagement and moving away with you, without the cues (name or let’s go) and then giving the jackpot marker.
And the step after that – no cookies in the other hand 🙂
>>I did try and focus on my out and not cuing it too much with physical cues from the other treat hand. I caught myself doing it, and then the out was harder when I held that hand still.>>
I thought you were much cleaner with your ‘please’! That toy is really high value, so she was not releasing it quickly – it might be that the value of the toy is higher than the treats, so you can reward with an instant “catch” or cue to re-grip it, rather than a cookie – getting that toy back might make it worth her while to let go of it quickly 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>> I would really like to build on How great would it be to have the reward in the ring at a trial. Would love to figure this one out. Maybe keep working on building it’s value as high as possible while training in the hopes that it will override his trial brain? Any thoughts?
I agree about the leash! It has come naturally for a lot of dogs but for others, we need to train it. And it is on my list for my dogs to train too, so I have just put it on the list to train this week and post next Monday. It is a value transfer application, so we can get the dogs liking it! It will vary for each dog, so I will train all of my youngsters with it and that should help us get some ideas for Cody too. For now, definitely keep building the value of it in training as a tug toy.
He looed great in the ring rental!
One suggestion: Be careful of your left hand going to the cookie pocket as you lead out – that might indicate where reward is available and since you are not likely to do that at trials, it might change his focus and arousal state.It looks like he was tugging REALLY well here in the practice setting – he does not do that in trials? will he tug on the leash before his run at trials? Or not at all, at trials?
The mat game REALLY cracks me up. Will he tug with it like that at the end of a trial run too, or only the beginning?
Hmmm percolating an idea… can you teach him to lie down on his leash like a mat, and then see if he will tug on it like he tugs on the mat? Transferring the concept might help!
Either way – as we develop this leash idea – you will need the tug leash to just be a tug toy for now, maybe even not use it as a leash in training, just as a toy,
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>> Spot boy is getting amped at trials. I have a lot more dog there than at home with practice. So much fun!!
Yay! So fun!!!!!!!
>>So, on the threadles I have a question…imagine that, huh?
Ha! Good questions!
>> When you switch to a straight 180 degree set up, I get the wrap verbal to get more collection, but what do you call the balance rep? It’s not really a back side – it’s the obvious side the dog would take to just do the 180.>>
Depending on how the dog is trained, I use my soft turn verbal there (left or right).
>>Is there any time when you’d find it helpful to have a ‘hey you – collect please’ word instead of using your wrap cue? >>
I don’t have an easy cue like that – it is too vague in terms of exactly how much collection I am asking for, plus I don’t want to add another collection verbal 🙂
>> I”m still hung up on the gray area between a full 180 degree wrap and the turn that is more than 90 but less that 180. I wonder a bit if I might be watering down the tight wrap by using it when I want less than the full tight wrap.
Because of the wide variety of turns in agility, there will always be a bit of grey area (or we have to have more verbal cues – ewww!) I will only use the wrap verbal on the threadle when the threadle line requires the dog to come back across the plane of the turn jump pretty soon after they took it, within a coupe of feet of the wing. If the threadle is 30 feet apart, then it is more of a left or right because they don’t need to collect as much. Figuring out how much collection you need in that specific case will help you decide which verbals fit closest, otherwise you’ll drive yourself nuts trying to have a verbal for all occasions. A similar example: on backside pushes, I use “back” for all of them, even if they are not full slices, except for the full 360 degree circle wraps which require a lot more collection (I use dig in that case, it is the only time I use it).
>> It probably isn’t a thing here, but I use that verbal for a wrap out of a straight tunnel as well as jumps and I see myself getting screwed by a jump placed more than a 90 degree turn that I don’t want when I ask for a tight wrap back to me if I’m still behind and not able to be there to use physical cues to help. Does that make any sense?>>
If I am understanding this correctly, it would depend on the timing of the cues – what happens after the collection cue tells the dog what to do next. So if I wanted the full wrap, I would call or cue the next jump or something depending on the context. And if I wanted the threadle – as soon as the dog collects for the wrap, I would cue the threadle so he knew where to go next. This happens before he takes off for the turn jump.
On the videos:
>>I was at 1 day of a UKI trial yesterday and everything we’ve worked on was in the courses. I was sending you lots of ‘Thank You Tracy’s as I ran the courses.>>
I am glad to hear you had the challenges at the trial! They are showing up in USDAA and UKI and CPE too!
He is doing really well with the switches from the weaves to the tunnel here and you did a good jo rewarding the switch before he even got ot the tunnel! Yes, he is looking at you a little but I think part of that is timing: you can start the cue as he is still weaving, so he can turn immediately 🙂 It will require some trust of the weave skills but it will also tighten the line to the tunnel.
Backsides – lots of good stuff here too, but definitely too many reps (33 or so, there was definite physical/mental fatigue by the end which could have contributed to the errors).
He did best on the backside verbals when you started saying them before he even finished the wrap, so that is good to remember – you can start them early and say them often 🙂
He is doing a really good job on the harder angles where you are not parallel and need to take a little step to push him to the backside like at :39 – he is reading those REALLY well and not needing too much step to the backside at all.
One thing here is he has a threshold for how far away across the jump you can be for he pushes: if you are moving to where the exit wing meets the bar – he is basically 100% at this point. Yay! If you are past the exit wing (parallel so there is daylight between you and the wing) – he fails (like at :42 an :47 and 1:22 and 1:27). So be careful of your position – over the course of upcoming training sessions, inch your way over to the exit wing and past it, so he can be successful and then you will be able to be further across.
>> then had some issues with front vs back side of jump so my session went long, but I wanted to end on a couple of good reps where he seemed to understand what I wanted and we finally got there. Not sure what I did to not get the front side toward the end.>>
I think the front versus back was just fatigue – he was starting to show some fatigue by 1:45 and by 2:30 he was walking to the wing wrap. So he might have just gone on autopilot and was guessing that it was a backside because he had just done literally 2 dozen backsides 🙂 So – do 10 reps or less then be done with it. And you don’t need to finish in a good note, if things have gone south you can just be done 🙂 This is an easy setup for us to not realize how many reps we have done, because we are walking and the dog is running and doing backside slices which are pretty physically demanding.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
She is doing well with her threadles, responding really well on all of them! Bear in mind that dogs get very threadle-happy in training so they keep offering a zillion threadles and the regular lines go away (especially herding dogs, I have never seen a terrier get threadle-happy). So when you are doing a session – start with the regular 180 line for a couple of reps, then do the threadle then when you want the regular line again, make it clearer by getting in closer to her line in the gap. When she was threadling, you were raising your arm high and moving away really fast, breaking connection, so she was guessing and went for the higher value thing at the moment (the threadle). You stayed gap at :57 and that really helped her see the difference. She did better with her balance when she was on your right and then at the end on the left, you stayed in the gap more to support the line so she did better there too! Nice! So being patient and staying in the gap really helped.
Speaking of being patient… on the course work video, that is the main thing: be patient, run the lines more… don’t rush to the next line as much. In the first video, you were tending to want to fling her an run away (I totally relate to feeling the need to hurry to the next place on course!) That is why she was coming off lines – the rushing caused your line of motion to change and pull her in (or added an extra jump on the blind after the tunnel after the weaves). For example, the backside in the opening – you were using the verbal, but you had a super high arm and you were turning your line of motion and running to the tunnel, so she took the front side. Staying on a parallel line (across the jump, but patiently on a parallel line) will make it easier for her to commit to and you will be able to get way up the line for the blind too. When you were more patient, working each line to make sure she had it (like at 2:15) – it was lovely!
She had big weaves questions – you can keep training her to drive away into ‘nothingness’ as you hang back (lots of thrown rewards) and also you can keep her on your left there and do a switch away to the tunnel – that allows you to layer the weaves and get where you want to be for the next section more easily.
The full run on the 2nd video was MUCH more patient and worked so much better! You dud a great job of working each line. And you still got everywhere you wanted to be really nicely! The ending line got a little behind, you can get the side change there before the tunnel but the rest was really strong 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think (and stay warm!)
Tracy
