Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Good morning! This was a good session, he is really loving that tunnel now 🙂
>> When I am holding him and ready to say ‘Tunnel!’, should I be waiting until he’s pretty much completely focused and turned towards it? Ronin obviously now understands the value of the MM and it’s a distraction, which is good practice, but not sure how much to test that vs. making more sure he’s focused and ready before giving the command to do the tunnel. I know, not really a black and white situation, but curious about your thoughts.>>
This is an excellent question!!! 2 answers for you:
– He does not have to be looking at the tunnel in order for you to start the cue. Hold his collar, say tunnel a few times (we all say it more than once on course anyway LOL!) and then let go. Some dogs don’t focus forward on the line or task at this age, yet they are still highly successful. An example of that is my border whippet, Contraband – he would never focus forward, he would always look at me. And yet, when I gave the cue and let go, he always went and did the task. So I stopped waiting for him to focus ahead, because he was Wildly successful without it. Interestingly, now that he is 2 years old, his focuses forward in flyball but not on the agility start line. And it is fine – because he is simply never wrong. So I have chilled out about it (very hard for me because I am a founding member of Team No Chill. Ha!)Ronin is not a sighthound, he is a terrier 🙂 But He is similar in that he seems very happy to get it right even without looking at it first LOL! So, don’t worry to much about it.
— you are correct in that the MM is a fabulous distraction – it helps fold in all of the self-control we want! So, if you are holding him and saying tunneltunneltunnel and he is pulling towards the MM and not the tunnel – if you think he is really guaranteed a failure – then just keep saying the verbal til he stops pulling towards the MM and let go, see what happens. If he fails, no worries, start over closer to the tunnel entry.
Speaking of you holding him – that is the only part of the session that I have a suggestion for: the tunnel now has good value (plus it has a lot of motion involved) and the MM is high value now too… and coming to your hand for a collar grab? Not nearly as fun! So, we fight fire with fire… or, maybe I should say, cookies with cookies! You were empty-handing him when he got back to you and trying to grab for his collar, so he was scooting away and sometimes grabbing the tunnel. So, have cookies in your hand: after he gets the MM treat, call him back to you for a really good cookie (show him the cookie if you need to, we can jump start the reset that way), feed the cookie, grab the collar, feed another cookie… then do the tunnel send to the MM.
This will help in 2 ways: it makes for a more efficient session because there is a balance of value: coming to you to line up is valuable, going to the tunnel is valuable. Handler focus and line focus getting trained all in one session.
And, it will help him love the collar grab and line up which is very useful for start lines and such 🙂Towards the end you had him on the inside with the threadle foundation, and he was perfect of course 🙂 So now we need to attach a verbal to it: have you decided on a tunnel threadle verbal? If so, you can use it now when you are working on the threadle side 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyWow! Sounds like she had a lightbulb moment and now she totally has it. YAY!! She is brilliant 🙂 Great job showing her what you wanted!!!!!!!
T
Good morning!
You have done a great job getting the MM to be very happy-making, he seemed to be very excited to train for it! When I was using the MM with the dogs that were not really food-drive to begin with (whippet mixes are not big eaters), I mixed in some freeze dried tripe and tiny crumbles of stinky treats. The tripe didn’t make it through the MM dispenser, but the smell got attached to the kibble and it was a big thumbs up from the dogs 🙂
The other stinky thing I did for the MM was I left my kibble in the bag of the other treats, then pulled it out to put in the MM – very stinky but higher value for sure.Great job with your tunnel intro here!!!! Was this the first or one of the first times he has done it? Very nice! Great job setting him up for success, both with the tunnel and the MM (2 relatively new things for him). Super!!!
As soon as you think he will reliably run through it from the angle you had him on here (relatively straight) you can totally add the verbal. You might need to be softer with the word at first so he doesn’t look up at you, but I might be wrong about that and you can be louder – he will let you know and you can adjust accordingly.
Then, I bet within that same session or the one after it, you will be able to have the verbal and the angles of entry. Fun!And while that is going on, have you decided on your tunnel threadle verbal (what do you use for the other dogs?) Based on how quickly he picks things up, you will need to have that ready soon too because we will be able to add it soon as well.
Great job here!!! Keep me posted!!!
TracyGood morning!
Thanks for telling me about the video – the sound is WAY off! UGH! I am simultaneously banging my head on the wall and shaking my fist at YouTube. Sigh. I will get in there and fix it, or re-film it if I can’t get it fixed because yes, the timing of the click is kind of important. Eek!!!!!! But yes – try to click for back feet.
Also yes – if you don’t have a box, you can totally use a mat. I have used large bath mats and also chunks of yoga mats that are big enough that it is relatively easy for the pups to trot through with all 4 feet. I will take a look for more video, I am sure I have some of Contraband doing it, somewhere.
The retrieve looks awesome!!! Well done! And even in the short time that I have known her here on video, her play behaviors are really blossoming! I know you mentioned that she didn’t play with you & toys as much as you wanted when we got started – but looking at recent videos, I would not have guessed that if you have not told me. That is exciting!!!
I think you were really quiet during this video for the retrieve elements (probably by design, because it is a relatively new behavior, as compared to the strike). When you think you can consistently get this behavior, go ahead and add words, even if they are informal. For example, my informal retrieve cue for toys is “bring the ting” haha! And it works really nicely for agility and flyball. Obedience would need a more formal cue because it is a more specific behavior. But no rush to add the cues – the context is the cue for now and she is doing beautifully!!!
Great job 🙂 And I will get to work fixing that video, hopefully today 🙂
Tracy
Hi!
>>Jump threaded (close) jump threaded wrap (maybe I need to see them). Is there a reason to not use “in” for both (coming from a person that obviously doesn’t remember dog side leg, let alone which of 100 verbals to use 😜)?The reason different verbals are needed are because they are completely different behaviors and we cannot rely on our handling to always be right there to show him. It would be like using sit to mean both sit AND down – something is bound to go wrong with that.
And practice, practice, practice will make the verbals seem like second nature 🙂
THi!
>>Should I shelf that for a while and work only this? He should have a fair understanding of the command>>Do you mean the motion override game versus the mat work here? You can do both – one is on the flat, the other is with the mat, so they won’t interfere with each other.
>>I find myself saying “go weave” or “get your weaves” as well as just “weave.” Do I need to try and break those habits on course or will using “Weave” during training translate and override my bad habits?>>
Good question! I vote for breaking the habit, especially because Go and Get are also the beginning of other cues that are not related to weaves. So, just use “weaves” and no other chatter unless you need a directional like “get out” before it. Get your weaves doesn’t really have specific info.
T
Hi! Sounds like a long day but you got really good work in!!!
On the prop practice:
He is showing really great value for his prop, so we can add some things:
For the sends:
– when tossing treats, be sure that he is engaged and sees you toss them, and more importantly: use a marker like ‘get it’ every time. He didn’t always see the treats and you were not saying anything, so it got a little muddy. I don’t want him to start scanning the floor for treats, so the engagement and marker become really important.– speaking of engagement… engage before each send. It is not a loop of send-cookie-send- cookie. It is more of: engage, send, reward. Engage, send, reward. The engagement prepares him for what is coming and also helps you get the mechanics ready.
At this stage, the distance is perfect, so now you can add countermotion! Get closer to it to start and move to the countermotion games 🙂
The parallel path also looks good. The errors were when he was not ready because you moved away quickly while he was finding the treat, so he just followed you. Let him find it and chew it before you move up the line again.
The handling game also looked good (and Suzie gave perfect feedback and advice!). With this, you definitely want to get him excited with the ball. And use the get it for the cookie toss. And don’t worry if he is tight to you or not – that is accomplished with you decelerating sooner. He did great here! And if his stays are coming along nicely, you can use those rather than cookie tosses to start 🙂
Nice work!
TracyHi!
>>Found the registration! PS. It is not easy to find clasess to register for on this website. I would think that you would want a list of clses and registration to be up front and clear on the website.>>
Glad you found it! It is hard to find because we hide registration once they get past week 2. So there are several active classes at the moment but registration is hidden because they are either finishing or halfway through 🙂 the new classes are much easier to find (no new classes at the moment :))
TThis all sounds good! I’ve found that limited the training time AND having to train more than one dog in that time helps us make better plans and be more efficient 🙂
And you can see if the jealousy thing helps in class! There will be some extra noise 🙂 but hopefully no one minds 🙂
TracyFor more RC foundation, try this:
First on the flat, then add in the prop in front of her so you do the RC then release forward to the prop (this was done before we got all proppy lol)
T
Hi!
Thanks for trying the RCs again – I think you just need more room to do it, like 20 feet, because she had already committed to doing the prop a certain way when you were cutting in behind her here. But, we can also teach her to turn away for a RC with some other games – I will grab the videos to show you that!Parallel path also looked great, it was an easy concept transfer! So now – don’t click anymore, because it causes her to look at you and we don’t want her to look up. Instead, mark with a get it and throw the cookie (or toy). And, mark and throw sooner: you are looking for the intent to commit, the decision to move to the jump, rather than waiting for her to get between the uprights. When she is between the uprights, there is nothing else to look at so she is likely to look at you. When you mark intent, the reward will be placed earlier so she won’t look at you 🙂
The RDW mat also looked good! Next step: now, stare at the mat (don’t watch her) and click for back feet only. At first, any back feet then you can ramp it up to clicking for the 2nd back foot 🙂 Staring at the mat makes it much easier 🙂
Definite progress with the retrieve to hand!!! This looked great! Food value is high enough now that you can do stationary shaping stuff like this with success. Yay!
2 things to consider:
First, make sure she swallows the treat after the click, before presenting the toy again. The toy came out fast, so she finished chewing the treat after she gave the toy back to you LOL!Second – now for some words 🙂 Maybe add a word to pick it up, and a word to out it? Thinking ahead to obedience, you’ll want words for all that eventually.
Great job on these! Let me know what you think and be right back with the rear cross videos.
TracyHi!
Thanks for trying the RCs again – I think you just need more room to do it, like 20 feet, because she had already committed to doing the prop a certain way when you were cutting in behind her here. But, we can also teach her to turn away for a RC with some other games – I will grab the videos to show you that!Parallel path also looked great, it was an easy concept transfer! So now – don’t click anymore, because it causes her to look at you and we don’t want her to look up. Instead, mark with a get it and throw the cookie (or toy). And, mark and throw sooner: you are looking for the intent to commit, the decision to move to the jump, rather than waiting for her to get between the uprights. When she is between the uprights, there is nothing else to look at so she is likely to look at you. When you mark intent, the reward will be placed earlier so she won’t look at you 🙂
The RDW mat also looked good! Next step: now, stare at the mat (don’t watch her) and click for back feet only. At first, any back feet then you can ramp it up to clicking for the 2nd back foot 🙂 Staring at the mat makes it much easier 🙂
Definite progress with the retrieve to hand!!! This looked great! Food value is high enough now that you can do stationary shaping stuff like this with success. Yay!
2 things to consider:
First, make sure she swallows the treat after the click, before presenting the toy again. The toy came out fast, so she finished chewing the treat after she gave the toy back to you LOL!Second – now for some words 🙂 Maybe add a word to pick it up, and a word to out it? Thinking ahead to obedience, you’ll want words for all that eventually.
Great job on these! Let me know what you think and be right back with the rear cross videos.
Tracy
