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Hi! This is great! City Agility! Was that a train in the background? She did an amazing job with all of the distractions – good girl!!! Turning around on the plank looked really good, she was able to balance beautifully. It also looked like she had no problem turning left and right, balanced and smooth each direction.
Ooh, I like that green wobbly thing!! It is a great conditioning game to put her paws up and balance. You might have to help her slow down so she doesn’t fall on her head LOL! I was very happy to see that she got right back on it after she slipped off. Yay! It might be too small or high to get all 4 feet on it, but the 2 feet on it were great!!
You can bring a tug toy on walks too and see if she will play tug – the city distractions are a great prep for agility trials 🙂
Well done!
TracyHi!
I am excited that you still had some green grass!!!!The Lazy Game looks great! Looks like you added more and more distance and he was finding things nicely, all while ignoring distractions like people and cars! He looked a little while you were not really moving but when you added a little more motion at the end, he was awesome about driving out away to the middle jump without looking at you. Nice!!
One step sends – looking great!! You were connected, you were on time, he had no questions, you were able to get more distance on the send AND get ahead. And I am SUPER happy with his turns on the middle jump – especially on the last 2 reps, he set himself up GORGEOUSLY to turn 🙂 YESSSS!!
>>One step sends (um, I noticed some bizarre arm movements when I sent him. Luckily he went anyways, but that’s embarrassing stuff.)>>
Ha! Not embarrassing at all! I left a lot of my arm flinging in the demo video, I was totally a flinger. We will tend to have a bit of a fling on these, for 2 reasons:
1 – Physics! Centrifugal force grabs our arm and pulls it up as we turn away. If we try to not have that happen, will will not be moving naturally and the dogs will think we are bizarre 🙂
2 – a common thing is that we fling our arms more than we probably should… and I want the dogs to just carry on and do the jump anyway, ignoring the flinging LOL!My only suggestion on the one steps sends it when he lands from the first jump and you start the send, add in your left/right verbals. Every else looks fabulous.
Video 3 – lazy game warm up was great, and your connection looked GREAT on the speed circles!
The verbal timing looked and sounded really good! When you were cuing the tunnel at 1:02 on your right side, he looked at you – but that might have been a product of getting rewarded before the tunnel a couple of times in a row. At 1:11 though, when you cued the tunnel, you did a big decel and turned – so he took the other side, good boy. That will make your tunnel threadles easier LOL! He was a little sticky on the next rep but when you relaxed the connection a little at 1:29 – Boom! Wrong end of the tunnel. These were all on your left.
Fine going into the tunnel at 1:38 on your right! And at 1:49 at the end, you really ramped up the connection and your cue read as “you ARE going in to that tunnel” LOL!! So, he went in 🙂 For whatever reason, he is a little stickier on your left going to the tunnel than he is on your right – could be a side preference thing? It is pretty common, Elektra is the same way, so I drive her into the tunnel as much as possible, exaggerating the cue but it helps support her. When he is on your left, keep exaggerating and then it will be easier.And I think it is pretty common to see a slight side preference on these, and I think that is what you were seeing and describing. Every since we started these classes back in July, and with the new crop of puppies that just started… we are seeing some side preference early on. I am not concerned about it – I think that every single one of our dogs has had a side preference, and we are just better at seeing it with younger dogs now because we have been staring at screens since July LOL!! Ramping up the connection will help balance it out.
Great job here! I am looking forward to the next set of videos!Tracy
HI welcome back!!! You two look fabulous here – look at her stays! Look at her speed! Look at her focus on the line and independence!! Look at how nice her turns are! Yowza!!!! She is correctly named and the future is very exciting 🙂 Wheeee!
OK, some specifics on her brilliance:
The Lazy game looks good! Be sure to keep moving, don’t help – you can wait until the she finds the cookie but then keep moving. You looked like you were a little helpy at first LOL! If she looks like she is going to miss the jump – no problem, just keep moving. She will figure out that missing the jump means NO COOKIES and then I am sure she will find the jump. She caught onto this VERY quickly: free cookies for jumps! LOL! And adding the tunnel – easy! Great connection when you added the tunnel and speed, and her commitment got even better. Nice! On the timing reps – you looked super connected, verbals were on time, and you just needed to turn your shoulders sooner on the first couple of times through the pinwheel – which you started doing on the last couple to the left and so she immediately tighten up her line. It was really lovely!2nd video, with the handling – also super happy with this!!!
Starting with FC wraps – VERY nice timing and connection at :10! Even nicer at :21!!
You then moved to the BCs: Your timing of starting the BC at :31 was good, but you can finish it sooner, getting your head turned as quickly as possible so you can connect before she takes off.
You were a little late at :44, but then earlier starting at :54 – because of her speed, you can experiment with how early you can start it: when you see her land from the jump after tunnel, give your left or right cue then start it and see if she still commits!Then back to the wraps: 1:08 was good but you were freakin’ awesome at 1:20!! Wow! Also awesome at 1:31, look at that independence!!!! At 1:43, your rotation was a little early (it happened before the decel) so the cue almost looked like a RC instead of a wrap – she considered turning away but then heard the verbal and the rest pf the cue, and got the wrap. Yay!
The last rep was a BC at 1:56 – you are getting earlier and more comfy on these! Nice! Keep playing with how early you can get in and out of the blinds so we can see if she will still commit.
Great job!!!
TracyHi!
>>In the last couple of runs, you’ll hear a lot of background noise. It started to HAIL! I still wanted to try a couple more things, and Keiko was agreeable, so we ran in little ice pellets>>
OK, after seeing this and also watching Helen run in the snow, I guess I should not complain about 40 degrees HAHA! You are my hero!
>> Most of the time, I managed to get turned in time to give Keiko a clue about what was coming and then to see her land.
Yes, you were looking great! Very clear connection, good timing, Keiko seemed to have zero questions. Yay! She was able to set up nice turns on each blind. When you send to the middle jump – as soon as she is heading towards it, you can start leaving for the BC line to the tunnel – it will get you further up the line and set and even better line to the tunnel entry you want. If you are connected, she should commit to the jump after the send jump (the BC jump) without needing another send to it. Your connection looked great!
Her understanding of staying on the line looks great, and your ‘twist’ on the blinds is really opening up nice connection! Your timing gets earlier and earlier as you play with the mechanics – looking really good!>>When she goes through the tunnel, she is really ready to go do a jump. Even when I was turned, looking at the opening, and calling her name, she came out fast and had to curve to get on the path. Should I be giving her a verbal cue sooner, or some sort of modified tunnel break?>>
Looking at the tunnel exits at :26, :40, :54, 1:0,2 1:17, 1:26 – you were doing a blind cross to get her on your other side. With turns on tunnel exits, she is going to do whatever the last thing she sees before she enters the tunnel and I think that is what is happening here: you were accelerating and facing forward when she went in, so she accelerated forward on the exit – the BC cues started after she was out. So, it tighten it up: decelerate and start the blind when she is still 4 or 5 feet before getting into the tunnel (although you might find a FC is easier in that situation because it turns your feet to the next line sooner). Ideally, she would see the fully completed cross just before she gets into the tunnel.
She is really understanding these pinwheels – the distance on the pinwheel looks great and she is flying without you having to run in there and support. The only time she would slow down a little was when you were sending to each individual jump rather than sending and moving.
During the hail 🙂 The first couple of tight blinds can have a deceleration into them (just like we would on a wrap) to tight them up a little (1:56 and 2:02). You had really good timing on the blinds to the tunnel! This is a definite place to keep moving so you don’t end up in the way when she lands – but it might be possible you were trying not to slip on the ice that was falling from the sky LOL!!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>. She weighs too much for me to hold her in that position now.
I have a version of it where we don’t have to hold the board, thankfully! I can hold the board with my 14 lb dog but not with my 40lb dog 🙂 Stay tuned!
Hi!
>> I spent some time yesterday secretly “constructing” toy chains from an assortment of his previous favorites. I have one of these hidden in all of the places where we play/train and I have one ready to join us on today’s errand run.>>
Yay! Arts and Crafts!!
>>I was discussing all of this with Meagan S yesterday, and she pointed out that his sudden swing away from toys could be partly a need for more food due to his recent growth spurt. I’ve been so focused on letting him grow into the weight he arrived with that I might have taken that a bit too far. He got a larger dinner last night, and later, was totally into tugging with me in a way that he hasn’t for about a week.>>
That is entirely possible! Looking at the full picture – food versus tug drive constantly shifts back and forth at this point for a breed like Labrador that has strong drives in both directions. Could be just a pendulum swinging and his tugging last nice was coincidental. Could be he was having a bit of teething pain. And *most definitely* could be that he was hungry! I am a weirdo in the dog training world, in that I always feed my food-motivated dogs a meal *before* I train them. It might be a small meal, but it is a meal. Most conventional wisdom is that you should train when the dog is hungry! But… I call bullsh*t on that because I find that hungry dogs get frantic. I mean, I get hangry if I need to focus on a task and I am hungry. My observations on dogs are that the foodies always train better when they are NOT hungry. I had to work my 2 puppies this morning on a series of things that HAD to get filmed today due to impending snow… they both had a lovely breakfast and then went out to work for food rewards and were great.
So, experiment with feeding small meals before training especially when you have food and toys in the picture and see how he does!
>>Not disagreeing with your observations and suggestions. Just thinking that there might be a couple of layers to this and I can attack it from multiple angles.>>
Absolutely! We are generally looking at these things in terms of operant conditioning but that is really just a small piece of the puzzle 🙂
Hi! Great job on these!
Turning around on the plank: Yes, you can totally start posture on the plank and then do it before you add in turning around! I like the idea, it will help him keep his feet still The sequence of events can be:
1. posture so his feet are still
2. cookie lure bending, slooooowly turning his head from side to side
3. Turn all the way around (lured)
He was tap dancing a bit so that made it harder to also think about exact foot placement (and also might have meant hard mouth). Teaching him to slooooooow down will help him think about balance (and posture and the cookie bending are great foundation behaviors for fitness stuff too! As a flesh protector, you can also lure with a peanut butter stuff kong so he is licking and not grabbing. Standing still might be difficult, so the licking my help him settle.Backing up – He wants to look up at you, which is making it harder for him to realize that we want him to keep his head down to back up. So, we can change the mechanics a little to draw him forward with the cookie drop between your knees (rather than hand deliver) and then toss the reward for backing up back between his front feet rather in the pan, so he scoots back even more, looking downwards – it will keep his head down (because he will be seeing a lower cookie hand then looking at the ground) and it will also set us up for part 2 that I posted today. Dropping the treats can also protect your flesh 🙂 It looks like he likes to look up at your face and might even sometimes jump up – so bending over him is probably a bad ideas, because you might accidently get face bopped (I have had it happen, ouch!!) So you can probably do the lower hand an cookie drops by sitting in the chair or on the table with your feet spread out enough that he can step under the chair or table to get it, so you don’t have to bend over too much! That will also almost certainly elicit the backing up with the lower head.
Wrapping looks really strong! Yay! I LOVED The moment when he looked at the bowl with a clear pass option to cut in… and instead chose to WRAP rather than cut across. YESSSS good boy! He couldn’t reproduce it in the next pass but after that he went back to great wrapping. Very cool!!! You can replace the donuts with a wing now, starting it nice and close. Removing the bowls is fine, you can just drop the treats with a ‘get it’ cue. We don’t need to cookie this from your hand – partially as a flesh protector 🙂 and partially because we will eventually be doing this work with him with using toys. The fewer cookies from your hand, the better your flesh will feel 🙂 The only other small detail is that as you add distance, move yourself back to give him more room on the rug so he doesn’t try to go fast on the wood and slip making the wraps.
Tugging – this went well! He did a good job switching and your did a good job keep things exciting! You can let him win sometimes and run around, especially when he really pulls hard. I think letting him win and have a victory lap will be a good brain break for him too – he might have been looking for something else here and not engaging with the shorter toy because he was pulling super hard but not getting a chance to win the toy. For the smaller toy hat he doesn’t like as much, you can also tie it to a better one and then it can take on the value of the other toy, making it more valuable by itself. I really liked that he offered a down to try to restart the game! He seems super drivey on his toys, so you can also stand and let him do all the work of pulling back on a good toy, letting him win when he pulls extra hard 🙂
Great job on these! Let me know what you think!!
TracyHi!
>>Then I turned my brain on and remembered I knew how to shape.>>
I feel this! I feel like I have to re-learn all of my skills with each new dog.
He definitely liked the treats and also appeared to think getting on the thing was a little weird at first. Great job with your rewards and then breaking him off for some tugging! Your transition looked lovely into the second round!!!! He offered with even more confidence there, and also on the 3rd little round after the tug break.
His tail is like a barometer, so funny – waggy waggy when he is all like “I GOT THIS” but then still when he is thinking through the moment. Love it!
Also, I am REALLY excited that he went back and forth from the treats to the toy so nicely, right in that space. That is unusual, especially since you had yummy treats. But fabulous!>>For future reference, sliced swiss cheese is very difficult to handle.>>
Yes, it gets greasy LOL!!!
Great job here. The next step would be to see if he would offer hind end. But before you do it on something relatively big, you can see if he will do it on something lower, like maybe just the lid of this container? If he is already doing all 4 feet on that – great! You can see if he offers all 4 on the bigger stuff.
Nice work!
TracyHi! This looked great!! He is so funny – great with the wrap offering and the back-and-forth, but also being 100% sure that he got all the cookies hahaha! Then checking to make sure that you reloaded before he started offering again. And he didn’t seem to have any trouble as the wing got further away. Perfect! I think at the end you had a click where he was looking at you and he was like wait, what? LOL!
So, next steps – you can delay the click til he is all the way around now (I don’t think that will be a problem at all). You can move the wing in closer and stand up, dropping the cookies into the bowl (moving it in closer because standing up *might* be a big change and we don’t want 2 challenges yet just one challenge/change). If standing up is easy peasy… move the wing back out away. Keep me posted on how he does, because we can move really quickly through a lot of steps here, he is very much like a sponge 🙂
>> Should I just keep adding to the bottom of the thread, or should I reply to specific responses you provide so that specific feedback stays with specific games?
I think bottom of the thread is easier to find over time than within sub-threads. But you can use the blank rectangle right below the box you type in to tag each post so that you can sort them by tags when you want all of the topics together.
Great job here!
TracyHi! This was a really fabulous session!!!!! All of your mechanics looked great, you kept a high rate of success, you smoothly switched to the cone… and she did not bat an eyelash as the upright got further away or when you did the cone. Perfect! Exactly what we want. Woohoo! And the stool looked pretty comfy 🙂
So… next steps: on your next session in a day or two (no need to do this every day). Start right on the cone. Do a short session. If that is all good like this one was, the session after that can start with you on the stool and the cone – but in that session, add in standing up and dropping the treats into the bowls. I don’t think that will be a problem for her at all. Keep me posted, because we can keep adding the next steps if it goes as nicely as this did.
Great job!
TracyHa! Yes, ‘easy money’ is correct LOL!!! As it should be 🙂
Before you go to standing, 2 little details: One thing is to use both hands to reward him (not just your right hand crossing over). You’ll have cookies in both hands and that way the hand next to the bowl is the one that drops the treat in – it will help up when we add countermotion work and the next level of the game.
Also, delay the click now, every so slightly, so he is fully around the wing and almost at the bowl. Essentially, you are clicking more of the finished behavior. I don’t think that will be a problem at all 🙂Yes, after that – standing, and then after that is moving the wing a little further away.
Then, like a fine steak fresh off the grill… let it rest 🙂 Let his brain cement all that for a couple of days and then we will build on it 🙂
Great job!
Have fun!
TracyHi! Part of the fun of puppy shaping is working on our own mechanics and also solving the puzzle of what will work to get the behavior. 2 ideas for you:
First, without adding backing up into it for now – shape value for getting on the mat. Saliency is a reflection of value, so without it he was unable to figure out that he was supposed to back up onto it. So do a quick session of “get on this thing” with all four feet and then a quick session of “stay on this thing”… and the tomorrow morning we add the next step (cliffhanger!LOL!! It is literally loaded and next in line for Tuesday release LOL!!!) I think we will be able to split things differently to help get the behavior.
Second – this is about the mechanics, and could also be why he was watching your hand a lot: keep your hands completely stationary. The clicker hand was pretty still but the cookie hand was not. You can leave the cookie hand below you and just flick the treats to where the rewards need to be: flick one under you for him to get, then after a click, flick the treat to try to get it between his front feet. If the hand is not moving, he will figure out a way to operantly work the situation to get the treat, without think it has to do with the hand moving. Your delivery hand was going pretty far out, so he might have been locked onto moving with it (as you mentioned)/ Your timing definitely got clearer later on the Cato Board session and he was definitely showing value!! Both of those will help us in the next step.Let me know what you think!!
TracyHi! I think this went well, actually! You had a nIce high rate of reinforcement and you got some good backing up! Yes, she definitely appeared to be hungry 🙂 but she was also focused and thinking about what to do with her body. You took a good amount of toy breaks but she wanted the treat – if that happens, you can try running to a different location (like down a hallway or into a different room) and throwing the toy around so she forgets her cookies for a moment (don’t worry about getting it on camera :))
>>then watched read lesson got set up and this video is night and day. Thank you.
Not cutting the lesson to just the skill, due to I think what happens before and after the “skill” to your trained eye gives the whole picture. Right wrong??>>Yes, I think the full session is very helpful! This one looked good, and adding in toy play further from the food location should help get her back on the toy 🙂 I don’t know what the first session looked like, but you made great adjustments on this one!!
We build on this skill tomorrow with new stuff, which should help her back up even further. So for now, jst see if you can convinve her to play with the toy after eating a cookie or two. For my food driven dogs, I often feed them a small meal and *then* train them – that gets GREAT results 🙂
Nice work! Keep me posted!
TracyOMG this was so funny! The other dog was all like, y’all have fun running, I will be here with my toy chilling out. LOL!! Too cute!
The toy race itself is going well! Try to start with her, with your hand on her collar – hold her til the ball lands then run run run (I am sure you can’t beat her LOL!) – that will help her keep her head down and drive straight to it, rather than go out a little wide. You can also have your videographer hold her so you can get a head start and try to win the race 🙂
Great job here!!
TracyHi!
Working through distractions in the environment is more important then the actual plank games – great job getting her back in the game! You can start by tugging to get her focused then go to the treats on the plank – then release to tug. The tugging adds a high level of engagement, so the distractions of neighbors will fade away. Neighbors are AMAZING at showing up when we don’t want them too. And for the shaping things, you can go to crazy high value treats, so she can’t take her eyes off the game. Regular training treats might not cut it in the distracting places, so you can go to something she might not normally get – chicken breast or steak or hot dogs! Yum!
I think she did well on the plank itself, so it was more a matter of figuring out how to help her ignore all the thing around her. Try the tugging and crazy delicious treats and let me know how it goes 🙂Tracy
