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Good morning and great question!
I think we need to condition the silence (and facial expression that goes with it – set of mouth, where you are looking, etc). So for example: start the lure with permission to follow (shhhhhhh) then when he starts following it, you go to your silence then after a short silence – “get it!” or something that says now is the time for the cookie. So the shhhhh is more of a cue and not a mark for reinforcement, if that makes sense? Easy enough to fade and replace with the cue for the behavior when you want it.
Then, the silence gets built in as a keep going, all good, because it predicts reinforcement. But then there would need to be something else that breaks it off so he also doesn’t get silence when he is not correct or you don’t want him to keep going.Let me know if that makes sense or if I need more coffee lol!
Tracy
Good morning!
Great lists here – you’ve clearly been making positive reinforcement a focal point in life and training, as well as the underlying emotional state of the dogs. Perfect!!! It look all works together, as you know.A baby BC that likes food…. fabulous!!! We will protect that like gold 🙂 I suggest we insert food into the procedures sometimes just to maintain that – the didn’t-quite-swallow thing is normal with young BCs so I play a little game with treats and a toy: swallow the treat, get the toy (I make sure I see them swallow it 😄) Do it with the smaller treats in a setting where you aren’t training anything else, it is just a goofy living room game for now.
Toy play sounds good, and expectations in different settings getting adjusted also sound good (he is still a puppy so it is important we don’t pressure him). Some of these procedures can also be used for acclimation games in new environments.
And I agree that there are some activities we use for training and some we don’t want to use. Years back, I think it was Jean Donaldson from the SFSPCA who used leg-humping as a reward activity LOL! No thanks. Ha! But some games can be used if needed – if he loves loves loves playing with other dogs or greeting people, keep it in your back pocket in case we ever need it (Also teaches the dogs when to ignore other dogs, a lovely by-product!)The camel training sounds so fun! If you plan on filming any if his work, please feel free to open up a thread for him. Let’s gift him a free working spot 🙂 I’d love to see more, what a great opportunity!!!
Have fun!
TracyGood morning! This is a really good list.
The food and toys will be easy enough to incorporate, but I think we can also incorporate his love of people and dogs! And that reinforcement procedure (the when/where/how of greeting and playing) can also help him ignore the people and dogs, like the judge in the ring! We’ll get the food and toys established this week then work on inserting the people and dogs. Does he play with your other dogs?
TracyHi and welcome!!! I am excited to see you here!
About engaging with toys… what stuff does he like to put in his mouth and play with? Or chase? Other than food LOL! Sticks? Hoses? Paper towel roll? Let’s start with figuring out what he enjoys playing with already and then we can go from there. It will be fun!
Tracy
Hi!
>>for when you get back, not for while you are on vacation
I wish it was a vacation LOL! I am basically in charge of getting the course builds done on an 8 ring national event. What was I thinking LOL?!?!?!! And running 3 dogs, but I didn’t enter that much this year 🙂
Thanks for posting this! All of the balance reps looked good, so I watched it a few times to figure out why she threadled when she did, and why she didn’t when she didn’t 🙂 I think it has to do with you moving back away from the threadles for a step or two. When you pulled back with a little bit of motion, just 2 steps – she got it nicely at :08, :13, :51, :58.
When you used a parallel line of motion or only one little step – she did not threadle. Aha! We are on to something. And she came into the gap every time you decelerated or stood still. So I think she is relying on the moving back to threadle into the gap and reading all other motion as stay on the line.No problem, though! Since she did really well with the angles, you can go back to the angles and open them up a little so you can fade out the need to move back – just move on the parallel path slowly. Then we slowly close up the threadles to be ‘flat’ like they were here – it might take several sessions or longer, but that is fine! I suggest getting her happy with you moving at a jog or run on the angled threadles, then inch by inch closing them flat over several sessions.
>>By the way, I’m hoping to be able to get Annie through the gap without having to use 2 hands because the 2-hand cue is working amazingly well for the threadle wrap and I want to save that as a dedicated wrap cue. I’ll see if I can get a couple of those on video while you are away.
Yo ucan use a one-hand threadle! Or you can have different positions – where are your hands in the threadle wrap?
Nice work here!
TracyHi! Glad you had fun at the trial!
>> I could his slowing down a bit on some of the other runs.
Yes, the dogs get physically and mentally tired. It is hard to quantify it in agility, but in flyball we see each dog’s time instantly… and the first runs of the day, and the first run of each heat, are almost always the fastest. It is fascinating to see the times decrease! For example, I run 2nd in the pack: I have to time my release based on the speed of the dog running 1st in the pack, so I wait longer as the day goes on, so I don’t end up being early because the dog running 1st might slow down.
I make sure my dogs get sleep time during trial days, and I also feed them meals during the day – small meals, but meals 🙂 There is a study somewhere that found that there was a link between glucose depletion and self-control depletion!>>On the first Pairs run, the 2nd obs was the WPs. He had enuf of that set up! So he did a 18 sec wscape, then returned to run with a vengeance, (for clean!!!)>>
Weaves as #2 are a bummer! I love that he came back with a vengeance though!
>>The first run of the weekend was jumpers. It was N’s best and not good on my timing and not enuf verbal cues. At the first backside, I slowed down, because N was not ahead and I was going to have to go to the BS too! What should I have done differently?>>
I thought it was a good run and I LOVED your blinds! I also loved the crowd cheering 🙂
I don’t think you were too far ahead on that first blind… it was more that you pointed ahead of him while he was still behind you, so it turned your shoulders to the front side of the jump and that is where he went. In that situation, keep your arm back until he is passing you and use connection. Compare it to the next backside, where you were ahead but you kept your arm back and he got it really nicely 🙂Tracy
Hi! The foundations for the “don’t obsess on the food in my hands” are posted already in Reward. It is a matter of establishing what each procedure is. The next step comes in the next set of games, which is Nov 22 (break week is week 2 because of the US Open).
T
Helloooooo! I feel like I was just chatting with you on Messenger lol!!!!
Welcome back! This will be a fun adventure!!! I have found that clean reinforcement procedures create a cool cycle of high rate of reinforcement as an umbrella, which leads to high rate of reinforcement in the skills-specific stuff, which leads to a more relaxed dog in the ideal state of arousal… which brings up right back to the high rate/umbrella, high rate/skills, and on and on. A happy cycle!!
Your reinforcement list looks great! It might change a bit here and there but overall, it is really solid and we will refer to it often.
As an aside, several items on his list are also on my personal list. I, too, would work hard for steak (cooked, though), cheese and parm crisps 🙂See ya soon!
TracyHi! Welcome to class, it is great to ‘see’ you here!! I totally remember you and Hemi – it has been way too long 🙂 And congrats on your new puppy!!!!!!
Customer support is up to their eyeballs sending seminar confirmations, sorry for the delay. You can upgrade to a working spot if you like – 9 weeks is great for the very basic foundation stuff, but the class will quickly go past the puppy stuff (I recommend MaxPup for that!). You can do some of it with your new baby and then switch to Seeley 🙂
Let me know what you think!
TracyHello and welcome! The dogs that make us re-think everything are the best dogs 🙂
I am excited to see your boys in action! And yes… after the Open. I usually don’t have the break week happen in week 2, but it seemed to make sense here LOL!!!See you soon!
TracyHi!
>>River is better than Chief for some reason!>>
It is probably generational 🙂 With Chief’s generation, we did a lot of TAKE ALL THE THINGS IN FRONT OF YOU (especially because he is little) and not a on of emphasis on verbals. With River’s generation, we trained a lot more of a lot of different things, so I am not surprised she did really well!
She was definitely thinking hard on the reps where you were standing still! She was super successful. She slowed herself down to process the verbals, because that was the only info she had when you were stationary – good girl! So nice!
Adding motion was harder because you mentioned, the motion was not too specific. I think one thing that can raise the success rate is to change your line of motion so that the wing and the tunnel are both equally visible without her having to cut in front of you for either (in this setup, bringing the cone closer to the camera would give her a sweet line to both).
It was hard to see from the camera angle, but on the motion reps when you were cuing the wrap but moving forward, she would have had to run in front of you/across your feet (at :46 and 1:01 for example – your line was blocking the wing and she was not comfy cutting in front of you). She does pick it up but you can see that she is moving in front of your line when ideally she would be more parallel to it, if that makes sense.And that can be the same for when you add the jump – she had to run in front of your line and we don’t want her to cut in front of you, so the reps where you turned your feet made more sense to her (like at 1:50). She did get more comfy with it, but then she got into the habit of cutting in front of the line like at 2:27, a little patterned to it and it was hard to convince her otherwise for a few reps LOL! (couldn’t really hear the verbals but I think that is what was happening there and at 2:47 and 2:56 too?)
So with the jump, you can set the sequence slightly differently by moving the cone to about where Chief was in a down at 1:09 🙂 that way you can continue the hard challenge of motion that is not pulling or sending too much, but she can see each on her line and will have to decide which one based on verbal without cutting you off. Angling the cone that way also will add more speed, which makes it more challenging too (but also simulates the exact angle we see on course for this challenge).
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyWelcome! I think the goal here is to get the reinforcement procedures firmly established, then we look at applying them to behaviors and trials. Whenever we are fighting with the dog about something, it always comes back to reinforcement procedures. And then when they are in place? Everything is so much easier 🙂 Have fun getting started!
TracyHi and welcome!
Thank your for the update! Dr. Overall is the best 🙂>> but I still have the overarousal or stress eating and grabbing behavior. I’m hoping that clear knowledge of how reinforcement is going to be delivered will help.
We can definitely look at this!!! Try to keep an actual spreadsheet of antecedent to the behavior – literally, what happens right before it. And also it might be a list of things that happen before it (I look at umbrella success rates as triggers for that stuff).
>>I’m still having issues if I disconnect after a sequence that he’ll go grab something. I don’t mean to disconnect. I thought I reinforced a behavior, but at some point, I actually do have to reset a jump:-)>>
You might have reinforced the behavior for sure! But there might be other things in play: low overall success rates, self-control depletion, perceiving that disconnecting to reset a bar or something is a negative punisher (punishment is in the eye of the dog, not us LOL!) or anything, really… so for now, insert a behavior into your loop: do the thing, reward him, then insert something to do as you reset: get on a mat, go in a crate, hold his collar, something that you can then reinforce him for and then carry on to the next part of the session. It is a big of management as we try to sort out his needs 🙂
>> The marker words like snacks, Get It, Shhh, Catch, will replace the marker like “yes” or the click?
Yes and no 🙂 Nothing really replaces a click, if you are using a click… but we don’t always need to click. I use the clicker for a precision behavior, so I might click then use the marker. If I am going to throw the toy out ahead? Click then “get it” If I want the dog to come to me for a cookie? Click then snacks. Or come to me for a tuggie? Click then BITE. We work more of this in the next set of games.
As for yes… it depends on how you use it. You can use similarly to a click: yes then reinforcement marker. Or, you can use it as just a general praise but not paired with positive reinforcement (this is what I try to do consistently now – yes is praise but not a reward mark(. Otherwise the dogs just come to us every time we say “yes” even when we want them to keep doing the thing (ask me how I know haha!)
>>Then for Catch. . . I’ve already taught them that Catch means something is getting tossed to your mouth either at my side or somewhere else. So, I think it means be prepared to catch it with your mouth. So, should I have a different word for things getting tossed to them away from me?
I might need to see a video to see what you mean, by if ‘catch’ means: Stay where you are, cookie coming to your location’, then it is probably fine.
>>Is there a list possible words to use for things? My creativity level is a little low right now:-)>>
We can start one in the forum!
>>ALSO, I LOVE the word snacks!!!!!
Ha! Everyone loves eating and saying snacks. And I have a marker for Hot Sauce for a certain reset and style of reward delivery: “ice cream” LOL!!! (she comes back to me and licks string cheese lol)
T
Good morning!
>>Hypothetical situation … handler did way too many threadle reps (like 12 on the angled setup and 12 on the traditional setup). She knows she should set a timer for future sessions so she doesn’t overwork her dog. How would said handler decide what to post for feedback? Say, for example, this handler had trouble with balance on the angled setup, but finally got it, then had trouble with the threadles on the traditional setup, but also eventually got it.>>
Hypothetically, with a herding dog… you are probably going to get “all threadles, all the time” so that might be why said handler had a hard time getting balance then got balance so had a hard time getting threadles back if I am reading this correctly LOL! So, for the next session, I strongly encourage no more than 2 reps of the same thing in a row – balance every other rep, or every 2 reps. And separating the angled setup from the traditional setup.
So for feedback, if the threadles went well on the angled setup and the balance was hard after a lot of reps – the answer is more frequent balance. For the traditionals, it is was hard to get the threadles – post those up and let’s see what happened.And BIG HOORAY for ZIP!!!!!!! That is awesome!!!!! Congrats 🙂 I am doing a happy dance for you and Zip!
Tracy
