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>>Peeka’s mohawk cracks me up; I call it her fin, and it’s actually a weird cowlick that she was born with. She has a bald spot right underneath it, haha! >>
OMG let’s just call her Baby Shark with that fin. It is so adorable!! I can’t wait to meet her in person. Her whole litter is amazing and she is clearly a huge personality in that little baby shark body 🙂
Hi! Great seeing you last night – she is amazeballs and THAT MOHAWK is the cutest thing ever!!
Great question about toy play! A couple of thoughts:
>> With my other two dogs, I have a “rule” (by which I mean goal, I guess) that when you (my dog) are on a toy, you should stay on that toy until I release you. So I do lots of proofing with staying on a tug (or ball) even if a cooler toy comes alive; you don’t get the other toy until I ask you to.>>
>>My question is…are my rules OK or problematic? The toy variation breaks them. The bowl version seems different because the dog is targeting the bowl instead of the reinforcer.The rules of playing tug are all good… eventually 🙂 I only start asking for those types of things when I have the toy drive where I want it – meaning, I can’t get the pup to let go of the toy and the pup will tug on just about anything, anywhere 🙂 I am sure that is also the same for you – installing those behaviors eventually.
If we put proofing in too soon, we might put too much pressure into the play and not get the drive we want. For some pups, we can do it right away, for some we add them eventually… for other pups, we don’t ever add them 🙂 because we don’t need them. It is too soon to tell with Peeka because she hasn’t been alive that long 🙂
So with all baby puppies, I allow a WHOLE LOT of naughty wildness at first – if I shake a toy, grab the toy, steal it, pull it out of my hands, victory laps, etc. That is probably what you are doing – just getting her wild about the toy toy 🙂 I like to do all of the ‘wrong’ things that make dog trainers gasp when I am building toy drive hahahaha I have a video that I will post for you all 🙂
Then the pups guide us as to how quickly (or if) we can install the other elements of the game, such as staying on one toy while the another is moving – all of that is what I call “stealth self-control” and comes in gradually. Now, I only add self-control to things the pups are wild about, so I suggest no self-control on toys any time soon haha 🙂 It could be a matter of a few days, or weeks, or months, or never.
But – in the interest of layering in the stealth self-control and having the fun foundation for it when the switch flips into “I LOVE TOYS SO MUCH!” there is any easy way to play this 2-toy variation on the back and forth that will allow you to play it without any potential conflicts with the goals you have for further down the road: attach a ‘get it’ verbal right before you shake the other toy. So she will be tugging on toy 1 for a couple of seconds – then say get it and toy 2 moves (and you look at toy 2) while toy 1 goes limp. Then vice versa. Eventually, the stealth self-control becomes all about don’t grab the next toy (or any toy) without a get it cue of some sort.
The other thing that was happening in the demo video that is harder to see is that I was actually cuing an ‘out’ with Elektra (who at the time was cuckoo for toys but not food) – as the 2nd toy started to shake, I was using the hand on the first toy to give a hand cue to release the toy (more on that in different games) so she was leaving toy 1 on cue (she was getting a release cue from my hand) and the focus on toy 2 was a cue of sorts to get it. I just tend to not talk about getting an out on a toy for a while in puppy class, until the toy play is more sorted out – otherwise all we get are outs and not tugs LOL!!!
Let me know what you think 🙂
TracyGood morning!!! Great to see you here 🙂 He is REALLY fun!!!!
>>. I am working on not having teeth on me ever, but not getting too hurt when he makes a mistake. Any help with the teeth issue as you watch our videos would be appreciated. Sometimes, when you see me not feeding from my hand, that is why >>
Tell me more! Does he take the cookies hard when you hand-deliver a reward, or sometimes miss the toy and get flesh instead? Both? We can definitely work on anti-tooth-hug games 🙂
On your prop shaping session:
Nice session accompanied with excellent choice of tunes!!! He did really well!! I loved his slightly sideways “thinking ears” LOL!!! No tooth hug issues there that I saw, unless I missed them, but you were also using really quick throws as the reinforcement.
Interestingly, by the end, he was morphing this into rolling the prop rather than just hitting it LOL!! Now, does it make a huge difference for this game? Not really… but it is a great challenge to see if we can isolate the hit and not get the rolling. You can play with rewarding him right at the prop, standing still and eating the cookie off of it, so he moves less and taps it more. And then after a short session of that you can try adding the cookies tosses off to the side but with maybe an earlier yes marker – as he lifts his paw – to get rid of the roll. You were not late here, he just has very quick feet. And that is part of the reason we play these silly games with the pups – to learn how they move so we can shape behaviors we want without getting behaviors we don’t want (I have learned that the hard way in the past!)Target video:
This is one of my FAVORITE tunes!!
His targeting is also looking really good! Nice value!!! This looked like there was more of a ‘hard mouth’ on the food delivery here, only because he was stimulated and engaged (but we still want to protect your flesh – fingers are delicate and we need them intact! A couple of ideas for you:
with the target (excellent choice of target!), hold it out to your side away from you, elbow locked, and low enough that he doesn’t have to reach up for it, he can just reach out to it (kind of like where you had it at :05 here). And then when he hits it, leave the target there and bring the cookie hand over to the target, delivering the cookie either right on the target (you can turn your hand so your palm faces up so the cookie doesn’t fall off) or to his mouth directly, right in front of the target – that can help soften the mouth a bit by changing his position and the cookie position. And if you can get it into the target hand with the upturned palm, he will learn to slurp it up and not grab it, if that makes sense.Separately from the target games – have you ever done a lick game with treats? When he is not too hungry, put a good cookie in your closed fist and show it to him… ignore all efforts to get it with his teeth (wear gloves if you need to LOL!) and when he licks you hand – boom! Hand opens and he can slurp the treat from your palm. It helps you isolate his tongue versus his teeth. Tongue = cookie but teeth = no cookie. Do this when he is NOT hungry and use boring food to start, because if he is hungry and the food is exciting, he will not have good tongue awareness LOL! I often train my food motivated dogs *after* they have eaten a small meal, so they are interested by not too ramped up due to hunger. Let me know if that makes sense 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!! It was fun to see BliZZard’s name in the Zoom class last night! I have been following him on Facebook – in general, the breed is adorable and he is SUPER adorable!!! Gah!!! Can’t wait to see more 🙂
Tracy
Hi again! Her hand touching falls into the “well, that was easy!” category LOL!! She loves to nose target as you mentioned- made me giggle too, what a good girlie!!! Her nose targeting is already very strong, yay! My only suggestion here, for now, is to tweak the placement of reward: when she touches the target, leave your target hand out to the side where she touched it – then bring the cookie hand over to the target hand and plop the cookie into the target hand (or deliver to her right in front of it). That will keep her from hitting and then moving across the front of you to get the cookie (as we build this, it will make more sense LOL!!)
Great job 🙂
TracyHi! It was so fun “seeing” everyone last night!! The puppies were rockstars and so cute 🙂 We had folks there from every corner of the country – it was really cool to see!
Little Caper is so fun!!! She is smart and quick!! The foot targeting looks great – the hat is an excellent choice (I used a hat with my now-2-year-old, Hot Sauce). Tt appears that she has done some foot targeting so she picked this up really quickly! You can use it as an opportunity to work on quick mechanics and transitions: have your cookies and clicker ready and your tuggie tucked into your armpit… all before you drop the hat in to start the shaping. It took a moment to get organized at the start of the video, but then you were more like organized with a quick transition at the start of the 2nd part of the session. Then after a few clicks & treats for the great paw hitting, you can present the tuggie with one hand and grab the hat with the other LOL (3rd arms are useful here too). The super quick mechanics are not necessarily required for this game, but this game is a great one for getting really fast on the prop/treat/clicker/toy mechanics for later on and more complex behaviors. Because she is already so quick, clever and coordinated, you are going to need to be quick too LOL!!
Great job here! Maybe do one more short session just like this to really get the prop value up and then go right into the Sends game that we did last night!
T
Hi!
This is great first session, he is so keen and smart!! Hard to believe he is so young!!!
The mat is clever and does make it more salient! And I don’t mind the other dogs barking if the pup doesn’t mind – it is more that we don’t want the other dogs right in there, honing in, getting in the way, wandering through, LOL!! That is a distraction the pups don’t need 🙂
He did well here! He likes to look at Da Momma, so we can adjust the placement of reinforcement to help him look at the prop more: you can drop the reinforcement right into the center of the ring for the first mini-session, then have him leave it to come play with the toy – then remove the toy and when he goes back to the ring, plop the treat into it. That will raise quick value for the ring. When you play with the toy, lift the ring up for a heartbeat so when you are ready to go back to having him offer, you can re-introduce the ring and that makes it really salient – so he will look at it and hit it more, which gives you really good stuff to reward 🙂If you feel like you are needing 3 arms to get this all done… then you are doing it right hahahaha! I always feel that way with each new pup 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyFirst one into the pool! Hurrah! Great job on these sessions!
First up, spoon shaping 🙂 It is a VERY clever prop, considering where this goes next – and since you probably don’t know what we are using it for, you will find this to be a good choice!
Nice job getting good clicks in for spoon hitting! One suggestion to make the mechanics faster so you can get him even more focused on it: have the cookies and the clicker in the same hand – then present the spoon off to the side. When he hits it: click then, leaving the spoon where it is, bring the cookie hand over to it and plop a cookie reward onto the spoon or into your palm of the spoon hand for him to eat. That will keep him even more focused on the spoon and also will keep him from looking at you or following your hands. Then it is easy for him to tap it again because it is right there. Every now and then you can toss a cookie away to restart, or break it off with toy play like you did here – he did GREAT getting back on the toy after the treats! Yay!!!
Great job!
Tracy
Yay! It is a family affair! First cousins for our little girls, and Contraband is a cousin too. Elektra is related somewhere way back there (I forget how) and when I look deeply at the pedigrees – Export is also related.
Nacho and Contraband – not related at all haha!!!!
See ya later!
T
Welcome to you and Wingman!!!!! One of these days we will have to have a puppy meetup in Floyd 🙂 He is an adorable dude and it sounds like his brains match his cuteness 🙂 can’t wait to see more!!!
TracyWelcome Lisa and Caper!!!! I miss seeing you all at the NE trials!!! Caper is a gorgeous pup, we are going to have a blast 🙂 Yay!!!
TracyHello and welcome to you and baby Mae!!! She is so cute!!! 5 months is the perfect age to work through this, I’m excited to see her!!!
THellooooo and welcome to you and Vanessa!! I love the name!!! Can’t wait to see her 🙂 Yay!!
About the profile photo – you’re not old lol! I still don’t know how to use most of the functions on this site. But we can change photos:
Our website software pulls profile images from a popular profile image service called Gravatar. You can create an account at Gravatar.com using the same email address that you use on agility-u.com. Then follow these instructions to upload your profile photo over on Gravatar: https://en.gravatar.com/support/activating-your-account/Hope that helps and see ya later!!
TracyHello and welcome!!! Being a bit older is actually good, you’ll make quick progress 🙂 and being a bit more thinky is GREAT – we want the dogs to have understanding before we add speed so I am glad Ria wants to sort it out before blasting through it. Have fun!!
Tracy
