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Hello!
Good news… he loves toys and loves getting them as rewards!! And you are definitely keeping it fun to bring the toy to you.
I think letting him win the tug game and keeping the toy is great – he definitely did not wan to bring the toy when you moved towards him or tried to entice him by moving away, so he might think that you will take it and he is in independent toy play mode at this stage.
(No worries, though, because the desire to play is fantastic and we can totally shape him to bring it back!)
I think the first step is to get him to come towards you (with or without the thrown toy) and interact with you, so you can do a retrieve-version of the two toy game. Using toys with the same value (identical toys, or very close) you can throw one and then after a couple of seconds, you whip out the 2nd toy and start to play with it. Focus all of your attention on the 2nd toy (wiggling it, running around with it, running away from him with it) and then when he comes back to interact with the 2nd toy, he can win that one. Then you go get the 1st toy and repeat the process.
Another option is social learning. Is there another dog in his life (probably not Frank 🙂 ) that you can play this game with? Have a couple of toys and the dogs can tug/play together with you, the toy, and each other. Ideally the helper dog has a GREAT retrieve so Barry can see how much fun it is easy bring the toy back. I do this all the time because I have good helper dogs who will bring the toy or ball or frisbee right back, so the puppy follows their lead and brings it back.
And speaking of balls and frisbees – you can use them to get the retrieve as well. A few balls and discs build a nice retrieve because when he brings the first one towards you, you throw the 2nd one. Just be careful with the balls/discs: roll them rather than do high throws or bounces, so he doesn’t break himself chasing them 🙂
Nice work here! Keep me posted!
Tracy
Good morning!
He looked great in the minny pinny! Since this is looking independent and he is bouncing, you can revisit it periodically. To keep it spicy 🙂 you can use this distance between the bars but also sometimes shorten them for a more collected bounce, and sometimes have a short distance then a long distance (or vice versa). That way we are adding in bit of ‘reading distances’ challenge that the seems ready for 🙂
Tunnel rocking horses is going well too! He is exiting the tunnels pretty straight (only a slight look towards you) and that is a big goal: to keep him blasting out. You can try gently curving the tunnel just a little! That will be a good prep for what we add in the next round of classes too.
I love the distance between the barrels on the rocking horse game: it added a lot of speed! I REALLY like how he would exit a barrel behind you then drive pat you to the next barrel. YES! He is most proficient with the FCs (been doing those the longest) but the spins are going well too – just reember to connect back to him so he can ee the next line really well. He had a little question on the spin at the beginning when your rm was more at your sides he didn’t see the connection as well. And he did great on the race tracks/post turns, maintaining a parallel path to your path. He is reading all the different handling really well and that is fantastic!
>Apparently we’re not ready to put threadle wrap into this game.>
That was definitely hard! On the first ones, you were behind the barrel instead of next to it or past it. That would need him to drive past you to the TW and he didn’t recognize the cue. So let him sleep on it 🙂 and then on the next session, you can send to the first barrel from further away so you can be at the 2nd barrel and decelerated, showing the TW cues more clearly. And be super careful to keep your feet facing forward on the TW line and have no step towards the barrel – that is what sent him to the other side of the barrel (the FC side) at :34 for example. Then at the end he was just in FC mode so it was fine to reward and take a break.
He is doing well with the stays here! You can transfer this game to do stays in front of anything at all – he did a great stay in front of the barrel, so you can take him on a stay tour of the facility here: stays in front of a jump/tunnel/contacts/weaves (building value for the stay before he truly knows how much fun these obstacles are :))
Great job here!! So many exciting pieces coming together!
Tracy
Hi! Bummer about the weather! Definitely keep videoing the sessions -you are really good at analyzing the videos!!
Thanks for the AlphaFlo suggestion. I will definitely look into it!!! The horse people are WAY ahead of us dog people in this respect! We didn’t need to use stem cell for Elektra but Dr. Canapp is great about answering questions or researching things if he doesn’t already know. I am glad Wager is feeling great, because Wager is one of my favorites <3
Keep me posted!
TracyHi! This sounds good! And if you feel you want feedback, you can hop in at any time. I will keep you posted about the future MaxPup 2 dates!
Tracy
Hi!
Ah, a perfect sniffy walk with all the leaves on the ground!!! He is very cute and definitely loves using his nose. He is such a cool pup, able to use his nose for stuff like this and trained scent behavior, but also quite the driven, engaged teammate for the agility training to. Love it!
>This is actually a 2+ mile walk we do four to six times a week. >
Perfection! And I bet it ha a lot of variety depending on the time of year, weather etc.
>He is also in training for human remains detection so he actually gets a lot of sniffing in a wide variety of environments.>
That is amazing!! Fascinating work. Canine olfaction is truly amazing. A littermate to one of my whippets is training in human remains detection too and it has been fascinating to watch him work.
Thanks for sharing the sniffari!
Tracy
Hi!
Yes! This is looking really good, he is totally getting the idea! You can add in meeting him more at the end of the tunnel to see if he will drive past you to the threadle entry. And for balance, you can mix in some GO GO GO where he exits straight to the thrown toy.He had one moment of trying to grab the toy –
Hiding the toy behind your back might be accidentally enhancing it more, so I liked the last rep where it was tucked away under your arm – that was perfect!Great job!
Tracy
Good morning!
I love how he came into the session really excited and offering wrapping!
Great job with that first reward placement – those early placements are key to helping him finish the wrap even with you fully facing the other direction. By the 3rd rep, he finished the wrap by himself. Super! Click/treat to you for nailing the reward placement at the beginning which drove the rest of the session the right direction.
Adding the full serp then releasing with countermotion was no problem. He nailed it on the first rep (nice job shifting your connection to the landing spot after you released).
After about 3.5 minutes, he was not as easily able to hold the stay and was mor locked onto the toy – that is usually an indicator to take a break and let him run around or decompress for a moment. You did get good reps (you mentioned something about smoke from his brain at about 5.5 minutes LOL!) so you can use the 2 failure rule to guide you about session length at this stage: when you see that 2nd failure, take a break them come back in a short while. Rather than 7 minutes straight, this session can be two 3.5-minute sessions with even more success (with a run around break in the middle).
Nice work!
Tracy
Found it!
She is similar to my CB so it would be similar wrapping. For him I use powerflex and wrap 4 times around for flyball and 2 times for agility. And I take it off after each run.
T
Winter is here too early, it can go away!! Ugh! I have been collecting course maps for Muso’s winter training 🙂
T
If you are having rain issues but will have dry times over the weekend, feel free to submit! I might not be able to look til Monday but we definitely want to gt in as much work as possible 🙂
T
Hi!
It is one of the Laws Of Dog Training that all awesome reps do NOT end up on video LOL!!
He did well here – the hard part was finding the cookie at the beginning but then when he did, the rear crosses looked great.
>I tried your other rear cross exercise in the backyard earlier, but I think i need to build more value for the foot target,>
If he is doing well with this version of the RC game, don’t worry about doing it with the foot target. About half of the pups are so focused on the foot target that they really don’t even consider turning the new direction, even when the handler is on time with the RC info. This game takes out that focus on the foot target so we get the RC behavior much more easily. An this version of it transfers to the jump really well too.
Great job!!
Tracy
Hi!
>
It wasn’t that hot, less than 20 celcius (65f), but I’ve noticed he seems quite sensitive to the heat, seeking out shadows. Goals for this summer is getting him keen on a paddling pool. (I will try to groom him this weekend to get rid of some coat!)
>We don’t think it is that hot and the adult dogs think it is hot… but it he is new to the world so he might be like, wow this is hot LOL!! It will get easier as he gets used to it.
T
Oh, I will take that to mean the food reward did not help him come back LOL!!
You can put taking the toy for a run on cue – then let him do it for a bit. And when he has had a nice victory lap, call him back (don’t let him give you the toy until you call him back). That will help get the woohoo out with the toy and builds the retrieve because we can more consistently get the behavior.
T
>I’m saying “payday” as my marker cue (but haven’t got the ear buds wired for sound), then ‘wow’ ing. Probably the “wow” is overpowering the payday, so I’ll try to make that cue bigger.>
Ah yes! If the marker was there, say it big and loud in the same tone as the wow, then be silent of a few steps before adding the praise so the payday marker is really salient.
>> He didn’t seem stressed at all,
I’m so sensitized to Franken-feelings, it was quite revealing to me how happy Bazza was with this exercise.
>Yes! It was very cool to see him enjoying it 🙂
T
Good morning!
>Sent you a DM so you can see what Sprite is doing. We can work on it in the privates? It was never her best skill before, but it’s much worse now.>
Sounds good! I might not be able to answer the DM today (9 hours of driving ahead, ugh!) bit I will go back and see what helped her before her injury and we can look at how to refresh and update that to help her out again. Dr. Canapp says hello haha 🙂
First video – look at that line up and lead out!!!! Very cool! Great job with all the stay rewards too.
On the straight line release, I think the fast movement drew her eyes off the jump. You can release and just walk at the same pace for now. Placing the reward out in a really visible way past the jump will help too – she is just more locked into your motion right now (totally normal for a herding breed :)) so a reward target is very useful. She was getting it by the end, but we want the first reps to be successful too 🙂
The wrap to the left looked great! Nice collection and she finished the wrap. Really nice!
2nd video: this also went really well. The lineup and stay looks good – she was predicting the rhythm of your release a little (standing up when she was predicting you’d release, so you can mix up the time difference between releasing/rewarding quickly versus praise for a few seconds, etc. The wrap to the right also looked good – she might be a little stronger to the left on this skill but both sides looked good! She did miss the jump on the straight line when you were moving fast an holding the toy (on your right side) so I think a lot of reward target will help – it is a good spot of that manners minder, because the MM can just sit out there the whole time: it gets triggered for the straight line stuff, and the FC then toy reward is used for the wraps.
Great job!
Tracy
