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Hi!
She is a plank queen! Moving back and forth, turning around, doing tricks 🙂 all look good! And movement & noise- no problem 🙂 You can put a couple of extra things all around the floor (plank, baby teeter, platform, wobble board, inflatables, etc) to create a playground for her to walk across.
I love that her toy has a name LOL!!!! Love it!!! You can play tug with her during the games to get her jazzed up before the toy comes out to challenge her: can she maintain her balance and proprioception, even when she is a bit wilder from tugging!
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
She has really excellent barrel value! So the next steps here are going to be cleaning up the cues at the start. If she is facing you and you step to the barrel, she doesn’t really know which side to go around the barrel (especially if your dog-side leg is back). She is defaulting to the left turn side unless she was clearly seeing the leg step to cue the right turn.
Since the barrel value is very high, she is ready for us to give very specific cues but lining her up on one side of you (facing the barrel) so you can send to the barrel. That is on tap for tonight when we add the turn and burn game 🙂 That will answer all of her questions here and let you add distance and countermotion very easily 🙂
Nice work!
Tracy
Good morning!
>Lots of learning in the airport, a new place and great opportunities for resilience conditioning walks!>
That is great! Hope all is well with your mom!
On the send to the prop:
>I also tend to forget the “Ready” game because she immediately want to drive to her frog hat. >
Yes, definitely add it in. You can take a screenshot of the field guide so you can see ti right as you turn the camera on which can help remember the ready dance and using the dog side leg (that went well here!)
Think of her frog hat as a tunnel: it is now officially ‘by permission only’ hahaha! The ready dance is will help her understand that it is cued, plus it builds anticipation for her to explode to it. And it helps her not start without you. If she is wanting to go to the hat without waiting for the cue, you can give her a cookie for sticking with you during the ready dance.
That moment of engagement will also help you wait til she is ready to do the cue – on the sideways & backwards sends, you were cueing the send while she was still eating, so her responses were not as snappy as they all be with the ready dance.
You can take out the clicker now – it will free up your hand for the upcoming games. And, since we are working on getting toy drive into the game too – you can start each session with toy play (before the hat and cookies come out). That association will help make it easier to bring toys in even when food is in the picture.
She had some questions about the start of reps at the barrels too – we work on that specifically tonight in class 🙂 With the barrel, you can face it and use an arm and leg cue to send her to it, along with connection to her cue face 🙂 For now – work one barrel at a time rather than going for 2 in a row. We will clarify the start of each rep which will clean up the connection and drive to the second barrel when we add it.
Nice work here!!
Tracy
Good morning!
She is doing well with toy races! She did get big mad when you pushed her back LOL! I think she’s got more speed in there: if you get there first and wait for her then play, she will moderate her speed to stick closer to you. So… you can cheat to win! Get there first by a step or toy and grab the toy and play with it, teasing her, showing it to her – all super engaged with her, but not giving her to toy. Then right in that spot, to capitalize on the excitement: Do the next rep. She is going to be fired up! And you can push back less so she can win by more 🙂
She is doing well with the wing wraps too – the upright with the toys was looking good! The barrel with the food is also looking good! The barrel with the toys – harder for sure!
>Or maybe she just wanted to play with the barrel?>
I think at first the toys were visible and audibly smacking the ground – but then when she lost site of the toy, she was seemed to be like “oh hey, this looks cool!” And maybe yes, she might have thought it was a toy. It looks like she was tugging on it at the end? LOL!!
So yes – for now, stick with food when using the barrel and as you get to standing. And when you are standing, we will add the toy back with the new game coming tonight 🙂
The forward focus game with the bowl and cone is going well – the hardest part was the lineup for the first couple of reps. 3 hands needed! But you rewarded her really well and she was understanding the lineup much better.
As the game gets harder, you can hold her longer to get the forward focus. Things were happening fast here, with the cookie into the bowl, hand cue, release all happening pretty rapid-fire so she didn’t really have a chance to look at the line. You can slow that down. Cookie in bowl, hand cue, then wait: when she looks at the line, let her go. That will help add the forward focus cue more specifically and we can add a verbal to it soon as well.
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
He is doing well with his foot target here! We are starting to see really good value for it – during the shaping and after the sends you can add it a reward marker like ‘get it’ when you toss the treat so he looks at you less, or a cookie-from-hand marker for when he is coming back to you.
>I wasn’tclose enough to start. >
On the sends, you can be a little closer, and also reward less from your hand during the ready dance. He was getting multiple cookies which might have made him less interested in leaving the cookie hands 🙂 He looks ready for you to also add in the sideways and backwards sends!
>He doesn’t switch from toys to food and back as easily as Muso did at that age.>
I think a longer toy will make a big difference in the presence of food. The toy in your hand was just kind of squiggling around in front of him and you were bending over him, so a longer toy (or two toys tied together) will allow you to get him chasing it as you swing it around nice and low. Bear in mind that a squirrel or bunny would not hang out right in front of him, it would run away 🙂 so the long toy will allow you to make it more squirrel-like.
Also, start each cookie session with toy play so he doesn’t get into “training is only about food”. That will help normalize the toy coming in and out of cookie shaping sessions too.
He was more into the toy during the stealth self-control session! That was partially because you were on the ground so not bending over, and the toy was moving more. Plus… no food present!
His forward focus to the toy was great! You can add the hand cue during the easier reps, so he understands it better on the hard reps and it is paired with looking away to the line 🙂 At 1:22, you added the hand cue but he never looked at the line (stared at the toy the whole time). So be patient like you were at 1:35 and the later reps, letting him look at the line before you release him. You can also start to add a verbal cue to this as he gets better and better at looking at the line.
Nice work here!!
Tracy
Good morning!
The long toy worked great – she was totally tugging like a whippet LOL!! And glad she liked the plank enough to offer it when you were near it 🙂
She is looking at the toy really well when you throw it, then drove to it beautifully. No problems with outdoor distractions, she was totally engaged. Super! To go to the next levels, we need to sort out the restraint part:
> she seemed to get better with restraint as we went along!>
Yes – but without a harness or collar, she is tolerating it more than seeing it as the start to a super fun game. It is kind of awkward to be able to restrain her by her body with one hand and she is feeling that it is a little weird. Plus, to hold her by her body, you need to be on the ground so you can’t add your motion. So I highly recommend a light harness or collar that you can have one finger on to hold her – she is likely to prefer that (as long as you don’t move her around by the collar). That will allow you to stand up while you throw the toy, so you can run sooner (which will show her handler motion more).
Nice work here!
Tracy
Hi!
Sounds like a fabulous week!! I am glad that he was all-in for playing and training! Your work is paying off 🙂
>I tried my loeo most runs and he was good. He’s really getting that.>
Excellent! It is a strong behavior because it is learned more through classical conditioning than through operant conditioning. And that carries over into the joy of entering the ring.
If he leaves to go visit (like at 1:07) when you take your hand off his collar, re-start the leash off engagement on game. Learning happens all the time, and stuff like this can be easily un-done by him leaving then coming back and getting the toy (1:12). Just happily start over and get the toy in immediately if the distraction is very high to avoid building in leaving to investigate people.
> I didn’t hide the toy just because of the challenges.>
That is a good decision: the focus in the seminar was on other things, no need to also do remote reinforcement. For me, remote reinforcement is a skill like weaves: they need to learn it and love it – but we certainly don’t need to do it all.the.time.
Looking at the video – I loved how he came in with focus and engagement even with all of the chat and new people around him. Your focus was entirely on him, which is lovely.
>Stays, unfortunately I spliced the video backwards for the sits. They are very good day one. Then they faded. They never got paid. All on my but very happy to have one again.>
Well, the behavior did get paid… which is why it changed LOL It got paid with the release and sometimes he was a little twitchy and moved before the release. If you play the video in super slow motion (like from 1:44-1:48 for example) you can see that you think you released on the verbal, but what was happening was that you moved forward, he moved, then the verbal happened. Be super super clean about motion and releases to maintain the stay.
He did great holding his stay with the toy on the ground later in the video!
>Thursday he was wild.>
Tired brain – depletion! Working in seminars in challenging environments is expensive on the brain, the change in the daily schedule that week is expensive on the brain. His normal rest schedule was likely thrown off… so he was tired and needed a little more support in the form of breaking things down and rewarding.
>But you’ll see that there was a minor error and this is where seminars are hard. Most presenters now least want to fix the jump they missed and pay instead of continue which he’s used to so he knew there was an error and then there was more errors and he got over bearing. Jumping biting for the toy.
>But you’ll see that there was a minor error>
Handler error there – you didn’t get a good turn on 1 at 1:46 then you accelerated straight for a couple of steps and blocked the line to the front of the jump. Looked like a line to the backside. Then at 1:47 you said ‘tunnel’ so he went into the tunnel. You cued it, he went to it – 100% rewardable.
Then you stopped and called him back, withheld the toy, didn’t ask for anything else. He was like: I did what you asked (I agree) why did we stop, what is happening here. Combine his brain being tired with frustration from not knowing what happened and with the punisher of the stopping/no reward when he was correct: jumping up at you in frustration then landed hard (ouch). This makes my case for not stopping!
Then starting off the fix, the line up was off (he was facing the backside) which produced another error when he was correct, more frustration. You did give him the toy but it ws not the same as truly rewarding.
>this is where seminars are hard. Most presenters now least want to fix the jump they missed and pay instead of continue >
Yes, there is a TON of punishment in agility. A lot of agility instruction, even with the nicest, best instructors, comes from the viewpoint of telling the dog what they did wrong way too early (punishment). This is because almost all of agility training comes from the operant conditioning angle: reward or punish ‘choices’. Turns out – that is very limiting and doesn’t always work out for the best.
Fixing a missed jump is, quite simply, a punisher. Chaser agrees, based on what happened next. And you can see how immediate the fallout of punishment is with an adolescent. If there is *any* chance that it was handler-error when you look back at the video, then you need to reward something like an obstacle or two, then go back and fix it in flow.
>which he’s used to so he knew there was an error and then there was more errors and he got over bearing. Jumping biting for the toy.>
Yes – by withholding reinforcement, the punishment indicates that *he* was wrong… but he was reading the information presented to him correctly. So I imagine that is incredibly frustrating.
So if something can be fixed by handling help or handling adjustment? Then clearly the error was handling error (I bet you slightly adjusted the handling to get the line you wanted). And that is why it is important to reward the dog as if he was correct because when we look at the video, 99% of the time the dog is correct. And if it turns out the video shows he wasn’t correct and we rewarded? No big deal, because the reinforcement won’t build that behavior when the handling gets adjusted – frustration from punishment builds the frustration behavior very very quickly though.
And this is not said from an emotional viewpoint – it is simply how the science works. The cues fire the neurons which fire the responses – and the neurons literally grow little spines that consolidate the behavior for the long term.
He is going to learn either way… so what do you want him to learn? Learn the feeling of frustration or overarousal, or not trusting the handling? Especially in a hard environment? Or… do you want him to learn to trust the handling and feel confident that he can drive lines without the possibility of punishment, and make quick decisions based on what he sees.
I know what you want him to learn 🙂 Same as what I want him to learn! So you can run another obstacle after a handler blooper, reward him on the way back to the re-start, adjust the handling to see what went wrong, then reward the jump he missed (and reward yourself because the cue was better :))
And if an instructor says “why did you reward that??” you can say that the science indicates you reward when you make the error – especially because you had said tunnel and he took the tunnel (even if you don’t know why he went around the jump before it). It is the exact scenario he might see in layering. Good dog!
There is a ton of work here to be thrilled about! So stand strong in your understanding of the science and get those rewards in after you mess up (we all mess up LOL!)
Tracy
Good morning!
He was so fun here – BLASTING to the backpack even with it being new, and a new place, and exciting things going on right on the other side of the fence. And you were standing. SUPER!
One important thing to note: at :20 he chose the right turn when it would have been very easy to do the left turn. This is great!!
And you were able to stand at the end. Perfect! Tonight we add a game where you are standing and he is wrapping (and there will be running and toys too :))
He was also very good about putting his feet on the paw pod – he doesn’t seem to mind the stick-up nubby things that are sometimes hard on puppy feet. Do you have a 2nd pod? You can convince him to put front feet on one and back feet on the 2nd one 🙂
For the sits at the end: he was happy to hold position for the cookies. When you release, be sure that you say the release word while you are stationary – then move the toy after he moves. You were moving the toy then saying the release, so he is going to think the movement of your arm & toy is the release.
>Can we use it for start line releases, to the static toy?>
Yes, eventually – but I think you won’t need to help with a target for him to stay on. We are going to convince him that the stay is really fun 🙂 but the first part will be to get the releases separately from your motion. So be perfectly still, release… then move.
Well done here!! See you in class tonight 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! These sessions look great 🙂
He did really great here with the forward focus especially because the bowl was empty and he had to look away from the cookie in your hand. Super!
Things got a little harder after the tug break: he had to look away from the cookie hand AND the toy behind you. It only took him a couple of seconds then he went back to his lovely forward focus. Yay!
Since this went so well, you can add 2 things:
– if you want, you can add a hand cue and a verbal cue to the forward focus. Eventually, picture this going to Charley being in a stay in front of a jump and you use a hand & verbal to indicate looking at the jump before you release him. You can add the hand & verbal (I use ‘look’) cue after he is lined up next to you and before he looks at the bowl. To help this get started, you might feel the need for 3 hands LOL so you can put the cookie into the bowl so the cue hand is empty.
– you can start adding in the advanced level, where the bowl keeps moving around the cone so he works up to focusing on the cone and going past it. You can also use the toy for this game.
Looking at the goat tricks:
He as happy to get right on the disc- yay! And it was moving a good amount but he didn’t seem to care. The larger disc was a good choice, being much easier to get his whole body on. I think he will eventually be able to get his whole body on the small disc, but the larger one is better for now to help teach the body awareness.I think he was trying to play with the bubble wrap LOL!!!
Since he was very confident and also went back & forth between food & toys here really well, you can take all of your inflatables and make a trail for him to walk around on, or small piles for him to climb over.
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
He did great with the forward focus to the cone while you held him! You had very nice timing of letting him go when he looked at the cone.
One suggestion is to add quiet as you line him up and cue the looking at the line – if you are using praise and talking a lot, the new verbals will get lost a bit. If you line him up, get quiet, then cue the look: you can easily add a verbal because it really pops out. Then when he looks at the line, you can use your wrap verbals. The rep at 2:41 was the best example of what I mean: you were quiet, I think you said “look” then you did the wrap verbals when he looked: then the big praise came after it. SUPER!!!
Keep moving the toy further and further around the cone! The goal is that is eventually gets close to you and you can cue him to look at the cone, then he goes to the cone and passes the toy on the ground.
Excellent job with Winnie (who seemed to really like the cookies LOL) and the 2 dog game – truly send my thanks to Igor 🙂 He is helping a lot and had great timing on the recall!!!
Benny was VERY successful and I think the game was a tiny bit hard. That is exactly what we want – a little hard but not tooooo hard.
>He noticed my 2d dog Winnie first time when we started – he was surprised and barked.>
Yes – he was more vocal for sure and a little distracted. But he as able to make excellent decisions and ignore Winnie. We never want the game to be so hard that he fails and barks at or chases the other dog. Yo can see at 2:14 that Winnie was moving while he was heading to the wing, and that was VERY hard! He didn’t make it to the wing 🙂 but also didn’t chase Winnie and that is great. Then he was perfect on the next rep.
>he didn’t notice anything except his toy.>
His brain totally noticed her 🙂 But because it was challenging but not impossible, he was successful and it helps his brain learn to ignore the motion of other dogs. For the next session with Winnie, you can move them even closer to each other (you can see in the video demos that the dogs were almost side-by-side).
These are all games from flyball where the dogs MUST ignore each other completely (8 dogs off leash in the ring at the same time, eek!) so I will keep sending you variations on flyball games. My Papillon plays flyball so even small dogs can get super confident being close to big dogs.
When you are out with other dogs that he might be concerned about, keep him a little further away so you can play with him without him feeling pressured by the other dog. We will gradually get him closer and closer, but starting as far as needed for now is perfect.
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
Her tail wagging while offering behavior is so cute to watch! Happy Frankie! She did great with the wrapping game. No questions, even as the upright moved further away.It is noteworthy that she stopped offering when you praised her… so don’t praise if you want her to keep offering. Markers – yes. Happy chat? Nope LOL 😂🤣
What a good girl on the plank! It was a little tall for her to offer hind end immediately but you had a well-placed cookie toss to get her over it… then she went right into getting all 4 feet on the board. Wow! She truly is a goat 🙂 and good job to you for that one reward at 1:51 being tossed across that opened her up to the idea of getting all 4 feet on it. SUPER!!
You can break things off and run away to see if she will play with toys – that keeps arousal high which is a nice challenge for maintaining mechanics in high arousal (good for puppy brains!!)
> She is still less inclined for play outside. Will have to work on that when there is no food.>
You can use boring treats (as boring as possible LOL) when shaping, and the longest craziest toy for her to chase (like lure coursing or bunny chasing) to see if she will get interested in playing. And moving away from where she was getting treats will help, because it will be harder to get her to tug if there is a location association with food and good food smells there too.
Great job!
Tracy
Good morning!
I agree – I like how this is progressing 😁 Super fun!!!
She can move forward pretty quickly through this: the next step can be using something a little bigger to go around like a cone of small barrel. That is likely to be very easy for her, so if she says it is fine and dandy then you can change your position to standing. You can start in a seated position like you were here to get her into the groove of the back-and-forth, then stand up in the same session and see how she goes.
Standing will set you up to be able to add the next game coming soon, where she gets to run run run more (and I am sure she enjoys the runnings :))
Great job!
Tracy
Good morning!
Holy wow he was on FIRE for the find the jump game! That was squirrel-chasing speed! You were running normally on the first couple of reps and then his speed caused you to kick into a higher gear too – well done to you BOTH! I think he likes this game LOL!
You are adding distance really well – keeping moving further over bit by bit, and you can also work on getting him driving ahead by going in close to the tunnel and waiting for a heartbeat til he almost exits… then run forward. He can drive ahead to the jump and you can throw a reward (like a treat hugger or favorite toy). This is like toy races from MaxPup 1, but now we have added a jump 🙂
I am excited that he did well with the sends and serps too! He is really getting the idea of all the sequencing concepts – so fun!!!
Nice work :) Tracy
Good morning!
>Once again a busy week and didn’t make class Thursday>
That is such a bummer! Don’t they know you have an awesome baby dog to train?!?
>Or maybe if he thinks we will wrap he doesn’t go fast overall? >
It is entirely possible that if he thinks all the reps are about tight turns that he is being an overachiever: he is getting them really tight but not building up speed into them. Smart! LOL!! So mixing in a ton of GO reps will help him predict the turn less and go fast on all reps 🙂
The basement training was perfect for skills reps!
The lap turns are going really well! When he went to the other side of the wing, it was just because you were early – you made a great adjustment to be later, letting him get to your hand, before turning him away. Super!! And he had no questions about adding in more speed with front crosses on the wings before you cued a lap turn.Tandem turns: the better he sees the outside arm, the easier it is for him to come in and get the turn. You can use both hands if you want, as long as he still sees. The outside arm. It might even be easier to use both hands, because it keeps the dog-side arm from blocking his view of the outside arm.
When you added more speed& race tracks around the wings, most of the reps were lap turns and that worked well! On course, you will probably end up using more lap turns (and those are close cousins to threadle wraps) so you can add in the tandem turns to the race tracks too 🙂
He did great with his directionals on the minny pinny!! The space was tight so he touched the bars a little more than he normally would, but he was fabulous about turning on a verbal-only cue. What a good boy! It is a hard skill for sure!
Great job here! I am looking forward to seeing you in person and meeting Dublin soon!
Tracy
Hi!
Good morning!
The sends and serps are going really well! He was pretty perfect 🙂 until you started to run – and I loved his excitement when you ran! So to keep the accuracy and get the excitement when you run, you can angle the jump ever-so-slightly towards his line. That way, as he exits the wing wrap and heads to the backside, he can see the line to the bar more clearly. You can start by angling maybe 45 degrees then gradually move it back to its original position here.
The ladder grid looked strong! He sorted it out brilliantly and was quite fast & balanced on the last bunch of reps. SUPER! Since this went so well: onwards to the accordion grid 🙂
For the collar-to-hand shaping:
>I was using kibble, so that might have had something to do with the enthusiasm level.>
Since we always want high enthusiasm, try to avoid kibble 🙂 He likes the cheese here and definitely loves the ball!
For getting this behavior with the ball – it looks like you had 2 balls and that is what I was going to suggest. He offers the collar to hand, you throw ball. He may or may not bring it back but no worries: you have the 2nd ball! So when he puts his collar in your hand, throw ball 2 then as he is going to it, you go pick up ball 1.
The cheese also worked well – have the reward ready so it is instantly correlated wth the collar to hand. You can have the treat ready in the other hand so you throw it immediately when he touches his collar to your empty hand, without the delay if you have to reach up, break off a piece, throw it. That delay might not build the conditioned response to the behavior because he ends up looking up at you for long than he had his collar in your hand.
Nice work here!
Tracy
