Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi!
>>So I thought I’d show you a sampling and ask if any of them are at all close to what you’re looking for.
Yes! The first one was really good, she did the in-then-out without you moving much at all 🙂 Yay! I think she then started to second guess herself, and maybe started to think she needed permission to go to the reward.
>>I could have just given a verbal rather than the arm motion. Your thoughts?
Yes, this! As she is almost arriving at your target hand (good girl!) give her your get it cue (but don’t move haha!) so she turns and races to the reward, similarly to the first rep. You were really good about not moving, I think she was being careful not to grab something without permission 🙂 So, the verbal permission will totally help.
She is bending her body really nicely here! Great job!
TracyHi Kristie! This looks great, especially after :11 when you were able to send her backwards and leave forwards: lots and lots of countermotion!! This is going to set you up nicely for tomorrow’s games 🙂
A bonus challenge for you, since she is doing so well:
As you see her starting to move towards the barrel, slowly turn your head forward and break connection to look forward to where you are running. Let’s see if she can still commit!! The reason I want to challenge her with this is because it will allow you to take off and run up the next line earlier, plus it will allow for earlier blind crosses! Let me know if that makes sense 🙂
TracyHi! I am really glad that I am not the only one who had to walk this more than a masters course to get all my hands and feet in the right place LOL!!!!
You did a great job here, I think this game will be really good to help him bend his body on decelerations – he wanted to ‘square up’ at first but he was getting better and better at wrapping like a noodle around your leg. Yessss! Both sides looked equally strong, and your decelerations looked REALLY good and on time, he didn’t go shooting past you. And he was definitely happy to accelerate out ahead, even when you asked him to be patient and turn tight again 🙂
You can add a little challenge by starting a little closer to him and tossing the treat, the sprinting away up the line to get him to gallop – then decel and turn. That will challenge your timing and also challenge his weight shift into the decel and bending. He looked ready for more, though!
Great job!
TracyHi!
Yes, a lot of the little dogs have ZERO patience for us hahaha!
Parallel path is looking lovely! He was totally on board with this, beginning to gallop towards the jump LOL! Love it! You did a nice job of getting ahead and I swear you read my mind in session 2: I was going to suggest you go faster and… you already did! So you can go faster and get way ahead by turning and leaving the other direction before he finishes the treat, that will add the challenge of you getting way up the line. I think he will be fine with that, but stay relatively close to the jump so it is a little easier at first.
Another challenge to add is to go all the way to the cookie with him and wait there as he eats it, literally right next to him… so when he is done, you can then move towards the jump again – that should allow him to drive forward ahead of you to it (rather than chase you line). Do you see where this is going… rear crosses on the jump at some point, when he can drive way forward of you to get it. Yay! Great job!T
This is looking really good! It didn’t take him long at all to figure out to put the ball in the bowl 🙂 Yay! And you only had to retrieve it once haha!!! I think he might have had too many reps of the same thing on this, so he was changing the game – after about a minute, he had his feet in the bowl, was tossing the ball more, etc. So you can break it off after about 45 seconds (which is a lot of clicks and treats!) do a little reset, then show him a slightly different picture for the next 45 seconds or minute – it can be you holding the bowl, then you kneeling/standing with the bowl nice and low in your hand. Or, you can stay on the ground with the bowl on the ground and offer a tug toy for him to pick up and put in the bowl (I only did a ball with Voodoo because his tug retrieve was great and I wanted him to learn love tennis balls for flyball :))
Great job here!!!! Future agility AND flyball star in the making!
TracyHi!
>>As you recall, Pose can do some very weird things with her feet at high speed (remember our running Aframe and running dog walk?).>>
I totally remember that! I was thinking about it while watching yesterday’s videos 🙂
The 3 jump grids are looking better already, she is still working on organizing her front feet and hind end, but it is already so much better – she did have a couple of moments after landing from 2 going right to left, and one little moment before 1 going left to right (1:09). She sorted it out for the next rep. Stepping in without re-touching her front feet to the ground before 1 is *hard*!! She hit the wing on the last jump of the last rep, but it might have been just a ‘going for the toy on the ground’ moment because she didn’t appear to be otherwise off balance. 12″ looked good and after the first few reps at 8″ she was ready for it. I also think this slightly open distance was perfect for now – easier than totally flat but still definitely challenging!
The 5 jumps seemed a little too hard for now, she was getting herself into ‘ass over teakettle’ moments (I think that is the scientific term haha) like at :47 and 1:03 where she got a bit off balance, lost control of her hind end and her rear ended up over her shoulders/head. It is a little too much hyperextension for now, so I think staying with the 3 jumps for now is better until she has it totally sorted out 🙂
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! I hope your mom is doing well!
These are going well – I think it is SO HARD with the youngsters but I am really liking what you are getting with her!!Some ideas for you:
LOTS of good planning on the walk through. I loved your decision making process at 2:25 – finding the best line (the slices) and moving the 8 jump over for the baby dog on 7-8-9! Exactly the right thing to do to both put her on the fastest path AND make it challenging but also easy enough that she could be successful.Little details to add to your planning for the next walk throughs (I keep a list of things to remember with my young dogs, because I tend to forget and repeat my mistakes):
– Threadles are hard, so plan them very specifically in terms of what exactly the physical and verbal cue is. It was hard to tell on the walk through.
– when you have a cross on a line after the tunnel, add more connection to tunnel exit so you can get timing for the cross, which would start shortly after she exits the tunnel (4-5-6 here). You were working the timing in the walk through based on when you arrived in position, not based on when she was exiting the tunnel.
– speaking of timing – one thing that will help get the timing is to plot your exit line from 3 and 7 so you don’t get too deep to the tunnel and end up late for the BC 5-6, or too deep past the entry wing of 7 and pull her off 8 while trying to not run into it 🙂 By exit line, I mean your exact running path in that moment. So on 3, for example, I would tell myself to not go past the center of the bar on 3 and send to the tunnel from there (Lanna can totally do that) which can get you to step directly up the line 5-6. And on 7, you will want to stay on the running line that keeps you outside the wing of 8 so you can run an almost straight line to 9, which helps straighten out her line too.
– one last detail – add your verbals in the walk through. You were very quiet 🙂 If you rehearse the verbals, they will be much easier to do in the run.
On the runs –
On the first run, the threadle handling looked like first fast walk but verbal was her name. On the 2nd run, You had the in in going and it helped! So that is a spot to be sure you are loudly rehearsing your verbals in the walk through (you did say “words are hard” and I totally agree 🙂 That is why I am the crazy person at a trial running around talking in the walk through LOL!)On the first run, you got in too deep in those 2 spots (4-5 and 6-7 but you still helped show her the next lines – the BC 5-6 was a little late and you had to help a lot to the 9 tunnel, but you showed her! And that is really helpful for teaching her to help find those lines on her own. Yay! On the 2nd run, you adjusted those 2 spots to not go as deep and look at the tunnel exit more (#4) and both lines were much smoother.
I liked your thoughts between the runs “words are hard” almost made me snort water through my nose LOL!
One other thing I noticed was that you were more comfortable on the 2nd run, so your arms were lower and your connections were clearer. So you can help create that in the walk through by trying to run the sequence even faster than you think she will go, and see if you can get all the elements (timing, connection, verbals, lines) at top speed with invisible dog: that should make the run with the real dog feel practically relaxing 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
About that threadle at the beginning – as we figure out what each dog reads, it is useful to help us execute! On the threadle between the 2 jumps, Tokaji is relying on decel and motion away from the gap. So if you are going to use the decel and motion backing away from the gap, plan for it so you are earlier with it and also a little further ahead, so you don’t get caught behind on the line.
>>Things are very tight at 17. Having a better threadle cue will help me leave earlier and decrease congestion at 17.
Yes – being able to keep moving forward will really help there, something to keep working on with the threadle! The other option is, with the forward moving threadles being a work in progress, to replace the threadle with a double blind, which is all about staying in motion.
Good job running to get past the exit wing of the serp jump! It looks like you got a little in her way on the first one then stopped short which ended up looking like a RC, but the 2nd rep of that was much smoother there.
>>Abort until we are better at our cue don’t take anything until I tell you
In the rare moments that I use a bypass cue (don’t take anything) I have found the easiest way to cue it is to completely disconnect, slap my leg and call the dog’s name. It makes my dogs SO ANGRY that I am doing such a strange thing that they drive right towards me and then I send them to the next obstacle LOL!
On the sequence/walk through –
The process is looking good, I have some ideas of things you can add to the consideration so you can hit a home run on the first run 🙂
On thing is to account for the time it takes her to get to and through a tunnel when you are sending… you will have more time then you planned here when you use the big tunnel sends. At 7:06, for example, you sent to the tunnel and then you went to 4 for the RC and your invisible dog was suddenly there… which would not be happening in real life 🙂 She is fast but not THAT fast LOL!!!! Not planning for that will throw your timing off balance.Also, I think it will be helpful if you plan to cut corners more on the tunnel sends rather than go deep to tunnels then run up parallel to the next line – you can send her and while staying connected and yelling tunnel, you can start to move directly to the next position. On the walk through, you were not really planning your strategies on that at speed, so it caused a bit of a kerfluffle on the first run (and could have also made the 2nd run easier).
One more idea on the walk throughs: rehearse more connections and verbals, this was all body language of the handling cues but not really connection and verbals – and that is what will lead you to sort out the timing (seeing where she would be and what you would say to her and when). If you don’t rehearse connection and verbals repeatedly during the walk through, then you are executing them for the very first time during the run – which is a lot of multi-tasking and will draw your focus away from the timing of the physical cues. If you rehearse and rehearse the connections and verbals along with the physical cues, then the run will flow as if you have done it a dozen times before (because you have… in the walk through!)
On the run – You got the RC on 5 but not taking into account the timing on the #3 tunnel on caused you to wait near 4 a lot on the RC and the be late on the BC 8-9 because you went too deep back to the 7 tunnel. So in the walk through, driving in deeper to 3 will help you get 4-5 and also help st you up to send to 7 and move directly across the line to 8-9 rather than back down to 7. Also, working the timing on the tunnel sends in the walk through will let you know that you did indeed have plenty of time to do the BC 4-5 (which worked nicely on the 2nd rep!)
The BC 8-9 is a great choice – so plan to send to the 7 tunnel and go directly to it, don’t round the corner of the tunnel line – step away sharply and directly to the new line. You were late on the 1st one and she was mad LOL The 2nd run worked better because you had an idea of the timing and pace – but you will ideally want that to happen on the first run at a trial, so that is something to add to the walk throughs.
Seq 2 – no walk through to bug you about here LOL! The forced front to the throw back on 4 worked nicely on both reps to get 4, but you need to be further across the bar there – you were in the way on the line to 5 so she had to go around you to get it.
About the tunnel threadle cue at 8:10 and 8:21: this is something to definitely plan in the walk through: what, exactly, is the physical cue, connection and verbal you are going to use? The first rep and the 2nd rep looked and sounded totally different – on the first rep, you ran hard and had both arms up and shoulders pulling away. On the 2nd rep, you deceled as she approached 6, had a different connection, the turned and ran a different exit line. Plus, the verbals were different. So I don’t think of the off course tunnel as a handling error on the first run… I think of it as a planning error 🙂 And that is why I bug everyone so much about the walk throughs 🙂
Also, if you use a tunnel verbal on your tunnel threadles… be absolutely certain her head is giving you position to say it. What I mean by that is: ‘tunnel’ is a forward cue that asks her to drive to the tunnel she is looking at… so if she is looking at the wrong end, you are not going to want to say tunnel until you can convince her to look at the correct end. On the first run, she was looking at the wrong end when you said tunnel, so away she went 🙂 So always look at her head – before saying a forward cue like ‘tunnel’ – if she is looking at the correct end, then you have permission to say the cue 🙂 And that is something to plan for in the walk through – that connection is important 🙂Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! I think he did well on the 12″ jumps! A couple of things to consider:
>>So I’m finding some nuances of verbals confusing….the tunnel was already curving left but the exit kind of pointed at a different jump than the one he was going to take….so I said “left”…have no idea if that is necessary for this scenario or not. The red jump if he really carried out of the tunnel was more in line of view.>>
One way to think of it is that the verbal should name his behavior, as exactly as possible. So in that tunnel exit scenario, you can use a left for the exit up to the blind cross, because it is basically a 90-degree-ish left turn. But I think you were also using it when he went to red jump on the next pass through the tunnel? I would not use it there for the tunnel exit – partially because he would have to pick up a right turn to get to that jump, and it is definitely not a 90-degree-ish left turn.
>>>>Jessica thought that a RC would help me get to the offset 180 BC better. She thought I was kind of getting in his way in round 1 with the BC as he came out of the tunnel. Good to try different things and see how it goes.>>
Yes, I agree that you were a little late on the BC after that tunnel – if you are going to do the RC, though, you need to hang further back while he is in the tunnel and then accelerate through it (with a little decel at the end to keep it tight). You were ahead so you were decelerated…so he was slowing down too. The late BC was faster 🙂 But, you can get the BC earlier: when you cued the tunnel, you rounded the line and followed the path of the tunnel and then moved up the line to the BC – that delayed you lot. You can send to the tunnel, even exiting on a spin, and trust him to do the tunnel on his own – just get yourself directly between the 2 jumps and then you will have an easy and timely BC. Once he is committing to the tunnel, there is no need to support it more and there is no real need to run parallel to the jump after it – just get into the gap 🙂
Same thing on the last video that had the RC before the poles: you were ahead and decelerated, so he was slow (I don’t think he was slower because it was late in the lesson – he was slower because there was a lot of decel). So, when doing a RC, strategize to go into the previous line more so you can decel a little to set the line, but then accelerate at the beginning of the RC to drive him ahead in extension. Let me know if that makes sense!!
The 12″ jump after the poles seemed fine, it was hard to see clearly from the angle but it looked like you disconnected on the first rep and then he was fine on the others 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
>>On the last one when I did the 360 wrap at 2 – I had actually done it the other way with both a german and a throwback and he always knocked the bar. I think it was either the spacing or he was too hot>>
That is interesting! Those slices are hard indeed, in terms of the jumping effort required. There are 2 reasons that he might drop the bar:
– either taking the backside jump is not enough of a default after the backside cue and he is relying on handling – which causes bars because we are in the way a lot, trying to cue the jump. It is a cycle! So, working on getting him to take the jump automatically on a backside cue can really help – like on a german, when you see him heading to the backside, you can just leave for the last jump and see what he does! I have found that when the jump is the default, the jumping effort gets a lot better.– he might have trouble organizing himself on the slices, so the zig zag grids totally help. Here are videos of what I mean:
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi there!!
She is doing so well – she is such a serious worker 🙂 Makes me smile to watch her every time!!
The hardest part with baby puppies is figuring out the transitions and how to elicit/cue the behaviors (I am in that zone now with Elektra) – so it takes some experimenting because every pup is different. With that in mind, your sessions are going well so we can focus on the transitions to take them all to the next level.A couple of ideas for you:
yes, she is not realizing that the mat is most super awesome excellent 🙂 So, to answer your question about offering versus the send cue:
if you are near the mat, you can assume the ‘international position for offer-me-something’ which is basically cookies in hand, hands in a neutral position (usually in front of us), kinda looking at the mat (not staring at her) – I am sure you have some sort of this going already in all of your shaping games LOL!! That is actually a cue to offer (along with proximity to the mat) and since the mat is *right there*, I am pretty sure she will offer the mat. And that is a great way to start a session, because it re-juices the value of the mat and primes the pump. At her age, I am a big fan of priming the pump before going to the harder stuff 🙂Now – as you gradually add distance away, the international-position-for-offer-me-something is NOT what we want to use, so 2 ideas for you on that:
– on the video, you asked if she was ready, and she responded with ‘heck yeah I will go to the mat now’ LOL!! Clever girl!!!! So, since you use ‘ready’ a lot (so do I), you can make it more of an attention cue and an “I’m about to cue something” cue, rather than a “go do the thing” cue 🙂 I do that by saying ready, using a little bit of game-on body language, and rewarding the pup for looking at me. Food or toy reward is good there 🙂 And then, since the ready is as much for me as is it for the pup – when she is looking at you, you know she is ready to see the cue (and you are ready to give it) which should make a smooth transition into the send – which then builds the value and understanding of the send cue. I use the ready word as a way to connect with the dogs throughout their careers, and I didn’t even realize it til very recently 🙂
– On the send cue – she did best when you used your arm AND leg, like at :09 and 1:10 (just don’t be tooooo far from it, maybe 3 or 4 feet is perfect for now). When you didn’t sue the leg and only used your arm: she wasn’t as sure (like at the very end, 1:28ish). So, remember your leg 🙂
And if she is hanging out on the mat because the mat is MAGIC 🙂 you can always call her back, reward, ready, send again.
You can also incorporate toy play, if she is able to go back and forth from toys to food readily. You can use a cookie for the mat hit, then call her back for the toy. And she can get a cookie or toy for the attention on the ready cue 🙂
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>For the Serp work, you say No motion. So, do I take the stance (closer to the wings rather than in the middle) and give her her release and Get It, and no arm motion, no motion of any sort until after she is at the treat? Just want to be sure I’ve got this.>>
Yes – it is going to feel really weird, but yes – stay frozen until she gets to the reward. The goal is to create the “automatic” turn away on the serpentine cue, rather than any reliance on needing help with a physical cue. It will make more sense when we add motion.
>>Yes, Around is the wrap word – it also works for going around barrels in NADAC.
Perfect!!!!
>>The girl on my shirt is actually my very first Aussie – she was also my first clicker trained dog and my first agility dog. She was a special, once-in-a-lifetime girl. And she hooked me on Aussies. Keiko is our sixth>>
That is so cool! I love the shirt 🙂 Aussies are really terrific dogs, they can really do it all. Keiko is super fun!!!
T
Hi!
>> have worked on slicing grids and strengthening exercsies. Do I need to be doing something else in training to cue Mookie better or sooner to slice a jump with more control ???
Any help with the fast dog would be wonderful.>>Which slice grids are you doing – the zig zag grids? Those are really good for helping out. And strengthening exercises will really help!!!
Also check out the default exercises for the serpentines and the backside slices: those will allow you to get out of the way sooner, which gives Mookie more time to look at the bar and set up the jumping for it. Let me know how all of those are going, and if they all look good, we can move to other ideas 🙂
Tracy
