[Tracy Sklenar]

Thank you for the course video! He is so fun! He is still developing his commitment skills, so I think these games will really help him drive the lines. That way he won’t rely on your handling for everything – and also you will be more comfy with how to show him the lines. Your handling there was good! And with young dogs, we are trying to figure out what they need, what they know, and how show it to them 🙂
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Great session here with Skylar!! he is terrific!
His sending is looking really strong, nice clear hits. As the session progressed, two things that I noticed:
your forward sending to start looked great. When you went to the sideways sending (your right side was nearer to the prop), he was turning to his left, turning away. Ideally he would be turning towards you on those, so it might have been that the prop was too close to the furniture (so turning towards you, to his right, didn’t give him enough room) or it is possible that as you were sending sideways, he felt rear cross pressure. Interesting! So on the next session, you can try in a bigger space and see if he turns to his right on those, rather than to his left. Let me know!

The other thing I noticed (and you mentioned it) was that as the session progressed, he wanted to stick closer to your hand rather than hit the prop as much 🙂 I think that was a value shift, meaning as he got more and more rewards from you hand, he wanted to stay closer to your hand (especially because he already has a really strong hand touch). So you can mix it up to keep the value back on the prop – when he hits it, you can toss the reward back to the prop rather than feed from your hand. Try that 50% of the time and see how he does, in terms of maintaining the hit to the prop.

Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>How much video time are we allowed to post in here weekly? Sorry, If I have over posted.
I don’t remember.

I don’t remember either LOL!! Something like 6 minutes total per game… you are fine. LOL!!

His tunneling looks great! When you are back near the exit, sending to the entry, I think it will help if you move your dog side leg forward when you let go of him – you had it back, which makes it a little harder for him to be sure he has permission to go that far away (the jumping on top of the tunnel was hysterical, and you made a good adjustment! I personally also reward that silly stuff because it is a damn fine display of athleticism and balance – reward it once then get closer like you did so it doesn’t happen again LOL!). And when you did step, he was 100% sure that he should go. Yay!!
These looked to be all on your ‘outside’ so based on how well he did, you can switch things up so he is on the inside (between you and the tunnel) to do the threadle foundation. Start close again, so he feels comfy with turning away, then add the distance back towards the tunnel exit again. He was using his body brilliantly here, so I am confident he will be fine on the threadle foundation too 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! Great job here!!!! And I *totally* feel your pain about standing still LOL!!! My 2 weakest skills are standing still and being quiet LOL!!!!!! You did an awesome job though. I really love how she as being thoughtful about it – driving in but not pummeling you 🙂 and then turning the new direction (at approx :12, we could see the first moment when she figured out it was an in-then-out behavior and turned (and then you expertly rewarded with the toy). Perfect! And yes, good job with the reward on the ground, that is hard for the youngsters!!! You were really good with your upper body – it was only on the last rep where you turned too much (every other rep had your upper body being perfectly still, not turning to the reward).
About the height of the target – it was fine here because you were in a natural position (not bending too much) and she did not need to lift her front feet off the ground to hit it. In the games I am posted later, you can use this target hand position for the ‘baby’ level and then we fade the actual touch to the target in the advanced level 🙂 Stay tuned! Great job here!!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Oh no! That must be frustrating!!! Thank you for keeping me posted. No rush! We will work you through everything after the vet gives you clearance, we have plenty of time and can extend the class, no problem 🙂

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!!

>>Before I forget – you mentioned that at some point you would help me to figure out how to keep him motivated at a trial, when I can’t run with his ball in my hand. I do mostly AKC, though now that Ivan is getting faster, I will do some live UKI trials with him.>>

yes!!! Let’s make a plan – I will add it to custom skills sets to give you a bit of a full on program 🙂 Basically – he will know he is running for a reward, and he will know where it is… and he will run the course to get the reward. I know he loves his ball 🙂 but a question: do you have a Manners Minder? If so, does he like it? We can use either/both. I have used a Manners Minder successfully to get Nacho running in agility – wish I had thought of it a few years ago LOL!!! But we can also use the ball. Ivan will tell us which he prefers. And yes, UKI is MUCH more user-friendly for that plus he might enjoy the bigger courses.

Nice job in the mask – how did it feel running in it? I have seen videos from trials in FL with the masks, so it is good practice. It looks like Ivan had zero trouble with it at all! Yay!

In general, I think your runs went well and your plans were good – the only major oopsies had to do with training skills and not plans or executions. That is pretty cool, because we can focus on those training areas. Here are specifics:

Course 1: just like at a trial, when the walk through is over, the walk through is over LOL!! You can probably leave out some of the time you spent walking the lines – I bet you can do this from the sidelines at a trial, or ‘see’ the easy lines without having to walk them (such as 1-2-3, so you could skip directly to the 4-5-6 and then the ending line. That will save time and give you more time to get comfy with the harder parts. And that will then have a domino effect of giving you more time to add the connections and the verbals. This sequence was pretty straightforward for you and Ivan, so you can go directly to the fast walk throughs where you immediately add in more connection and the verbals, trying to run it at his pace. I thought your run looked really good!!! Nice connection and lines, and he really drove it nicely!!!

Course 2: You mentioned being done with the walk early, and yes you want to be sure you truly “have it” when you stop the walk through. I think you *did* have it, but you can always double check yourself by running it really fast from start to finish with connections and verbals, to see if you can nail it with your invisible dog 🙂 I thought you had a clear walk through and you worked to get the timing on that tunnel thread section – you chose a harder handling to work on!! The handling got better and better on each section of the walk through. True, it did go wrong on the actual run – but I think that is more of a training thing than a walk through thing. On your first run, you had the cue in time that he could respond – but he didn’t process the verbal and upper body as overriding the motion of the lower body on the line. The physical and verbal cues were correct (you might have been able to call his name before the thread) and he didn’t read them, so we can work on it in training – by having you do the cue exactly as you did, but at a walk to start then we will work back up to running. If you had a trial this weekend, you would want to choose your blind cross there, or rotate your feet – but we will keep training on it!! On the 2nd run, you tried to be earlier but it was too early, no worries. So you can send to the previous jump and then walk through the threadle without turning your feet and then reward – we can then gradually add more motion.

The rest was lovely!!

Course 3: this also went well – the oopsie at 2 was surprising to me – you planned and handled correctly, and he ran past the bar there. Normally he is SO perfect on those – my guess is the tunnel to there was a bit of a distraction? We can add a distraction game to the custom skills sets 🙂 You worked it by trying to rotate or help, but your initial plan was correct (send and run to the blind). On the re-do, you did the blind earlier and he got it – but it was a little too early for that particular line. So, like with the thread on course 2 – this was more of a training moment than a handling/walk through error. You can work it as a default moment: send to 2 and run away like you did, dropping the ball in behind you as he rounds the backside entry wing.
Everything else looked really good and ran according to plan: loved your double blind! You planned it, practiced it, then executed it! Happy dance!!! And yes, wrapping 9 is a valid option here: it is a spot where you can walk the distance during a walk through, from landing of 8 through takeoff of 10. Neither the slice or the wrap at 9 gives a great line to 10 but the wrap is better as the exit line – but the slice is a better landing spot from 8, so the distance would be the decision maker there (best 2 out of 3 :)). On the wrap, you handled it as you rehearsed I – fabulous! My only suggestion is to try to handle those wraps from the takeoff side – when you step past the jump to the landing side, you are cuing more extension than you want there. But staying on the takeoff side will cue strong collection plus get you up the line sooner.

Nice work here!! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! I hope you get some rain soon, wish I could send some of this approaching tropical storm! The grass didn’t look slippery though, he seemed to grip it nicely.
Nice session here! The ‘rest’ photo was so cute – giant tongue!
On the ‘easy’ reps at the beginning, with the slightly lower bars: time for more motion 🙂 Try jogging then releasing. If that is fine, try releasing then jogging – the change in motion after the release is generally more of a distraction than the jogging before the release, so it might be more challenging. The toy will be out ahead the whole time. Adding more motion will help simulate what he will be seeing on course during serpentines and backside slices: you’d be running! You can also add more motion to the backside 3 jumps version (still on the lower bars). What I mean by ‘fine’ is that you won’t really see any difference: he won’t touch the bars or wings.
The ‘reading’ grid with the 14-16 jumps was harder – he wasn’t dropping but he was ticking, from what I could tell. So, those can stay in the ‘chill’ mode of not a lot of motion for now, just repeating what you did here. He did pull a rail on the last jump on one rep, but I think that had more to do with your marker and excitement as he was jumping, so he rushed to the toy. That is a distraction we can add later on, because sometimes we humans talk or get excited over the bar, and we would love it if he could ignore us just long enough to not touch the bar 🙂
Nice job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi again!
His wing wrapping is looking great! And he had no trouble transitioning to cookies from your hand. Woot! He is starting to whip his head around through the turn, which is what we want 🙂 It looked really great with the toy too 🙂 Yay! And yes, he is quite brilliant 🙂
You were marking with moment he made the decision to go to the entry part around the thing, the decision to commit (which is perfect) so now you can add challenge – wait a little longer to mark, when he is almost all the way around to help build the ‘finishing the job’ of commitment (because we are adding more on that game tomorrow :))

And following up with what I was mentioning above about errors – this was a super high rate of success session. At 1:26, he had a question and did not immediately go to the thing. You were perfect there – stayed quiet, no reward, but you inched in closer to the thing and he was able to be successful after that. After a bunch more successes, you were able to reproduce the challenge and he nailed it.
Hi Kevin (not a distraction LOL!) Great job here!!! He is starting to move fast enough that you will need to have more carpeting available or move it outside so he can dig in as he drives around 🙂

Great job!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hello!!
So nice of you to get all dressed up for us and your parallel path training!
And yes, he totally had a lightbulb ON moment on this. And your reward placement was consistent and clear: note how he continues to look ahead even after the click! YAY! So now that he understands the basic joys of parallel path, let’s build on it:
On this video, you were clicking, treating, then continuing towards the treat and so when you did the next rep, you were parallel to him or he drove ahead. Perfect! Keep doing that, mixed in with this:
click, throw the treat, the immediately turn and head the next direction so he has to find the jump with you way out ahead (think of the times on course when you send to a tunnel and run run run up a line, and you would want him to find the jump after a tunnel without you needing to be anywhere near it :)) Don’t run yet, just walk, with some connection, and stay close to the line of the jump (no lateral distance yet, being way out ahead might be challenging!)

countermotion: this is looking good when you are relatively close to the prop! He might be a righty which is why you sometimes get a right turn when a left turn is the ‘right’ answer hahaha. So on the left turn reps, move away but not as fast for now, so he can sort out how to turn left 🙂

When you got too far away, two things happened – either you clicked and he hadn’t touched, or you saw he didn’t touch and marked it as wrong. There was too much failure when you were that far away (maybe 6-8 feet) so stay in the 4-5 foot range for now, where he is able to be accurate and fast, like at 1:28ish. Also, when he doesn’t get it, two things: don’t mark it (you are getting some slowing down when you mark it) and if he fails once – move in closer so the next several reps are all successes. I think the distance plus the other things in the environment contributed to the 2nd part of the session on the prop being difficult for him – the first part had a high success rate, there was nothing around and you were maybe 3 or 4 feet away. The second session on the prop here, near the treadmill, was at abut 63% success (yes, I am the wackjob that does the math on success percentages while watching puppy videos hahahahaha!) So ideally we want puppies to be at 85% or higher in every session – which means when there is a failure, set up success again very quickly (without marking the error with a word, the most recent science says to avoid that because it doesn’t help learning – I mean, he knew he didn’t get a cookie so… LOL!!!)
You can add challenge by staying in the 4 to 5 foot distance and leaving sooner, as he is passing you (leave slowly….) and then you can inch out the distance away by a few inches each session.

>> It’s hard to catch the cheating but i’m trying. He knows it too! When I don’t reward it he goes back it makes an obvious hit.

OmG yes, those little paws move FAST!!! No worries about the sometimes ‘cheat’ of the almost-hit for this: when we transition it to a wing, there will be no way to really cheat 🙂

Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi there!

Parallel path:
He is so funny at the beginning: chew chew chew chew oh wait we were doing something!

Very nice session here – he was totally on board with finding his line to the jump. Yay! Very nice 🙂 Starting with the food here with the toy present but not really active was excellent dog training! That toy is stimulating, so you were basically working it into the equation while setting him up for success. Perfect!

>> but I tried to end the last rep with a thrown toy and he had no interest in it. Is how I dragged the toy on the ground okay, instead of throwing it?

Sounds like he was in food mode when you tossed the toy. On your toy break on the video, I thought the dragged toy was perfect – engaging, presented to play (not as a reward for the behavior) and then you were able to transition him back into the lower energy game with a ‘party’ then a get it -it took you from high energy (during the playing) to lower energy (during the ‘work’) and he was perfect. That is exciting! So when you do use the toy at the end, you can drag it for sure. When you want to use a toy as a throw reward for the parallel path, you can use throw it then drag it, or throw a ball or something that will keep moving: motion seems to activate the play when there is food around.

Question about the toy play first: will he still jump up for the toy if you immediately throw a treat and then walk past the jump? Or, did you try to get some tugging then do a ‘party’ with several treats? Just curious, for planning 🙂 Teaching youngsters to return to ‘work’ after tugging is a puzzle but fun to figure out 🙂

Wing wraps: He did a super job here! On your next session, you can reward closer to your body, for 2 reasons:
– it will keep you from having to lean to hand them out to him, and that way you will have less body language built into the behavior (makes it more independent)
– feeding closer to you gets more bending of his body, and that is perfect! Plus it adds challenge, because he will need to ‘find’ the upright to wrap.

Tunnel:

>> I’m also happy with how well he is leaving the Ready Treat – we have worked on leaving it before, but it was a while back so I’m pleased he isn’t showing much conflict there.>

I agree!!! He did a great job being interested in the ready treat but not obsessing on it LOL! Good boy 🙂

He offered the tunnel beautifully here. I agree that he had trouble when you added the verbal (not a lot of trouble but a little). If you have used higher pitched repeated words or sounds as attention cues, then he might be confusing the two things. So, 2 ideas for you:
– soften the energy of the verbal by, just before he is probably going to offer it, saying one quiet “tunnel” with a lower pitch. And then reward like you were doing here. He might find it easier to offer the tunnel when the verbal is less stimulating 🙂
– add in a gentle restraint, right in front of the tunnel, with the verbal. So you would hold him, start a quiet tunnel verbal, then let go and see if he offers. We want the restraint and verbal to be pretty mellow so he can control his excitement (and not offer any ‘chomp chomp’ by accident haha) – and then we can eventually ramp up the excitement.

Strike a pose:
Your feet were great, very cooperative!!! You were smart to basically be in position before you tossed the treat for him to get. I love how well he drove to the hand target: perfect!! You were very crisp in how you presented it and he nailed it, even when he knew there were cookies in your other hand 🙂 Yay!!!! And yes – it was very cool to see him getting the in-then-out chain going, such a smartie!!!!
You might want to sneak in a toy reward after hitting the target. Without worrying about your feet – have the toy in one hand all scrunched up so it is not that exciting – present the target and when he hits it, have a big toy party (I think one rep with the toy is enough, so make that the whole session: one toy rep :)) Your cookie sessions can have more reps. If he *cannot* hit the target with the toy present, no worries, we will revisit that later on.

Great job on all of these! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hellooo!

>>These were not crazy, they were carefully orchestrated plans of attack and you are interesting more craziness with the blind cross😀 we will try it.

Yes! Crazy = orchestrated plan of attack 🙂 Same thing LOL!

>> I am thinking a quick snap, no arms and a quick hard reconnection so she isn’t left wondering where to go.

Yes, plus verbals (more on that below)

>>Course 3
Not entirely sure how to handle 2 caused hiccups at 2 and delay at 3-4 my mind was still at 2. Still not sure about my verbals at 2>>

About which verbals:
One way to think of it is that verbals name behavior: so you can decide which behavior(s) you want from her, then pull out the verbal(s) that name that behavior. And sometimes, powerhouse dogs like Tokaji need an attention verbal, something like an early name call, to tell them that something is about to happen and PAY ATTENTION lol. It is like those big orange “ROAD WORK AHEAD” signs 🙂

>>16-17-18 an awful lot going on here. My mind is not thinking ahead. Still thinking about the blind at 17 after it has happened.
I’ll try tweaking the set up next week.
I do have issues especially when the handling is tight and I am close to her keeping my mind thinking ahead.>>>

The mind game is important, your mind should be pretty blank at that point so you are almost on autopilot, not getting distracted or thinking about what previously happened – and knowing what to do ahead without really having to think about it. That is what the walk through process is perfect for – so if your mind game is getting behind on these big courses, check out the Package 4 stuff with the walk through process. You can apply it to these courses if you like, but the walk through process will help with the planning and execution on these high speed technical sections.

Have a great weekend!
Tracy

Thanks for your help

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Good job on these!!!

On your first course:
Overall, the walk through was really good and I could clearly see what your plan was going to be. Also, your connection was crystal clear on those last couple of ‘fast’ walk throughs. Nice!!! You can add more verbals – name calls, obstacle cues, wrap verbals.

I thought your opening went great. One thing I noticed in the walk through on your RC 4-5-6 was that you powered through it – but it is a tight turn that needs deceleration on 4 and 5, so remember to add decel on your list of things to remember. When you powered through it with Win, she got it but she went wide because it was all pretty accelerated and you had to slow down to get her through it a bit.

>>On the first walk through, I think maybe I didn’t recognize 9 to be tricky for her? I was thinking about her angle to the tunnel but maybe not enough about getting her to take it correctly?>>

I think you were looking at the angle to the tunnel and that is great! The oopsie of the refusal (and on the 2nd run, the RC when you wanted a wrap) was a product of the transition you rehearsed: in the walk through, you were moving pretty fast then you rotated. And when I played the walk through side-by-side with the run, you did the exact same thing – which resulted in a refusal. So I believe that she is telling us that forward motion into the wrap jump is more important than the rotation, and she needs the fast forward-slow forward transition (decel!) before you rotate.

That is great news! Because it is easy enough to add in decel – write it on your hand to remember LOL! So basically – go fast, slow down, then turn when she is pretty close to the jump.

On the second rep, you drove in more, went forward for longer (yay!) but the element she needs is the decel as you are still facing the wrap wing (that is why I call it “slow forward” because we don’t want to push in towards the bar, we want to keep going towards the wrap wing but decelerate on the way). You pushed in more towards the bar there so she pinged away, thinking rear cross.

So the important thing that came out of this course: remember to decel in your walk through rehearsal so it is there during your run.

Course 2:

>>On the second walk through I felt like I had a nice fluid plan then I got flustered during the run and had to back peddle to save it, which she did for me!>>

I am giggling because I was expecting all sorts of craziness…. but you never lost connection and you got right back in the saddle and the result was basically a smooth run (and a clean fast run too!) Yay! The good things were that because you walked it a lot, you knew where everything was, you didn’t have to disconnect, and you didn’t get mentally lost when your plan went a little sideways. That is GREAT!!! You executed almost all of your plan, exactly how you walked it.
My recommendation would be to walk it *more* – you left a solid 90 seconds on the clock of the walk through 🙂 If you are 3:30 and think you know it… visualize it in your head with your perfect plan (it was a really good plan!) – can you run it fast in your head, or do you go a little blank? If you can run it fast – go out there with your invisible Winnie and run it one more time as if it is the real thing. If you go blank – go back to the part of the course where your mind went blank and re-walk that several times (my guess is it would be 4-5 here) then do another fast run of the whole thing. Use every second of your 5 minutes. Sometimes, if I am first dog in the ring (or one of the first), I don’t use my whole 8 minutes at a trial, but I always use at least 5 minutes 🙂

Both these runs are looking really good!!! Onwards to sequence 3! Stay cool 🙂
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! This was good to see on grass, his organization is much better coming in from the backsides, especially. The 5 jump grid is looking good in general – he made a mistake on the first one and dropped bar 3. In looking at what caused it: he was short on his landing from 1 (meaning his front feet came down close to 1) and then he didn’t power into 3 – so it looks like he hit it with front feet on the way down. On the 2nd rep, he fixed that – he powered into 1 better and then used his hind end more between 2 and 3 (in slow motion you can see he puts his back feet in a different place) and didn’t touch the bar. Good boy!
On the 3 jumps with the backsides – really nice going right to left on the screen! I tried to figure out why he pulled the first bar going left to right: his front feet might have landed on the foot of the jump wing and his tail definitely wrapped around the wing – it was the wing that moved, causing the bar to fall. He didn’t hit the bar, so you can put the bar back to regular height (the bars on the grid starting from the backside can go up a notch too, in the next session. He adjusted and it didn’t happen again. He is much better on his step ins to these backsides on grass, using a real stride rather than pattering his front feet. Yay!

If you really want to add a little ‘reading’ challenge, you can take the 5 jump grid and alternate bar heights: 12-14-12-14-12 or 14-16-14-16-14 and add if that goes well, add in an 18″ bar here or there. He won’t be able to just go on a learned rhythm, he will have to assess the grid individually.

Have fun!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

I am glad the formatting is working better, thanks for the idea!

And yes – after realizing my good walk throughs were the ones responsible for getting me to the podiums and my crappy walk throughs were resulting in crappy runs…. I really love the process 🙂 It also helps me see where I need to improve for my young dogs: when I started doing it with Voodoo, I was so far from what he actually needed, it was like a comedy show. But now I have a much better feeling for his pace and know more about what he needs, so the walk through looks a lot more like the run in a good way 🙂

Fingers crossed for good weather!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi Kyla! This looks terrific, he is doing a great job with his prop smacks 🙂 One thing I am seeing with all the pups is that the prop hit looks different on the sends (turns) versus the parallel path (extensions) – and that is fine, because the behavior is different just like on jumps. That’s what he did here. It looked great, we build on it very soon. You can try adding sending and leaving before he passes you (slowly) to increase the countermotion. His speed to and from the prop (and wing) looked very balanced here- he definitely likes the ready ready moment for added excitement! Now, with that in mind… you don’t have to reward him if he starts without you lol!! If you aren’t ready and haven’t cued the send, and he goes – just call him back. I tell my pups that I have a secret to tell them LOL! And you can build in reward for NOT going during the ready moment: ready, ready… if he doesn’t go (makes eye contact or looks at the prop) then he have have a cookie or a tug moment. That will help us put the sends on stimulus control and also it will indirectly help your future start line stays 🙂
His wing wraps look really good!!! When things go really exciting with you running away, he was fast going to the wing AND chasing you. Yay!!!!! We add to this tomorrow 🙂
Great job!! Let me know what you think.
Tracy

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