Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi there!
>> but let me know how I did!
One thing to note is that you and he ALWAYS do a great job!!! Any difficulties fall into the category of trying to figure out the needs of a young dog and matching your mechanics (timing, criteria, rate of reinforcement, etc) to that. You and Lazlo are rocking it!!!! He isn’t even 6 months old, right? I am impressed 🙂
The rear cross session went well – it think he is just so locked into the targeting behavior that he doesn’t always process the rear cross cue – he almost looks surprised to look up and find you on the other side LOL!
One thing you can do to help him is put an empty food bowl out on the side you will be turning him towards. Then do the rear cross and plop the cookie in the food bowl on the new side – this might help him realize that he can multitask this behavior of targeting: go to hit it AND prepare to turn 🙂 Young male dogs, in my experience, do not always multitask well until they are more like 9 or 10 months old (my almost-10 month old boy pup is beginning to multitask) and Lazlo is maybe 6 months old? He is actually a bit ahead of his time, developmentally – doing really well! My Contraband would not have been able to do this at 6 months old The small puppy in the demos is almost 5 months old… and a girl. A whole different ballgame LOL!!!! The good news is that the boy puppies grow up to be just as amazing as the girl puppies, so I respect the differences, enjoy them, and I don’t worry about it at all LOL! The boy puppies might not be as good at multitasking behaviors early on as the girls, but they are easier in other ways 🙂The parallel path with the toy in hand looks great! The hardest part for all of us is figuring out how to balance arousal with each individual – so with Lazlo, I think gradually sliding the toy into play and incorporating food will help us figure out what works best for him! Next session – add a little toy play! He was great with the behavior here, so you can get him tugging a little, do a few reps for treats, then the party cue can be a thrown toy! Then trade for a treat party and end the session.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Yes, I am a little obsessed with how the dogs turn their heads to set up a great turn. I learned about it from Lisa Frick (I figure she is a good source of info LOL!) and I am LOVING what the dogs are giving us so far!!! You’ll see more about it in upcoming games 🙂
And when you are watching agility: the dogs that turn well are leading with their heads. The ones that don’t turn well are not turning their heads until after landing. Fascinating stuff!On the video – yes, standing up was a good call, he was fine with it and we don’t want your legs to be angry LOL! Sometimes the pups lose their train of thought for a moment and that is what happened when you stood up – but then he got right back in the groove and was fine with you standing and with your feeding from your hand. AND he was ignoring the cookies on top of the bag too? Super!!!! He was just fine with the pool noodle too – and yes it is cool to see him snake his head around!
Great session on both objects! We will be progressing them later this week 🙂Tracy
Hooray for Costco! Brilliant! And it also narrows his focus to the bar.
And I love the trumpet in the background 🙂 Gorgeous 🙂
He did a super job with his commitment here, easy peasy concept transfer. You can basically click/throw the instant he turns his head to the bump – on most of the reps, it was as soon as he got onto the blue mats. And, note how he was really not looking at you by the end of the session – looking ahead! Yay! When you take it outside, start with food but I think you can quickly move to a toy (Nemo ball!) which will make it more stimulating AND add challenge because he is going to have to look at the jump in order to get you to throw it.
Nice work!!!
TracyHi there!
Good job getting to a new location, and I like the pod under the hat there to make it more obvious.
He totally got his rear crosses, superstar! And he had some good paw touches on the parallel path work too. I think the hardest part was transitioning back to focus after eating the treat in the new environment (lots of distractions). So, for the rear crosses – keep on keeping on, he is doing well and we don’t need to change anything 🙂
For the parallel path work: yes, it is hard to click/treat before he looks back at you, so don’t worry about it 🙂 Keep your eyes locked onto the prop to see the hit and do your best to throw quickly (he will probably still look at you when you mark the hit). I am no worried about it, because when you move to the concept transfer, you will be able to mark and throw much earlier, as he is moving to the jump and long before he looks back at you (because we don’t need to see him touch the jump bar LOL!). I see you already did a bit of that (below) so it is fine to watch for the foot touch to the prop here and look for commitment differently on the bump 🙂
For transitioning back to task in an exciting environment – he was fastest to ignore the distractions when you threw a bit of a party after he got the treat: so you can be quiet as he is offering – then click/treat and party party! And you can treat from your hand again as he returns to task, then reset then get quiet when he is offering. He did an amazing job for a such a young dude, so I know he will continue to grow the skill as he gets out to more trial environments 🙂
TracyWheeee! Great job! You are going to need a cape!
Yes, using your arms as little as possible helps on these because of the quickness of the connections that are needed (arms slow everything down). You can now obsess on watching her head turning as your cue to do the next blind: blind #1 is as she is finishing the weaves. Blind #2 is when you see her head almost approaching the backside wing. Blind #3 is when she is on the backside and turns her head to look at the bar. You were a tiny bit late on blind #3 here.
Also – you can add in your verbal! I use a threadle cue to get to the backside (because it names the dog’s behavior, which is the exact same as a threadle) . And then you can use your wrap cue on the exit! I have found using my verbals have helped the dog when I am a little late 🙂Great job!
Hi!
>>eah, the dude definitely does not let me get away with an “oops” if I click wrong – he feels he earned the treat! 😉
Ha! I always reward after my crappy clicks, I just try to save myself with good placement (helps me escape the judging looks from the dogs, because my whippety dogs are EXTRA judged LOL!!). It is kind of a “yeah, I totally meant to do that” approach LOL!
On your parallel path video – I am not worried about where he is looking on the prop at this point, so you can focus on the foot touch. It is fine to smack it or trot over it as long as he touches it – my trick is to stare at the prop and not watch the dog. I can’t really see feet when I am watching the pup, but I can see feet very easily when I stare at the prop. And this has helped my running dog walk training immensely (and hopefully you will do some RDW with him :))
We can go to the concept transfer and that is where we can focus more on where he is looking and where you can click earlier – mainly because on a jump-like thing, we don’t want him to touch it LOL!! So going towards the pillow prop is looking great and that is why you can move to the concept transfer. And for running contact work in the future, you can focus more on the foot touch on the pillow. Let me know if that makes sense 🙂Your sandwich is looking really good, he is making the transitions beautifully! You can do the blind cross element a little sooner – basically start it as soon as he turns towards you after the cookie. That will buy you time to do the blind and then decelerations into the turn. As you do the turn and also the GO after it – stay a little more connected to his eyes the whole time – that will help him stay on the correct side and also drive ahead (I know, it is weird to look at the dog to get them to drive ahead, but it points your upper body to the line you want). So on the GO moment – say you finish the turn – look at him, throw the reward and start to drive ahead. You were looking ahead at the cookie so he would sometimes look up at you on the turn exit.
On the turns where he had a little trouble staying on the correct side (location 3 lol!) I think it was a bit of a connection thing – try to have your cookie hand a little further back so he could totally see your eyes, and maintain that connection through the turn. On those reps (like at 1:15 for example) you were turning fast so he lost the eye contact. On the other reps, you were exaggerating the eye contact and he was perfect. Nice!!Wrapping the magic laundry basket – yes, exactly right on the rewarding from hand! But a bit of Toller abuse to do it on the entire tub of dog food LOL!!!!!!! Too funny 🙂 He seemed to have no problem with the rewards from hand, which is great!! We will be building on it shortly, so if you have time, maybe do another session on the pop up laundry basket in another place or two, just to lock in the value.
Serpy threadling looks good, and yes, he was telling you it was too high, good catch 🙂 He is small enough that for now, you will want to bend a little so he does not have to come in to hit the target – his head should be straight or even go down a little to hit it (I feel your pain, I do this on my knees with the smaller puppy!). Everything else is looking great!! So on your next session, lower your hand – but we will be fading the touch element in the next steps so it is a temporary thing, just to keep him from hopping up 🙂
Great update on the tunnel!!! I am glad he was having a good time getting treating for coming in – so many treats, so little time LOL! Good boy! And having him to that while the MM is out there is a double whammy of working on balance and value – also a good foundation skill for the running dog walk!!
Great job on these! Let me know what you think 🙂
TracyHi there!
About the toy retrieve – a couple of ideas for ya! First, be super careful that you never take the toy away when she brings it (or sorta brings it) in order to start the next rep. We humans think that it is part of the game, but many dogs find it a bit punishing and start to NOT bring the toy back. So, I do a lot of trading as the reward for a retrieve, a lot of giving the toy right back, and tons of ‘go for a run’ moments 🙂 So when the pup brings the toy kinda towards you – your options for reinforcement are to either send her back for a run with it, or offer a cookie or another (better?) toy. Then I let the pup run around with the other toy and trade again 🙂 And if I traded for a cookie, I deliver the cookie and then give the toy back immediately. It creates a truly winning situation for the pup for bringing the toy back! True, it is not exactly efficient for training a skill LOL! So I tend to train the retrieves separately or use the toy from my hand/on a short line during training (or start the skill with treats).
She really seemed to enjoy tunneling for the jolly ball on a rope here! LOL!! I think that it will also strengthen your collar grab because collar grab will predict the fun! One tweak to that though – don’t move her by her collar, she didn’t seem to love that. Instead, start at the angle you want her to be on, take her collar, throw the toy, and then send her – that will eliminate moving her around and also make a super quick association between collar grab and the big party starting 🙂
The tunneling looked great! She seemed to have no problem finding it on any of the angles/positions. No worries about the clicker or the marker timing here – your handling was clear enough and she was totally on board with driving to the toy! Yay! You can add in a bit of you holding the toy to throw it (rather than having it out as a target) and see how she does! The ready ready also looked good, she is definitely getting more comfortable with you gently holding her while you ramp her up. Fun!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! The parallel path work looked great! She chose to go really fast and that is fine, you were perfectly chill LOL! I think you can throw one stride sooner (it al happens so fast with her LOL!) as soon as you see her looking at and heading towards the jump, mark/throw while she is still 6 feet away. That can ideally help her not look at you at all. Don’t get too worried if she does look at you a little – there is nothing else to look at over the jump, so just keep trying to get the reward thrown as early as you can. Her commitment and concept transfer looked awesome!! I think for now you don’t need a toy on this – a toy might produce more speed and we don’t need more speed right now 🙂 She has a TON of speed so we can keep things in this lovely thoughtful zone for a while longer.
Strike a pose is going well – my only suggestion is to hold the target hand further away from your body and look at it (and not her) just to make it a little more salient for her to drive to (I am thinking ahead to when we add more of your motion to this :)) Yes, she totally was into the treats for this game! The toy in your hand was a tiny bit of a distraction (which is pat of the reason it is there) but I agree – she is probably more enthusiastic about it as a reward if you throw it. So you can throw it then reward her with a cookie for bringing it back? Or when she gets it, have a second toy to offer to play with her? I totally understand the need for 3 arms if you need the toy to be on a leash too, so the retrieve games separately (like in a hallway) will help build the retrieve and this game can easily be progressed with food 🙂Great job!!
TracyHi! Lots of good stuff on this video!!
On the wing wrapping, he is showing great commitment overall! He gives the best balance of speed going towards the wing when you give him a step as a cue (rather than letting him offer). On most of the steps where you had a little step to the wing, he ran. When you were stationary (no real step) he was trotting more. So definitely ramp up the excitement now – a bit of ready ready (eye contact, verbal silliness :)) then one step – then reward. You did plenty of reinforcement out at the wing, which is perfect! You can even mix in some more excitement when he really drives away by turning and running for him to chase you and the toy (we add more of that this week :)) I like the balance of his speed on the last few reps of the wing wraps – fast going to the wing and coming back!!
The shady tree wraps were so funny! And he really liked the metal thing to wrap LOL Notice on the metal thing that you were starting from a collar restraint (maybe because he was hunting something in the tall grass?) but that added excitement – and he was fast going to the thing! So the collar restraint (and the ready ready silliness) is definitely good to ad, as it is stimulating him to drive away with speed 🙂 He doesn’t look unhappy about it, just stimulated in a good way 🙂
Parallel path/rear cross – he definitely turned better to his right on the rear crosses but then he got the RC to the left on that last rep! Brilliant!! I think he just needed to info a little sooner on that side, plus the concept of a rear cross in this context was completely new, I bet: he was so focused on the task of hitting the prop that he was not at all expecting that you would be on the other side LOL!!! He did great – on your next session, start a little further back, maybe an additional 2 or 3 meters away from where you were started – and after establishing the parallel path, being that far away will allow you more time to show him the cutting in behind for the rear crosses.
Great job! I hope your week is not as crazy this week 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! I am glad you are getting some time away in a safe place, sounds terrific!!!
>>I trained touch collar means look at me so he is probably reverting to that when I put my hand on him. I’m fine with that, and hopefully he will figure out the context clues. The collar touch is a safety item for off leash walks.>>
Ah! That explains it 🙂 And yes, I have complete faith that the dogs totally learn the context cues for when to focus ahead, so there is no need to worry about it here. Dogs are brilliant with context – far better than I am LOL!
On your sandwich video – what a fabulous opportunity to work little games in an exciting environment! To me, that is so important, and his focus on the game with you was outstanding! I mean, here is this puppy out in the wide open spaces and there is access to just about everything – and he was doing a great job on his games.
Your handling was lovely – very clear connection on the blinds and a nice early deceleration cue/cookie hand to bring him into your side. In the early stages of the video, I think he partially didn’t realize you were doing agility games, and partially couldn’t produce the exact response in the face of the distraction (water, for example). No worries at all – I couldn’t hear what you were saying to him early on, but it looked like you were pretty chill, let him sort it out, and rewarded anything that was good-ish (<------- scientific term LOL!). I love that you used the water as a reward too - between using water as a reward and letting him sort out the environment, it was a masterful session in that by the end, he was able to reproduce the behavior that he could do "at home" by driving in tight to you, turning, then driving ahead. So the overall shape of the session is far more useful than the specifics of the game, as being able to produce behavior beautifully in a new distracting place is basically the holy grail of dog sport training 🙂 Yay! On the serp game: omg how cute was he when he offered the through the legs trick for the toy! It also shows us how salient/valuable the toy/leg position is relative to the value of the target hand. Two things that can help him when he is coming in with speed from the cookie toss: -let him see you strike the pose - let him see you put the target hand out. The motion will draw his eyes to it a bit more. - as he starts to return and you put the target hand out, turn your head to look at the target - pups often follow our gaze to the target as well, as the little bit of motion of the head turn helps too! Your physical position was fine, your feet were generally pointed towards the reward. And yes, you will want to work up to being completely stationary so you can use your verbals to cue the toy - but I think it is great for the dogs to also see us get really excited about something and move to the reward. The eventual position of the toy will be on the ground, and he did well with that - he is not yet predicting where the reinforcement will be based on the position, so more practice of the in-then-out of touching the target then turning to the reward will help that (and it will eliminate the times where he drove away to the toy). The toy in the hand is mainly just a replacement for the 'wrong side of the jump' distraction that dogs will be faced with in threadles, so it is good to work through for that concept (plus many pups don't yet know how *not* grab a toy on the ground until cued - but Fizz already understands this so that is why he did well with that 🙂 For the concept transfer to a jump... if you have access to anything that simulates a jump bar, like a low log, you can transfer the concept to a log or anything similar 🙂 Great job! Let me know what you think! TracyHi! I hope you had a great time on a well-deserved vacation!!!
>>With being out of town, I am so far behind in class, I don’t know where to begin. Feeling overwhelmed, Gah!>>
Totally feel ya! It is a right of passage of puppy ownership… feeling that there is so much to do and then finding the time to do NONE of it LOL! Ha! My best piece of advice is write the titles of each game on a small piece of paper, a different piece for each game. Put them all into a hat and pull one out each morning and pull one out each evening 🙂 That way you don’t have to plan, you only have to pluck one out 🙂 Everything will get done eventually! If you have time to do more than one thing, pluck 2 games out of the hat.
You got training done while on vacation, and that is damn impressive!!! Now go be a plucker and pull some game titles out of a hat 🙂
T
Hi! These are looking really good! She looks like she both easily found the tunnel entry AND figured out how to bend her body to get into it. Perfect! Great job adding in the distance further and further down the line to the tunnel exit – she still thought it was easy 🙂
On the last 2 reps, you were really only using verbal cues and not using any really body cues (you moved, but after she was already entering the tunnel) – those were the most perfect ones 🙂 On the other reps, especially when she was on your left, you were moving and helping a little. At this point, you can fade out the movement and just use verbals. Later this week, we are going to add in the threadle/discrimination verbal for the tunnel – with the ultimate goal being that you won’t need to really ‘handle’ tunnel discriminations, you will be able to use your verbal cues and she will nail it as you proceed to the next part of the course. She is indeed very zippy and will only get faster from here, so it is going to be super fun to get her to drive away on the verbals 🙂 YAY!
You can use the ball as a distraction for the easier tunnel sends 🙂 It is kind of like the Zen Of Balls: you must ignore it in order to get it 🙂 LOL! It adds a nice layer of distraction and arousal which is super useful for when she goes into higher excitement situations.Great job here!
TracyHi! Nice work on these!!
I think the rear crosses are going well!! I am happy with how he did – he hit the prop with focus forward to it each time! I think the rear crosses that were most successful (turning to his right) were a combination of slightly earlier cues and also it is possible that he is a righty and not a lefty 🙂 It is very normal and common to see a side preference at this age, so no worries at all. He was very ‘on task’ to hit the prop, so even at the end when you were earlier on the turn-left cue, he was focused in on hitting it and not as much focused on your motion behind him. As you keep playing this, he will drive forward more so then you will be able to do the rear cross to the left sooner, which means he will be able to process turning left a bit better. We have some games later this week that will help too – but for now, keep playing just like this and rewarding in the correct direction even if he doesn’t turn that way as the first order of business 🙂Adding the ready treat to the tunnel was 100% the right thing – he still offered behavior but you had a very nice obvious target/reinforcement. I think this session went great!! So keep using the ready treat for another few sessions, keeping it pretty close to the tunnel exit like it was here – then you can start moving it a bit more out of the picture. If you get one more session that looks like this (happy pup with high rate of success), you can start to add the verbals and angles in the advanced game and then we will have him on the ‘inside’ (between you and the tunnel) to begin the threadle foundations too.
At some point after that, we will lengthen the tunnel a bit (no rush!) and I think after a couple more sessions, you will find that the value of the tunnel is high and you can mix in toys and treats from your hand for going back and forth.The concept transfer for the parallel path was terrific! He was all like, “this is the easiest thing ever.” LOL! Great job with the click coming for his choice to commit to the line (before getting to the upright) and quick thrown reward – that helped him keep his head nice and straight which is exactly what we want. Adding distance was easy peasy – I loved how he was finding his line towards the end!!!!
At this stage, the next step is to add a toy to this – at first, just the toy present and visible in your hand but everything else is the same (cookies as rewards). Then you can add tugging before (cookies as rewards, still) then you can start to use the toy as a reward sometimes, click then throw a toy then tug 🙂 After that – there is not more more to do with this game (it will get back-burnered for a bit, maybe pull it out every couple of weeks) – he is too young for us to do much more than this with the jumping. But, the concept is what we want and being able to ‘find’ the line even with a toy and arousal in the picture is awesome!!!Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyWelcome back, I hope you had a great time at your cabin!!!!
Video 1 – sending – looks great! He was giving very intentional paw smacks in all 3 locations. I think he did a little better when you had a bit longer of a moment of ‘ready’ before the sends. He got so mad at you at 1:30 when you clicked but didn’t treat LOL! (I think you didn’t treat and he was totally being judgey, it made me laugh so hard) but he got right back into it 🙂
When you added countermotion, some of the clicks were early or for “almost” hits – no worries when you see that, just be sure you wait a little longer on the next rep 🙂 One thing that was GREAT to see him do was that he was setting himself up to turn after your sends and especially when there was countermotion – Yay!!! That led to some hits that were NOT as good but you can emphasize the prop by shifting the reinforcement placement – click then toss the treat back to the pillow to help maintain the value. Your motion away was distracting AND valuable (because the cookies were moving too!) so tossing reward back to the prop as you leave will help maintain commitment value when you see him not-quite-hitting the prop.Video 2: Wing wrapping:
I have the exact same laundry basket thingie at the first location! LOL! He did well here too – something distracting at the first location slowed the responses down but then you were cracking me up in the home session (laundry basekd, couch cushion, LOL!!!) he was unperturbed LOL!! When you put the cookie bowl INTO the basket at :56ish, he also looked at you like you had lost your mind – this pup cracks me up with his expressions LOL!!
Since he is doing so well – using the laundry basket thing from the first location, you can have your two targets out but we are going to fade them by sometimes rewarding him from your hands (if he gets too interested in your hands, you can also mix in dropping cookies onto the targets). The games coming up involve rewards from hands on this, so you can get a head start by rewarding from your hands on your next session.Serp/threadle 1 – very nice! Is that a post it note stuck to your hand? LOL This looked great – nice strong hits to the target. Try to stand a little bit more stationary until he reaches the reward – your position and verbal and hand movement will cue him to go to it while your shoulders don’t move, to develop the in-then-out chain. You were moving a heartbeat too soon, as you were delivering the reward.
Your body position looks good! Excellent pose 🙂 At :52, he came in towards the toy rather than the target – you can help more by turning your head to look at the target sooner. It looks like you were looking at him (well, he is cute!) and then when you looked at the target (after removing the toy) he went right to the target. You won’t always have to look at the target but it certainly helps at this stage. And omg I almost spit water out of my nose when the target got stuck to his nose at 1:01! And gold star for ignoring the human distraction in the room after that LOL!Tunnels – this also went really well! He found the tunnel entry from all sorts of distances back from the entry and lined himself up really well to make the turn into it. The reps where he was on the outside of you looked great and I didn’t see any real difference when you did the inside reps.
>> but he is not really liking me holding him. I started using the collar, but switched to holding him at the chest.>>
This is good to know and hash out at this stage! The restraint might be a lot of pressure right now, and we want it to be all fun and no pressure – so you can modify it to where he gets a cookie for lining up next to you, then you can crouch then cue the tunnel with your hands near him but not (yet) touching him. You can gradually add in a light touch the immediate send, and a finger on the collar then immediate send – that way you can build to restraining more by teaching him that the small bit of pressure or touch mean that party is starting 🙂 So, if he isn’t loving the restraining part, feel free to play this without restraining 🙂 He is happy and we want to keep it that way 🙂
You can start to add more angles and distance away from the entry on the inside reps too!Great job here!!!
TracyHello and welcome!!! It is great to see you here again 🙂 Mackee is SO CUTE!!!!! It is so fun to watch her!!! She is so cute that I actually had to watch it several times because I kept getting distracted LOL!! I love her! She did a great job on the hat prop – very nice intentional paw smacks 🙂 Yay!
On the sending – she did really well hitting the prop. At only 3 months old, it is very advanced work! Time to add a bit more challenge on the sending: we can now move you a step or two further away because when you were sending, your hand was close to the prop (she could hit the prop AND look at your hand LOL!) So during the next session, do a warm up where you click and treat for a couple of paw smacks, then start the sending a step or two away from the hat: add challenge by having her have to go past your hand (just by a little bit) to hit the prop. If that goes well, you can add in the sideways and backwards sends (starting close and then starting a bit further away too). Keep the success rate super high like you did here on this video.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
