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Hi! These were both really interesting sessions that gave us some insight into Ruse!!
On the proofing games, I suggested adding motion (you interpreted correctly:)) because I thought that would challenge the wing wrap. I was wrong, she seemed fine with her wing wraps. The challenge was the tunnel exit! I would normally not suggest the spin rotation here on the tunnel entry because we would just want a verbal… but you were doing the spin in a timely way and a verbal and also standing still when she exited: but she had a lot of trouble with tight turns on the tunnel exits!
And to make it more interesting, the left turns were not as good as her right turns in the 2nd half of the video.
It is possible that the wing out ahead caught her eye, but that is something good to work on… the handling before the tunnel told her to turn and I believe she went wide even when the wing was not there anymore. So, leave the wing there and play this game with cuing the turn on the tunnel even sooner (2m before she enters) to work through the exit turns. That will help her in the long run. You can also Gott her at the tunnel exit and run forward into the wrap to challenge that too 🙂Her left/right turns on the minny pinny got better as you broke them down. I think she just needed to know that she could indeed turn away from you, and as soon as she got that idea she was much better. I think another practice or two of this will help smooth it out.
On thing I noticed here on this game (and I think it will help the other games too) is that he doesn’t lead with her head into the turns. Have you ever taught her to turn her head to make the turn? Where the head goes, the body follows 🙂 let me know – I’ve got games to teach that 🙂Great job!
TracyGood morning! Nice work on these!
Bang game: you can use a cookie lure to get him lined up parallel to the board 🙂 It can be lured because it is not a behavior we need for anything else, so it is one of the times that I am perfectly happy to just ask the dog to follow a cookie LOL!!!
He was very successful here and you had a lot of motion going too. You can add a little more height to the board but we are also going to begin fading the target (see below). On thing here and also on the elevator game – when you are delivering the treat (by hand especially) feed a little further forward, place it just past the edge of the board so he continues to go right to the end).Elevator game: Also looking super confident as well as accurate with a lot of motion! Yay!! I see what you are saying about him not quite being at the end of the board – I think that has to do with treat delivery. You are placing it between his front feet a little further up the board, so his stopping point is reflecting where you are placing it. So, when you deliver the reward, place it just past the edge of the board, on the grass, so his mouth can come off the board to get it but his feet stay on the board. That is harder placement on the tossed rewards but you can try for it LOL!!
No need to add more height or motion to this one, so focusing on reward placement is all he needs for now.On these end position games, it is time to go back to the plank and begin fading the target (there is a game posted to help you sort it out). I think the easiest thing will be to gradually just make the target smaller and smaller right at the end of the board. When it is faded on the plank, we can then fade it on the bang game – no rush though, we have plenty of time 🙂
Uphills – this is a good refresher session! He remembered what to do. And the target at the end is producing a weight shift thanks to all the other games, which might be why it feels more tentative. But, we want the weight shift (rather than the leaping off he used to do before he knew there was an end position LOL!!!!) So this looks great. You can shift into the downhill game, with the downhill board going to the ground and target position. All the games are coming together now 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
He did really well here! Almost all of the angles looked solid with lots of motion, except the left side sends from around 7 o’clock as you mentioned. You can keep those in isolation a bit more, meaning just 4 poles and a little less motion for a session or two til he is more comfortable then you can add back more motion to those, then back to 6 poles.
On the rest of the angles, you can add more of the handling challenges (like the rear crosses, countermotion, running away laterally, etc) and continue to throw the reward: he was looking ahead in the poles perfectly! You can keep fading out the MM and soon enough you won’t need it there at all 🙂After a session or two of the various challenges on the easy angles, and a session or two on the harder left side send angles, then you can tighten up poles 5-6 to straight 🙂 Yay! That will take us into next week, if you do a session every other day or every 2 days. That is perfectly on track for the next games. YAY!!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Love the music in the background here 🙂>> So basically when I do the channels or 2×2 so I just skip the entries where I’m reworking them but I can advance with the other entries??
If you are working on distractions or high speed/motion stuff then yes – don’t ask for the stuff that is still in progress with less motion. Separate those into isolated sessions like you did here. It won’t take long until the currently-harder stuff is stronger than the other sends 🙂
>>I did do a session with one 2×2 angles at like 1 and 7ish. He did pretty well. I kept it really simple at first with no motion and no frisbee. Then I slowly added walking and the last rep I jogged. >>
Yes! This was a really good session!!!! You had just enough challenge but the success rate was very high (one miss, I think, and the rest were all successes). Super!!
>>Question – should I start moving right after I send him or do I wait for the commitment to the first pole?>>
Start moving as soon as you send him so he does not rely on you being stationary as part of the weave cue. Movement should be like butter: smear it smoothly everywhere on your toast before you take a bite rather than taking a bite then smearing it on 🙂
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This actually outlines multiple sessions 🙂 Think of it in terms of variables and try to isolate each one. Work 2 sessions with each variable and if you get 2 sessions of 90% success or higher, then add the next one (the 2 sessions can be at separate times in the same day). If you add the frisbee AND more motion, there is a higher likelihood of failure. So since the frisbee is a BIG variable, add it but dial back the motion. Separately in a frisbee-fire environment, add more motion.
When he can handle both of those separately, then we put them together 🙂 And in that moment, we can reduce another variable by loosening up the tightness of the poles a little.>> The idea of adding all the crazy from the start is new for me but it totally makes sense to build it in from the beginning.>>
In the past, I think we were all guilty of getting the behavior in a really sanitary way so we thought we had a dog that understood. But then as soon as there were distractions or variable changes… turns out the dog would fail and fail and fail (especially in trials) and it just created stress. So nowadays it takes me a LOT longer to teach the dog to weave (10 weeks for my dogs, which is a far cry from what it used to be where we thought we could do it in 2 weeks!) but they are sooooo much better in their understanding and a lot less frustrated 🙂 Have fun building the crazy in LOL!
Tracy
Hi! I think this session went sooooo much better without the MM – he had a higher success rate and was not looking at you all that much. Super!! So let’s keep the MM out of the picture for a now to continue this momentum.
Keep being sure to clarify the releases especially using a marker for the cookie toss: he hits position and you use a verbal to tell him what is next. Is it a release forward off the board? Or the cookie toss coming back to him (which for me is also a release to get the cookie). Have all that planned and ready so he is not releasing off your hand movement or getting confused about when to move.
About the mechanics – yes, they are critical for this stuff! If I don’t have my mechanics ready, I find that I am crappy for the first part of the session. And I might get it together halfway through, but that messy first part can do some damage and also leads to more reps than needed (I am a definite ‘less is more’ type of trainer LOL!)
So a couple of ideas to have your mechanics solid right from the start:
Use those field guides to jot down exactly what to do in each session, before you do it (not just for recording what happened). And that plan for the next session line is actually the most important part because it helps me remember what I need to focus on. I use my phone because it has a little stylus and I can write on my field guide on the phone. The other option is a plain old post it note or index card (old school but effective LOL!!). I never come out to train without some type of written notes on what I need to do and how.And then the next step is to do the first couple of reps without the dog. Like a walk through of an agility course! Use your invisible dog and do your first couple of reps exactly the same as you would with Chapter. When you feel you have got the mechanics and movement, then bring the real dog in. Sure, family and neighbors will think you are nuts hahaha but that is fine – practicing mechanics will make for a great session!
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
This was an interesting session to watch: on her first rep, she didn’t weight shift so got off balance at the top of the board as it dropped to the target. I am guessing she didn’t like that, as she spent the next few reps trying to decide where she wanted to shift her weight. And that is fine – it is thoughtful rather than trying to splat herself 🙂 and she was emphasizing getting the target position right. Yay!You might have done this – give her a warm up on the elevator game with a couple of reps to give her a look at the setup before doing the full downhill. That can help her with deciding where to shift the weight.
But other than that, we stay here for a few more sessions with this setup so she can decide about the weight shift at the end while maintaining her good targeting! The target can still be visible like this for a couple more sessions, then we can fade it. She does not need to go fast on this game, it is more about helping the dogs know how to comfortably move across the board with balance 🙂 We get speed again in upcoming games.
You’ll see this in the games released tomorrow: but now that they are all moving across the full teeter, there is a lot of concussion when it slams to the ground. So, like with weave and a-frame training, do the concussive games less often like every couple of days to preserve her body. You can do the target fading games on the plank or low bang/elevator games more frequently because they are a lot less concussive.
Great job here! let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Lots of lovely work here!
On the first video: very nice work focusing on those left side entries, she did really nicely!!!! You had good speed going too, it was not as if you had to slow walk there 🙂 Yay! You can add back in some more of the difficult challenges such as the rear crosses, moving away even more laterally, etc.
Interesingly, when you switched to the right side sends, she was looking at you more while she was weaving. It is the first time I can recall her doing that. We will keep an eye on it, pun intended 🙂 and we might need to have the reward out front sometimes or use a smaller reward in your hand. I think it will go away as soon as the poles go into sequence because she will have an obstacle out ahead to look at, so you can also have a wing out past the end of the poles to throw the reward to or have her wrap after the exit (mix both in).I think you can also tighten the channels a notch more during these sessions over the course of this coming week!
Her Find Em games are doing exactly what they are intended to do: add significant challenges and excitement!
She was super good about weaving away from the toy, although it seems she thought it was a bizarre thing to do LOL! She prefers the toy to be moving as the reward, so you can do this with 2 toys: one on the ground and then one that you throw.The Find ‘Em from the wings is harder than it looks and it helps us know where the dogs might have a strength or weakness! She seems to be just fine on the right side and straighter entries, and that left side entry is the hard one – she prefers to flank out with the excitement of the potential toy through which makes it hard to hit and hold the entry. Since the wing is doing the job of adding speed and excitement, dial back your speed on this one too – send around the wing and don’t move at all on those left entries, then build to walking. It might take a session or two before you can run again but that will keep her at a higher rate of success – if she fails twice on a challenge in a session, dial back the distraction (which is usually your motion) for the rest of the session to really pump up the success rate and cement the understanding.
That seems like a pretty normal part of the progression with her: those left side sends need to percolate a bit before you can add more of your motion and speed 🙂 And that is fine, she is progressing really fast through this all.
We see that same left side question in the combo find em – she was getting it but her weave mechanics were not as good on the left (she was lifting her head and hitting the poles with more torque on her body). So on those left sends too, just walk for now.
However, I think she did a spectacular job on this setup (I am pretty sure my adult dogs cannot play this game successfully LOL!!!!). My only suggestion is to step in to the tunnel to be one more step past the weave entry to convince her to go in – it was a bit of a layer here and she was not totally sure. With you stepping in for another step or two, she will get that she can layer the weaves to get to the tunnel and then you can send from further back.
She did a great job getting the entries but also super impressive was her ability to stay in the poles while you did crazy things like run ahead, put pressure on her line – and there was one rep where you did a rear cross behind her and it stunning! She definitely had to think about it but she hit the entry and stayed in, even with the delicious tunnel right there. Well done!Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
His entries look super here! I think you might indeed be clicking the MM a little early as you mentioned a few times here, most of the clicks were when his nose was just arriving at the gap between 1-2. It was not a problem during this session but as the poles get tighter and you are moving more, try to delay the click til yup I see the right shoulder passing pole 2 so he is definitely entering.
Because everything looked so strong here, you can move forward in the progression: it looks like 1-2 were basically straight by the end of the video, so let’s get 3-4 starting to angle now too. It looks like they were at 2&8 by the end so next session can be 1&7, followed by moving them closer to the poles 1-2 to begin to develop the striding.
You can start the session the same way you did here: not much movement for a few reps but then add your motion in sooner. The tightness of the poles have an inverse relationship to the number of reps: the tighter the poles, the fewer reps we can do, so you can ‘spot check’ entries without motion then add motion in sooner. Over the course of several sessions you will still get all the entries in, but we don’t want to do them all in one session once things get to 1&7 or tighter.
Great job here!!!
TracySounds good! There is a little something with the tunnel exit but since we are not sure what or why, I don’t see a need to keep poking it 🙂 And there is nothing wrong with any other tunnel exit, so we are just going to carry on with the other things 🙂
TGood morning! I think this went really well!!! Ewwww 92 degrees…
You were ahead past pole 3 on all reps and also moving. Yay! My only suggestion is to be careful of the line up if the channels are out: on that last rep, he and I were both convinced you were going to ask for the channels that were right there LOL!I think we move forward now: on poles 3-4, tighten them up to start progressing them to being straight. Keep being sure you are moving and any except the Lava Zone.
You might find that he has an easier time with the channels at this point, so be sure to tighten those too. He just seems to be more successful in those, so it will worth working through that progression too 🙂
Great job! Stay cool 🙂
TracyHi! This was a good session! I love her speed on the tunnel-jump-weaves sequence and we did see some lovely striding there too!
She was not as speedy on the tunnel-weaves-jump sequence – she did run to the poles on some of those but also trotted into them on others. I can conjecture about why (eyes adjusting after being in the tunnel, she has to duck a little in the tunnel so it takes her a heartbeat to come back to speed, she was starting from the stay) it could be a variety of reasons but obsessing on it won’t help LOL!So for the next session, using almost the same sequence, tighten the poles another little bit – another inch, or the width of a finger. I think the tunnel-jump-weaves can stay the same way. For the tunnel- weaves, maybe throw a jump wing before the tunnel or send her in so she can start from a run? But otherwise, we aren’t going to worry about it. Do most of the reps on the tunnel-jump-weaves line and you can also finagle things so that she is on your right side on some reps on the tunnel-jump-weaves line (a long distance tunnel send will help you get there).
Nice work here! Let me know if the plan makes sense 🙂
TracyHowdy! Do you mean on course when doing 12 weaves? It depends… some dogs are better when we are quiet and some are better when we keep saying the cue 🙂 I am trying to give the initial cues and then be a little quiet so I can breathe… all of those months of sitting on my butt this year have caught up and I am out of shape LOL!
Hi! The foot target for the down is not as critical on the mountain climbers yet, because the dogs will still be standing when they get to the top of the board here. When we get into the uphill downhill merge game, then yes: target for the down. Let me know if that makes sense!
If you think she is happy driving through the pivot of the board, you can add more tip 🙂 Yay!Hi! She is doing so nicely on these!! Because of her course running experience, she understands the joys of tunnels more than the puppies do, which makes the game harder for her. My adult dogs all had a REALLY hard time with these and the puppies had a much easier time LOL!
I think the turns to her left on the first section look really strong, very nice quality to the turn and she was adding collection before she arrived at the wing. NICE 🙂 And she seemed to have no trouble ignoring the tunnel when asked and also no real trouble when you had her do it from the tunnel. She did have a question about the turn when you did it as a post turn, like at 1:13: you were cuing the wrap and she was collecting but then doing the post turn instead of a front cross caused the handling to support the wide line (she looked at you there and was like: wait, what? LOL! But good girl, still didn’t go into the tunnel. So for this game, do the FC or a spin on the wing.When you switched to the other side: she seems like she is not as good at turning to her right as she is turning to her left. Is that something that you have seen? She doesn’t seem as ‘bendy’ to her right and had more errors (like the tunnel right at the beginning). But then she got into the groove and nailed it. Yay! So you can keep focusing on the right turns and you can also do things like puppy stretches or leg weaves to get her even more comfy turning to her right.
Because this session was so lovely, you can add one more level to it: Run! Wheeee! Cue the tunnel and run towards it and run along it so you are at the exit with her – then show motion into the wrap cue 🙂 try to show good motion and be on time…. but this is also going to help her process the verbal even if you are not perfect (she is waaaaaay to fast for us to rely on perfect timing on handling!)
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi again! I think she looked pretty balanced and organized here too. As with the straight grid, try this at 4 feet and see what she does 🙂
About her looking at you: from the video, it looks like she was looking at you on the lead out but then when you released her, she only looked forward at the grid. I am happy with that 🙂 She can see the grid peripherally and over time, you’ll get more focus forward in the stay (or not, she might be fine looking at you til the release :)) Did it look different during the training – was she looking at you over the jumps?
One thing you can do is you can adjust your position to be closer to the MM – first right next to it, then parallel to it laterally rather than being a few steps back from it. You can also move the MM another 6 feet away so she can power out of the grid too!
And yes, you can continue to click the MM right as you release so she looks forward, that will help too 🙂 but for now, don’t worry about where she looks on the release because if you wait too long to release (waiting for the forward focus) she might get confused.Separately you can encourage her to focus forward by going back to the toy races from MaxPup 1, the first game: warm her up with the baby level but then let’s do the grown up version: start her in a sit, place the toy on the ground, and release her to it when she looks at it. Then you an transfer that to a jump 🙂
Great job! Let me know if this makes sense 🙂
Tracy
