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Hi!
She did well here! Since every dog is an individual, I have some Ruby-specific ideas for you. She reminds me of my Elektra (the small black and white pup), lots of opinions and very busy but also very smart!When she is in the sit and you are not moving (just looking at her) you can totally praise with a quiet gooooood giiiiirl. I think when you are looking at her but not saying anything, she is wondering if she should offer behavior or just sit there. You added the praise at 2:03 and she was much more settled. When you are moving away, I think she will know if it is a stay game so you won’t need to praise.
Now I see what you mean about her not always wanting to sit. You can help her with the verbal sit cue and you can also do a hand touch line up if she knows that? And, maybe try this game with a tug toy – it is possible that Ruby, like my Elektra, thinks that sitting for treats is dull and would prefer more ACTION haha! So, you can totally do this with a tug toy as the reward. That provides action but is also great for building in a bit of self-control 🙂 while keeping it super fun.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! She was super confident on this game! You can add challenge by narrowing the channel of the long jump boards so she has less room to line up. And I see what you mean by her having so much fun that she was being a leaping monkey LOL! You can help convince her to NOT do that by putting the MM on the far edge of the table – and click it as soon as you see her butt line up on the board entry. That can kill 2 birds with one stone: marking her excellent decision to line up, and getting her to stop on the table and not leap off 🙂
Let me know what you think! Nice work on all of these!
TracyHi!
She looked surprised on the first rep but then was really good!! It does not have a lot of action, so you can use this mat behavior differently since she is not doing a running dog walk. You can add a verbal to it (hit it, for example) and then use it in the contact discrimination game! It can be a contact replacer for now until the full height contacts are ready for discrimination training 🙂And of course you can add motion to make it more exciting for her 🙂 It is deliberately dull when we are starting running dog walks because there is sooooo much running on those and we want the dogs to be calm at first. But we can add in some wildness for Keiko right away and see how she does!
T
Hi!
>> most of the runs, I was pre-placing the reward, which should have meant she just rant ahead and didn’t look at me. I can certainly try to learn how to aim and drop the treat, but I thought having it pre-placed would be even better (?). >>
For the pre-placed treats, you can introduce a new thing (like more motion) then fade the treats in advance to see if she can make a decision – then throw in the reward. You will get very good with your aim 🙂 You can also toss the lotus ball back to her, that might be easier to throw?
>>Perhaps I need to start staying farther away and vary where I’m standing/running as she moves along the ramp?>>
Yes, mix in different things and see how she does 🙂
T
Hi!
Good sessions here! I think she is wanting to look at you and target, which was making it harder for her. So a couple of ideas for you:
When she is barking and looking at you, you can call her back and reset. You can totally send her with a ready ready and then an interim cue of some sort. On the first video, when it is clicks and treats without the MM, try to have the treat come really fast so she doesn’t have tine to look at you. When the MM is in play like on the 2nd video, let’s tweak the game a little to emphasize moving away from you and not looking at you: have her start next to you, give her a little “ready ready” moment – then send her. You can jump start that by rewarding for any hit of the mat moving away (click the MM) and then you can delay a little to get the back feet marked. Then, rather than reward her for coming back over the mat (where she will want to look at you), you can call her back to you around it, reward, then set her up and send her again. I think that can help her not look at you, which will also help get rid of the barking. Let me know if that makes sense! She is doing well so this should take us to the next level 🙂
TracyHi!
Yes, someone loves his crate very much LOL! I have an idea for his tunnel – put his pet tutor out at the other end of it, where he can see it (he has a PT, right?) and then try this game. That might change things LOL! The visual of the PT might balance out the crate love and make it harder to respond to the crate cue.But overall, it was a really good session! This is harder than it looks (we are also playing it in the ‘grown up dog’ proofing class) and there are definite head explosions. I think he did a really good job finding both on a verbal only and we can definitely balance out the value of the crate. Did he do Susan Garrett’s crate games as a pup? There is so much value on those games, that the crate is such a big distraction. And that is great, because we can use that to help teach discriminations 🙂
Nice work on these!!!
TracyHi!
He is doing a great job on his stay, which allows you to just think about the handling. Very cool!
On the BC and FC lead outs, try to be more at 3 (or moving towards it), you were a little but moving towards 2 on the release then back to 3. So try be moving to 3 very directly on the BCs, or standing on the far wing of 3 on the FCs (old school lead out pivot position LOL!) and release: it makes it more challenging to find 2 but I think he will be fine 🙂 His commitment looked great!
I agree that your timing on the BC at 1:00ish was rocking!!! You trusted his commitment and he rose to the occasion 🙂 He was also really good at reading your position on the FCs, turning nicely over 2.
He read the lead out push reps really nicely, but he was wondering why you were not moving and facing him so much LOL!!! He is like Voodoo at that age…. sooooo much collection on the lead out pushes LOL!! So you can start closer to 2 and try to leave a little sooner. And then we put that type of lead out away until he needs more collection on 2 on this type of lead out (although this generation of dog is being trained differently and my guess is that will never need to be sledgehammered into more collection on this type of opening :))
Great job!
TracyHi!
>> Should I be using a verbal cue based on which direction he is wrapping?>>
Yes – if you are pretty sure he will do it, add the verbals. What I would do if I was more confident that my dogs would do it is I would add a threadle verbal because they have to come between me and the wing, which is a threadle behavior. Ideally, it would be my threadle-wrap or threadle-RC verbal. I currently have not even begun that on my youngsters so I just went with the name calling.
>>I realized I wasn’t using both hands to turn him in the tandem turns. I was trying to figure out what to do with the hand with the toy.>>
You can use one hand if it is more comfortable! Or stick the toy in a pocket. I also show the toy as part of the indication, it might help in the early stages.
On the video:
Lap turns from the stay – he was perfect on the first one but did not come in on the 2nd. It looked like maybe you moved too early, but judging by him wanting to wrap on rep 3, your decision to throw the toy back on rep 4 was a really good one!
When you added the tunnels and more action – you were also more insistent about coming in and he was really good! I mean, he still thought it was a little stupid, but that is normal haha!! He and Contraband share that view 🙂On your tandem turns – interesting that he had the same progression – great on the first rep from the stay on your left, but then a much harder time on the 2nd rep on the other side. Could be that he wants to be a lefty here 🙂 Or that when arousal comes up, he wants to find the wing. That is actually a GOOD thing in a young dog LOL! You responded by just being a little more insistent so the cues were more obvious, and he did really well!! With his speed, you will need to do some RC moves as it will be hard to be ahead all the time – I have found the tandem turns to get used more often than the lap turns – so these are great to have in your toolbox 🙂 Keep insisting and showing your hands, as well as sometimes mixing in the thrown reward for driving to you.
Great job!
TracyHi! Great session on the serps here! He was reading the line really well – great job with the early arm back and strong connection! The line from the tunnel exit when he was on your left was actually really hard but he nailed it!!! And the line on the other side when he was on your right was lovely, no accidental backsides 🙂 Yay!! So you can keep flattening them up to add more jumping challenge.
Nice work!
TracyHi! Glad you got to play at the club!!
His teeter games look good! He was offering the down on the bang game nicely. One note about motion – my rule for myself is that I can present any type of motion for the dog, except stopping as he stops. Stopping while he stops might build in my decel as part of the cue which we don’t want. So on the bang game, add slow-ish motion that you can continue until 2 or 3 steps after he stops and downs 🙂 It is kind of like motion override but the cue is spot 🙂
His angled approaches looked good and he looked super confident on the mountain climbers! I liked your variation! It is similar to the elevator game and it more definitely adds in weight shift. He was not as fast on those as he was on the mountain climber, probably because you were facing him or the board was a little more unstable or both. Either way, it was all good and a nice addition to the games!Running contacts –
Sorry for any confusion about the mini jump grid – it is a jump before and after the box and not ones on the side. I need to go re-read what I wrote, it is possible there was not enough coffee in my system at the time LOL!And yes about the hind feet – we don’t want to withhold reinforcement if he only hits with front, just delay a little to see if we can mark the rear and then party. The only non-reward moments would be skipping the mat altogether. So in other words – don’t be such a good clicker trainer, delay your click a tiny by to see if you can mark rear feet. I think you will be able to, he is offering REALLY nice touches!!!! Lots of split-rear-feet opportunities. The angles also look good!!
His a-frame box is going well too, I think the hardest part is excitement. When you either got verbally exciting or you were really moving, he jumped it entirely. So you can add in verbal excitement and not much movement, or verbal excitement then moving only kinda fast. This is where I would add you in being ahead as well. Then do the opposite of not being verbally exciting (be calm in your cue) and adding more motion, and we will meld those together at some point.For the DW – before exit angles, add motion and see what happens. For example, send on an angle and you walk on a straight line (banana line, similar to what Katarina calls it) and add motion to that! Then gently add in angles of exit. In the grand scheme of things, exit turns are not that hard to add in – motion is much harder 🙂
Serpentine:
1 jump serps look fabulous!
On the 2 jump serps, I think you were pressing back in towards 2 with motion on some so he wanted to push to the back, and on others you were moving too fast and not connection enough as you noted – so he bypassed #2. But I think 1:02 was really nice and you got him to do it nicely! I think the jumping effort on the 2nd jump (which would be jump 3 of the serp line) is weird and hard, so the youngster are choosing to push into the backside because it is actually easier! Interesting! You can see at 1:48, for example, he really had to think about the jump effort, and he did, good boy! It is almost a sideways jumping effort so based on Presto and the others this week, we will add a jump grid for them to work this out on (I have just the one for it!).
When you angled the jump just a little: TOTALLY helped! So keep that jump angled for now especially on the first few reps of a session to get the understanding deeper.
The reps from the tunnel at the end looked GREAT – you really had to hustle to get there (fun!) and then he read the jumps perfectly (jump 1 and 2 of a serp line)Great job!!!! Hopefully Eric hasn’t noticed the tunnel in the basement LOL!
Tracy
1:02Hi!
>>So he does do this during the day and it is chasing other dogs, people who walk by and birds. When it was dragonfly season he would also leave work to chase those. While we do play frisbee and ball in the yard, it’s a sporadic activity. >>
My guess is that the rehearsal of this behavior is high in value and overriding the behaviors you are trying to train, so when there is a little bit of frustration (incorrect response, value of available reinforcement is not high enough) that he defaults to the undesired behavior because of the inherent reinforcement value (and hacking his dopamine/endorphins). Is there a way to eliminate his access to that while you are putting the training in place? That will help shift things!
I agree with your assessment that, at night, the triggers for the running are far fewer so you see the behavior less… which also means that the value for the training has risen. Yay!
Very nice progression on your serp session! It is a look at what type of agility dog he will be, which makes it totally worthwhile to train through the distraction 🙂 He needed a little more verbal and a little less motion on that first rep where he ran past the jump – and that is exactly what you gave him on the other 3 reps. Perfect!!!!
Since that went so well… as far as a game plan, is it possible to do the handling and other stuff at night, where he finds it easier to engage? And save the engagement training for the day? That will reduce frustration for both of you, I think! He still learns the agility skills while you also teach him about working through distractions, and then down the road we meld it all together.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Hope you are having a good weekend!
I guess it is a matter of how individual dogs respond, but I generally try to take the smaller steps in training, and perhaps try to move through them faster, rather than taking bigger steps then have to backtrack. The other way to look at it is: add one new element as quickly as you can – but not two new elements at the same time. For example – 2 jump flat jump serpentine. Motion is the new element, so you can angle the jumps a little and leave the toy in a helpful place. Do that for a rep or two, then change something else (flatten the jump or move the toy position, not both). That way you can progress quickly without jumping ahead too quickly. Let me know if that makes sense!
TracyGood morning! I am sorry to hear she had a stressful week, I hope she is feeling better!!!
The rocking horses are looking really good! Looks like Santa sacrificed himself for the greater good of dog agility here LOL!!! She really likes that toy! You can play some toy game to get her to give it back, there are a whole bunch over in the Toy Transitions group on Facebook. In general, when the pup drops the toy, I give it right back so the don’t think that bringing the toy back means they will get it taken away.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1074089192764113It is possible that the random barks mean she wants you to send sooner, maybe just before she gets to you? She appeared to know where you wanted her to be and came immediately to that side, so I think your connection was fine and your Hallmark Moments were in place LOL! Your mechanics looked good and she did really nicely committing and coming to the new side. So… she might just be a little pushy haha! No worries, some dogs just like to ‘talk’ during agility. You can try giving her the send one step sooner and see what she does.
Also, if possible, you can separate the stools by a few more feet and that will add more ‘action’ of you moving – she will like it AND it will be pretty challenging 🙂
Great job here!!
Tracy
