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Hi!
>>Lennan really does seem to have value for that hand target. I’m not even sure why he loves it so much. He learned it right away when I first taught him to touch it. He’s never been that enthusiastic about targetting to my hand without the target. Apparently he loves the target though.>>
Alrighty then, I am glad he loves it LOL!! My goal was to make the hand target more obvious for the pups with the target, and if that has helped build the love for the behavior with Lennan, then I am happy! Yay!
The stays looked great on the video! The ball was a really strong exciting distraction and yet he seemed fine with moving into the sit and holding it (sooooo many BCs get sticky with a ball like that!). And I LOVED your running away then throwing back the toy! That is something I use on course: running into the lead out then releasing! It is something the Europeans handlers use to get the most speed from both dog and handler plus it is super fun. He was definitely engaged, but also SUPER successful. Well done on that!!!
>> The turns were more challenging using the toy.>>
Yes, for sure! I think the conditioned response to the toy is a bit of a grab at it when he is driving into your hand with the toy in it (he had his mouth open a few times LOL!). so you want need to just have him stand in front of you and follow the toy as a lure in your hand for a spin or turn away – to give him the idea that he can follow the toy hand the same way he can follow the cookie hand. Then it will be much easier for him to be able to execute the turns. Your timing can be maybe one step sooner because he comes in with more speed to the toy, but I don’t think the timing is what made it hard – I think it was more about conditioned response to toy from hand. The other thing than can help is to have a turn away verbal to add on (even if it is an interim cue for now) – because he definitely appreciates the different verbals as useful info! And if you can tell him whether it is a toy strike or a turn away as he is moving in, I think he will set himself up differently. Let me know if that makes sense.
Parallel path: happiest red dog EVER!!! I think he likes that game, especially with the toys LOL!!! He did a great job 🙂 3 suggestions:
– you can get rid of the clicker, I don’t think he needs the marker on this (you can go to a verbal yes marker)
– you can add a verbal GO cue because he is taking it in beautiful extension, so we might as well name it 🙂
– you can add more of your running – especially if he is going to hear the GO cue 🙂Strike a pose – this was an interesting session! I think his questions when the toy was held out obviously to the side had to do with conditioned response to the toy in that position. As soon as the toy was in a different position (near your belly or on the ground) he had a much easier time of targeting. So my guess is that the conditioned response of that position being the ‘international sign for get the toy’ position was overriding the saliency of the target hand. So, 2 thoughts:
to work the strike a pose on the jump, have the toy either on your belly or on the ground, like you did towards the end of the session on the video.
separately, work through the conditioned response to the toy being held out away like you had in the beginning of the session – start him nice and close to the target hand, both in terms of the angle and the distance away, so the target is *right there* and then have the toy out – move the target hand and down, shake it a little to help get his attention on it, and release him to it. If he goes to the toy first, you can lift the toy, but hold position and keep waving the target hand to see if he can say “ah!! My target!!” and then reward.Let me know if that makes sense! You two are looking great!
TracyHi!
That is funny, because I think of your Pose every.single.time that I type the name of this game LOL!!!! And the locked in bar is perfect!One thing I love about Differ is that she is 1000% in everything she does, including standing on the Cato board and also that small cheating moment at the beginning LOL!! Good girl, though, she was great on the rest!! Position 1 was easy for her and the other positions were more challenging: she had a lightbulb moment at :39 where she almost went to the toy hand then realized that the gateway to the toy was to do the serp. YES! Big moment!!! Note how after that she was setting up the proper serp turns (in then out) on the original side and also immediately transferred it to the other side. That is *exactly* what we want to see: drive in over the bar and also be turning. Brilliant!!!
2 little details on the mechanics: keep your feet facing the reward (try not to turn your toes towards her) and keep your upper body frozen til she arrives at the reward (you were turning your shoulders forward to follow her path to the reward a bit, particularly when you switched sides). This will help us add motion in very soon. And one thing to play with is not having your target hand as low – it is good to get started but, looking ahead to adding motion, you will want to have it at a natural position for when you are running – so you can see if she can still read this as well with your serp hand getting gradually higher and higher, until it is in the same position as you would use your Pose and Lever.Great job here! She is so fun to watch!!!
Tracy
Hi there! Is that Offenbach in the background? Fun!! And I forget who the 2nd composer is, I was singing the Comet jingle lol
Tandems are looking good!! You are being careful to get the mechanics right, which might be why it felt a little awkward? One mechanics suggestion that might help: keep your feet facing forward until after you have turned him away – you will be moving forward and turning him away with your upstairs, and when he is turned away – then step the new direction. You were using your outside leg to step into him while turning him away just before turning him away, so it might have felt weird and it was causing him to push away rather than drive into your hand (like at 1:23 and 2:06).
So ideally your hands would start turning him away while you keep walking straight. You can play with this by NOT turning your feet at all, continue to walk straight forward: and use your upper body to turn him in a complete 360 – that can give you the feeling of the arms doing all the work – then we add back the feet after the turn away cue. Let me know if that makes sense?
Kaladin is perfectly happy to let you experiment with mechanics, because there were SO MANY COOKIES lol!!! Great job with all the rewards while playing with this 🙂Tracy
Hello and official welcome to you and Bindi! It has been great to ‘see’ you in the live classes (your screen photo is great :)). First let me say that I am so sorry to hear about your father 🙁 these are terrible times and I am sorry that it hit home for you. I am glad the class is bringing joy and keeping Bindi busy 🙂 It has been great fun to figure out how to teach the concepts to puppies and how to have a great time doing it! You and your classmates are helping to keep me motivated, here as I start month 5 at home (with 2 puppies and a kitten haha) Thank you for the feedback, and keep it coming – let me know if there is anything you want to see or hear more of, or clarifications, etc. And keep me posted on how Bindi is doing – she is adorable!!!!!!
Tracy
Sounds great! I figured she was just being a good girl and waiting for permission 🙂 Keep me posted!!
T
Hi there!
Thank you for the good tunes in the background 🙂 You have great taste in music 🙂He did a really nice job wrapping the jump after the backside!! You can move even more past the backside exit wing to add challenge, and since he did so well with the wing wrapping, you can do the FC and move away before he finishes the wrap to challenge him to finish it and not back jump 🙂 He was doing really well at the end of the video too, you were moving away earlier and earlier!!!
On the threadle section – he was beginning to respond when you stopped your motion, and he was really getting the idea by the end! Yay!!!! I think we should train him to read the threadle cue to let you keep running though – he is way too fast for you to want to use decelerations or rotation to get him in on a threadle. And you are not the only one in that boat LOL!!! So, I am going to put together the entire threadle progress and post it for everyone as a custom skill set – that way he will learn the verbal and you can just run run run 🙂 It is easy and super fun to train – stay tuned! I will get it all together tomorrow and have it up before or on Monday, depending on how much it rains here LOL! 🙂
Your backside sending looked really good here, he was committing nicely! And he was also doing a great job taking the jump on the backside. Connection looked lovely too!!
Tracy
Keep me posted about this one, I am interested to see how she does after a day or two off – very often, the dogs’ brains sort it out away from the equipment, which is the coolest thing to see!!
I have spent quality time obsessing on walk through timing, so it is fun to try to pick up the little details 🙂
Hi! Looking good!!! I love that you used the flip cue to go into round 2, it was a great opportunity to practice it. Connection looked good and you executed your plan really nicely even with coming into the 2nd go-round with a lot more motion.
One thing that I see here is that the verbals might be telling him different things than what you want – for example on 4-5-6 on the first round, you used his name then come and a leg tap. But on the redo of that first round, you said go on as he was doing the 4 tunnel. You also said go on 6-7 on round 1 then did the FC… and I think the additional go on cues are causing him to question. The go on at 6 where he dropped the bar was likely why he was unprepared for the turn (because you did say go on, which is probably not intended to be a tight-is turn cue :)) The FC there was not faulty in terms of timing, per se, but it was more about the send to 7 with the go on so he had to try to adjust in the air (unsuccessfully). At :45, you also used a go on to 7 and I thought the FC timing was strong – he was still a little wide on landing (and ticked the bar at 1:01). When you restarted after the bar fix, you cued 5-6 saying go on… and he looked straight ahead at :29.
At the very end, you used go on to cue the extension line. So….. try to clarify what go on means so you don’t use it for straight lines *and* turns 🙂 Maybe replace the go on with a jump cue (or name call or just connection) on the gentle turn lines.
I think you can also give a name call or right cue on the 9 jump before the ending line, to get a tiny bit more collection.
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>So I thought I’d show you a sampling and ask if any of them are at all close to what you’re looking for.
Yes! The first one was really good, she did the in-then-out without you moving much at all 🙂 Yay! I think she then started to second guess herself, and maybe started to think she needed permission to go to the reward.
>>I could have just given a verbal rather than the arm motion. Your thoughts?
Yes, this! As she is almost arriving at your target hand (good girl!) give her your get it cue (but don’t move haha!) so she turns and races to the reward, similarly to the first rep. You were really good about not moving, I think she was being careful not to grab something without permission 🙂 So, the verbal permission will totally help.
She is bending her body really nicely here! Great job!
TracyHi Kristie! This looks great, especially after :11 when you were able to send her backwards and leave forwards: lots and lots of countermotion!! This is going to set you up nicely for tomorrow’s games 🙂
A bonus challenge for you, since she is doing so well:
As you see her starting to move towards the barrel, slowly turn your head forward and break connection to look forward to where you are running. Let’s see if she can still commit!! The reason I want to challenge her with this is because it will allow you to take off and run up the next line earlier, plus it will allow for earlier blind crosses! Let me know if that makes sense 🙂
TracyHi! I am really glad that I am not the only one who had to walk this more than a masters course to get all my hands and feet in the right place LOL!!!!
You did a great job here, I think this game will be really good to help him bend his body on decelerations – he wanted to ‘square up’ at first but he was getting better and better at wrapping like a noodle around your leg. Yessss! Both sides looked equally strong, and your decelerations looked REALLY good and on time, he didn’t go shooting past you. And he was definitely happy to accelerate out ahead, even when you asked him to be patient and turn tight again 🙂
You can add a little challenge by starting a little closer to him and tossing the treat, the sprinting away up the line to get him to gallop – then decel and turn. That will challenge your timing and also challenge his weight shift into the decel and bending. He looked ready for more, though!
Great job!
TracyHi!
Yes, a lot of the little dogs have ZERO patience for us hahaha!
Parallel path is looking lovely! He was totally on board with this, beginning to gallop towards the jump LOL! Love it! You did a nice job of getting ahead and I swear you read my mind in session 2: I was going to suggest you go faster and… you already did! So you can go faster and get way ahead by turning and leaving the other direction before he finishes the treat, that will add the challenge of you getting way up the line. I think he will be fine with that, but stay relatively close to the jump so it is a little easier at first.
Another challenge to add is to go all the way to the cookie with him and wait there as he eats it, literally right next to him… so when he is done, you can then move towards the jump again – that should allow him to drive forward ahead of you to it (rather than chase you line). Do you see where this is going… rear crosses on the jump at some point, when he can drive way forward of you to get it. Yay! Great job!T
This is looking really good! It didn’t take him long at all to figure out to put the ball in the bowl 🙂 Yay! And you only had to retrieve it once haha!!! I think he might have had too many reps of the same thing on this, so he was changing the game – after about a minute, he had his feet in the bowl, was tossing the ball more, etc. So you can break it off after about 45 seconds (which is a lot of clicks and treats!) do a little reset, then show him a slightly different picture for the next 45 seconds or minute – it can be you holding the bowl, then you kneeling/standing with the bowl nice and low in your hand. Or, you can stay on the ground with the bowl on the ground and offer a tug toy for him to pick up and put in the bowl (I only did a ball with Voodoo because his tug retrieve was great and I wanted him to learn love tennis balls for flyball :))
Great job here!!!! Future agility AND flyball star in the making!
TracyHi!
>>As you recall, Pose can do some very weird things with her feet at high speed (remember our running Aframe and running dog walk?).>>
I totally remember that! I was thinking about it while watching yesterday’s videos 🙂
The 3 jump grids are looking better already, she is still working on organizing her front feet and hind end, but it is already so much better – she did have a couple of moments after landing from 2 going right to left, and one little moment before 1 going left to right (1:09). She sorted it out for the next rep. Stepping in without re-touching her front feet to the ground before 1 is *hard*!! She hit the wing on the last jump of the last rep, but it might have been just a ‘going for the toy on the ground’ moment because she didn’t appear to be otherwise off balance. 12″ looked good and after the first few reps at 8″ she was ready for it. I also think this slightly open distance was perfect for now – easier than totally flat but still definitely challenging!
The 5 jumps seemed a little too hard for now, she was getting herself into ‘ass over teakettle’ moments (I think that is the scientific term haha) like at :47 and 1:03 where she got a bit off balance, lost control of her hind end and her rear ended up over her shoulders/head. It is a little too much hyperextension for now, so I think staying with the 3 jumps for now is better until she has it totally sorted out 🙂
Let me know what you think!
Tracy
