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Good morning! This was a great way to spend a Friday night 🙂
He looked really good here, and he picked up on the 8 poles really quickly. Plus, he nailed the 6 poles in the mini course! Yay!So, looking forward: I think from this point on, in your indoor facilities, you can be working on the 6 straight poles, no need to open up the poles anymore.
And looking ahead to the next step: yes, move to the 6 and 4 (all straight) and then I think you will easily be able to do 6 and 6. Remember to ‘warm up’ on the 4 poles first then do the 6 then 4. If it proves to be really easy for him, feel free tp go from 4 to 6 in the same session. If it is hard, you can stay at 4 or if it is really hard (which is not likely) then you can open them up).
For outdoor training, you can see how he does on 6 slightly open poles and then maybe 6 straight poles? Outdoors is a step or two behind the indoor progression for him, which is fine – just less experience working outdoors 🙂 But he will catch up quickly because he is doing a GREAT job in his indoor locations!!!!
He is getting close to 12 straight poles! Fun times ahead!!!!!
Tracy
Here ya go!
Awesome! His box cars looked really strong here – striding, forward focus, speed and also accuracy were all spot on (he had a blooper on the first rep but that was just the warm up).
You can do both sides in the same session – the box cars are more of a spot check thing to begin bringing the weaves together, so you can do a bit of left and right side sending in the same session, then bring the poles together. My guess is that he will be perfectly fine to let you bring the poles together to a set of 12 in the next session or the session after it.And the holee roller is a great choice – it is perfect for throwing and grabbing, and yes his retrieves looked great (and you tugged with him when he brought it back, which really rewarded the retrieve :))
I am excited to see him on all 12 poles really soon, fingers crossed for great weather!
>> can’t seem to find All Things Tunnel. It’s probably obvious but ….can you help? >>
It is one of the Facebook classes – I will go grab the link and post it for you 🙂
Have fun! Great job here!
TracyHi! Good session here – you had different angles of send, you were moving ahead of him, and he had lots of success. His striding continues to improve – we are seeing more and more rhythmic striding! And these poles are fully straight, yes? Good boy! And great job NOT falling in the mud, solid dance move there. And no 911 interventions? LOL!
I think the main thing here (and probably in other areas of training) is sorting out what is a consistent use of reinforcement. The holee roller is a great choice, right? But he fell out of interest in it, which changes his ‘attack’ of the weaves which changes his striding. He liked the frizzer thing for sure.
So separately from the weaves, you can play with building up the value of the other toys (dead or alive lol) by pairing them with the higher value toys: keep a friz hidden or tucked under your arm, get some play with the ‘lesser’ value toy, then whip out the friz. This should be done away from any actual training of obstacles because it will take some sorting out. The goal is that he is happy to play with any toy – so keep switching toys, adding new ones to the pile, making the toy you are holding or throwing the MOST exciting thing. That will help him in the weaves (because he will be driving for whatever you put out there) and also everywhere in training. And that way you can save the higher value toys for harder environments (like NFC runs at trials) and they will retain their value.As for weave training – for now, use only the higher value toys (and keep changing toys out before he says ‘no thanks’) so he keeps attacking the weaves. And keep on adding angles of entry, drifting laterally while he weaving, driving ahead, and so on. He gets more solid every time you do it.
Great job here – let me know what you think!
TracyHi! He did really well here! He was driving through the pivot and to the end nicely on these.
You were near him on a lot of these, so I think you can add in moving past him – keep moving so that you are almost at the tunnel after the teeter as he gets into position.
He will also have a little more speed if you give him a straight entry to the board – he had to find the entry here, which slows him down a little because he is getting on at an angle.
And I totally agree that revving him up with a toy will help – he is really fast at home, but being able to rev him up with a toy will help transfer things really nicely to trials. If he likes to tug, you can try getting him to tug on a leash, as that is basically a toy that you can bring into the ring and also use as a reward for the teeter.Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Really nice session here – he was confident and he was nailing the end position. And you were able to keep moving past him when he was in his end position – super!!! He also seemed just fine when you added more speed to your motion.Since this is going so well, you can lower the table even more – does the facility have a 12” table?
And, time to move into the elevator games as they are the last piece to putting things together. When you are comfy with the mechanics, I think he will move really quickly through these.
Great job!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Thanks for posting the grid, I see what you mean! There were a couple of things going on that we can adjust to help!
One thing is to start her closer to jump 1, less than a foot from it – that way she will have to use her rear more and the grid will be more challenging for balance.
The other thing had to do with the toy – she really liked it LOL! Because she was so into the toy, she was leaving the stay early and then doing a joyous flying monkey leap as she approached it LOL! That bit of leaping is what contributed to taking jump 2 and 3 as one jump.
So, add in more stay rewards and also be stricter with criteria. And also maybe hold the toy but use a target as a focal point, so she drives to the target then you drop the toy onto it. Or, hold the toy and use a cookie target? That might help her focus on it but also will hopefully eliminate the joyous leaping 🙂Let me know if that makes sense! It is all good to sort out now so that she has no trouble in the future. 🙂
TracyHi!
>>I suppose they just learn to make up their mind what feels best. Right?>>Yes – we want them to be balanced and we leave the rest up to them 🙂
She looked good here, I like this distance for now. It might change as she matures but she did really nicely!
The bounces look good and when jump 3 was far, she did well with appropriately adding a stride. On rep 4, she added a stride where she could have bounced, but I think that was more about the manners minder being close, so she shortened up so she didn’t land on it. She looked really good on that last rep though, nice adjusted bounce!!!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Good question about the teeter in class #4… I guess it depends on how difficult he finds the environment. He might be depleted by then, in which case there is no need to do the teeter. But if he is happy and relaxed… go for it! And per UKI rules, you can place the target on the ground to help him!
TVery whippety, to not eat lol! You can maintain control of the reinforcement by getting to eat it then release to the toy or to run. That will keep the food valuable by pairing it with other stuff, and also keeps his arousal more centered 🙂
THi!
You can alternate sessions:
One session of box cars, then one session on 6 poles closing them up, then taking them over to a box cars session, then next session on the 6 poles getting more closed, and so on. That will help get it all done 🙂
TGood morning! This looked great – nice warm up, nice crazy elevator, then really strong teeter performance! And that teeter wears sandwiched between some things that created some pressure in the environment… no problems. Yay! My only suggestion is to try to stay facing forward and moving forward until after he has landed and hit position before going back to reward – you were stepping into him a little as he was landing. I recognize it because I have to stop myself from doing that all the time LOL!!! It causes the dogs to back off the end position a little, so I force myself to keep moving forward LOL!!
Great job here! I think that the teeter can now go into sequences as classes!
TracyGood morning!
Yes, I can imagine Lennan being dramatic in his response to not being able to train LOL!! Poor guy, I am glad he is back in action here!
His plank session went well, the only difficulties were when you tried to run. He did well with you walking and also walking faster with big strides – but running was really hard. It might have been the combo of running more and being ahead so you can split it a bit: start closer to the wing you are sending him too, so you are moving faster but more parallel to him the whole time or even a little bit behind him. It looks like the target wears either fully or mostly faded for those, so the target might need to make a brief re-appearance when you go to running. The running is the last element on the plank work to convince him to let you do 🙂The other thing on the plank work was that as he was hitting it harder, it was moving more (like falling off the inflatable) then he was being careful and slowing down more (smart LOL!) So you might want to switch to the bang game to add the running to the end position, so he can drive as hard as he likes without needing to also stabilize the board from slipping out from under him.
If his foot is feeling good, I think you can also start to do the elevator games again! Niamh looked really good in terms of letting you do the mechanics – her session looked strong! Lennan is likely to come more to the end of the board, so be prepared to have to use more muscle to grab it LOL!!
Looking good here! As long as he is feeling good, we can move into the final games 🙂
TracyYay! Look at your boy doing the full teeter!!! Watch his face at about :45 – he hits end position and he licks his chops as you praise. That right there is the positive conditioned emotional response we are going for! He should be drooling in joy for the teeter LOL and that can of deliciousness you were holding totally helped.
He was trying to jump on the teeter (rather than run up it) and I think he scared himself a little by doing that when you were too far ahead, so for now keeping supporting him with motion and not being too far ahead of the board. He also missed his end position when you were way ahead and running, so don’t ask for that yet either. We want to avoid failure at all costs for now, to really protect his teeter love (it will be easy enough to ‘proof’ the end position later on).The trial this weekend comes at a good time! Remember to reintroduce the teeter in tiny bits with just end games and don’t be tempted to do to many reps.
And keep me posted!
>> Now if only you had running aframe class because this boy doesn’t get mat work>>
I trained mat work for the running contacts like we train Flyball box turns – with an elevated mat then an inverted mat, to help them really ‘find’ the mat 🙂
Tracy
