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Hi! Sorry to hear about the snow 🙁 The video looks so warm and sunny!!!
The tandem turn games are going well!!! One general note is to call him right before he enters the tunnels so he is expecting to look for you on the exit. You were using verbals, but it was at the exit and a ‘heads up’ cue before he enters will also help (in this scenario, a name call is perfect)
First rep – looked great! You were ice and patient on the tandem turn: you turned him away *then* you stepped in. On the second rep, you stepped in as you were turning him away, so he ended up on the other side of the wing. You can reward that – those moments are handler-induced 99.99% of the time – and he was frustrated at :23, thought he was getting the reward, and jumped for it. The next reps at :30 and :40 were lovely! :48 was good too, but it looked like you might have pulled too far away, he almost turned right instead of left? Hard to see in the shadows of the trees 🙂
1:03 was really nice again 🙂 And so were the last reps on the green wing closest to the camera. Yay!!
On the race tracks, you might have been a little far ahead on a couple of them, which made it harder for him to see the wing & connection – you can drive closer to the tunnel in those moments, so he can see the wings fully. His turns on the tunnel exits looked great!(side note: we have been working tunnel exit turns with ALL the levels in the last 4 or 5 months, from the puppies up to the Masters dogs online – and that Speedstakes course today was ALL about the tunnel exits! Eek! Voodoo has been the Masters demo dog and his exits looked great, thankfully!)
Great job on these! Now I have to get off my bum and try that Speedstakes course with the 2 Papillons… wish me luck, they are feral and have no indepedent skills LOL
Tracy
Hi!
>>I am not always sure when to use the right left verbal vs the wrap verbal but from what you just said when going to the tunnel he is just partially turning compared to the threadle verbal where he is turning a greater radius.>>
Exactly! I think of it in terms of how tight of a turn it is. A left or right is kinda of a 90 degree angle of turn like the letter L, and a wrap is more of a full U turn – extra collection on the wraps.
>>I practiced the set point again today. When I moved the jump to the 12 foot distance he actually bounced. I couldn’t believe how much he pushed off with the rear legs when he realized how much further the last jump was. So I then moved it another 3 feet to 15 feet and he did take one stride.>>
He is a powerful dude! A bounce at 12″ feet for a Viszla is totally a good thing! It is a powerful breed. When he is all grown up, you might find that he can bounce 15 feet!
>> We stopped at that point as the birds were roosting and making all sorts of noise to totally distract him. >>
OMG hardest distraction!!!
>>His sit stay was really good at that point.>>
Perfect!!!
>> Do you want him to take one stride at the 12 foot distance?
Not necessarily, based on his stride and power. He can bounce as 12 foot distance. As long as he is maintaining good form, a 12 foot bounce is fine.
>>I was working on his sit stay. I think part of the problem right now is it is a little colder out and his package is sitting on the cold ground and he lifts his butt up!>>
HA! That is too funny!!! You can try a stand-stay to help protect his package? LOL! The joys of intact boys lol
>>I am using an iPhone to video. Any help with editing is appreciated.
You should have an app called iMovie on your phone. It is a white star in a purpley square. If you click on it, you should see a “+” sign – click on that, and you can click on “Movie” then then you can select your video and click Create Movie
If you click on the video on the next screen, you will see “Actions” with a little scissor icon – click that and then you can use the ‘split’ feature to cut stuff out.It takes a moment of playing with it to get used to it, then it is easy 🙂 Now my list is from an iPad so here is a video for the iPhone 🙂
Tracy
Hi! Looks like you are having super nice weather!!
Set point – he was a really good boy and I like how he was looking ahead and setting up a nice arc over the bar. He has good jumping form! He got the ‘bounce” on that 2nd rep – you set him up nice and close, so he powered in and lifted from his rear. Yay! My only suggestion is to have to reward another 6 or 8 feet past jump 2, so he can land, take a big stride, then get to it. The reward was close there so he was landing on it a bit LOL!
On the backside game: the key element is your eye contact. On the first rep at :28, he was behind you and you were looking forward, so he couldn’t see your eyes and was not sure where to be. The same thing happened at 1:04 and 1:21 and 1:44, and he guessed that he should go to your left side and did not end up smoothly on the backside. Compare it to the reps at :43 and 2:03 and 2:23 and 3:02, where he could see your eyes much better and went to the backside. Nice!!!! At 2:52 and 3:26 he was starting on the wrong side of you so he was confused 🙂 A lower arm and having your hand more back towards him will really help him see the connection too. So as you work the backsides when he is behind you, keep your arm back towards him (not forward to the jump) and make eye contact so he can see where to be. Then I think it will be easy 🙂
Great job here! Fingers crossed for continued great weather!!!
Tracy
Hi!
>>I did a late FC here and threw out my opposite arm after #6 to keep him on the line to left tunnel entrance – it works but I try to not use it>>
The run looked good! The FC could have come a one step sooner (or a BC would work) but he read the line to the tunnel really nicely! You can probably go in towards the 4 jump by a step or two closer, so y oucan move into the FC or BC on 5. It might have felt like you were too far ahead there LOL! On the video, it appears that he was not going to curl in to the other end of the tunnel, but it might have looked or felt different in real life 🙂 The outside arm can keep him out especially if you feel like you are behind on the line – and if you want to save the outside arm for other situations, I bet you can ramp up the connection and he will do well with that too!
>>So sometimes I just start in another place and move into the skill we are trying to learn.
Makes sense! And it keeps things fresh for him 🙂
He did like the nighttime session! He is a night owl! LOL! The blind 3-4 started sooner and he had no trouble over the bar here (you can play with starting it even sooner, so you are on your left arm already when he exits the tunnel. Verbal and motion can support 3 so the blind can be wicked early. That will give you an extra heartbeat to decelerate into 4 to tighten it up a bit – you were accelerating so he accelerated too, causing him to land long. He has a really good send, so you can do the blind and then basically stay where you are, connected, and send him past you. That should cue the turn and get you back up the next line nice and early 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think! And I totally feel the pain of the time change too – bleh! I like long sunny days 🙂
Tracy
Hi!
>>I found disconnection to be more difficult than I thought it would be!
Yes! It can be weird at first – disconnecting *on purpose* haha! And yes, I somehow disconnect by accident so easily LOL!!
>> I had a hard time with some of the BC’s after the backsides especially with Seq 5 after obstacle 4. My natural inclination was to do a FC, which doesn’t work well at all to get the best line from 5 to 6. >>
Correct! It is a really crazy sequence because you have to disconnect and run to get to the next spot 🙂
>>I was pleased with most of these sequences but know there is always room for improvement.
Well, when I was jotting the notes on the runs, I looked at the list and it was so boring because all I kept writing was: “nice!” “so nice!” “Super nice!” “Great!” LOL!!!! So the feedback might be a little repetitive in discussing how well it all went LOL!!! I LOVED this video, so much GREAT stuff! Wheeeee!
Ok, here are specifics 🙂 I do have little ideas here and there of things to make a spot or two smoother, but overall he seems to understand what to do with the bar on backsides (in terms of jumping it and not running past it so you can really trust him! Your connection looked great overall, I could see your eyes looking for his eyes at every moment, except when you were deliberately disconnecting to run forward. I couldn’t really hear the verbals, but that might have been due to the video? Also, he is committing nicely on your rotations for wraps when you disconnect and move away, and his turns were tight! I know you were jumping him low, but he can still turn wide on low bars 🙂
And, your exit line connection looked fabulous: I know you were working on that to helping tighten the exits of turns after crosses and it looked consistently great here! Disconnecting and moving away as early as you did hopefully made it feel easier, because you had more time to get it going and your running lines were really clear.One general idea about the 1-2 start on Sequences 1, 2 and 3:
On jump 1, he was ticking that bar a bit – you can lead out closer to the line to the tunnel so he adjusts for the turn before takeoff rather than in the air.Seq 1 looked great! Seq 2: Nice blind at :18 in terms of timing and connection and line! His commitment was solid so you got that blind in easily.
Seq 3: Nice timing of the push to 4, nice disconnect, nice blind, set you up for good timing for the wrap at 5. Super nice! It is pretty aggressive, early handling but he looked great. Only one tweak – a little more connection to his eyes on the wrap cue and less indication of the landing spot with your arm moving back will help him add more collection there, to make for a perfect turn. Both reps were really lovely!!!
Seq 4 – so nice! You really trusted him at :51 on the backside push to 4 and did the blind nice and early – and that set up the same great timing at :53, nice early disconnections for the blinds on both – you were reconnected before he even took off which allowed him to see the next line super early, so he was tight and fast there.
Seq 5 – On the practice moment at 1:02 and 1:18, I think this is where you were working through the instinct to FC? You were rotating a little extra there – as you saw in the full runs, you don’t need to indicate the bar after sending him to the backside, just running through to the blind to your right arm works nicely. Otherwise you end up rotating too much on the backside which makes it harder to rotate into the wrap – he was ticking the wrap bar after the backside because you were moving backwards into it instead of forwards away to the next line on the practice reps.
On the full run with Jake – WOW! Nailed it! Great send to the backside at 1:34 then you really trusted him and went right into the next position! He was so fast & tight on the backside! Yay! That allowed you to set the wrap even sooner and the turn was lovely.
On the full run with Juno – nailed it *again*!!! WOW! Great job with the big send then disconnecting to get to the next place. Both boys showed that they can be trusted and you can send and leave 🙂 The only difference between Jake and Juno is that Jake collects a little more when you are backing up and Juno jumps a little longer when you back up – so with Juno, when you rotate on the wrap cue, you don’t need to back up to the wing – you can send him to it behind you.Lovely work here!! Let me know what you think!!
TracyHi!
>>Interesting! So it sounds like the fix is basically, take the backside AND COME BACK OVER THE JUMP. Thank you so much! This is so fixable. I will continue to go back to some of our previous exercises, drop the ball, and work more on “finishing” the jump.>>
Yes! We have 2 options: either rely on handling or rely on training. In the past, we have been relying on handling with this skill and it just is not as effective as when we train the dog 🙂 It is the same as weave entries: weave can either rely on handling, or train full understanding. I like the training 🙂
>>As with my previous submission, working on 1 or 2 jumps feels weird to me, but I can see the lesson is so valuable. We can do this!>>
You can also incorporate the training into sequences: as you cue the blind and see her moving towards it, drop the toy on the landing side as you move away for the blind, for example. Lots of rewards in all scenarios will build the skill 🙂
Have fun!
TracyBumping up! See you all in 2 hours! Fingers crossed that the monsoon weather is only at my house 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! This is looking great. The wing being close to the jump when you started looked really good, and I didn’t see any difference in her responses when you moved it further away starting at :12. Yay! You are doing a good job running straight on the out cues (it is NOT easy to keep the feet straight! LOL!) and so you can play with using less of an opposite arm and see if she stills does well. Your arm use here looks really good, so there is nothing wrong – but we want you to be able to run forward as fast as possible and so fading the arm a little might make that easier (or she might really need that arm cue, we shall see!)
Good timing on the blind at :25! The FC at :30 can start a little sooner but it was still good! She was a tiny bit wide on both – I think it is because the history of the out cue has had all of the rewards thrown long on the line, so that is what she is expecting. Keep throwing in the super early crosses like this, and you can add in a wrap verbal to help her read the difference – and she will add in the collection beautifully when she realizes that the reward comes near you when you rotate. And a big hooray for the straight line (no get out) at the end! After all the rewards for the jump she was a superstar to follow the handling there. Happy dance!
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>>when doing the video don’t want to eat up a lot of time rewarding>>
What type of device are you recording with? I use an iPad and then use iMovie to edit out most of my stay rewards 🙂 Let me know and I might be able to point you towards easy editing!
The smiley face is looking good!! He made the turn immediately when you asked for the tunnel threadle versus the ‘go tunnel’!! Good boy! Two little suggestions: you can move more towards the tunnel entry that you are asking for – he was turning and lining up to the correct one each time, but then he was not totally sure if he should continue because you had decelerated. So keep moving towards the tunnel entry you are cuing til he is in, then have a big party 🙂 You don’t have to run yet, but staying in motion will smooth it out.
You are using the verbals on the wings, which is so helpful! One suggestion it so use a simple left or right verbal when you are going to ask for the ‘go tunnel’, and then use the wrap verbals (I think that is what you were using here) for when you want more turn to set up for the other side of the tunnel. When we replace the wings with jumps, you can envision it as saying jump or ‘go’ when you want him to continue straight, versus the tighter wrap cues when you want a turn. Let me know if that makes sense!
Great job here!
TracyIt is fun to see what each dog ‘tells’ us about their preferences! She definitely likes the connection and motion!
T
Hi!
These were definitely challenging for her, I could see steam coming out of her ears!! She kept changing how she wanted to do the last jump. Different striding, big strides, little strides… she was definitely reading it!! Your movement was fine – I think eventually we will put you all the way out at the end because it is the hardest thing for her: scoping distances with you way ahead.
Two slight adjustments to the mechanics of the grid:Start her closer to 1 so she cannot touch her front feet down before it – she has to lift off from the sit. It is a plyometric challenge to get her using her rear better (it is harder too :)) You had there in the right spot at :44 and it totally changed the picture, extra steam coming out her ears there!
You can also move the MM further away so it is about 15 feet past the last jump – that way she can extend between jumps 2 and 3 and not figure out how to collect to land decelerating for the MM.You cracked me up at the end – I just drove 5 hours in that rain and it was GROSS!
>>PS. How did surgery go??? Been thinking about you!
Thanks! It was a pretty complex surgery, but now I have a good understanding of why they were saying the rehab was going to take so long (remodeling part of the groove, adding a thing to better hold the patella, moving one of the other bones, and adding a thing and then another thing and wires and eek!!) The pupster is home snoring now, so we will be using lots of good meds to keep her very chill for the next several weeks as everything heals up. The surgeon seemed happy with how it went and prognosis is good!
TT
Hi!
>>I gotta say, these seemed easy. Disconnection comes naturally, lol.
Bwahahaha! Same here: disconnection is my strongest handling move, even when I should not be disconnecting LOL! I did some obsessing on why it can work, thus the 2 rules (motion + verbal).
She did really well on her dig digs!
>> We had one missed dig where maybe I just forgot to drop the ball>>
On the one that she missed, you were moving a little faster so she lost confidence that it was correct at the last moment. She never really even turned to look at the backside, so it was not a ball drop issue. You were a little slower on the others so she was perfect. The goal is gradually begin adding in more and more motion – plus in “real life” we would connect to the dogs on the first part of the cue and then only disconnect when it was time to run forward 🙂>>I actually tried one of these in a recent trial and it failed fantastically, with barking and lots of drama. I hadn’t practiced it in a while and it wasn’t really a good setup for it, but I went for it anyway.>>
My guess is you tried to run away from it when she is still in the stage of needing you to not run away yet? If you have video, post it and we can figure out why she got so mad lol
The push/slices and the backwards check check looked great! My only suggestion is that on the check checks, toss the reward more to where she would land and less towards the line near you, just to really help convince her to commit without you having to connect 🙂
>>This disconnect drill should be a good one to practice randomly every once in a while to help with that. For the backward sends I added a little motion to get Annie to take the jump since we don’t normally do those.
Absolutely! It is a good one to refresh. And I thought the motion you added was perfectly fine.
On the 2 jumps – the hsoulder position of the first rep versus the 2nd rep (and 3rd) made all the difference. On the first rep, you had strong connection but both arms behind you, so she curled in. On the other reps, you used a little bit of the outside arm to bring your opposite shoulder ahead of your body: she got it really nicely!! And she would totally tell us if she felt it was stupid LOL! It is a subtle difference to us, but not to the dog.
Her digs looked GREAT here!! You can totally add more motion in and out of these. Yay!!
The checks also looked really good – adding the motion here (I htink this is where you meant) was great – you still got your nice tight turns. You can leave even sooner on these, as soon as she passes you – it will be more challenging but I think she will be fine with it and that will give you more time to reconnect after the blind.The pushes to the slice also looked really great! And she is coming in to take the bar pretty independently – GOOD GIRL!!!! You started adding more speed on these towards the end – perfect! Keep adding more and more speed to both your pushes and your digs so yo ucan run in and out of them. Her turns also look lovely on all of these, she is setting up really nice collection without losing speed.
>> I’m thinking about using the opposite arm as my default way to send to backsides from now on, without any intention of ever fading it. It seems easier that trying to get my opposite shoulder visible. What do you think about that? Any down sides? I wouldn’t be able to use the opposite arm for Get Outs, but I think I can use the dog-side arm for that.>>
I think eventually you can fade out your opposite arm if you want (or not LOL!) but for now, it is helping her. I see no downside to keeping it – I keep it with Voodoo, and he is the pushiest most opinionated dog, the first one to point out anything he feels is stooooopid LOL! I also use it for my get outs – it is a different context and different verbal, so he is fine with it too. And, it has not created any problem with any other cues that use that arm, like threadles or tandem turns. It is really different looking (and sounding).
>>For the “check-push”, I wasn’t sure I was really as disconnected as we were supposed to be. I felt like I had to look at Annie to get the push, which only came out ok.>>
I think they were really good! The disconnection can be somewhat casual, you were disconnected enough 🙂
>>I was really happy with the last two pushes with the first jump angled. It seems like I might not have done this sequence the same way you did it with Voodoo. I might have drawn it wrong in my notes, but I was still happy with what we did, even if I made it up. >>
Heck yeah! Much to be happy with! I think you did it right, it added all the challenges and she rocked it. Yay!
Great job!!
Tracy
Hi!
>>My mistake on thinking the PDF suggested a BC on sequence 1 for backside/wraps. The way my printer printed up the sheets made it look like that text went with the map of sequence 1. Oh well, maybe it was nice practice for me to try it anyway!>>
it was definitely super cool to do! I am sure the is a use for that move somewhere!!
>>I have to be honest and tell you I don’t think I am actually thinking about when his head turns for the backside! LOL I have to concentrate more on that.
Watch for the head turn – that, theoretically, is your cue to giddy up out of there. If you see the head turn and you leave… and he *doesn’t* commit then we have more dog training to do.
>>I’m definitely going to do a few reps of the toy drop for independent backsides on a regular basis.
That independent backside understanding is SUCH a useful skill!
T
Hi there! I think a couple of tweaks in the mechanics will help sort it out! Because it is connection-based, it helps to teach it to him from out ahead of him. So a slight adjustment to the order of festivities should make it easier:
– Have him hold his stay while you start moving up that parallel path towards where the wing meets the bar. Then connect with him… THEN release him with the push verbal. You will be 2 or 3 steps ahead when you release, and moving. You can also help jumpstart it by having him hold his stay on a parallel path to the backside (rather than facing the front of the wing) for now. And try not to say “ok” as part of the release, as that implies front side of the jump 🙂
When he was taking the front side, you and he were both moving so you were either parallel to him or a step behind, so he was reading motion and taking the front side (like at the beginning or at 1:55-ish) When he was successful, you were a step or two ahead (like around 1:00). It will be even easier when you are a couple of steps ahead, plus you can then also move up a parallel line with your feet rather than stepping towards the entry wing – you started this way (moving up the parallel path) but then adjusted the line of motion to add the step, to help him out.
That should make a big difference!
And good job dropping that ball in pretty early – keep doing that as it will continue to help build the default understanding of taking the bar after going around to the backside.>>I sent you a PM on FB Messenger.
I hope to get into emails and messenger tonight after I go through the class forums, depending on how much brain power I have left 🙂 It was a long couple of days! HS is home and on the road to recovery, thankfully!
Tracy
