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Hi!
>>Haha you should see the vast crazy furry options I have after 3 Vizslas who don’t tug. I tried everything!
Ha! I feel that! My dogs with lower tug drive have the BEST toys, zillions of dollars of fancy toys… and my dogs with great tug drive have crappy toys from the dollar store LOL!
>>I will work on less contact and I have a tail on a line that might be that long.
I think it will be most important at the beginning of sessions when her arousal is coming up – but then when she gets rolling, she will be more engaged and it won’t matter as much.
>>If not I’ll add length. The good news is we tried the send game with toys and she was so locked on I couldn’t get her to go back and forth. Sitting in the send game is much less body pressure.
She was locked onto the toy? Cool!
Great job on the video here!
At the start of a new session to get it rolling, you can let her swallow the treat then drop the next one in – I think when pups are chewing, they don’t process anything else til they swallow LOL!
You were plopping the next treat in very nicely, but she was happily chewing and didn’t quite notice it as clearly as she would if she was one chewing 🙂
The cone definitely has value and it was really interesting to see her light up when it came out! And yes, you can totally see the wrap stuff you’ve already done, great job!!! She seems to understand it AND love it!
To help her not cut in between you and the cone (and not do a full circle), you can change the timing of the reinforcement placement ever so slightly – you were getting it in on the target as she was at the previous target, so now you can shift to waiting til she snakes her head around the cone. That way she will see you plop it on the target she is heading towards (as a reward) and won’t be as tempted to cut straight over your knees to the next target (because there will be no cookie on it LOL)For now – to make sure she doesn’t get frustrated with the circling versus 180ing, no need to move the cone away until you have a session or two with the tweaked reinforcement timing. And, you can also use something else to go around: a pole or single jump stanchion instead of the cone. We will be teaching her to differentiate very soon and don’t want to frustrate her in the meantime.
Great job 🙂
THi!
>>Asking him to sit or down is going to be hard! Lol. We will try! If he’s successful then release and race to toy?
Ah yes, sorry I neglected to mention that important point: yes, release to toy 🙂
>>He was in cheese mode with the drive to handler! I ditched the toy partway through because I decided I was happy with him in cheese mode and it was also a little easier for me to remember what I was doing!>>
I was very happy to see cheese mode! Partially because it means he likes food during training now (the days of criteria:swallowing! are behind you LOL!) and partially because it is almost an acknowledgement that decel/turns are lower arousal behaviors and food drive is a lower arousal thing too, if that makes sense.
>>Will try to incorporate earlier slowing down and turns. Haha, I definitely knew the timing was off when I received the tooth hug!
Yeah, I don’t think he was biting you, I think he was just running into your hand with his mouth open. Contraband does that when I am late.
>>I think he can probably do the toy on the ground distraction with the stationary drive to side. Will see what happens!
>>The different reward placement sounds great. Will try that!Yay!! Keep me posted on all this.
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Have fun!
TracyHi there! He did well here but I do see what you mean about not really driving hard into the recall.
He might have been hot/tired, or he might have done enough toy play for one day, or both, he was not really driving to the toy as reinforcement here – you can totally do this with food! I am happy to start these games on food then bring the toy play into it later. I realize now that it is fine to build it separately. So he was playing with the toy (and playing really well!!!) you can also limit the toy play to a rep or two then switch to food while he is still wild for the toy. He will certainly not be sad about a bigger piece of cheese 🙂 But you will also get snappier recalls into the blind if the reinforcement you have on your is higher value – so on a cooler day or when he is not as tired, a low value cookie to the highest value toy. Or a low value cookie to a high value cookie when he chases you. His understanding of the game was perfect, so it is more about working the drive to the reinforcement as you run away. That is part of the fun of all these puppies… figuring out how to use their natural drives to build the games we want, while building the other drives to be able to use all the reinforcement. My little puppy (Elektra) came to me with just about zero food drive – yikes! So some training was easy because toys were more useful as rewards… but plenty of other training was harder because in order to train it, I have to figure out how to use toys instead of food while I built the food drive. It is a fun puzzle 🙂
Great job on all of these games! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>he’s just a deliberate chewerA Sheltie that is a deliberate chewer, LOL!!
I think he is getting the idea here for sure! Yes, sometimes it takes a session or two to get the ball rolling but I see definite intent here (not accidental back and forth). If he gets stuck you can totally help him out – start each session with the cookie drops, then let him offer, then before he over-thinks it (which seems to happen after a particularly long chew LOL!) you can do a couple of cookie drops to re-establish the back and forth. I am happy with his intentional back and forth around the wing here – if you get another high success session like this, you can move the wing a little further out 🙂
Tracy
Hi! He did really well here too! This was a hard game because he had to move away from the magic cookie hand! (Cookies are life!)
The ready dance was great in helping you set up a very clear send. I couldn’t see your eyes here, but I am assuming you were looking at his eyes 🙂 After the first moment where he had to sort out leaving the cookie hand, he did a great job of leaving to smack the cap (although I hear they are tasty, indeed haha)
If he starts to nibble it or change behavior, it might be that you have added distance too quickly so you can move back in closer to it.
Great job remembering to reward back at you!
You are ready to move to the next steps – starting nice and close to the cap, do the sideways sends, and then the backwards sends.>>Also – not sure if it matters how I thread these replies – I’m experimenting with tags and separating the games by threads (I think) but replying to the original post for a new game
Let me know how you like it – by doing it this way, the replies show up under each video so it is easier to keep track of.
Nice job!!
TracyHi! Great job here, he is so fun!!!!
We can build this drive ahead game using 2 approaches for him:
Using the toy, we can approach it as a toy drive building game where we are more interested in getting toy engagement than drive ahead. In this context, a few ideas to get us to the end result of him grabbing and pulling on the toy like he was in session 3 here:
– keep the toy version of this game to only 1 or two reps, and only in cooler weather so he hs all jazzed up about it. Black puppies heat up really quickly.
– when throwing the toy, throw it a little further so he tracks it moving… and let him go to it just before it lands. Since he likes to chase toys, we can use that to help build the love of the dead toy by letting him chase it just before it becomes dead.
– and have the toy on a longer line so when he grabs it (because it will be further away) you can play tug for a second or two… and if he gives it a good pull and/or shake, let him win it and take it on a victory lap. Wheeeee! The longer line will allow you to throw it further so he can chase more while still allowing you to engage when he grabs it – and also keeps you from bending over too much (that might be too much pressure as he is heading towards it).Now, I am assuming he is a foodie (Sheltie :)) so you can also build the game separately using food. I built this game with food with my Pap, Nacho, and he totally outruns me in agility and drives lines in flyball brilliantly. So, using a lotus ball or treat hugger (if he likes those) or just a giant visible cookie, play the game with food – you are probably going to be able to progress it very quickly by adding distance and running 🙂 And I bet the warmer weather will be less difficult when there are big pieces of food involved 🙂
He might find food too distracting during sessions with a toy, so you can definitely keep these sessions (food or toy) separate. We will for sure be able to get food and toys in the same session in training at some point, but I do like to keep them separate early on as we build the value for each.
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>I hope the video of my Ridgeback was one where we looked like we knew what we were doing LOL! We’ve come a long way
Yes! It was a cool video – you were running courses and doing a great job!
>>Lazlo is from Poeta Whippets in Canada. I feel so lucky to have a Poeta puppy!
Ah! Yay! He is related to both of my puppies – the Whippet in both of them are Poeta lines 🙂 He is probably pretty closely related to Contraband!
>>But yes, please tell me if you think I am doing TOO MANY reps with him, or my sessions are too long. He’s so fun that sometimes I get carried away. I do have a timer, though I forget to use it all the time. >>
I will 🙂 And setting a timer to 2 minutes, religiously, will help you get the internal clock going. I did that for a long time and then I got lazy about it… and turns out my sessions all ended up in the 2 minute range LOL!
>>Or if you think he’s ready to progress to the next step, let me know so I’m not holding him back.
There is a way to know if you need to move ahead or stay where you are or make it easier: the 2×80 rule. If you get 2 sessions in a row at 80% success or above, it is time to move on. I will count failures in my head during the session, or go back and look at the video to figure it out afterwards – but if I get 2 failures in a row in a session, I make it easier in that moment (rather than waiting to see the video). Say that I am doing 10 reps of a behavior, and he is 100% correct. Cool! I will do one more session – and if he is 100% correct or even 90% correct…. time to move to the next step. There is no point in doing 5 sessions at 95% rate of success. Conversely – if the pup is failing 50% of the time, we need to back track and make it easier. It is a math game, really, and that helps either move us forward or prevent us from moving too fast.
>>As for doing the games with a toy…he really likes toys, but I find it hard to shape or train new skills using a toy. He can get really excited about the toy and has a harder time thinking. Sometimes he will just jump up and bite me if he wants the toy, or he’ll sit and bark. I really don’t want to build frustration into his training so I’ve just been using toys to reward things he already knows. I’m open to advice on this.>>
We should definitely incorporate the toys, then, to work through the arousal and excitement they bring and teach him how to modulate himself. I agree that you will want to use them only with skills he is really good at for now – so for example, do a session of the easy sends with the foot target. Have the toy in a pocket or nearby. Reward a couple of reps with treats, then in that session, reward with a toy, then go back to treats. We can gradually incorporate the toy. And I think you will pretty soon be able to shape with a toy as the reward – do something really easy like shaping him to get on something (like a new dog bed) based on a skill he probably already “knows” in a different context.
On the videos:
Decel & turns:
His fast drive back to you was making me laugh! And you got a good luck at the pointy dog brilliance – note how after maybe 2 reps he was grabbing the treat and driving back to you before you even had a chance to call him. Love it!
You did a great job with the cookie hand out and with the timing on your turns and he was perfect with benidng his body through the turns. Because this went so well, we can build on it 🙂
You can add more distance and more motion – so throw the cookie and move forward as he is going to get it (a bit of countermotion added in by doing that) and then as soon as he gets it, decelerate.
When he is comfy with that… do the Advanced level where your cue hand is empty and he gets the cookie after arriving at your hand or after turning with you (I don’t anticipate this being a problem at all, t is just a delay of the reinforcement).Then, as we were discussing above… do it with a toy 🙂 he will have to decelerate and turn with you in order to get the toy, so it is a good way to teach him how to basically ignore the toy in order to get the toy.
Wing wrapping – good sessions here, he went from following a cookie lure to offering going to the next bowl on his own to the jump upright being in place and a little further away.
I think my only real suggestion for now is to move the bowls a tiny bit further apart – he has a pretty long body so having the bowls a little further away from you (maybe an additional 6 inches on each side of you) will help challenge him more because his butt will pass the jump wing so he will have to turn around to go back to it.
At the end of the session, the wing was maybe about 6 inches away from you or so and it was harder – LOVED the moment when he almost came between you and the wing, and then literally backed out to go around it. Clever!!!! So on the next session, start the wing a little closer until he is easily going back and forth, then start to slide it back out again. We don’t need much distance at this stage at all.
And, with the wing nice and close to you… this is a good one for toys! You can use 2 relatively low value toys and play – more to teach him how to handle toys in the picture than about the wraps (you can see the demo with my tiny pointy dog on the video)
Driving to the toy – this is a perfect game for the toy! He did a great job and was an extra good boy to bring it back to you! I do see what you mean about him not being as grippy on the toy, especially at the end. Keep using a nice big soft toy. Also, make the transitions very clear so he knows when he has permission to get it: play, hold him, throw the toy, let it land, wait for a heartbeat or two or three (builds up a lot of anticipation!) and then let go and tell him to get it. It looks like there were a few things happening at once or very quickly together: the toy release, the throw, letting him go, the get it cue – so he wasn’t entirely sure if he should get it. Add in teething and he turned off at the end. No worries! It will be fine on the next session – let me know how he does!
Great job here!!!
TracyI am glad he is having fun!! And clever to use your knee as a bit of a helper haha!!! The pups learn the wing wrapping really quickly this way so I bet he is now doing a great job. Watch his head – is he snaking his head around the upright? That is what we are looking forward 🙂
T
Hi there!
Your tech is great and the kids were perfect tripods!!!Poet rocked these games. Loved her very distinct foot smacks! And when you didn’t get the treat in as fast as she liked, she smacked again and bobbed her head LOL!!! Good girl , love her attitude.
She is building really nice value to our prop here – you can make one tweak to this, which is to click the foot smack just as you did, but toss the reward away to the side (rather than deliver one to her then toss one away). That will get her beginning to move to the prop, which will serve us really well in the next games.Game 1:
Love the long tug toy 🙂 She grips it best at the beginning when you keep it low (she lets go when it goes up in the air), so resist temption to pull it up as you play (she is so small, it is easy to pull it up!) To save your back, you can make it even longer 🙂 so you can be more upright while playing! When the game gets rolling, she had a better grip on it (more arousal). She didn’t want to give it back LOL! so a game I play to get it back involves sitting on the floor, playing some tug… then relaxing my hands and letting the toy go “quiet” – when the pup releases it, I give it right back to the pup for more tugging. That helps the pups start to recognize the release cue, while keeping it fun to give back the toy 🙂Her driving ahead looks *fabulous*!!!! Fast and focused forward perfectly. Yay!!!! She is ready for more – so you can throw the toy further and add more motion – start to really run run run and see what she does! If more running is too much pressure, you can back it off a little – but I bet she is fine with it 🙂
Great job here!!
TracyHi Nancy! It is so fun to see her, she is fabulous 🙂 This session went really well, lots of very crisp sends to the target. Great job with the clicks and reward placement, and I loved the singing during the toy play breaks too LOL! These were the sideways sends, so I am guessing you did the forward sends already too. A couple of ideas for you as you keep playing with this:
Add a bit of the ready ready dance with her in front of you, mainly so she know exactly when to go to the target – at this stage, the behavior is more cued with your send than offered, and sometimes after a reward, she wasn’t sure if she should offer it or wait for a cue so the behavior was a little more tentative. If you can do the send-reward-ready-send-reward-ready, I believe you will get very fast, crisp behavior – you can see it when you took a moment to connect at 2:04 and 2:22: those were two of the best reps of the session, even with added distance away from the target. This will also help make the cue very clear when you add in the backwards sends.
I also like that the ready ready dance adds in a transition from handler focus to line focus back to handler focus, to help keeps things balanced.Since she likes toys, you can totally do this with a toy as well (instead of the food rewards) – you might need to start back closer to the target to start this because leaving the toy might be more difficult (or not LOL!)
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Hope you had a great time at camp!!!! You look tan and relaxed 🙂
seq 1:
With the big distance between 2-3, you can drive in closer to 2 so she sees more motion as you are exiting and also you don’t need to call her as much.
I think you can leave sooner on the circle wrap at 3: as she passed you at :08, you stayed there long enough to put your left arm up and say “right here” – you can move forward as soon as she passes you. If she doesn’t understand the commitment ,we will teach it to her.
You sent and left on jump 4 really nicely! Her commitment and turn looked good there at :12.I bet you can get a blind cross in between 5 and the last tunnel!
The other thing to consider on this particular sequence is doing the slice line on 3 instead of the wrap. Backside wraps are almost always slower with big dogs, so you can have her come to the backside the same way you did with the wrap, but cue a slice (towards the green tunnel side of the barn here :)) and then she will take 4 the same direction you did. It will be both faster and easier!
Seq 2 started off really well! You got her to the backside at 4 really nice but then ended up in the other end of the tunnel. Bringing her to the backside of 4 around the outside of the coure there is a nice line 3-4-5 but puts her on her left lead to the 6 tunnel – so you can get it with her on that line, but it is more of a ‘get out’ to switch her leads than a ‘go tunnel’ which means stay straight (we actually address this specifically in the week 3 package that I posted today :))
The other option that you did on the 2nd rep is a much better line up for the 4-5-6 line – pushing her to the backside of 4 towards the middle of the course. You can be on a bit more of a perfect path there 3-4, on her line more so she has a slightly tighter turn from 3-4. You were maybe 1 step too far over across her path so she was one step wide.
You did a FC after 4 to get 5 and 6 – it pulls her to the right over 5 and you did a bit of a RC on the flat to 6. It works, but it creates a wider line 5-6 and puts you behind for 7. The other option is to replace the FC 4-5 with a spin so you run down the center of the course with her on your right. She will be on the correct lead to go straight the tunnel so you should be able to get it from that line.Seq 3:
I think you can trust her more on 3 at 1:04 and 1:27 – send her to it from further awayand then run forward, right past the wing on the perfect path, and do the blind to get her on your right side. You were in a good spot on the send to 3 but then you pulled away from that line to keep her on your left to the tunnel – it worked but it is wide and puts you behind for 5 (which was a little wide at 1:10 and 1:31)
You had the right handling choice at 7 (backside serp to a blind, also known as a german turn) – really good send to the backside at 1:14! You over-helped with the right here at 1:15 and kept her on your left for too long. You did the blind to your right at 1:16 when you were halfway to 8 so she didn’t see it in time – try to do it as soon as you are past the exit wing of 7 and before she even takes off 🙂 You will really have to trust her 🙂Now compare it to the last rep at 7: you were already earlier on the blind (yay!) and you ran a really good line right past the wing (double yay!) and she read it SO nicely!!! So definitely keep pushing your luck and see how early you can leave her on those backsides – I bet she surprises you with how much she understands! And if she has questions, we will train more commitment.
As you work through the Package 2 courses, take a moment to read/watch the Package 3 overview – I think the section about watching her head to see if you have ‘permission’ to leave will help you trust her more on these 🙂
Great job here!! Let me know what you think 🙂
TracyHi! Welcome back, I am so excited about your new pup!! And I love the name Yowza!
And the photo worked 🙂 What a cutie!
I am looking forward to seeing Yowza in action!! Have fun!
TracyHello and welcome to you and Lazlo! Great name for a gorgeous pup 🙂 RRs are very cool! I get to work with one, once a year, in New Zealand – AMAZING dog!!! YouTube popped up a video of your girl, I feel like I have met her – super cool!
And welcome to the world of pointy dogs 🙂 Whippets/whippet mixes are amazing – they different than any other dog I have every trained and I am loving it. They are brilliant! One thing I have noticed is that they learn really fast (which is common in a lot of breeds/mixes) but they *retain* better than any other breed/mix – not only do they remember what you’ve trained, but sometimes it is like they have been reading a few chapters ahead and they come to the next session with the rest of the behavior learned in advanced LOL! I am excited to see him work! Where is he from?
On the videos:
Pre-Game 1: lordy, he is gorgeous. He looks Ridgeback colored LOL!
Great job shaping the foot touch to the target! A couple of ideas for you:
He is a speedy critter already… so have your treats in your hands before you start – maybe 4 or 6 treats so that you can click and get the treat in immediately. Reaching into your pocket is building in him looking at you (which dilutes the foot smack a bit), so faster treat delivery will keep him looking at the target. And when you need to reload, you can move away, grab another little handful, then start again.>> but then as I moved away a bit, they got a little sloppy and more like drive-bys without duration.
I think that had to do more with him watching your treat hands 🙂 So he will be more accurate on the target with quick cookie tosses when he doesn’t have time to watch you get the treats out. Plus, there is a good element of self-control layered in when the pup has to ignore a handful of treats 🙂
>>Do we care at this stage? I’m not sure if we are going for duration/accuracy, or just any front foot hit.
We don’t care about duration, just that he hits it. Go for a very clear front foot hit (your clicks were spot on for that). He does not need to have duration (meaning, he does not need to hit the target and stay on it) so you can click and toss the treat to the side (rather than deliver it to him) – which will get him off the target and reset the next rep, so he can move to it and smack it again 🙂
I think you can go into the Sends game, he looks ready! And you can do this game with a toy as well.
Nose touch to the target looks fabulous – great touch and great timing with your ‘yes’ marker. I have the same suggestion for this as with the foot target: have the treats in your hand so you move it in really really fast, placing it near the target – that will help us convince him to look at his target and not at the momma as much 🙂
I will be introducing what we are using this for on Saturday 🙂Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
