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Hooray for the links! Macklynn is terrific!
Looking at the foot target video: Overall this is a really strong session. You made progress towards the end behavior we want, and we got good ‘feedback’ from her about what helps her get the behavior.
She is VERY engaged with you and happy to focus on you – I think she was offering her sit and down because she has been rewarded a lot for them 🙂 And also possibly because of how your hands were positioned up high, drawing her focus to you.To get more touching the foot target and less offering sits/downs, you can change the placement of your reward: if she interacts in any way with the target, use your marker (I think you were using ‘search’ for a thrown cookie?) and throw it off to the side. Then as she comes back towards you, you can throw the treat the other direction pretty early: try to mark the moment she looks at the target and not at you 🙂 and throw the treat.The treats being tossed to the side will help her realize that the sit and down are not it – it is about smacking the target.
>I need to increase my energy level>
Your energy level during the ‘offer me something’ moments was perfect. Calm and quiet! And I think you were lovely in the tugging moments too! Be your normal self 🙂
When you go back to tugging, you can hide the treats for now and use a long toy so it is easier to chase. When you got back on the ground and squiggled the toy around, she really engaged brilliantly!>I’m worried that I’m frustrating her by waiting to shape what I’m wanting.>
I think she was happy to work through it here, but any time she offers a stationary position when you want her to move to interact with something, you can switch to thrown treats 🙂
The toy you used for the nose touch game was perfect: nice and long and she really liked it 🙂 Her boop is going great! She seems to be very clear that hitting the hand is the key to the reward and you didn’t get any relaxed downs til the end. The tossed treats helped keep her moving so her down at the end might have been that all of the treats kind of chilled her out with you low to the ground. That is where breaking it off to play tug more will help, and you can remain standing.
This game turns into a handling game, so for your next session you can do the same thing but with some type of visible target in your hand (like a plastic lid or something like that).
Great job here!!
TracyHi! What a brilliant girlie she was here: tugging, driving forward, and ignoring all the distractions of the great outdoors! Add in the super cute pounce on the toy and it was a lovely session!!
Since this is going really well, we can keep advancing it: in the next session do everything the same except throw the toy a little further, and when you let her go to drive to it, you are also going to start walking forward. If this motion draws her attention back to you/away from the toy, you can move very slowly so she keeps focusing on the toy.
Great job!
Tracy
Hi! The links came through: yay!! They are marked as private so youtube won’t let me see them: can you set them to unlisted?
Thanks!
TracyGood morning! Hope you had a fun vacation after the huge success at the Invitational!!
Great job with the moving target pre-game! Lots of rewards helped his stay be super solid and it looks like he was looking at the toy and not at you when you released.
The toy was nice and long, so you didn’t have to bend over at all either. And he could easily scoop it up while running: perfect! Is it a sheep toy tied to a hollee roller? LOL!
Adding the jump was no trouble at all for him. Super!
Since this went so well, you can start with the set point game when it gets posted tomorrow.
>I have been working on his sit mechanics on a sit platform as well as his stays. I hope the improvement is visible!>
OMG yes!!! Big difference, his feet are nice and tight under him!!!!! Yay!
>I’m really conflicted about using 2 different words for the wraps right/left.>
We can prioritize the verbals based on where you think his career will take him (and how courses might evolve in coming years). For now, you can do one wrap verbal and it is definitely possible to add another later on. But, if you have a wrap verbal that means ‘towards me’, you will also need one that means ‘away from me’. There is no escape from all the verbals lately especially as the courses get bigger and there is more layering needed.
Great job here! Have fun!
Tracy
Good morning and welcome back!!! We might need a teenage dog support group – my pup is 9 months too LOL!!! I am excited to see Quill play these games!
Tracy
Good morning and welcome back!!! It will be fun to get back in gear – I am sure Gruff is ready to work & play (he is always ready :))
Have fun!!
Tracy
Hello and welcome back!! This will be great fun with Tarot: she looked lovely on the video! We can really focus on commitment to jumps & lines when she is ahead as well as add more distance too! FUN!!!!
You will be busy with both classes, so be sure to set a timer so each dog gets a short turn 🙂 Have fun!
Tracy
Hi!
With one working spot, you can alternate videos – Bandit get videos for one game, Copper gets videos for a different game, etc 🙂T
Good morning!
I have been secretly hoping that you would start training Lew in agility 🙂 I am glad that your hubby saw his brilliance and agreed to a career in sports 🙂
>We haven’t done much by way of puppy-puppy foundations for sport-life up to now but he really gets excited to train.>
Letting a tiny pup grow up a bit before training is perfect!
>He is quick to talk back if he is frustrated and that is a first for me.>
I like that he is an effective communicator 🙂
>He has finally decided that he likes food, so that changes the game for me!>
Perfect! That does make life so much easier in training.
>Same pajamas, different puppy! >
Classic!!!! We should do a compilation of the pajamas over the years LOL!!! Mine are also the same haha
The pregames are going great! He is definitely engaged and happy to offer! And I see what you mean about him communicating his anger when the treats are not coming fast enough LOL!
He is SUPER quick in his movements – he moves towards the prop then smacks you with his foot LOL!! So you can reward him for moving towards it/looking at it, getting the click/reward in early and before he smacks you. Then you will start getting more of the foot smacks you were getting at the end of the session.
The next step here is to begin working your way up to standing: I think a good intermediate step is having you in a chair and if he is fine with that, you can go to standing in the same session.
Nose touch video:
Look at his toy drive! Wow!!! Super!! And he dove on the toy at the end even after all those cookies. Yay!The nose touches went really well!
Bearing in mind that he doesn’t have a long nose at all, you can read a lot of moving towards the target. It looks like he was touching it nicely here but as we add more speed in upcoming games, he might not want his eyes that close to the target is it fine to reward just before he gets to it.Great job here! He looks awesome!
Tracy
Good morning and welcome!!!! Bandit is so tiny compared to Copper! But they are both adorable 🙂
Bandit has lovely toy drive! You might want to tie a couple of toys together so he can tug with one end of the toy on the ground while you are tugging and eventually standing. He might still try to come up a little higher on the toy which is perfectly fine, but at least we are giving him option to get low and pull back on the toy. And it will save your back from bending over a lot while you tug 🙂 The toy in the 2nd video was longer and it looked easier to tug on when you were standing.
The nose target went well! Was it a post it note? I approve LOL!!!!
Part of this session was about sorting out how to structure the session – keeping the toy hidden for now really helped him focus on the target. And you did a great job of moving the treats slowly so he could lock onto the rewards and where you were placing them – brilliant! He won’t need that for long, but he is only 9 weeks old so the shaping sessions will include a lot of teaching him where to look for the rewards for a bit.
I LOVE his happy exhuberance in the forward focus driving to the toy session! SO CUTE!!! He was brilliant about looking at the toy, and seemed very happy to let you line him up and hold his collar (side note: Papillons and Pap mixes sometimes do NOT like the collar hold, so we make it super fun really early in training).
Since he was brilliant here, you can add a bit of duration: throwing the toy and letting him stare at it for another second or two before letting him go. And you can also add distance by throwing it further.
He is not running away with it, so after he gets the toy you can help him come back by enticing him back to you or even showing him a 2nd toy: we will be working on retrieves in this class and it starts with ‘don’t run away with the toy’ LOL
When you’ve got a bit more distance, we will also get you standing up for this game because it leads into adding handler motion.
The foot target video also looked strong! He got thoughtful about interacting with the object which is good! You can add in a tug break after every 3 or 4 cookies to keep his excitement high and to continue building the skill of going from food to toys to food.
For this game, he probably needs one more session to really get the foot snack going 🙂 then you can dive into the first ‘prop game’ posted today.
Great job!
Tracy
