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Hi!
OMG, -10…. eek!! It is ‘deep winter’ here with temps in the high 30s and I am FREEZING hahahahahaha definitely not spring but definitely not -10 🙂 Stay warm!This session went beautifully! She never even looked at the Pet Tutor. Brilliant girlie!!! Your FC “pop offs” were great. You can add in going straight – lead out less, keep moving and release so she gets forward motion and should go to the Pet Tutor. Mix that in with the decel, on both sides. I really don’t expect her to have any problems with it but it will be a good challenge. And good for indoor training!!
>>I honestly thought she would go right for the Pet Tutor (especially since she was doing some running contact mat work right before hand where she did go to it.) She blew my mind here. I even moved it closer for the last couple reps to test us more. Love the efforts of my baby girl here.>>
I agree – she was awesome! And we need the dogs to understand that certain behaviors are independent of our body language (contacts, weaves) and that others are entirely dependent on body cues (or verbals) – jumps are definitely all about watching the physical cues. She nailed it!
>>Full disclosure I had just gotten out of the shower so hair is wrapped up and comfy clothes on. I figured at this point what the heck, might as well provide some entertainment since we have all been together trying to keep our sanity and puppies trained the last 7 months lol.>>
Ha! See, I would not have even noticed if you hadn’t mentioned it – I only noticed the pants because I thought they were cute and fun looking 🙂 Over the summer, I got myself a little together for videos but at this point, I am all about pajamas and pony tails hahaha!
Great job 🙂
TracyHi!
The minny pinny went nicely! It is serving our purpose of naming the left and right behavior – great job starting on angles and also with delivering the reinforcement on the bend line, so he could really follow through on the left or right turn. He is treating it like a bending cavaletti, doing a nicely balanced trot. That is perfect for this age and he is sorting out how to work his body. Eventually this turns into a bounce grid but he is a little young for that (I generally don’t do that with big male dogs til closer to 10 months). He seemed pretty equal on both the left and the right, which is great!!!
>>On the first few reps, I clicked out of habit. And I saw his reaction to the click and clipping the bar, so I stopped.>>
Oh, I feel that! For some things I make sure I leave the clicker in the car (not even in the house where I would be tempted to pick it up LOL!) One other thing I noticed is that he finds the moment you reach for the cookies in your pocket to be a distraction. 2 ideas for that: in your ‘wrap the wing while I fidget’ game, add in reaching in and out of your pocket to help him not be as distracted by it. And on the minny pinny games – have the treats already in your hand and not moving until after he has exited the bend. This will help him learn the two skills of ‘ignore the treats’ an ‘use your bod’ separately, then we can add them together 🙂
Great job here!!
TracyHi –
>>Your feet stay parallel to dogs path even for the send?>>
It will ultimately depend on the angle of entry the dog is coming from, but on parallel path where the dog is already on the line to the backside – there is no reason for an additional step so we don’t use it in the teaching progression either. And on simple lines of entry – we don’t handle with a step anymore and it is really easy to get the behavior without it (that app has been updated, thanks to the Russians and Germans :)) If the angle of send if very severe, I might use a send step. So we teach it from the ground up without reliance on send steps except on very severe angles.
Tracy
Good morning!
>>Good reminder that someday we will be back in person and with other dogs doing things around us. So I put his harness on and got him tugging (it took a few tries before he really grabbed the toy) and then asked for a few tricks and ditched the harness in the middle before setting him up.>>
Perfect! I am trying to make lists of all the things we would normally have shown the pups by now without even thinking about, so we can show them before they have to go out into the world LOL! My dogs have been basically off leash for a year, so…. I need to get going with leash games LOL!
The decel games look really good!
He thought doing it from a stay at the tunnel exit was STOOOOOPID so I am glad you went to the sequences pretty quickly. He was great with his collections! The one time he did not commit was at 1:19 – I think that was just a matter of being too disconnected. He was fine on all the other reps where you had a tiny bit more eye contact.
When you added the sends:
he had a question at 1:32 and rear crossed: 2 ideas for you:
– don’t say go (use your left wrap there) – I think you said go or maybe jump? But the wrap verbal you used on the other reps is better suited (I don’t think the verbal was the source of the question, though)
– step more to the wrap wing and be a little more upright. On that rep, look at your feet and arm on the send, they were definitely moving towards the center of the bar which is more of the RC cue.
Watch is in super slow motion (Youtube let me put it into 25% speed) – he was heading to the wrap wing until your arm got involved at 1:32 with the point to the center of the bar, which then pushed him to center of the bar and to the RC line. So he was already considering the RC – then your left leg at 1:33 pointed to the RC line and that affirmed the RC decision for him. Really interesting to see in slow motion! So, standing up more an sending to the wing more than the bar will help, then push off the send leg to step back and do the FC element.You can see the difference at 1:48, where you were a little more upright and not sending to the center of the bar as much and he was great.
On the other side at 1:59 – really nice mechanics on the send and wrap verbal, he was great.
The Go balance rep looked good !
Nice simple decel at 2:35! More connection will make it perfect when you are trying to handle ‘for real’. I am super glad about his nice tight turn!
At 2:49, doing the bigger drill on the other side -this was similar to the send at 1:32 with too much pressure into the RC line there – is he a righty? The extra bit of pressure on the send might be turning him to his stronger side – note that you are pointing to center of the bar and when he is approaching the jump at 2:50, he changed leads preparing for a right turn.
He ended up turning left because nothing else about the handling said right turn, so he decided to wrap left (good boy).>> And got one send where I was getting really excited at how tight he was turning and then realized he was trying to get something off the floor! (maybe a dropped treat?)>>
That was great! LOL!!! Just think of it as a well-placed reward for his good decision there!)
I liked your send mechanics at 3:17 – he never considered right turn there (but the pressure of the initial send cue did cause him to shape a wider line to the wrap jump – interesting! So keep doing the softer send cues that are to the wing and a bit more upright. That is where he does his best 🙂
Overall, though, it was really cool to watch him be able to read the decel and sending soooo nicely!!!
Great job on these! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>Are you still accepting videos?>>
Yes 🙂 Bring it on!
On the video:
The Go versus left in the beginning looked good! With the first left cue he went straight – I think you were blocking his line, a little too far up the line – so he didn’t know how to toss you out of the way to make the turn 🙂 The rest looked good!!And the backside through the box also looked really good! And the FCs also looked good- great connection, nice tight turns, he never looked in the wrong place. Nice!!!
Getting the backside on the inner wing in the middle of the box is REALLY hard. The trick is to NOT roll your shoulder while trying to cue it – move to position and keep your arm back and say the verbal. When you also rolled your shoulder to point to it, it added a bit of a motion cue which blocked the line a bit and also pinged him back out to the other jump.
Positional cue is important on these so he knows which backside you mean. The positional cue is heading towards where the bar meets the wing, so he sees the full wing.
For example, at 1:24 you were blocking his line/view of the wing you wanted. But at 1:31, your position was good and he nailed it:) And having good position plus arm back – lots of good reps when you did that!
At 1:48, your “fuck yes” almost made me pee from laughing LOL!!!!! Please warn me so I can potty before watching your videos LOL!!! LOL!!! But yes, it was worthy of that marker 🙂 Nice position an connection, you didn’t roll your shoulders until after he was committed to the line.When he had trouble, it was the shoulder turning as you were also moving up the line that was causing the question: he was feeling your motion as sideways motion to the line (same as forward motion) and it ended up blocking the line. The best reps were when you were moving more directly to where the wing meets the bar, rather than downstream (which presented the line more towards the off course jump). Let me know if that makes sense.
>>One thing I noted on what I think was our very last rep was that he was on the correct line and changes. I’m assuming I did something to make him question his path.>>
That was the combo of turning/rolling your shoulders to indicate the backside before he was past you, with the slight sideways motion on the line produced by that shoulder turn. It pushes him off it.
>>Is there anything from the class that you’d like to see is revisit- I realize you are instructing several classes and students and if nothing jogs your memory 100% okay.>>
I drink a lot of coffee so my memory is decent LOL!!!
I would say the two things are:
the collection and left/right soft turns (not the minny pinny, although that is always good to revisit, but the proofing games before that with the 2nd jump as the distraction 🙂 Those will be SUPER useful for a young dog at the start of his career.
and also doing the serpentine on this through the box game – where you are on the serpentine/landing side of the jump so he drives in to you and doesn’t stay out on the line – that is a good one for him!Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Sorry for any confusion!
Using the set up that you have at the beginning of the video, you can tweak it to add height – raise the teeter to full height or closer to full height. And use a taller table on one end and a taller thing on the other end (taller lawn chair? LOL!) So the teeter is higher and height is in play – but the tip is the same or less (you don’t want to add tip AND height as new challenges at the same time).
The demo in my video is the full height teeter and very tall things supporting it – so there is lots of height without a lot of tip.
Let me know if that makes sense or if I need more coffee 🙂
T
hi! I think the teeter class has a lot of different elements – the stuff we did here is the foundation for the early stuff but there are a lot more advanced games to play 🙂
And the weaves class will be fun!! There is a bit of a double discount – you can sign up for both as an auditor for the combo discount and also be sure to use the coupon code – and then if you wanted to bump up to working in the weaves class, I can do that separately.
TracyGood morning! He is doing well here! The cone helped with the generalizing for sure! The other thing to do on the wings to help strengthen value is transfer the earlier games to a wing (like the game with the 2 bowls using the wing instead of the cone, and also a bit of shaping where he gets rewarded with a cookie on the other side of the wing to help him leave your hand. That will allow you to build up the wing value very quickly, which makes the sends even easier and then the cone is easy to fade.
On the sends, be sure you are connected by looking pretty directly at him – he did brilliantly when you were looking at him. But when you looked ahead, he questioned – compare the send at 1:01 (where he didn’t go to the wing) versus 1:07 (where he did) – it was all about connection 🙂 When you looked ahead and not at him at 1:01, he was not sure. Connection was great at 1:07 so he went to the wing. Often, when we are not connected, pups will grab for the toy or treats so sometimes the oopsie is blamed on the toy distraction when it is just lack of connection. So keep that in mind on the next session.The horse distraction sounds really hard for ANY dog, not just a puppy LOL!! Being able to call him back is a massive triumph 🙂 Yay!!! He will be able to work through it in the future, but getting a recall was a great start 🙂
Nice work here!
TracyGood morning! This is looking really good!!! I think your connection looks really good, he seemed to have no question about that here. Yay! And good job mixing in rewards tossed back to the barrely-things 🙂 I think his only questions had to do with the treats:
at the very beginning, he didn’t commit right away – because the treats were moving 🙂 Your right hand reached for the cookies in the left hand and he totally found that distracting. That is pretty normal, so an adjunct game (perfect for indoors in the crappy weather coming later this week) is to sit right near a wing or cone or something that already has a ton of value: and fiddle with the treats, move the treats, etc. – and when he offers the wrap, he gets a treat. It is basically taking the wrapping with the bowls and adding cookie movement as a deliberate distraction, so he learns to ignore the hands moving.And then the only other thing was that he had a little trouble finding the tossed treats. You can try for treats of a contrasting color (bits of string cheese is perfect for that) and also a get it cue of some sort – that way he won’t get confused about when he should look for the treats that are moving, versus when he should not. Let me know if that makes sense!
And if you have green grass… add in more distance and see how he does when you are moving faster 🙂
Nice work! Have fun!
TracyHi!
Her stays are coming along nicely! The Pizza moments make me smile every single time LOL! I just love that word for it LOL!!!!
One thing to do as you build up getting past the jump – be extra sure that you release from a different spot each time. Dogs are brilliant at figuring out our patterns and I think she is anticipating that you will release her when you get about 2 feet past he jump LOL!! So sometimes release before you get to the jump, sometimes at the jump, sometimes 2 feet after it, sometimes 6 feet after it… mix it up so she can’t guess LOL!>> She like lifts her foot, but then she knows she has to stay and puts it back down. I was wondering if I could put this on Facebook? I want to show her breeder.>>
OMG that was funny! “Oops, I didn’t mean to move my foot, let me put it back” Ha!
You can totally put any of this on Facebook! She is doing awesome and you can show her off to the world 🙂Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
I think the rotated sends are looking fabulous! You had some decent distance from the barrel, which made it harder but she got it. Nice! She is really good turning to her right but it was much harder turning to her left at first. I think the difficulty was more the reason she was jumping up and not the toy (she didn’t jump up for it on any of the reps where she had to turn to her right, and she didn’t jump up for it when she figured out the left turns).
But she did figure them out really nicely, so you can start to add a bit of the countermotion: when she is arriving at the barrel, you start to move away the other direction. Slowly at first so she maintains her commitment. Then move away earlier and earlier, so she is committing while you are already going the next direction 🙂
Great job! Have fun!
TracyGood morning!
>> It’s fun. lol. >>
Exactly! It is fun and totally worth doing a few times. The thing that agility dogs need to do on course is find the line in front of them, so this is GREAT to build value for!
On the video:
this looks really good! I think on the one error at :25, you didn’t hold connection long enough before you started to move away so she didn’t quite have the time to connect with you before you turned your shoulder. You can move but the connection must be crystal clear with baby dogs – you were moving and turning forward which broke connection. Adult dogs are likely to not have a problem, but baby dogs are every literal and will end up on the jump 🙂Otherwise it looked great. The only thing I would add now is more motion from you! You can jog as much as possible at home, or try it at Bonnie’s where you have more room. The goal of adding more motion from you is two things:
– can you stay connected AND move faster? Sounds easier than it is haha
– can she keep her lovely thoughtful behavior while you move faster? What I mean by that is, will she find the jump? Or, will she get too excited by your movement and just chase you (and this is where some pups jump up or bite the handler). If she does get too excited, you can slow down a little to wherever she can handle it. If it is easy… then go faster 🙂 Wheee!
Great job!
TracySounds good! I personally try to make things as much the same as possible for all my dogs, because I think later this year I will be running 4 maybe 5 dogs at trials… and I don’t have the brain power to remember all those different things. LOL! So it has to be the same for me or I will screw it up 🙂
T
Hi! We talk about it here and there in this class – but you will find a lot of info and demos in this free facebook class:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1074089192764113/
>>On another note for the upcoming classes do you have a working spot + audit combo.>>
On the teeter class and the weaves class, we don’t have live working sessions same as we did here – but everyone is welcome to join the live Q&A sessions where we will give in the moment feedback, either live if possible or on video. More info on that soon!
And great news about the teeter progress! Yay!!!!
T
