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Yay! I am glad to hear he was able to do his tricks and eat treats at Tractor Supply – that is a pretty distracting place!!!
T
Hi there!!!
>> It was the first time he’d seen a MM so now will work on getting him off of it now that he knows the joy of it.
Yes, the MM does bring joy to so many dogs LOL!!!
Foot targeting:
He definitely is getting good value on the foot target, yay! One thing to add now is to be clearer on your transitions into it. You were moving a lot but it was not clear if you were sending or wanting him to offer the target. That is why he sometimes went to it, sometimes looked at you. So after each reward, call him back, reset, then send him to it. That will allow him to know when to offer and then you can really build in countermotion.
He did well on the tugging, especially in the 2nd tug break! On the first one, you can throw the toy around more and get him to chase you more to get the game going.Retrieve games:
glad he likes tugging on you, it builds value for end position of the retrieve 🙂 You can add in letting him take the toy and run with it as a reward for tugging up on you2nd video –
Yes, he drops when you move too quickly and did better when you were stationary – so stay stationary for a while and try not to give him an uh oh if he drops (the drop means you were late rewarding him during the training stage :))
Keep building on this turning towards you, I think this is going well! You can sit on a floor and that might make it look less like you are going to move away. Ping pong the amount of time before the reward/party: a head turn, then a step, then a head turn, then a couple of steps, then 1 step, then try for 4 steps, etc.
One other thing is to shape him to ‘target’ something with the toy. It is a great shaping challenge! For example, to get Voodoo to retrieve the ball for flyball (he would spit it as soon as I moved), I used a clicker to shape him to target the ball to a huge empty bowl. Bam! Lightbulb on: dropping the ball in the bowl got the c/t and big party. Then I replaced the bowl with my hand (targeting the ball to my hand) – and now he retrieves the ball in flyball, which works out to be approximately 75 feet! I might have video somewhere of the shaping stage.
Nice work here! Have a great Christmas and I hope Spot enjoys his party at the kennel 🙂Tracy
Good morning!
I like that you worked on a ‘thoughtful’ session of body awareness and a wild & crazy session with the blinds – really nice balance in your training!I think she was confused about what to offer on the first part of the first video – you were wanting leg bumps I believe, but the proximity of the ladder caused her to want to show off her ladder skills 🙂 It was definitely clearer when you moved a bit further away.
I love how easily she can go back and forth from food to toys!
On the leg bumps – she seemed comfy with it so you can start adding the bending by holding her near on of your hips and tapping the reward on the other side of you near your other hip, ot help her ‘bounce’ through your leg grid – that will get more speed and mechanics going on this, using your body as a mini bending grid 🙂She seems to remember the ladder! Time for more challenge – you can stand up more and walk more, letting her trot for more steps (she isn’t hopping which is great). By standing up, you can drop the treats in or toss them ahead, to help keep her head straight. When you were bending over, she was looking at you more because the food was so present and coming from your outside arm, which was encouraging a bit of curling into you. When you drop the treats in, do it from the dog-side hand so she can continue to look ahead.
I believe she is ready for a bit more challenge here too, in the form of the ladder being elevated by an inch or so – the desired behavior is still a nice balanced trot, but now she will have to think about foot placement. I am not sure if this ladder has feet you can put on it to get it a little lifted off the ground? Or a regular human ladder can work too, with rounded rungs, because those will be a little taller.She was offering backing up too (at the very beginning) so you can add in backing up out of the ladder. 2 ways to incorporate this: You can start her in the middle of the ladder and have her back up through it so she only has to step over a run or two. Or, you can start her in the ladder at the 2nd or 3rd-to-last rung, so she backs up out of the ladder. Eventually, she can back up all the way through the ladder – such a difficult skill but so great for coordination! She is showing excellent coordination already, so I believe she is ready for more challenge 🙂
Cookie recalls:
The first rep was a front cross with good reward mechanics. The second rep was a SUPER nice blind cross! You had a FC or two thrown in there during the session, but the bulk were really nice blinds with correct reward mchanics- I love how she drives straight into you on those – no flanking or asking questions or slowing down.
Your videographer was perfect – funny AND providing excellent distractions LOL!!I think the reward-across-the-body is opening up some really beautiful connection, exactly what will make for terrific teamwork out there on course in the future. It is really clear to see on the angle of the video. Lanna is relatively small (and it is harder to make good connection with the littler dogs) but it looks great here!
The mechanics might be a bit uncomfortable right now, but I think you will get more and more confy as you play with this. We will be applying it to all sorts of things as we build the concepts of handling! So fun!!Plus, because it is clear to her, she can dig in and go FAST. And fast is exactly what we want 🙂
Well done here 🙂
TracyGood morning!
OMG the background noise was AMAZING! LOL!!!!!! Star Wars, Toller edition LOL!
The boys did well here – dual training is hard ineed but it looks like you had a nice high rate of reinforcement so they were able to do it! I have also found that the older dogs have a harder time than the puppies on this game! Keep playing with this, to expand it to one dog watching as you shape something or tug with the other – I think you can build it up to having them relax and watch the other run agility courses!Good update on the Tractor Supply adventure! He sounds like is was really interested in all of the sights and sounds, in a good way. Greeting happily is terrific! Was he able to eat treats and respond to things to earn the treats? I am thinking yes, he probably was, based on what you mentioned. If he can eat treats and relax, then the tugging will follow: pouncing on the toy is a great start! And Tractor Supply is pretty darned distracting 🙂 so it is a great place to go to play little games and socialize.
Nice work!!
TracyGood morning!
Lots of good stuff here!
First up, reverse retrieve: he is doing really well with both getting the toy AND bringing it back! Yay!!! A couple of ideas for the next steps:
take a moment after you drop the toy to get him more focused on it – drop the toy, restrain him, give a little “ready, ready…” and when he looks at the toy, cue the get it and run away. That will get even more speed and build in some good focus forward on these transitions.
You can also add in calling his name as you run away, simulating what you’d be doing on an agility course – this will add even more speed on the retrieve element while challenging the toy bringing too!
When he gets to you, you can mix in tugging with the original toy – I think on all of these, you traded for a different toy (which is fine) but you can also tug on the toy he brings. Mix it all up, he is being really terrific so we can build on it.Foot targeting:
I think a couple of things will get more drive to the target – yes, you can do more of the shaping on the Baby Level, but on the sends here are some things that can help clarify for him:
Make a clean reset and transition before each send – line him up on your side, hold the collar or gently push back on his check, use a little ‘ready steady’ chatter, wait for him to look forward towards the target – then send using the dog-side arm & leg. On the first several sends, you had the opposite arm and leg sending which caused him to look at you and not send as well.So clean transitions will really help – you added that at approx 2:41 and the behavior got sharper immediately. Nice!!!I also recommend rewarding with a tossed reward out on the target for now – it looks like the value is mainly on you (rewards back at you) so he doesn’t really want to leave 🙂 So on the sends – click then toss the reward at or past the target. It will be easy enough to shift the value back to you if he drives to the target but doesn’t want to come back LOL! A larger target can also make it easier, as it is easier to get paws on it to clarify what behavior you are clicking (some of the clicks were early so he didn’t actually touch it).
Hiking around on weird stuff is the BEST possible goat trick 🙂 Great for conditioning too! Love it! Have you noticed any sensitivity to noise or motion? He looks perfectly happy here on this clip!
And yay for a good plan with Pat Miller! Sounds like she is hitting on ALL the things to help him out, and that is great 🙂 Keep me posted!!
Tracy
Hey there!
Great session!!! Super gold star to Spy for eating the cookies… usually the BCs are not interested in the cookies when the chase game is on LOL! You did a great job working the mechanics of the reward across the body – I know it is weird but it is SO useful (I totally stole it from the big name Europeans, so I figured it is good enough for us to use too haha). And yes, it does open up great connection – note how he is straight as an arrow driving to you! No flanking or slowing down or anything, just freight train straight up the line: exactly what we want! 2 of the reps were pretty late, so you can chalk those into the “momma is going to sometimes be late, please help the momma out and make the side change anyway” column (which is a game that I *do* play with the dogs :)). The others were fine and he read it really well! Also, as he gets more experienced, he will be able to respond on the first part of the head turn and not wait to see the whole picture, which will make timing much easier for you.
Excellent job here! His countermotion looked good so you can definitely add in the foot targeting games!Tracy
Hi! The Bravery Course looks a little like my living room hahaha!! It had some really fun ideas for super weirdo things for the dogs to interact with along with more normal looking things. Such great stuff for puppies! He seemed completely fine with everything except maybe having to get his leash back on LOL! He probably needs some recalls off the Manners Minder, so he learns to eat his MM treats then comes back to work then back to MM and so on – that way he doesn’t avoid being reached for when the MM is around 🙂
Nice work here! The next step would be to let him offer more on these mini obstacle courses so he can leave you more and not follow the cookie as much.
TracyGood question!!!!
I generally only reward at the target on those reps, but that is with a pup who automatically re-engages with me (lucky me!!). My previous pup did not have natural engagement like that as a pup, so I would give a small reward for coming back and engaging. Let Lanna guide you, I think she is more like Hot Sauce in that she is likely to naturally engage, so a reward at the target is all you’ll need. But it is also fine to mix it all up, keep her on her toes 🙂
TracyGood morning! She is doing well with the concepts here and the value for the target looks really strong. Yay! A couple of ideas for you:
On the sending forward (in the early part of the video) and in the step backs (later in the video), add in a clearer transition into the send so she knows when to leave you and also so you don’t have to take more than one step. You can engage her, talk to her, give her a bit of a ready steady…. then the one step (forward or backwards :)) That will also get more speed to the target.
One thing I see here (which is a common thing as we teach these skills) – she is faster coming back to you then sending away from you (pretty normal at this stage and good to identify!). To balance the speed and get as much speed leaving as driving back, balance out the placement of rewards. All of the rewards here were back at you (which helps explain the speed difference) so be sure to toss at least 50% of the rewards out to the target while you are sending and/or moving away. You might end up putting more than 50% of the rewards out there when she hits it, and that is fine! Let her speed dictate any shifts in placement of reward: if she shifts to leave you on the sends at warp speed but is slow or sticky to come back… shift the value back to rewards from your hand. That value will shift back and forth throughout the training process, so look for any speed differences.
>>I see that I am leaning over, sigh
I think you were fine, I didn’t notice the leaning over as a bad thing here. It all looked pretty natural to me. Sends tend to lean us a bit – either leaning into a forward send or leaning away from the step back – as long as it was connected and natural, it is fine 🙂 She seemed to think it was connected and natural too!
>>The run off in the middle was to a toy lying on the ground. It struck me as a frustration/confusion behavior (I’d love your opinion).
I think it was a combo of things – the toy tossed behind you definitely was a hard distraction (note how she looks at it when you toss it there). She was a good girl to head to the target (I *think* she touched it with at least one foot? Hard to tell?) and then you had turned and moved towards the toy… so she had a “nailed it!” moment LOL! She likely thought the toy was the reward – but then you reacted and she might have had an uh-oh! moment. So it began as what she might’ve thought was a legit reward then a little bit of confusion. This is where you can use the toy as a reward (starting her closer to the target so she has a better hit) and also you can toss treats out at the target when she hits it, to balance the value of leaving you to hit the target, especially when the toy is visible.
Overall, really good session! She is still targeting nicely as you show countermotion and rotation, which is going to be super helpful when we add in cones & wings and tunnels and such. Super fun!
Nice work!
TracyYes, you can use anything – a perch or shoe or any random object 🙂 We transfer it to wings/cones/uprights eventually, when the understanding to come around is fluent.
T
Hi there!
I would personally not use the RDW mat for this – the behavior that I use on the RDW mat has to do with the rear feet, and that could get messy/diluted on this behavior. For the handling games, I am happy with a “touch it anyway you need to” criteria and I don’t care if the pup pounces on it, whacks it with a front foot only, stands on it, etc – all things that are not likely to be desirable on a RDW mat 🙂 The RDW mat proofing is more likely to involve more specific criteria, so I would keep the concepts separate for now. When HS was a wee puppy learning this (before the RDW mat work), I used a baseball cap as her “obstacle” for these games 🙂 to keep the RDW looking really different.Food for thought!
TracyHi again!
On the perch work – He did a good job of getting his front feet right on it. I think the bit of gentle pressure of one foot moving towards his back foot will help him isolate back feet (not your whole body, just stay in front of him and reach out with your leg/foot). By turning his head, he is likely only thinking about his head 🙂 plus if you use too much movement, it is harder to fade the movement out.You can also add in a clicker: getting on the perch with front feet gets a bit of quiet “good boy” praise but a click/treat for the back foot movement might help him realize that it is back feet we are hoping for.
>> I left the play part in because when he thought there was food on the ground he didn’t want the toy. Eventually he went for it, but had to work at it. Any thoughts on that?
He was probably in the center of a pool of scent, plus near the perch, plus near the cookie couch… so the toy wasn’t as salient. Moving it around more and getting him moving really helped, so working it til he engaged was really good! Yay! If he struggles in that situation, you can throw the toy or move to the other side of the room – that will get the tug toy more salient and he will likely engage very quickly.
Nice work on these!
TracyBravery Day LOL! I bet the dogs thought is was “Humans Are Weird But We Will Happily Eat Their Cookies Day” haha!
On the couch cushion – if Wager tries to jump in, be sure to reward Spot before telling Wager to get back on his place 🙂 Spot seemed perfectly happy to get on the cushion, movement and all. You can add tugging on the wobbly cushion – that adds an element of weight shift that makes it a little harder. You can also do position changes: sit, stand, down as he keeps the cushion stable under him.
I think he is ready for sme noise! A baking pan or bubble wrap are great for indoor use. Do you have a wooden wobble board? If he is comfy on one of those, you can put it on hard surfaces to create noise.T
Hi there!
It is fine to post several videos – the previous issue was due to a limit of # of videos that we didn’t know about, but we fixed that so you can post 20 videos per post or something like that 🙂Dual training:
it is great that you already started this, it is so helpful! Both boys seemed to do well on this (hi Wager!). You had Spot them hold a down which is fine, but you can also have it be “just stay on the station (couch)” so you don’t have to maintain criteria of the down when you are further from the station (outdoors, for example). Either way is fine, and they did really well! Yes, continue on your plan to fade out the hand signal, I don’t think he needs it at this point. And you can add in more active games/tricks – when you first add more excitement, be sure to raise the rate of reinforcement for the couch dog 🙂T
