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OMG that is SO FUNNY!!!!!!!! That is making me giggle, I can picture him doing it and being so proud of himself. LOL!!! Where is the video camera to capture moments like that? LOL!!!!
Thank you for sharing the story, I will be giggling about it all day, and look forward to the day when he is on some podium somewhere and we can giggle about it again 🙂T
Good morning! Hope you are enjoying this snowy weekend!
>>My positional cue for a threadle is a bent, opposite side arm across and close to my body with my hand closed in a fist. Your most recent suggestion on our Get Out video was that I start making my arm gesture more subtle. So, I’ll be working toward an opposite side arm that is pointing at a line rather than tight to my body and my hand will be open, rather than closed in a fist. Is this enough differentiation for the dog to recognize the difference?>>
Excellent question! It turns out that the dogs are able to recognize 4 or 5 different positions of the opposite arm (yes, I do obsess a lot LOL!) Verbals help this of course, but they are able to recognize them without verbals and while we are running. So for the threadle versus the get out arm this is what they are seeing (ideally)
– threadle: as you mentioned, it is a bent opposite arm across the body and close to the body. The other elements of the threadle arm are that we are generally pointing our threadle hand back to the dog’s eyes (which causes our opposite shoulder to rotate towards the dog as well), and also (from the female perspective) the arm cue is across the chest above the boobs.
– the get out arm: as you mentioned, it points at the line out ahead – that is away from the dog’s nose and it pulls the opposite shoulder ahead of the body and not towards the dog. It is away from our body (not across the chest) nd the height of the arm is generally at the bottom of our rib cage and not as high as the threadle arm
about open hand versus closed hand? I think that will be handler preference and doesn’t seem to make as much of a difference to the dogs, or at least not as much difference as arm position does. One thing that does seem to make a difference is movement of the hand: some dogs find it helpful for us to shake our threadle hand (I believe the scientific term is “shakey shakey” :)) and the get out hand is more stationary and frozen.
I have a video somewhere explaining the differences – let me find it, as I am sure it will make more sense than this under-caffeinated written description haha!!!
T
Hi! Really lovely session here!
On the first part of the video (I guess I am considering the first minute to be the first part LOL!), all of the threadles looked really good except very first rep. I am thinking it was a young dog error because he was a little excited and needed a warm up. On the second rep you were like HEY POTION IT IS A THREADLE and then he was great LOL!!!!
His understanding of the serp and tunnel cues looked really strong! Great job showing the different physical cues along with the verbals. On the tunnel rep at :46, you said “ok tunnel” so he zigged in towards you on the OK then back out on the tunnel – good boy 🙂 He was listening! For this game, you won’t want to say OK before the tunnel cue – but on a real course, it won’t be an issue ever because you will only find this challenge in the middle of a course, not from a stay 🙂On the second part of the video, he had the one threadle question. It might be that there were 2 new elements at once. Here is what I mean:
At :58 you were in a slightly different threadle spot (a little further past the entry wing) and he was set up on the same angle as precious reps. Your position was a great spot to challenge him with, he was perfect.
At 1:11 – you were in the slightly harder threadle spot plus he was also at a harder angle. This is on the where he went to the front of the bar and not the threadle. I think it was a combination of your new spot, his new spot, and perhaps your left foot twitched the tiniest bit 🙂 So when you change his angle, put yourself back in the easiest spot for now, which is closer to the entry wing so he can see you you completely on the in in side of it (and not any part of you across the bar, not yet). And stand perfect still because it is really hard 🙂The rest of the session looked great – you had him back on the easier threadle spot for these (which is perfectly fine as it is the place her will most commonly see threadles from), plus all the serps looked great. And on the tunnel rep, you didn’t say ok, you only said tunnel and he went directly to it. Yay!
I think you can start adding motion to the serp versus the tunnel – your feet move forward on the line but your upper body position stays in that ‘frozen’ position. And you can add threadle motion too, but on the easiest possible angles for him. Because he is young, the serp motion and commitment takes priority over threadles – he will need to do serps a lot sooner than he will need to do threadles on course.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Another excellent session here!
A few ideas, and a couple of answers for you:
When the Manners Minder gets involved, you can use the beep as the click and you don’t need to have the clicker in your hand.That way you can mark the behavior with the MM directly, which means the treats will be there before she arrives and you won’t feel like you need to attach a third arm to have all the things LOL!!!For this game, you can stand still as well (or sit LOL) – stand on a line so it goes you – mat – manners minder, Let her leave you to hit the mat and get the MM as the reward. Then it is perfectly fine for her to hit it on the way back to you – and you can reward again. I think rewarding with the tug for that is great because it asks her to do the mat behavior when she is a little wilder (which is always good to prepare her for running full out) and also because when the MM is out there, she was not as interested in tugging 🙂 She REALLY likes the MM haha! So adding the tugging will get her to maintain the balance of toys and food even as the MM takes on more and more value.
She is doing a great job with her foundations for the running dog walk, so I think it is very possible to have a great running DW with her! And Jedi’s generation (he is the exact same age as my Voodoo, they have the same birthday) doesn’t have the same benefit of us humans having a better procedure for training the running contacts – so I think Ruby’s generation will not need nearly as much maintainence and training, if that makes sense.Great job here!
TracyHi! This is also super nice! She is quite brilliant at this already. Two ideas for you, because we want this to be super independent:
– stand still 🙂 Let her do all the work haha!!! You can stand there or sit on a chair or even your couch 🙂 I am currently doing all of my running contact training from the couch, in my pajamas 🙂 And then you can click and toss a treat so she gets it then heads back to the mat 🙂
– have your treats ready on your hand, have a handful that is ready to go – she is so quick that she looks at you as you are getting the treat out and thrown, so have it ready so you can toss it before she looks back at you.
I love what she is doing and how she has added speed. Did you notice on the one rep where she missed that as you turned around to reset her, she went back to the mat and offered a perfect hit! Good girl!!!!Onwards to the next video 🙂
TracyGood morning! Yes, this was super easy for her! I think after all the goat games and shaping that this was easier than what she has done in the past. Very nice value building session here! I see you posted more so I will look at those before deciding what the best ‘next steps’ for her are 🙂 are you considering a running a-frame or dog walk for her?
T
I can’t believe he is 1 already! Time flies, but also I can’t believe he is only 1 – such a grown up dude!!!
I picked these games because I am trying to figure out how to help these pandemic puppies transition back to the real world, beyond crossing our fingers and hoping that the magically can focus haha! And I figured we were all going to have poopy weather. The ankle issue was just a surprise LOL! But I hope you heal up FAST so you can get back to running!
TracyHi!
>> A bit of Luring is okay to get her to trot. Yea. I did not want her to get in the habit of running through.
I have learned from the fitness professionals that is it perfectly fine to just use lures to get things started, because form is the most important thing. I used to NEVER use lures and now for this stuff, I am all like: let’s just put a cookie on the nose 🙂 I also use a tiny dab of peanut butter on a spoon.
>> Hmmm…wasn’t going to tell you but my Trainer had her doing it a wk ago and she let her run through and skip bars, take two bars at a time. Had the buckets on each end. I didn’t think it was right but I didn’t say anything.
No worries, one session won’t make a big difference 🙂
>>>Toss a treat out from the ladder. Ooo…yea. that was the problem. I was never ready going back. And then she went ahead of me.
Yes – she is so quick that it looked like you were in catch-up mode 🙂
>> I can take the legs off and then flip it over and it will be a little higher resting on the “T’s” I’ll do that.>>
That should be perfect! Keep me posted!
TracySounds good! He may never drive as fast to the MM as he does to the toy, partially because the toys might be more stimulating, or partially because he has to decelerate to a stop to get to the MM (pups can grab toys and keep running LOL!). But as long as he is not afraid of it, you can use it to shape behaviors and then eventually fade it and replace it with a toy instead 🙂
TracyYep – Pinder and Reilly courses are the exact reason that I have added more cues for my dogs LOL!!!!!
Good morning!
This went really well – I think the only thing was that he thinks the figure 8/mini race tracks on the 2 wings is stooooooopid, not enough running, he totally rolls his eyes at those LOL!! So you can make them more exciting by running in deeper to the tunnel (he loved it when you dropped the toy and had to scramble LOL!) and closer to those wings.
I think the threadley moments to the wraps (can’t really call them tandems anymore because you are not doing the RC element) – look great! The first one was really good but the one at :43 was AWESOME. He got that very independently and you barely needed to help him. NICE!!!!! Have you decided on a verbal cue for threadle-wraps? Might as well start naming it since he is doing so well.
And great job on the tunnel threadle – you let him read the cue with good line and patience, and he was fast and happy to do it. It looks like he turned himself away to the tunnel without needing handling help other than the threadle cue/arm. Yay!
And he really loved the race track moments when all 3 wings were involved 🙂 I think when courses get bigger in the spring and he sees jumps rather than wings, he will be less judgey about the 2-wing moments LOL!
>> I realized I am switching the toy to the other hand unconsciously so that I can the hand without the toy to cue something. Will have to think about that more.>>
I have started running with a toy in my pocket on this stuff, to help have my hands free and start to get the pups running without the obvious toy. For these skills, we can have that moment of delay to get the toy out, as the timing and placement of the reinforcement is not as critical. You can keep running til you get the toy out then tug or throw 🙂
Great job here!
TracyGood morning! He did well on this set up, even with the bucket in the middle of the line LOL!!
1st rep – really good timing on your serp cue position – the upper body was in place as he exited the tunnel an you held it and ran a good line – nice!!!
2nd rep – this was also really nice – the right verbal might actually turn him a little too tightly at :21, as you had to push him back out to the backside (and then the was like “what the???” with the bucket right there LOL!!!) He will probably follow your shoulders and a name call there for a perfect line. He is quite brilliant at following the lines you set, which is great because you don’t have to sledgehammer him to get him to turn. Yay!
He did well on the backside and the serp after it! On that serp back to the tunnel, stay closer to the serp jump to get a better line to the tunnel entry. You were serping and running more towards the center of the tunnel (:26) so he didn’t read the turn to the tunnel you wanted til after he landd and you stepped back in.3rd rep – Because he is so responsive, this is a good use of the right cue to the front side of the jump at the beginning, it lined him up perfectly for the front of the jump.
I obsessed a little on why he might have jumped into the wing here. I like to blame the handlers LOL so I looked for what you might have done to cause it with handling… I don’t really see anything that would have caused it, so we can check “handler blame” off the list LOL!!!! I mean, we can all be more perfect in timing of the shoulders opening and keeping them open and all, but really that was not an issue here.
He didn’t slip, and he is not a thoughtless lunatic when he runs, so we can’t look at footing or state of arousal as the issue.
So the only other thing I can think of is that, because there was no other jump out ahead and he had been rewarded there on rep 1 – he stopped thinking about the jumping and was looking at you a little for the reward. When I compare it to that same moment on rep 1, he is a little close to the wing he hit on that rep too. So my best guess is that he made a jumping error based on “sequence done, reward coming”. So to keep him driving ahead through the end of the sequence with good jumping mechanics, you can throw the toy sooner (or have it out there), or put a wing or cone out past the last jump and have him drive to it.Overall, he did really well here! Next serpy lines can have tighter serping angles!
Great job 🙂
TracyGood morning! Sorry about that, it must have arrived and then gotten shuffled down 🙁 Sorry!!!!!! Thanks for reminding me!
On the zig zag – he is doing well! LOTS of good powering over the bar. Some added steps here and there, and some ‘carrying’ of his hind end rather than pushing off it – but that will all balance out with a little more experience and one suggestion: for now, try to keep it a his wrist height approx, for now – eventually it goes up higher but that will be when he is more physically mature and experienced. My dogs see this concept at wrist height until they are 3 or so, then sometimes I challenge with more height (but not often). And the lower bar will help get a more consistent approach. And in each session, give him breaks after every 4 reps or so – the fatigue will be more obvious on this because of the plyometric element as opposed to the striding he would normally use on courses.
>>Should I put a short bar on both jumps?
Nope, I think it was fine 🙂
>>And I think some of the variability comes from where I set him up. I’m setting him close to the first bar so he’s got to come off his rear and I’m setting him up more or less parallel to that bar but I’m not sure where along the length of the bar? I assume for this game it should always be the same place? Mid-bar? Or closer to the take off wing?>>
Set him up nice and close to the bar, parallel like you were – but next to the first (outer) wing as if he is coming from a backside slice around it, or a serpentine from the jump before it. The variability is more likely coming from the lack of experience (this is a particularly hard grid!) and from the bar height.
On the turn aways – he is driving into you REALLY well, lots of speed! It is hard to convince dogs to drive into us when we are facing them and he is doing it beautifully. You can extend your cookie hand towards him fully, so you can remain stationary – the next step is to fade the backing up. Two reasons to fade the backing up: first, backwards motion often gets read as forward motion/acceleration from the dogs, so the end up off course or don’t get the tight turn info. Second, we humans get off balance when running backwards 🙂
So if you fully extend the hand towards him, elbow locked – you can stand still to bring him in and the arm and leg can move back – this gets drive in, tight turn away – an you don’t have to back up at all 🙂 He is understanding his turn away cue, and for now you need to let him turn his head away before you move forward (you were a little early on the one rep where he didn’t go to the wing). But I think soon enough you will be able to do a quick hand flick and go, he is catching on really quickly 🙂Great job!
TracyHi! Both of her tunnel videos look terrific!
On the first one with the Manners Minder, she certainly loved offering her tunnel! The Manners Minder was helpful but I think she has value for the tunnel already. I don’t mind that she offered it on the way back, just keep making it clear when you don’t want it and reward her for *not* taking it (I use a cookie in my hand for that).
I am goad you went ahead and added the toy play and angles in the next video – it was a very fun high energy session!! Time to take the line off of her so she doesn’t trip you up or catch herself on it LOL! It was a graceful fall 🙂
She also did well here! You can hold the toy on the sends now, I don’t think she needs it out at the end of the tunnel before she enters – you started throwing it towards the end and I agree, it was much better – both in terms of her finding the entry and driving to it at the end. She really liked it!Yes, add in the threadle where she is between you and the tunnel, starting from the easy angles. She is ready for sure!!
>>Wow I love my puppy.>>
I love her too! SO MUCH FUN – smart and athletic and also very cute 🙂 Feel free to send her to me if you get tired of her HAHAHAHA!!!
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
This is off to a good start. It is hard to slow the speedy dogs down to get them trotting in the ladder when they can trot fast or want to run. I think you did fine! A bit of luring is fine to help convince her to trot – and then she did really well! You can get rid of the clicker if you feel like you need 3 hands for this LOL! And yes, as soon as she figured out the trotting, she was getting ahead LOL! Rewarding in the ladder helped her, and then when she finishes it you can toss a treat further away out of the ladder to buy you time to get the next cookie and be ready 🙂 I am happy with how she settled in and trotted – you were really good about not rewarding when she tried to run, and that helped clarify it for her.
How big do you think she will get? We want to give her more challenge on the ladder, but she is too little for you to turn this one over. You can use jumps on the ground for now until she is a little taller, unless you think she is almost finished growing!
Great job!
Tracy
