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Good morning to you and Josie!!!! I am excited to see her!
The body of the intro here was blank – let me know if you posted something and it disappeared?
Have fun!
Tracy
Yes! That is right! I should have recognized the name!! She is so fun!
She did great with the Focus Forward here. Super!!! It was a really fun, high energy session – and short & sweet too. Super!
Since she had no trouble with it, you can start to add a bit more: after you toss the toy, wait a few seconds before releasing her to it, to get more duration on the forward focus. Try to be quiet when you are getting more duration because if you are talking, she might look at you.
You can also throw it further for her to run to even more. You can take the game outside to give yourself more room to run 🙂 Outside is harder for more pups, so you can start with what you did here and then add more distance on the throw.
Great job :)
TracyGood morning and welcome to class! Rusty is SO CUTE!!!!! And a terrific worker too!
>but food is his thing to the point of over-arousal.>
No worries! Part of what we do here is balance the rewards out so he knows exactly how to earn them and won’t be over-aroused when the food is present.
>I learned a lot about Rusty from these two shaping exercises.>
That is fantastic – these pre-games are not really about getting the behavior, they are more about figuring out how each pup works and how to best shape them. Good for you for noticing that the original setup was too hard and switching back to one where he can be successful!
He did really well with the toy play! In both sessions to get even more toy play, you can be standing up so he has more room to grab the toy – and to maintain the squiggling around and moving the toy around like you did here, you can tie two long toys together so you can be chasing the toy to play with it, and you won’t need to be on the ground or bending over.
This will also help when you go back to the toy after the treats: you can get him chasing it by standing up (nd picking up the target) and dragging the long toy away from him to chat and tug on.
He offered foot targeting brilliantly here! You did a great job shifting from rewarding at the target to using your ‘get it’ market (click/treat to you for using it consistently!!)
Since he is a foodie, you can start teaching him to ignore the food in order to get it by having a few treats in your hand. That will make the rewards quicker while also helping him tune out the treats in order to smack the target 🙂
The nose touch target also went great: he offered the behavior immediately! Good pup!!!! You can have 4 or 5 treats in your hand here too – that will help him not look up at you while you get the treat out (and builds in a bit of impulse control to ignore the food :))
He was in food mode at the end of the nose target session, so this is where you can get the toy play going but moving away from where you had the food (and all the food smells :)) and let him chase the toy you are dragging 🙂
As these games get more and more action -for the kitchen, you can put a cheap rubber backed rug down so he can move fast without slipping.
Great job here!!!
Tracy
Good morning (or afternoon!) and welcome! Ziv is VERY cute!!!
He did a great job sorting out the foot target! He was very clever about it: when the rewards were all coming at the target, he decided to stay at the target and not move. This included sitting on it LOL! Smart! I think it was not so much that he was unsure, and more about him thinking the behavior you wanted was to stand there.
So you can change your reward placement now: When he touches the target, toss a treat off to the side so he moves off of the target to get it then runs back to the target (and you can mark that and toss the treat to the other side.
Great job! I am excited to see more!
Tracy
Hello and welcome! Great to have you and Macklynn here! I am looking forward to learning more about her 🙂
Your 2nd post (the reply) here was blank – let me know if you had posted something and the website ate it? I want to make sure I don’t miss anything.
Have fun!
Tracy
Good morning!
Welcome!!
Vibe is so cute and tiny! I got to see Koolies for the first time when I was in New Zealand and they were amazing! There was one blue merle that I tried to take home LOL!! They are super fun and fantastic working dogs too! And Vibe is definitely looking super fun and super clever 🙂>He is a bit similar to Ripley – a concept dog, loves logic, loves training puzzles, likes a bit of consistency and routine to be able to settle well when we are on “down” time. This pup (like Ripley) would probably train 24 hours a day if I allowed that.>
I am sure that is because you are clear with your markers, timing, etc. Pups picked things up very quickly when the human has great training mechanics, which you definitely have.
>So far food wins out over toys during training but he does like playing with toys and tugging. We’ll keep building fluency with switching back and forth as we go.>
I thought he did really well in the videos here, especially because the toy play was right over where all the cookies were thrown so there were probably food smells. He really liked when you were dragging the long toy around!
>He’s doing great out and about in the world and is just as focused during training when we go to new locations (like ringside at an agility show) as he is at home – so far.>
OMG he is a perfect unicorn! Yay!
The pre-game videos look great.
The puppy raincoat is a fun prop for the foot targeting 🙂Nice transition from the tugging to the shaping!! And Vibe is already great at offering, clearly you’ve taught him the jobs of offering things. This went great with absolutely brilliant foot smacks and then getting him back onto the toy. Lovely!
Since you are already standing and he is already moving away to the prop, you can head right into the first game where we add sends when cued (handler focus with the ready dance then the send).
Nose targeting also looks great – he is driving in HARD to it and being brilliant 🙂 He was starting to look up at you (touch and look almost all on one motion) so you mark/reward a shade earlier: sometimes just before he hits the target.
Great job changing sides – he was in the zone for the other side and was surprised that the target was in the other hand, but found it really easily. Yay!
My only suggestion for this game is to break it off more frequently for tugging. Otherwise, you can set it aside in favor of the other games and we will pick this one up again in a few weeks.
Great job!!
TracyHello and welcome back! He is getting so big and grown up looking!
His MaxPup 1 video looks great – we are going to be able to hit on the advanced levels of the games this time around then he will be the perfect age for MaPup 2!
Have fun 🙂
Tracy
Good morning and welcome!!
Sunnie sounds terrific!!! There is another 10 week old chocolate baby pup here, who also likes toys over food – are they related? The other pup is Rye with Lori.
I am looking forward to learning more about Sunnie! Have fun!
TracyHello and welcome!!! 15 weeks is a FUN age 🙂 Do you know what mix Phire is? I am excited to learn more 🙂
Tracy
Good morning and welcome!!! I am very excited to meet Rye!!!!!! he sounds adorable and also very drivey 🙂
Here are the instructions for getting your photo into the Forum:
Have fun!
Tracy
Good morning! Welcome! I have been following Ender’s adventures on Facebook and he is ADORABLE!!!!
>As we were doing the pre games- he struggles to go from good to toys. (Like all my other ones) Definitely want to work on that while he’s a baby. >
This is totally normal for most dogs 🙂 To help get toy play happening when food is also around:
Since he is very food motivated, you can use low value food in his shaping sessions (the most boring food possible). Then when you want to break it off to play tug, you can grab a toy and run to a different room or down the hall or anywhere away from the treats and the treat smell.
Use a long long long toy so you can swish it around on the floor, moving it away from him, like a fastcat lure 🙂 You can even run back and forth a bit, dragging the toy. And when he gives a little bit of interaction, you can then go back to the food shaping in the other area.
Moving him away from the cloud of food smells and using the long moving toy will help a lot! Then over time you can get the food and toys closer together til he can go back and forth easily.
For the toy, I recommend a fur toy 🙂 That will hopefully be VERY EXCITING and really help get him grabbing it even in the presence of food.
>Should I get more toys that I can put food in? I have some lotus balls. He’ll tug and play just fine when there’s no chance of food>
You can use those, but he probably won’t tug on them. You can get a fur pouch and put food in it, then shape him to pull on it in order to get you to open it to feed him a treat 🙂 We can approach getting more toy play from all of these different ways!
Keep me posted and have fun!
Tracy
Hi!
His nose targeting is going well too! We got some of the nose-whistle frustration communication because he was not sure what would get the reward. So we can do a couple of things to make the hand target more salient for him:– rather than have it in front of your body (where he might also be thinking about engaging with you and making eye contact), you can fully extend your arm away from your body.
– as you present the target fully extended away from you, shift your focus so you are looking at the target and not at him (this is hard, he is very cute :)) When you shift your gaze to the target, he will shift his gaze towards it too!
– since he also wants to use his feet, you can raise your hand a bit (sitting in a chair might be the easiest) and you can also tilt your target hand so your palm and the target tilt downwards a little bit towards the floor – that is a way we get more nose and less feet 🙂 The feet are not a huge concern because this game progresses in a way that he will not want to use his feet, but it is fun to shape him to use his nose and not his feet.
I forgot to mention this in the reply above – as you begin to stand up, you can go to a longer toy to help protect your fingers. His tugging is lovely here and I don’t want him to accidentally grab flesh in his zest to play 🙂
Great job! You are off to a wonderful start!
Tracy
Good morning! Welcome to class!!
Moth is adorable and brilliant 🙂 And It is a good thing that he lets you know when he is getting frustrated – that communication is important and also, you’ll see that we have a TON of arousal regulation and resilience built in everywhere in this course.
The tugging before/during/after shaping sessions will go a long way to helping with arousal regulation. Very nice tugging to start with in this session! He immediately interacted with the foot target and that fit reward get him really engaged in offering. Good patience letting him work through that it was all about the shoe (and not just looking at you :)) – after that, it was smooth sailing with LOTS of good hits and rewards. Super!!!
Since this went so well, the next session should have you standing up. That can change the picture considerably, so feel free to mix in some rewards placed right on the shoe 🙂
>He does have a tendency towards reactivity and we are working with a behaviorist to make sure he stays in the realm of appropriate for a puppy.>
Good for you for helping him out in this regard too!!! And don’t be concerned if, as he enters true adolescence, you see a resurgence of some reactivity – that is completely normal as part of their brain development.
Great job here!
Tracy
