[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
I wrestled with YouTube again, they should be visible now. Let me know if you cannot see them.
Thanks!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>> In between elements of what you’ll see there, we had a short but truly excellent session of backside threadles with me holding my position until he got to the MM. Video operator fail, so I can’t show you,>>

All of the best sessions fail to make it to video, it seems to be one of the Laws Of Online Dog Training 🙂

>> I think the distraction during the backside slice work was stressing down because he still wasn’t understanding where to be. I mixed up my approach a lot…….using different rewards and even a different object for the wrap, to see if I could build up his engagement and confidence. This helped, to some extent.>>

I watched the video from the perspective of which were the fast, confident zippy reps and which ones had questions – and what were the patterns for each. I think it comes down to 2 mechanics things – the first one is whether he can see the wing (or barrel) or not.

At :16, :39 and :57 – I think he could clearly see the barrel or wing on those, so he went to them pretty nicely. At :05, :10, :27, :48, :58 – I felt like he had questions and was either looking around or looking at you. On those reps, you were blocking the wing as he was moving up the line, meaning you were moving more on his path and he couldn’t see enough of the wing or barrel to know that it was in play. At :10, for example, your left leg was where he needed to be – so he ended up being between the barrel and the tunnel and not entirely sure of what to do.

So, move your parallel path over to your dog-side leg being on the line to where the jump bump meets the jump cups on the inside of the wing – and he will see the entire wing as he moves to it. It can even be a bit further over, closer to the center of the bar, but I think where the bump meets the cup will be fine for now. And on the barrel set up, pretend there is a jump bump there 🙂 I use a leash on the ground so I can know where to put myself and don’t block the wing. I think your line was trying to help him see the entry to the wing but ended up blocking his view of it so he wasn’t sure of where to be.

The other thing that will help is a more distinct start moment – it was hard to see with the edits exactly what the permission moment was (to begin moving up the line) so he might have been looking up at you to see if he should be offering. A start stay will help this – he can be sitting facing the parallel path, you start moving up your line to where the wing meets the jump bump – then release so he can also engage with the set up. That can help clarify too!

>>. I mixed up my approach a lot…….using different rewards and even a different object for the wrap, to see if I could build up his engagement and confidence. This helped, to some extent.>>

I think he really liked the toy engagement! It was fun!!

>>I think I need to back up and do really ordinary parallel path stuff wih him then come back to this. >>

It never hurts to do parallel path work! I would do it on a wing only (no jump, no bar) so you can really build the love of going to the other side of the wing – but be sure to not try to handle to that side by stepping to it, just let him see the entire wing for him to offer behavior on.

>>How do you feel about me putting the MM on the line in this game? And if you agree, where should I start?>>

For the straight line/front side parallel path stuff, I don’t recommend the MM as I feel the dog is targeting it and we prefer they target to the jump (it is too much of a lure in a situation where we don’t need the lure because he is doing well on front side parallel path). On front sides with the jump bar in place, early toy throws past the jump when he looks at it and moves towards it will be great. I sometimes do use a MM on backside stuff or parallel path wing work, but not as a lure in that case – on the parallel path on the wing, the MM is tucked into the wing so it is more of a reward placement than a lure to get the pup there. And on the backside, I will sometimes tuck the MM in on the landing side of the jump on the exit wing… but that opens up the can of worms that the pup has to ignore it to go to the backside, and I don’t want to open that can of worms yet LOL!!
I think the 2 changes in mechanics will totally help! Let me know what you think and how it goes!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! Lots of good work here!!

Perch work: Good job on the deliberate movement of the perch work! This is a hard skill and I like that she was deliberately moving her feet and not flinging herself all around 🙂 I think if you feed her with her head lower, she will be less likely to sit – so try to keep her lower jaw parallel to the ground rather than her nose pointed up to you, you won’t get the sits as much. I leave my cookie hands right in front of the dog’s nose with the head low, so they can have something to focus on while moving (rather than looking up at you and potentially sitting). And you can reward her lower so she reaches down to get the cookie rather than handing it to her with her looking up at you. Otherwise, you are off to a really good start! Keep convincing her to do both sides and she will keep getting better and better at it 🙂

Retrieve shaping – This is also going well! She got lots of good interactions on this session. So for the next session, to get more interaction and hopefully more mouth on the dowel –
you can hold the dowel up higher, at chin level for her so it is high enough to eliminate foot targeting (she probably has a lot of reward history for offering foot touches to things :)) and will also keep her standing. Then you are more likely to be able to isolate things to get her mouth to open and put it in her mouth. You can also try tossing it for her to catch or grab – that might be a good way to get more of her mouth on it.

Great job! Keep me posted!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi Heather! Excellent question!!

Up until a few years ago, I used to think it was fine to have one for both. Then I was teaching a clinic with a group that had *great* trained threadle skills (far better than mine haha!) and I accidentally set up a sequence that not a single one was able to get right because they were behind the dog and only had one threadle verbal – so the dogs did not know if it was threadle on a jump or threadle on a tunnel (both options were visible to the dog and the handlers simply could not be ahead to use a physical cue).

That was when I realized we did indeed need 2 distinct cues – and it has helped me on course because I am not reliably ahead all the time.

And the European handlers also suggest having 2 separate cues for complete understanding, and those Europeans are very trustworthy haha!!!

So the benefit is it will get the dogs to the right place when we handlers are not able to show perfect handling (I know, it is rare that we aren’t perfect haha!!)

That is why I use ‘close’ for jump threadles and ‘kiss’ for tunnel threadles (as in, “I will kiss you, dog, if you get the correct end of the tunnel!” LOL!). And nowadays, I work on the kiss tunnel threadle first and get it going nicely before I worry too much about jump threadles, because in all honesty – we use the tunnel threadles a LOT more often on American courses, especially early in the dogs’ careers. The jump threadle can be perfected later on down the road.

Let me know if that makes sense; thanks for a great question!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! This is going well!

This grid is in the ‘harder than it looks’ category and he did really well! The first rep was a throwaway, meaning he needed to see what the heck this set up was. Then he was fine! He was able to consistently produce the side-to-side action with nice balance and no loss of form when you varied position or motion. Yay!
The next step would be to set him up a little closer to jump 1, so he lifts off immediately over the bar and does not ‘tap’ his feet on the ground in front of it (make it even more challenging to have to lift off from the rear immediately!). And then when that is fine (might only take one or two reps, for him, he is quite good at this already) – flatten the angles. The flatter angles are more important than raising the height on this. Eventually, they will be fully flat like serpentines – but that is a while down the road. And then some time after that we do go to full height but that is a loooooong way away for these pups. I do it sometimes with the 6 and 7 year old dogs (it is REALLY hard) but my young dogs have never seen it at full height – the littles have only seen it at 4 or 6 inches.
Great job!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

The sequences went really well!
Going through each rep:
Rep 1 – your blind was late 2 to 3 at :11, so he never saw the turn and reconnection before he made a decision about the tunnel – being a good boy, just didn’t see the new info until it was too late. Ideally, you would see him land from 1 and then start the blind so he can see it before he makes a takeoff decision for 2. The reconnection is the important part, which is why the timing was so critical. If we are late starting the blind, then the reconnection will be late and we won’t get the turn.

Rep 2- You did a FC 2-3, and it was earlier and worked better. He read it well! On the throwback on jump 3: the throwback handling got collection but you were moving backwards so he went wide. You can execute the FC a little closer to 3 (send to 2 so you are there earlier) and then you can stop your motion for the throwback to get it nice and tight.

Rep 3 – opening was very nice!!!! Yay! On the RC element – you were a little late getting on the rear cross diagonal at :33, so he had already made a wrap decision. To get on the RC diagonal sooner, get closer to the middle jump and as you turn him to face the RC jump, you can start moving towards the center of the bar on the RC jump when he lands from the previous jump. That puts pressure on the RC diagonal sooner and should help him turn.

Rep 4 – Your BC at :39 started sooner and so he read it a lot better! Yay!!! The wrap at :46 was good too! To tighten up the exit line after the wrap, you can be a little closer to the wing or if he is too speedy and you can’t get close to the wing, you can hang out wherever you are for a heartbeat to push him into the gap from right there before heading to your next position.
Nice ending line with the BC on the jump after the tunnel!

I think these all looked really strong!!!!!

The Zig Zag grids looked awesome! All of your foundation with body awareness and jump grids really help. So…. Make it harder now, by flattening the jumps so it is a harder line 🙂 I think he is ready for that!

Great job!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!
Yes, Mother Nature is being a pain – I woke up to a blanket of snow… so pretty for about 5 minutes and now it can go away LOL!!!

This game went really well! I think you can take to the next level with 2 simple tweaks (and you don’t need more room for it :))
Using the 2 jump advanced level, you can mark his decision before jump 1 to give him feedback on his responses to the cues: On the tight cue, if you see a collection before jump 1 (and also you will know if he is collecting if he is on the part of the bar closer to the turn wing), reward. And on the GO line, if he takes off in extension (and puts himself over the center of the bar) – reward. That go reward will be especially helpful to build up the go lines. There were a couple of times on the video where he was making a good extension decision on jump 1 for the go, but was not entirely sure yet about it so he didn’t take jump 2 perfectly. If you do a session or two of marking the extension choice and throwing the reward before he even gets to jump 2, he will have a lightbulb moment. Then after he sorts it out, you will be able to begin to delay the timing of the reward until he has taken jump #2, going straight.

And one other thing as you reward: for the tight turn cues, keep rewarding back at your hands, like you did here. That really encourages the drive back to you on the tight turn. But on the Go cues, reward by throwing long, so it lands past jump 2 – that will encourage the extension as you build the Go even more. Dogs are brilliant at predicting reinforcement, so if he hears “go” and it means the reinforcement is “out there”, he will definitely get better at the go cue LOL!

Let me know if that makes sense! Great job on these!!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! Lots of good stuff here!

I love all the elements of the baby dog handling stuff on the first video! Verbals, connection, lines, a little bit of backside, lead outs, a little bit of find-the-thing-after-the-tunnel. Super! He looks great and seems to have no questions about the handling or the distractions of other people. Woot!

Good boy on the wobbly board! I think the environment there pumps him up, the toy pumps him up, the wobbling was easy with the blocks under it, and his sister was noisy so he was a little pumped up. I do think the session is a little long, maybe break it into 2 one-minute sessions to truly leave him frothing for more.

Also note at 2:07 he reacted to the teeter slam in the background – so definitely be watchful of dogs on the teeter with him nearby so that you can jackpot the teeter slam noise – just to be sure there is a positive conditioned response. This could have also been a bit of depletion because he was already looking around before it (or he could hear the teeter)

Glad he wanted to get started on the teeter! Have you ever tried letting him watch Sizzle do a few reps of this set up, then he gets a turn (one rep, just one rep), then he watches then he gets a turn for one more rep? It is all about building arousal and excitement into it, without giving him time to overthink it. I think he is *not* worried about the sound, it is the movement only so watching Sizzle should be exciting for him.

Also, I think you should just do what you did in the final minute of the video as the entire session, not just the last minute of it – tunnel, teeter, breakfast, done. Or tunnel, teeter, toy, done. Once, maybe twice. Less is more! This ended up being a longer session than I would suggest, and I think he makes his best progress on the teeter when the sessions are short and high in value – the longer sessions for smaller food rewards don’t raise value as effectively because the reinforcement value is lower (smaller quantities, lower value, more repetition).

So set a timer on all of your skills sessions – do a minute, tops! I know I am a pain in the butt about that but the less is more approach will reap big rewards 🙂

Nice work!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!!

>> I helped him more since he had never heard the verbal before.>>

Whoa, this was his first time with the in in verbal? He looked GREAT!!!! I am impressed. On the very first rep, you twitched a little too soon so he ended up on the other side of the jump (that is his basis of knowledge for the most part) but then he was awesome on the rest! So now, you can build up his understanding that the threadle skill is a 2-parter based on the one cue: come in AND go back out. On this session, you were nicely stationary on the come in part, and then you helped with a bit of motion on the go-back-out part. On the next session – remain totally stationary, holding the threadle cue & position and saying the verbal until after he has come in and you see his head turn to the jump: then you can move and have a big party. I personally find it REALLY hard to stand still that long in the training stages so you will probably need to keep reminding yourself LOL!! That will really help him understand that he needs to come in and then put himself back out on the jump heading towards the tunnel, rather than wait for a physical cue from you.

The serpy moments went really well! He read the serp versus threadle nicely – on the ‘ok’ at :50 when he took the tunnel, it looked like your shoulder was closed forward to the tunnel so it was an appropriate response based on the physical cue. For the serps, you can open your upper body to him more, with your dog-side arm further back: think of serp upper body position as the center of your chest pointing to the center of the bar. The further ahead you are, the more your upper body will be rotated back to face the center of the bar (but not your lower body, so you will get a really nice yoga stretch going LOL!! And that way you won’t need to lean back to draw him in, just keep your chest open and you will be able to add motion forward.

>> I didn’t like my cadence of the in in in. I will try to slow that down next time.>>

Do you mean you felt it was too fast, like a patter? I thought it was fine 🙂 It sounded like what it will sound like on course, when you are running a zillion miles an hour with him because he is so darned fast. I love it!! He is looking lovely, great job here!!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! Lots of good things happening here!!!
He did a really really strong job getting to the backside, even as you got further and further across the bar. If you feel yourself drifting, you can lay a leash on the ground as a line to travel along. I didn’t think you were drifting in a bad way – you might have been drifting towards the far side of the jump, which is good!!! We want to avoid drifting to the entry side, and I don’t think you were doing that 🙂 But I put leashes on the ground as lines for myself ALL THE TIME so I don’t get lost in space while trying to stay connected LOL!!!

Your connection to him on all of these looked really great (the wrapping the tree rep threw you both off, we will just write that off as an anomaly haha)

And your front crosses all looked strong. (and also remember to throw in some cues to come to the front side so he is listened and not just backsiding haha)

The Blinds are much harder for him, and that also highlighted something in his understanding that we can strengthen (it is a common question with young dogs) – he is doing really nicely getting to the backside of the jump… but doesn’t exactly know what to do with himself when he arrives there 🙂 When your FC is happening, he is able to commit to the jump and jump it nicely. On the blinds, it was much harder because he was needing your blind to be perfect to help him with both the commitment and the jumping effort. I felt that your blinds fell into the ‘pretty damn good’ category – the rep at :55 maybe could have started sooner but was overall really good (he hit the wing). The rep at 1:17 was a little late started (he ran past the jump). The rep at 1:27 was good timing but he hit the bar.
So any time handling needs to be super perfect, I believe there is a dog training thing we can do: rather than obsess on perfection of timing and connection (because, truly, it was good!) we will look at his dog training question. I saw this a bit too on the early reps here – he is not automatically committing to the bar on the backside, he is waiting for a handling cue (normal young dog stuff). From the handling perspective, it is too hard to have to give all of those cues perfectly at his speed… so we will just train him to automatically take the bar. Your backside cues means “go to the backside and jump the jump” so that will eliminate the questions he had here.

To get it – cue to the backside as you did, and as he is approaching the entry wing = drop the toy on the landing side no matter what your handling is…. except don’t do any foot rotation (like a FC) or handling to bring him over the jump. The reward is for committing to the backside, and it is placed on the landing side to develop the default (before he makes a jumping decision for now). The two things I suggest doing as a handler as you do this is either disconnecting for the blind or moving along the serp line towards the tunnel.

After a couple of sessions of dropping the reward in to create the default, you can delay it and see if he starts to automatically choose the bar. Then lots of rewards for that 🙂

Let me know if that makes sense – I think the default to the bar is the last piece of the puzzle! Great job!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
On game 7:
Yay, he did such a good job here! This is a really hard proofing game. When you were more in threadle position (outside the wing, like at :18) he did better, which is good to know- he had more questions when you were in between the uprights or moving. So a couple of ideas for you to build on his success here:

Do separate sessions with motion and no motion.
With the motion sessions, start him on the easier angle of entry for the threadle, like you did at the very beginning of this video. Then show him the threadle and the serp and the tunnel cues, with you moving a bit but him starting on the easy angle.

Separately – change his start position to add angles – but do it without you moving 🙂 So for example at :27 he was at a perfect angle to add challenge – show him the 3 different cues without motion (standing still in threadle position, standing still in serp position, shoulder closed to the tunnel) and then gradually make the angles harder (but without motion). He will let you know how quickly you can progress to harder angles, based on how crazy he thinks you are with the easy angles hahaha!

Then… we can start to blend it together by adding motion to the angles. The goal is that you can really run through these, but that takes time to build to. No rush – he is off to a great start here!

>>We briefly tried game 8- I haven’t edited the footage but we couldn’t think about our RC mat in the presence of the tasty tunnel so that training session didn’t continue past 3 attempts.>>

Ah yes, the mat fades into the background! I think this would also be helpful for RDW training because it teaches the dogs to hit the target even when something exciting is nearby (like the human sprinting, or a tunnel out ahead). Have you tried a raised target, where the mat is attached to something that elevates it and makes it more obvious? That might make the mat more salient when the tunnel is right there. I have my RDW mats attached to an aerobic step thing at the moment to start that, and now they are taped down on a smaller plastic box which is probably 18 inches on each side, or less? I can measure it.

Great job here! Keep me posted!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! These are going well!

>> So I worked on it a bit. It seemed to me that if he’s lined up to the backside, he will go there even when I move across the bar. Then he was “backside crazy” so I had to send him to some straight jumps. Then back to backsides.>>>

Yes – the the parallel path backside work looked good, in terms of going to the backside and jumping the bar (and not going in the tunnel :)) He was still finding that little bit of step/push helpful to commit to the backside but you didn’t need to hold because he was leaving to commit nicely! At :20, the physical cue said backside (you were still on the line to the center of the bar) but the verbal said jump so when you moved the physical cue over so he saw more of the bar, he seemed totally fine reading the front versus the back.

>> I got one refusal to jump but mostly it looked good.

I couldn’t decide if the refusal moment at :59 was a product of hitting the wing on the previous rep (he didn’t have a lot of room to jump with all the acceleration on the cue or your countermotion without helping him by hesitating or cuing the jump or both. He got it at 1:08 on basically the same cue, so you can revisit the countermotion on the next session and see how he does.

>> Tell me how to continue to progress this.

Add the wing in near the tunnel exit, so you can send him away to wrap the wing and then as he exits the wing – you are moving more towards the exit wing of the backside jump (closer to the tunnel) and cuing either the front or backside, with your handling as ‘neutral’ as possible: connection, verbal… but very limited stepping to the backside or shoulder turning to the front. Give him as much as needed… but as little as possible 🙂 The goal is that we can strip out everything but the verbal, and even eventually show the opposite, and the verbal overrides everything. It takes a while but worth it – you might have to be walking to start this so he can process the cues.

And stay tuned for next week’s game, which expands on this and makes it really hard for the dog to rely on motion (it is a bit wicked :))

On your serp/threadle video – he did really nicely!!!! 2 suggestions to make it easier but also more challenging:
from the stay, show the upper body cue before the release, so he has the extra heartbeat to process it. That will help as you add a bit more challenge with running more, or starting with a wing to wrap him around, and also being closer to the wing on the threadles.
He did really well on the threadles when you kept your position a few feet from the wing. When he ended up on the front side at :23, you were in what I would consider a perfect threadle position but dang it is hard for the dogs 🙂 And by releasing and showing the cue simultaneously, he didn’t read it before making a decision.
So now to increase the understanding of threadles, your line of motion should be basically the same as on serpentines – moving very close to the wing of the jump and not being lateral. For now, release him before you get too far past the wing but then eventually it works up to being in serp position and releasing him either on the serp verbal or the threadle verbal 🙂 That is another way to help verbals get stronger rather than physical cues being required.

Let me know if that makes sense! We are really pushing the envelope here and I am happy with what he is doing!!!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! This is a great question!!
I have found that the dogs look at the bar as the frame of reference for front side versus back side of the jump, so when working on the single wing (no bar) it has not been a problem to send the dog around either side using the front side wrap cue. The dogs don’t seem to relate front or back side with the jump cups, only the bar. It *has* been a question from the dogs when we use the backside cue with just a wing – “mom, there is no bar here!” – unless it is a backside circle wrap.
Sometimes I get twitchy and turn the wing around so the cups are facing the right way LOL! But the dogs never seem to have trouble with the difference, they are looking for bar or no bar 🙂 Let me know if that makes sense!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! This didn’t go too badly, actually – it helped sort out 2 important things for shaping the retrieve:
first, she had to get in the groove of tugging while the clicker and cookies were present. That was hard at first – every time you moved a cookie or your hand, she was looking at your hands. But then you got it going and she was able to tug while you were holding the treats and cookies.

Then the 2nd small issue cropped up: she was totally trying to pick up the toy and move it to you… but she didn’t realize that standing on the toy made it impossible (ok, it was pretty cute and funny!!) She did gave a couple of good reps like at 1:26 and the end when she was NOT standing on the toy by accident – but I agree with your idea to use a smaller toy that she won’t step on LOL! I like the ball idea – a tennis ball is perfect for this, and she probably likes them too!
So while it was not a perfect session as planned, it did get you closer to the goal and helped her understand how to play while cookies were right there under her nose. I am looking forward to the next session. Nice work!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
He did really well here too! Fun!

>> I’m deliberately pushing his envelope on the entries to see what he can do.

He was great on just about all of them – my only suggestion is that when you are behind the tunnel, reward back towards you because that positional cue asks for the dog to exit turned towards you unless we override position with a verbal.

>> There was one rep with a blind entry off the back of the curve and he missed his entry because he was watching me run. I’m going to consider this baby’s first layer! LOL!>>

Ha! Yes, it was a hard entry and a lot of motion and he couldn’t quite sort the 2 of them together. No worries, he will get it, you can send from the angle with less motion or now.

>>This is my 10′ tunnel. Do you think it is best that I keep working with this one or should I swap in my 15′ tunnel soon?>>

Yes to both? LOL! I think the 10 foot tunnel can’t curve more than this without having too much bend for a big dog, so you can use it with this slight curve for entries and the double whammy stuff. And the 15 foot tunnel can be used to show more curve.

>>I was struggling with using a verbal that doesn’t currently mean anything to him.

You can start the physical cue with no verbal other than his name, then attach the ‘here’ verbal. I think it will make more sense when you are moving into it from an angle where he changes his line towards you rather than drives ahead of you.

>> I looked ahead at the week 9 double whammy tunnel material, and I see what I need to do with the threadle verbal baby steps.

Yes, the Double Whammy game will help solidify that 🙂 Have fun!

Great job here! Any issues with the ipad booting you out with posting the links?

T

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