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Hi!
I think your course memorization process is a good one. Are you finding it easy for you to make decision and remember them? I thinking limiting your strategies to 2 is good – otherwise it can be a bit paralyzing and we end up not executing any of them 🙂I am glad you are already doing the positive self-talk and affirmations! Heather’s father was an Olympian and has systematized a lot of mental prep work, which has been very helpful for so many! Yay! Positive self-talk and affirmations are one of the cornerstones, but they take practice. And it sounds like you’ve been practicing for a while so they are strongly in place. Terrific!!!
TracyHi there! She is great about offering! And a good girl to go back and forth from food to tug. Yay!
I have a planning idea for you:
Did you want her to just put it in her mouth, or pick it up? She offers a lot of behavior, which is great! It also means that one of the planning moments you need to have before a session is to think about what you *don’t* want in the behavior and plan to be sure she won’t want to offer it 🙂
For example, if you wanted her to pick it up (or even just put it in her mouth) – we don’t want her to touch it with her feet (that’s a ‘cheap’ behavior for animals to offer, meaning it is really easy for them without a lot of behavior cost, plus it is hard to pick it up if her foot is on it LOL!) and we don’t want her to offer laying down on/near it or backing up from it. So that is the big tweak I have for this session: plan for avoiding what you *don’t* want 🙂And in that spirit, for in-mouth or picking it up, I would start with you holding it up and away from your body a bit. She does offer her mouth on it several times (yay!) so isolating it by holding it should produce more mouth and less down/frog/bow (which are super cute, BTW!!!!!)
Then you can go to putting it on something like a chair, then eventually it can end up on the floor. Starting it on the floor makes it a bit of a discrimination in terms of what to offer (mouth? feet? down? etc) and holding it can make it really salient while making the unwanted behaviors more difficult/less interesting to offer.
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
If she can leave you in the dust while run as fast as you can while you yell GO! then toy races are off to a good start 🙂 We will expand on them soon!About the TnT/MM… I am not sure you need to do this game with the MM for a RDW, because the MM for RDW training (Manners Minder and Treat N Train for running Dog walk, in case anyone is reading this thinking we have lost our minds haha!) should be independent of your motion and also NOT that arousing 🙂 Things get really arousing with the toy race games which is fine for toy races… but RDW training starts are pretty much a precision game (split rear feet, that is pretty precise) so I am not sure we want the MM associated with that much giddy up. She likes food, right? The MM will be incorporated in some shaping, which builds a ton of drive to it so we should be fine for RDW training. Let me know what you think!
T
Hi there! He is getting so big!!!
For the restrainer… I suggest a harness so they can hold him easily 🙂 (not a neck collar) and also do a calmer handoff with food rewards. We want the restraint part to be exciting, yes, but perhaps with not as much writhing 🙂 That will keep the arousal level more centered.
The 360 is good here, just decel a little and start it sooner if you are going to do it so that he doesn’t slide past you, we want him to be able to adjust. Also, be careful of doing it when other obstacles are around… there were 2 tunnels right there and your motion of the 360 there actually tells him to take the tunnels – so in later training, we don’t want him to not take tunnels (for example) because of this early training of just come to you with obstacles around. I know some people teach dogs to *not* take tunnels or jumps unless the dog is specifically told with verbals, etc… but I am not one of those LOL! If there is motion towards it, the dog should take it, so do the 360s in a big open field 🙂The go was also good – but as with the 360, start that cue sooner if you are going to cue him past you. But check out the toy race games, that is a fun way to teach a great go go go! He was a really good boy to bring the toy back even with all of the excitement!! Yay!!!!!
Nice work here!
TracyGood morning!
>>Nerves – mine – I don’t think that’s an issue for us – every time I step to the line, i think we are going to nail it, unless he starts telling me otherwise
Great! And you can keep thinking about your performance goals rather than outcome goals of running clean, for example.
>>Nerves – his – we know he can worry a bit. I know his stress signs, scratching, yawns, looking around. If I see the signs when he’s up on the line, what’s my best course of action for him? Bail on the run, or try and get thru it
When the dog is asking questions or telling us he is nervous, we need to help him. I like to pull from my toolbox of tricks and stuff he might like: tricks, spins, barking on cue, etc. Take a few extra seconds (it will feel like a long time but it is not!) and get him playful again with the tricks, but balance it without putting too much pressure on him – I don’t mind a little bit of sniffing or looking around, etc – and I don’t want to ask for the same trick 300 times if the dog says “I can’t do it right now”. So ask for a trick once maybe twice. If he can, yay! Ask for it again or for another one, with a lot of praise and movement. If he can’t do it, ask for a different silly trick. If he can’t do it, maybe ask for a 3rd one… and if he can’t do it and looks away more or sniffs more then, yes, consider bailing or asking for just a tunnel then getting out. Outside the ring you can try to figure out what was worrying him.
>>Life Balance – I think I got that, and maybe too much
– work is a 50 to 60 hour week for another year or two
– training Cody – it’s my way to unwind after work, working and playing with him is one of my happy places, he knows how to make me smile
– got my boat April thru October and love fishing
– play tennis 2x a week – Wednesday with the boys and Friday nights with the wifeThis is great! And I love that your time with Cody is one of the happy places 🙂 And only another year or two of work? Yay!!!!!
>>Some motivational quotes that I use
– you will always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take
– good players play where the puck is – great players play where the puck is going to be
– The master has failed more times than the beginner has triedThese are awesome! And since you are a tennis player, here is one from Billie Jean King:
“Champions adjust and pressure is a privilege” (she has tons of great quotes!!_T
Good morning Nelci!
First, this:
>>About your comment above <> WHAT!!!! It terrifies me!!! Good! Ha! Mental prep should be uncomfortable at first in order to make big improvements 🙂 Based on what you’ve said, speed of preparation is an area we can really work on. So…. 5 minute walk throughs. It will force you to make decisions faster/sooner/earlier and then you will also have more time between the walk and the run. Don’t be afraid to screw it all up at first – those are the experiences we rely on to learn from.
I went to 5 minute walk throughs after my first European Open – there were 5 minute walk throughs AND no course maps. So I learned to watch the course get built and make my decisions really quickly. And it came in handy when I was running small dogs, because we were often first or second in the ring at local trials and then I had to turn around and get the big dog out to run (and running Voodoo is a little, um, different than running Export and the Papillons was hahaha!) I will be back running a small dog in 2020, so I have kept my skills sharp with the 5 minute walk through.
In CAMP class, we also did it as a 2-minute drill so I know you can do it!
OK, back to the memorization:
>>One of the things I do to make sure I know the flow before the walk through is to follow the flow with my finger on the course map without looking at the numbers to make sure I have it.n I also look at the jumps to see if they are position to visually change the dog’s lead.
This is good! Get the flow on paper then double check it after it is built – sometimes it is built the same (AKC in particular!) but sometimes totally different LOL!
Looking for lead changes and side changes will also help develop handling plans quickly, so keep doing that.
>>Day 3-Course Memorization. The JWW course, I learned in 3 parts:
– 1-6: 1-3 has a lead change and the 3-6 is going up on the course
– then 6-14, as a big circle starting with a change in lead (6-7) then another change in lead same spot but coming back 11-12, to the opposite entry tunnel
– The last third was the hard part for me to remember since it is a tight turn out of the tunnel to go up on the course into a pinwheel with a change in lead and then to come straight back down. This part was hard for me since there are a lot of lead changes for the dog so the flow is hard in mind.>>Something to consider: quickly finding the hardest section of the course (because you only have 5 minutes :)) and learning it *first* rather than in the order of the course – then going back to the less difficult parts? So in this case, you would learn the last third first, then go back to the 1st and 2nd thirds, then go back to the difficult part again.
That can help with memory because the things we remember best are what we learned first (primacy) and most recently (recency). The middle can blur together, so make the hard part the first & last but then be sure to give a decent amount of time to the ‘easy’ part.
Here is some science on it:
>>The STD course: I first read the entire course to know the general flow and to know where the numbers are. Here is where sometimes I may miss if there is a backside, since I may go too fast (always rushing).
“Look for backsides!” needs to go on your run reminders list for each walk through 🙂
>>Also three parts:
– 1-5, jump to tunnel then straight into the tunnel flick off the DW.
– 6-10, little circle with a change in lead to the table with off course tunnel (a chute from 2014! hahaha)
– 11 to 18, a big S, or down/up/down.You can apply primacy and recency to this too and see if it makes it easier to learn!
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Poor Demi, I didn’t know she had pain issues! Yes, please fill me in so we can make any adjustments so she thinks this stuff is the MOST FUN EVER!!
>>Relative to yesterday’s lesson, I switched to a bigger box. (Recognizing her previous issues, using such a small box was really not a great decision on my part.). Anyway, I didn’t tape it so that I could use my 2 minutes with the newer stuff.
How did it go? Was she a happy boxer? 🙂
She was a good girl on the touches, including the neck touch LOL! You can have your hand extended further from your body and you can look at the hand more directly to get even more egnagement on it. She seems super happy to do them, and I am glad to hear she was more engaged than in the past! Goog job breaking it off and good play!
On the spins… a hand lure is perfectly fine with a toy or treat in it – just move the hand slowly and then reward with whatever was in the hand (you had the toy then rewarded with a cookie on a couple). I think she was predicting the toy being thrown so she wasn’t as sure of the spin, so moving more slowly (or using a treat in the hand) will help. I loved her excitement here – so if you do go to a treat in the hand, make sure you are just as exciting with the cookie – throw the cookie, make the cookie dance, etc.) She did better when it was just your hand and not the toy in the hand, which means she was figuring it out (yay!) and also the toy might be too stimulating as part of the cue and works better as the reward.
Nice work here! Because of pain issues in the past and her high energy in the session… did you see any pain or soreness today (‘the morning after’)? Keep me posted! Nice work here!
Tracy
Good morning!
She is adorable! Where is she from? I love her and her spicy self LOL!!!!!I also love shaping sessions like these 2, thanks for posting both. The goal of this assignment wasn’t necessarily to train the pup, it is to train us humans and I think you nailed it in terms of making adjustments. Yay! I watched the 2 clips in order, taking notes, here is what I saw:
First clip:
Nice quick transition from the play into the shaping. She was on board to offer, you had her complete attention in a great way!
The barking is probably a combo of excitement + frustration – I think she offered a behavior she thought was correct but then read you the riot act when you didn’t reward it LOL!! (This, btw, also gives us good insight into her for future training, see below).
I admit to not being sure what the goal behavior was here, in terms of what you were wanting to shape based on the clicks. The first 2 clicks were when she was in a sit then moving front feet to be dropping down a bit – but then the placement was way up high from your hand so she jumped up for the treat. Then she offered the jumping up at :23 then got mad for not getting clicked haha! Thus the barking. Then she had to think it over with a sniff. She got some good clicks at the end for the sit with the front feet moving a bit as if starting to offer a down.Second session – You assessed the first session and totally changed everything about it (but kept the good play and transition before it) and BAM! Got the behavior. It looks like you were shaping a paw shake/give paw, yes? Great adjustments – you were low, the reward placement was better, you clicked a different paw motion. And she is SO STINKIN’ SMART that she got it immediately – and guess what? No barking 🙂 Yay! Click/treat to you for making the adjustment for a great session (I am guessing the sessions were done in the order they were posted here?)
So, general take-aways:
She is really smart and learns very quickly to offer that just-clicked behavior again very quickly. That means we gotta be really careful because the barking might come into play if there is not enough clarity. That is good to know about her! You can plan your sessions so that you make those first few reps ultra-clear (like you did in the 2nd video) and then break it off, assess, do the next session.About barking: barking is a complex thing in agility LOL! In general, if the dog is working and barking while maintaining their work… it is fine. They probably don’t even realize they are barking. For example, my Voodoo screams (literally, shrieks) while weaving at trials. He sounds like a teakettle exploding. But he also produces his best weave efforts *while* also shrieking, so I roll with it LOL! He is vocalizing but continuing to produced trained behavior, so the noise is likely a product of arousal and it is also probably reflexive (he doesn’t know he is doing it).
On the other hand… if he stops working and turns to bark at me – that is different. For example, at US Open when I was 20 feet behind him yelling GO ON GO ON in hopes he would keep going at the end of a course that needed him to be 40 feet ahead of me…. yeah, he turned and barked at me. Oopsie, I guess he doesn’t know how to Go On for more than 20 feet 🙂 It is a sign of frustration/not enough info/not enough clarity. I really don’t want that to happen, so I do my best to not build it in. And when it happens, I stop and clarify for the dog then make a note to train it with more clarity.
And with puppies – we will split things down so that she doesn’t feel the need to bark at you during training or shaping, as it appears to be a frustration behavior. (As a side note, if I want to teach a pup to bark on cue, I frustrate the pup to elicit the initial barking :)) Now, if she is doing a recall or toy races and vocalizing while executing it perfectly… no worries 🙂
Let me know if that makes sense! Off to a great start 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
On the tug video:
>>Spot is normally a good tugger but we usually play a bit differently than you outlined – do some of those no no’s you talked about.
What are some of the things that you do differently? There are many ways to play and the pups give us feedback.
Watching the video, I think the first 2 toys were moving a bit too much and perhaps too short, meaning he couldn’t actually grab it and latch on. He was coming at them with an open mouth but then was kinda giving up because they kept moving out of reach. The third toy seemed to be his favorite so far (and it was nice and long!), plus you were not moving it as much, so he could really grab it. Yes to move the toy but also move them more slowly so he can grab it – 6 month old puppies aren’t always super quick to grab LOL!
Also, getting low to the ground here was better than standing up/leaning over, he was more engaged on the toys. It might be too soon to have the other toy so visible when trying to switch toys, especially the favorite toy – you can put it up on something or move to a different spot. We don’t want to tell him any uh ohs, we just want to make the new toy really exciting – and making the other toy disappear for now can help. It was a good choice to use the higher value toy when the food came out!
I don’t think the session went south, I think he started to fatigue by 2:18 and definitely he was toast by 3:06. It might not seem like a long time, but it was a long session for a baby dog especially if it was all one big session. You can keep sessions to under 2 minutes total with lengthy breaks (hours!) with baby dogs.The tricks video is looking good, it is great to have all sorts of tricks already in progress. One general suggestion with your tricks is to use the food like a toy. You can have him chase the cookie or move your hand around so he can get it, rather than delivering the food in a stationary position. That way food can be useful for both play and for stationary/precision training.
On the shaping video – this is a very cute behavior! Yay! A suggestion for starting the session: have the shoe (or any prop) be the very last thing that enters the picture, which will make it more salient in the environment. And by making it more salient, you are likely to get immediate interaction. The video started with the shoe already down and off to the side, so the most salient thing was you – so he started offering behavior involving you. The shoe was the least salient thing in the environment there. Switch it up to you getting the treats and toy ready with the shoe tucked away (armpits are very useful haha). Get yourself settled, cookies & clicker ready… then BAM down goes the shoe. I am 99% sure he will offer something on it immediately. That gets the behavior rolling a lot faster, which raises the rate of success and avoids any frustration.
2 other shaping ideas for you:
The clicks for looking towards it were all good, but you can use your placement of reinforcement more specifically. You were placing the treat near the shoe… feel free to place it right on the shoe or in the shoe for those early clicks. That will also get the behavior rolling more quickly. The clicks will mark successive approximations/little bits of the behavior, but the reward can be placed right where you want the end behavior. I think of placement of reward as: where would I put the treat if I was going to lure the behavior? I’d put it right in the shoe haha! But, since we aren’t going to lure it, we get a click for something then you can put the treat in the lure spot.Also, break off the session more often – he was toast by 2:21 which is normal for puppies. I find that going 2 minutes straight is mentally fatiguing for pups, so I suggest breaking it off after every 4 or 5 or 6 c/t or cookies. Lift the prop (or move away if it is too big to lift) Then have a play break, clear both of your minds, get more cookies out of your pocket – then the prop comes back in and shaping starts again. These breaks will lead to really crisp behavior, plus the breaks build in the excitement of the toy play. We don’t want shaping to be slow or ‘blah’ (scientific term haha) so I like lots of dance breaks to reload/reset and start again.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyI don’t think the dogs could see it in terms of it being a lure. They might’ve know it was there but it was pretty tucked into my armpit LOL! So it was pretty much a surprise reward.
TOmg 10 weeks old, post photos so we can all revel in the cuteness!!!! I am so glad he is blowing you away, he sounds fabulous!!!! Have a blast!!
TracyYay! Welcome!!!! Bostons are SO CUTE and sooooo fun!!!! I’m looking forward to more about Quinn 🙂
TracyAh! User error, I was looking for a youtube.com thing but it was the Spy titled gold link LOL!
This looks good! He’s truly lovely, I’m excited for you! A couple of ideas for you:
Try to keep him tugging as the other hand lifts the next toy – he wants to spit when a higher value toy comes up 🙂 and, when he drops the higher value toy, you can reward that with getting the toy back (he really likes the baby wubba and the long toy at the end :)). We don’t want to accidentally punish a nice ‘out’ by taking the toy away or presenting a lower value toy.
I suggest adding more long toys – that will help protect the flesh on your hands lol!
And he wasn’t all that enthused about the food in the presence of the toys, which is pretty normal for a BC. So be sure you have a ‘swallow’ criteria so he doesn’t just put it in his mouth (took him a few seconds to follow that first treat LOL!). And reward swallowing it with a tug game, to build more food value in the face of great toys 🙂
You can also make the food delivery more exciting, less stationary. Get him chasing your cookie hand a bit, that will also make the food exciting in the presence of the toys 🙂
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
