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Hi! I agree that there was much to be happy with about your day 🙂 And I saw River’s videos, she looked awesome too!
I have found that, oddly enough, it is totally normal for toy driven dogs to not want to/be able to play in the trial environment at first. And, they often prefer something like cheese (when food is really NOT normally a high value thing, right?) No worries, we just go with the flow haha! And it sounds like you did that. My Voodoo (big black BC-ish dog) is VERY similar to Lennan. He was a toy-driven dog at Lennan’s age and would generally spit out food (his was 6 years ago and I was not yet all that good at building food drive – I have improved LOL!). But then when he was ringside in those earlier trial/pre-trial days, he simply couldn’t tug and was all about cheese. Huh? I was fine with that because I was happy to see some food drive! It all evens out, and now he is happy to play with toys, eat food, etc. Lennan is on a similar path but also Lennan has a better foundation.
I think that the pandemic has made some of the dogs think harder about being in groups of people or dogs – almost like it is a skill that needed to be maintained and got “rusty” in the craziness of 2020. It sounds like you are doing all the right things by being on Team Chill, allowing him to find his way in that environment, no pressure! And he is then relaxing and doing beautifully (even chilling beside you in a down, and also not losing his head at all with the motion near the ring – yessss!).
And good for you for sticking with your plan to just go in one time. Things go badly very quickly when we humans get greedy when things are going well. Ha! I am really excited for the future of Team Lennan and I hope there are more of these matches in your area soon!
T
Yay for nice weather!
>>Through various classes we have taken, she has had her fill of going in circles. It’s almost like she gets on a treadmill and plods along on automatic. I can make it more fun by moving off, using a flirt, throwing a ball, etc., but I thought the idea here was to have them focus on the direction and their stepping.>>
I see what you mean! She was definitely auto-wrapping. Her form was not bad at all on the 3 wings, but we really don’t want her to send herself back around LOL! So get a good rep, reward as you did, break it off to throw a toy (or reset on your other side), then do another rep. You can also reward with a toy in position.
On the wings: her form was good and she was leading from her head on both sides while also bending her body. Yay! I thought the reps where you treated using your outside arm were picture perfect! On the reps where you treated with the dog side arm, she was not as fast or bendy… but that might have more to do with her being a little tired or a little bored 🙂 You can try to start with rewards from the dog-side arm at the very beginning of the next session and see if she still lines up as beautifully as she did at the beginning of this session. The main thing about treating with dog side arm is that it does close your shoulder forward a bit so she might not get as good a view of connection.
When you added the bars: she definitely has the idea and is ready for more. Because this also develops into a jumping exercise, we don’t want her to send herself into it – so definitely reward then break it off and reset her so she starts when you are ready and she can come in with more power (when she sends herself, she is trotting which is fine for the 3 wings but we are going to change it now that the bars are in place).
When you revisit this with the bars, angle the outer wings in a little closer so that the center of your bars are maybe 3 feet apart (you can see how I angled it with my smaller puppy on the video – you don’t need to angle it that much because Keiko is bigger, but a little angle will help for now) – then send her around it. We are now going to try to get her to ‘bounce’ rather than trot to develop a bit of bending jumping form. As soon as she gets the idea and can bounce with the bars angled in tighter, we can angle them back out slowly to maintain the form while adding distance. My big adult dogs can do this with a 6 foot distance between the center of the bars. My large puppy was bouncing at 4 feet, I think it was (I think he is an inch or two taller than Keiko). We will see where we can get the bouncing and spread them out from there.
Let me know if that makes sense!
Oh and before I forget – you can totally add your left and right verbals here 🙂 She is ready! Great job!
TracyHi! Good question! That style of reinforcing has to do with how I make connection on the exit of a front cross or blind cross – with my dog-side arm back and looking across my body. It helps the dogs very clearly see exactly where to be, so they can set up really tight turns and drive right in while I stay connected. So what you are seeing on the video is my habit of reinforcing like that, partially to keep the pups on a nice tight line and partially to maintain my habit of staying connected. I have found that on this game, it helps keep the pups nicely lined up. When we reward using the dog side arm and the pup next to us, their butts often drift out and away, which is not really ideal. Let me know if that makes sense 🙂
THi!!
This is also going well! She is showing really strong commitment and a good balance of speed/responsiveness to turn cues. Yay!
I love that she did so well with the ‘daddy distraction’ – that is a hard one!
All of her “turn and burn” finishes looked great – nice and tight, strong commitment, and lots of speed. Nice! Commitment to the tunnel also looked good and that helped add lots of speed too.>> It was funny – unless I slowed and did a FC at the tunnel and barrel end, Keiko just figured that was the end on which she was supposed to run full bore & away!
I see what you mean, like at :25 and 1:27. I think a couple of things caused her to go wider on those – you were pushing for more speed (you told her to move it as she got into the tunnel at :25 LOL!) then you drove harder to the barrel (more of an acceleration cue) and you said high energy “go” before you said around… so that combined to produce more GO and less turn 🙂 At the end of that rep, at :30, you said Go on the jump wing and she was a little wide there too (even though I think the actual wing produces a tighter turn, naturally, than the barrel does because the barrel is a bigger footprint). On the reps where she was tighter, you had more decelerations and more ‘around’ (less ‘go’) which really helped her read it as a tight turn. She is a very honest young lady 🙂 So when you revisit it, remember to connect as she exits the tunnel then decelerate into your around cue – I think that will get lovely high turns.
Nice work!!
TracyInteresting… I plan to do this again, and I’m going to switch the wing and barrel locations to see if that makes any difference. She did have fun! I especially liked this for some of our distraction training. The biggest distraction for her – over birds, squirrels, noises in the neighborhood, etc – is my husband. She loves him and goes bananas when he comes out to watch her. So, we’ve been having him come out more often and she did pretty well today.
Good morning! This is going really nicely, she is having no trouble with committing to the exit while you stay in motion (and it helps drive her around the exit). She had one miss where she didn’t commit but I think it was more about getting distracted and looking away (rather than lack of understanding) – you repeated that challenge of releasing when you were pretty far ahead on the last rep and she did it. So, to help keep it exiting so she doesn’t want to look away – you can move to jogging around the jump. Sometimes jog all the way around and reward her for holding the stay, sometimes release her as you are passing the exit wing/barrel. And, you can execute a blind cross on the exit on some of the reps at this stage (it will likely not be a problem for her) – so if you start on your left, you can keep her on your left for some of the reps (like you did here) or change sides after you release her and pick her up on your right. The side changes add challenge because she will see you ‘disconnecting’ to do this blind, and it challenges her to maintain commitment.
And yes, it is totally normal that one side is easier than the other – and it will all even out as she matures and gets more experienced 🙂
>>I’m not quite sure I see how this becomes a serpentine, but I have seen throughout this course that your beginning exercises do lead to something more involved, and the baby steps are excellent building blocks. >>
There is always a long range goal haha!! This builds into either a ‘regular’ front side serp where you have to do a wrap on the exit (or push through to a backside on the net jump), or a backside slice with a wrap exit – such as a backside serp with a wrap exit and, if you do a blind cross: a German turn. I think you mentioned having OMD techniques in your handling (am I remembering that correctly?) and the ideal German turn (and related lines) is that you can be on the takeoff side as the dog comes around the entry wing, so you are out of the way and up the new line sooner. The main difference because how I train it/handle it is that OMD often uses a cross arm on serps (or at least they did, last time I checked) and I just prefer to train commitment as a default so I can just run and don’t need to add the serp arm, if that makes sense.
Nice job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Great job on the Canada Open, especially your Gold Medal!!!!!!! It was so cool to run the Speedstakes courses knowing you were also there running them!
About the verbals: I guess it depends on how you define them 🙂 my left and right are all about telling the dog to turn to HIS left or right, my position is not relevant. I use them to name the turn I would like, regardless of my handling so my dogs will hear the left or right on post turns, fronts, blinds, or rears (the handling is for me, the verbal is for them:))
If that is the same definition you’re using, then you can use the left and right for any situation where you want that line (I don’t have separate rear cross cues).If right and left are defined as being specific to turning away/rear cross, that is also good!! It means you will need to consider a left or right cue meaning turn towards you too.
Let me know if that makes sense 🙂 I’ll head over to your videos soon, we are having a power outage here for some reason so I’m typing this on my phone.
THi and welcome! The random object is so we can practicing training mechanics, building value, and handling concepts on an item that doesn’t matter in the long term for sports 🙂 that way we can take our time and sort out any issues. Then we transfer it to a wing or jump later on, and the concept is easy and the rate of success if very high.
Also, the foot target to a prop is much easier on the pup’s body than repeated wrapping is, so we are able to teach the same concepts without risking over-doing things with their bodies.
And, we can separate the wing wrapping and work on it separately, so it becomes really strong too. Then it all gets married together when the pups are older.
When choosing a prop, choose something that doesn’t look like a mat. With Contraband, I use a shoe 🙂 it can be anything 🙂
Hope that helps!
TracyAwww how exciting! And it all looked so ‘normal’ there like a real agility event (those days are pretty much gone here in the US boohoo).
I think you created an environment filled with positive experiences and positive reinforcement for him here on these videos. Yay! What a perfect first-trial experience 🙂 The first video had lots of tricks and reward of different types and different levels of excitement. You can add more movement to the cookie reward tricks so he chases you a bit more, to see how that changes his arousal. The tugging tricks were lovely. I don’t think he was over-aroused in any way, it looks like he was able to maintain focus and excitement in a distracting place! Same with the turn in the ring – you made it fun and fast and reinforcing to be in that ring. Perfect!!!! I was hoping you would do some start lines and tunnels when I read your description, and you did both. That was ideal, in my opinion. And he was almost perfect, just one missed tunnel (you might have taken off too soon LOL!) which he fixed on the way back and got rewarded.
I only have little suggestions for his next experience – you might have already tried some of these:
– make some time to just let him sniff everything, greet people, and watch dogs in the ring. He can be on leash or on a mat/cot – it is good mental downtime to do this and helps acclimate him to the environment. I mix in lots of name calls for treats while this is happening
– when you bring a toy into the ring, to maximize time: if you are going to throw the reinforcement, have a second toy with you so you can reinforce him very quickly for bringing the thrown toy right back 🙂
– if possible, have a leash runner or someone nearby so he gets used to that too 🙂Great job!!!! Looks like it was a fabulous experience 🙂
T
Yay, glad you are enjoying it! Yes, this is a different handling foundation program than even a year ago LOL!! Let’s all just keep getting puppies so we can keep evolving 🙂
Glad things are settling in for you; I am looking forward to videos 🙂
Have fun!
TracyGood morning!
That is interesting about the nose touch! And since she is still learning to love it, you can use an ‘almost touch’ to the target or a swipe for the serps & threadles. We are going to fade out the actual touch soon anyway, so there is no need to ask her to do something she really doesn’t like since we are getting rid of it anyway 🙂
Great job on the video –
Great job with your barrel as the cone replacement! She transferred the idea pretty quickly. Using the cone or barrel, you can transfer the sending concepts with the one- step sending forward, and then we can build them into the faster-moving handling games 🙂
Her prop work looks REALLY strong indoors, she was SMACKING it, too funny! On your sends, I think you were being too subtle 🙂 You can go from having her in front of you and then very clearly pointing with your arm, doing a big step with your foot, and turning your head to look at the prop. That big send will transfer nicely to when you are sideways and backwards, which will also transfer nicely to the cone or barrel! Your ready was really good at :54 when you were outside, and then you can follow it with a very big, distinct send cue. She didn’t leave for the prop right away because she might have still been in ‘ready’ mode (engaging with you) and not realizing she had permission to send.
On the rear crosses – this is actually going really nicely, we just need to show her the RC info sooner and she will have it perfectly 🙂 On the reps where she turned the wrong direction, you were a step or two late doing the rear cross: she was already “committed” to hitting the prop on the lead leg which would turn her back to the original direction. But, if you look at the rep that started at 1:06: you started her a bit further back and you showed her the rear cross pressure sooner by turning your feet and pressuring in behind her then cutting in behind her: she turned the correct direction on that one 🙂 The rep starting at 1:14 was similar in timing and she also turned the correct direction.
She lost a bit of value for driving ahead because the rewards were coming from you hands, so we can tweak that on grass – you can have 2 empty food bowls out parallel to the prop – and after the rear cross, toss the treat into the food bowl. I use 2 bowls so the pup can’t predict based on the where the bowl is LOL!
Indoors, you can just throw the treat, no bowls needed. On the parallel path commitment game, she had no trouble finding the treat in the grass, so that is a good option on the rear crosses too! That parallel path game looked terrific – solid commitment even at a distance!! Love it!
Great job! You can move forward with all of these games (and be earlier on the RC game :))
TracyGood morning!
>>We tried using the station for the serps, but he self-released several times, which tells me he’s just not ready for it yet.
Agreed! Stay is a mature behavior and lots of value needs to be built. Take your time; keep it fun 🙂
>> We did the early threadle game, but in Rocking Horse, it’s not a threadle, just a straight on entry. What is the best way to teach a tunnel?
Every dog is a little different of course, but I generally squish the tunnel up so it is as short as possible. For some dogs, you can shape the to go through it by clicking and tossing the reward. For others, you can start it by luring. I have used the Manners Minder for get the tunnel started: MM on one end, pup on the other end (although I think for Elektra, I had the MM literally inside the tunnel for a few reps LOL!)
Start by revisiting saying the verbal with the pup next to you and you gently holding the collar, straight-on approach, and see if he goes, Then add walking past it and see if he goes in it. Then add more and more motion, gradually.
>> And if I’m stationary by the entry, shouldn’t I reward back by me, since my position indicates a turn back to me, and not throw the reward out ahead because that would be rewarding extension, which I wasn’t cuing.
Don’t worry about that in the early stages – in the beginning, we are just rewarding “go through the thing” 🙂 And he has to leave you to go do it, so we want to move the value to the tunnel exit and off of you.
>>I know this seems super basic, but with my RR, I never really took the time to teach her the tunnel properly and she had a lot of confusion about approaches that weren’t straight on and needed me to take her all the way to the entry. So I’d like to avoid that.
Teaching a whippet will be different, because he can accelerate through it. A RR has to decelerate into it and has to stay a little crouched all the way through, so it is an obstacle that will require a lot more convincing for a RR.
>>Edit: I’m watching the lesson on start line stays and you gave me the awesome idea of rewarding behind the puppy to reinforce the stay! I put my Ready Treat behind him and then sometimes released him ahead for a reward, and sometimes rewarded with the RT behind him! I think this may help us get better stays, since he doesn’t know where the reward will come from. I guess it’s also a good way of creating “pressure” behind the dog, which they will experience at trials, but in a non-threatening, easy way >>
Yes! Yay! I do a TON of rewarding either back at the dog when I am out ahead, or behind the dog. One of my favorite things to do it leave a toy behind the dog, lead out, and cue him to turn back and get it (I also do this with the MM). I have been able to do this at trials to help the pups transfer the skills to the rings as well. The ready treat is very helpful!
Have fun!
Tracy
