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Good morning! Great job on the first threadle session here!
One thing totally worth mentioning: you are really good at setting up fun,, systematic, efficient and highly reinforcing sessions here!! She is getting a weave experience that is filled with reinforcement without any unanswered questions – that is going to make for some incredibly weave performances!!! Click/treat to you!These are going really well. She seems perfectly happy to find the entry regardless of your position. That is terrific! It was a really strong session, so normally I would say to move on to the next angles and also to add motion – I see 2 & 8 is posted below, so I will take a look there in a moment.
One thing to start thinking about: whether or not we will want a separate threadle verbal that is specific to the weave poles. We have a threadle verbal for jumps, we have one for the tunnel – both tell our dogs which side of those obstacles to take. Do we need one for the weaves? I have never needed one or trained one in the past, but the sport is evolving (plus my dogs are faster and I am slower haha!) so I am currently grappling with whether or not I want to have a 3rd threadle verbal or not (and rely on physical cues and/or use the same threadle verbal as on jumps).Food for thought! But, until we all make the decision for ourselves – on the threadles, let’s not go past 4 or 8 angles for now (because at that stage she is directly facing the , otherwise it messes up going straight the other way – more on that coming next week). If you get on Facebook, I am conducting some polls to see what the agility community is doing. I am leaning towards using the same verbal as my tunnel threadle, but we will be deciding in the next week or so.
Staying close on one area to build it up while progressing faster on other angles is perfectly fine and pretty normal, I think!
Great job!
TracyHi!
He is a weaving maniac! LOL!!! He did great here on the various angles at 1 and 7 and your motion was not a distraction at all. It was smart to straighten the poles out and he did a great job here too! So exciting!!! (You can reward when he weaves back to you if your line presents the weaves between you and him).
Now about that starting without you LOL!! You should totally add in line up cookies. You might need 3 arms but you have great mechanics, I am sure you can pull it off: one cookie in the throwing hand, and the clicker and the line up cookie in the other hand. I use a stick of string cheese (or a tug toy) as the line up cookie – when the dog gets back to me, I let him chew/lick the end of the stick of cheese (or tug on the toy) while I get him into position for the next send (and get myself ready :)) That should smooth out the process and also give you a moment engage with him -I like to get the dogs a little wild with a bit of ‘ready ready ready!’ and then send them.
Great job here! Go back to 1 and 7 and do a session of the threadle side entries on that slightly easier entry (and then close the poles straight if that is easy). And do the same with the Find ‘Em game in front of the tunnel – easy poles at first, then hard poles if he finds it easy. Keep adding motion on all of the games.
You are perfectly on track for the next games being added on Monday!!! YAY!!
Great job!Hi! He is doing a great job, of course – he has so much experience shaping that I figured this would be easy for him. Yay! And you read my mind – I was watching, thinking that you will be able to switch to a toy really early in the progression because he was finding the cookies to be a big yawn LOL! And there ya go, with the toy.
Question – has he had weave experience before? He was offering a weave behavior on the poles and that is often just an artifact of previous weave experience when we go back to starting with the poles at this angles. No worries – he doesn’t need to see the poles at this angle again, you can move right into the poles at 2 & 8 and then 1 & 7, with all sort of angles around the clock and also with your motion. You might want to have the PT there to establish the reward line and keep him from looking back at you, but then you can go to the toy. When I use the toy, I leave the food reward device out there on the line to maintain the forward focus on the line, and I throw the toy towards it (you’ll see more of this with Contraband, because he find the Manners Minders very boring LOL!)
Great job! You will be able to fly through the progression!
TracyHi! This looked great! She did really well sending from your left side. And also really well on your right! You were able to add even more motion on the right side angles and she had no trouble at all. Yes, you had a bit more support on the really hard angles but that is fine for now! You can also get really close to the poles and stand perfectly still so she finds the entry (but you are only 3 feet away so it is easier to be correct).
With the poles at this angle, keep adding motion for another session or two. Also at this angle (or a slightly easier angle), she looks ready for you to work the threadle side sends and also the poles near the tunnel (Find ‘Em! Game :))
And then… onwards to straight poles! Fun!!Great job!!!
TracyHi!
This also looks good! Did you edit out the too much motions reps? I think this was ‘just right’ in terms of the amount of motion on the left side (11, 0, 9, etc). Your right side reps were all pretty much sends, and she also did really well on those, so you can add more motion into them. About the harder angles (4 and 5 o’clock positions), I think there were a couple of things going on:
At 2:05, you clicked early (she had not gotten her right shoulder to pole ) and so she got clicked for going past the poles… then offered that behavior a few more times. I have done the exact same thing (more than once lol) and it is astounding how quickly they go to offering NOT weaving and just running past LOL!!! So rather than let the dog continue to fail because I set up the failure with my bad click, I have gone to just doing an apology rep – this is when I have done a bad click so on the very next rep, I reset the correct behavior from the angle by getting closer and ‘helping’ the dog by putting my cookie hand in between the poles to get her to come through.
In other words… as an apology for my poopy click, I lure the dog through on the very next rep to get the correct behavior. Then the dog seems to ‘forget’ the poopy click and they don’t keep offered the unwanted behavior that I accidentally clicked 🙂 I figure that the bad click is not the fault of the dog LOL! So I don’t want to set them up to fail more by continuing to offer a behavior that I just clicked 🙂
When she offered the incorrect behavior after the bad click, she got a little confused so offered a cone wrap 🙂
You can work that one angle (4 o’clock) from closer and also be patient to let her right shoulder get to pole 2 before you click. At one point I had to put down the MM remote and just throw treats because I kept clicking too soon LOL!
Onwards to the next video 🙂
TracyHi! I totally believe you, I have done the same thing! Ugh! Forgetting to turn the camera on does guarantee a great session, though 🙂
This session looked really good here! All of the left side areas around the clock looked strong! And so did all of the right side areas. She did have a question at around 2:50 when you are near the MM – I don’t think it was a weave question, but more of a “wrap the cone?” question plus there was some noise in the environment there too. So, you might have to take the cones out so she doesn’t try to wrap them LOL! I am guessing that when you are 3 or 4 feet from the poles that the cone was not in play, so she was more locked onto the weave entry. So, getting rid of the cone should fix it 🙂
Great job! I would normally say to move on to the next step, but I see more videos below so I think you did move on. Yay!
TracyWow, that is impressive – you were able to run and tug with a dog toy and hold a bowl of food with spoon in it all at the same time! He also showed good focus with another dog a little up in his grill LOL!
He did really well on this video, tons of fun before and after, and very high value rewards! Doing a new game with the teeter in a different location on the floor was really helpful and I am excited that he did so well!
But take your time adding tip, I think it was too soon to add more tip for a new game in a new location – he did a couple of reps nicely but he was still getting comfy and not quite driving yet. So he didn’t quite drive across with more tip. Try to do at least 2 full sessions (or until he is running hard across the board) before you add tip. We have the luxury of time, so remember to ‘boil the frog’ and add it so gradually that he barely notices 🙂
Nice work here!!!
TracyHi!
Training in a new place on a new teeter is perfect!!>>He was a bit tentative at first so I did a couple of really short sessions.
He was not as driven to the end as he is at home, but it was overall a great session! He seemed confident to do it, which is what we want.
>We when I started to add a wing wrap he gained momentum and looked more confident but jumped off the end!>>
Was it the rep where he ate his cookie then jumped off towards you at 1:18? Or did he dive off the end of the teeter at some point without attempting to stop? I think using peanut butter or something similar that he has to lick lick lick will help in two ways:
the smell will be paired with stopping so he is less likely to leap
it will buy you time to get back to him and prevent leaping 🙂 If he knows you are coming back and will be delivering more rewards, he is going to figure out to just stay there 🙂>>The second session didn’t go too badly, but I am glad I didn’t add tip. I can see I will have to do a bit more of this. Club also has a seesaw that is the new length, but it’s too hard to get out on my own, so I will have to rent a buddy to go use that one.>>
I think it went well! He was more thoughtful for sure, but not worried and he continued to drive to the end. Definitely keep going to new places, as it is great to transfer the earlier levels of all of the games into as many places as possible.
Great job!
TracyHi!
Two super nice sessions here!!!!
Targeting on the wobble board looks good! She was hitting and holding position really well with you moving as fast and independently as you could in a long narrow space. And she was holding herself pretty darned straight when you sent her way ahead of you. Happy dance!
The planned target cue is ‘tee tee tee’, right? You can add it here so it begins to mean: run across the thing that moves and do a 2o2o. And when you get into a bigger space, add a cone wrap before it to challenge her with more speed. She was great here! At home (and in a new space :)) you can add in tugging before and after each rep, to see if more arousal makes her behavior different.Bang game with end position this is going well too! You were a little too exciting at the beginning, be more chill LOL! More chill will help her find the position right off the bat. When she realized what the game was, she was great! Being chill will also help her find it on new teeters in different places, which is definitely something you can start doing, depending on how much access you have to different places.
Add the target cue to this one as well, because the next step needs it – start with her right at the very end of the board, so she has to leap directly into position rather than get on the board a the top of the contact then move down. That also requires you either being right near the edge of the board, standing still at first, then immediately moving away. Because we are putting you right there, it takes out any physical cues to help her (it is all in the new games posted on Monday). And wear shoes, I was afraid the teeter board would mush your toes LOL!!
Great job here, onwards to the next steps!
TracyClever setup! I am loving everyone’s creativity!
She definitely seemed to think she had entered a bizarro world on this – but then immediately got into the game with confidence. We will keep her initial need to assess the situation when we get into the transition to trials games!
She did well here at the end! You accomplished part 1 of this weird game: letting her know that the top of the board will be unstable and building value for balancing on it. Yes, I think the bigger peanut will make all the difference to get her whole body into the weight shift position. You can keep this setup as it is, and add the peanut to it – so the board rests on the little penut here, the bigger peanut is just after that (lengthwise so she can get all 4 feet on) – do you have a peant holder so it does not roll out from under her?
The box as target was brilliant LOL!!!! So if you have a bigger box… use that with the bigger peanut to get her to target to the cookies with her head a little lower. Or, depending on the size to the peanut, maybe the seat of a chair would work?
Great job!!!
TracyHi!
Try something like a dab of peanut butter so she stays there longer and you can go back to help her get down from the board. I am glad she is driving up the board so nicely, but we do not want to encourage dock diving!I think the easiest thing to do is a 2o2o on all of the obstacles, if she has a strong 2o2o on the AF and DW. You *can* teach a 4on for the teeter, but she is going to step off into a 2o2o a lot because of the history on the other contacts. Then it can get frustrating if you tell that she is incorrect to do that, so you will need to be super careful as you train the 4on that she fully understands it, so things don’t get muddy. It takes a lot of dog training – very doable, but also you might just want to stick with what is already in place. The 4on won’t be faster for her – and she will have better control of the board in a 2o2o position with her front feet anchored on the ground.
T
Good morning!
Oh good boy with the bowing and weight shift!!!
I loved hischeating and how he was willing to patiently lay there while you fed him LOL!!!!!! So funny! You can see him measuring the balance as he moves up the board here, so more reps of this is great! Do a couple of cookies then release, so it becomes more about arriving in position and less about him staying there. If you can get your hands on something less stable than the bosu, like the peanut, you can use that too! Or a fitbone balanced on a big disc or something.I love the groovy music in the background lol
If you have room in the house, you can have him wrap a cone then run up to the bosu with more speed!
Great job with your setup here, I think it will help get us to our goals!
Tracy
Hi!
>>Is Hot Sauce not using a physical target? I don’t think I saw one in the video
She is using one, it is a clear plexi with a strip of black velcro under it (from the teach it). It is much fancier than CB’s target which is made from any random piece of paper that I can find.
>>Are you rewarding for the correct position or also hitting target/scratching target? (It looked like Elektra was getting rewarded for position)>>
Because the demos are her very first session on these, I was rewarding fast when she chose the position. The scratching will come back in future sessions.
>>Did we shift to a target word as opposed to a general “whee” (or whatever the generic “go do your thing” word was)?>>
Yes – during the targeting games on the plank in package 1, the target cue gets attached. If that went well, we can proceed to the targeting games here, with the target cue.
T
Hi again!
String cheese is magic! I am glad she likes it! And she was doing well going back to the toy – that is not easy with such a delicious treat. And the high value treat really helped her get right into the sit. Yes, at the end, you dropped some – but she gets a gold star for not diving on it until you released her LOL! Good girlie. You can get crazier with the toy in order to get her back onto it when faced with cheese deliciousness. The other thing I do with my food rewards is mix in some of the lower value rewards with the cheese (as in, literally mix them together in a bag) so the lower value stuff gets cheese small and cheese grease on it, so it becomes higher value – but the dogs are still able to tug when I use it because it is not as exciting as the actual cheese.The serp exit looked great!
When you cue the barrels behind you, you can now start to ‘swoosh’ your arm less – you were drawing a full circle around the barrels with your arm, and she was fine with committing to it with your feet in countermotion position. Since she did so well committing, and because you are going to start adding countermotion, you can change the arm cue: just swoosh only to where she would be taking off (and look behind you like you did, it was great) and not swooshing the full circle around the barrel. This is so there is less arm motion helping her – because pretty soon your arm won’t be there at all (you will be run run running :))LOVE all the ‘pizza’ rewards – she looks happy to hold the stay while you get the rep ready and that is very helpful especially on this type of game where mechanics are SO important!!
One other thing – since she is doing do well, You can also use your wrap verbals here rather than the go verbal.
Great job!!
Tracy
