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Hi! No worries about several posts at once, editing can be really time consuming!
He did really well here too, I am really happy with how his commitment is developing!!
>>but wasn’t super happy with some turns being wide at first. I think having the cone plus wings was a little confusing at first?>>
I don’t think it was the cones plus wings, he seemed fine with that. I think it was a little bit of late timing and connection and a spot or two where your line or motion didn’t support a tighter turn. For example, at :06 he was a little wide on the wrap because your rotation was late, so he is very honest and went long 🙂 And a little more connection as he comes back around it will help too, rather than looking forward. At :13, you were pretty far from the line you wanted to get him into the tunnel, so he read you position (and that is why he was a little wide).
Compare it to what you did at :37: soooo much earlier on your rotation and on a REALLY nice line: great turn there! Super! Note how you were fully turned before he even got to the wing. And that was also a good place to reward.
>>he turns tighter and digs in more when he’s at higher arousal than in this video.>>
I agree, nothing to worry about, I prefer they go blasting around a bit at this age because it is easy to teach him to turn nicely (because he can work in arousal without losing his thoughtfulness). 2 things to get him to work in higher arousal: start closer to the wing or cone so you can explode out of it more, rather than send and be stationary for longer. That will kickstart the drive on the lines.
And… resist the multiwraps 🙂 At :33 you asked for one and it reduces his arousal which slows him down. So, for now, I recommend skipping them. I recognize that they are a popular training game but I reserve them for when we need to improve the quality of a turn or improve thoughtfulness. And if the dog slows down, I put them away for a while. He is doing fine with both so now it is a matter of working out timing to cue sooner.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! This is a hard game, he did REALLY nicely 🙂
You started by wrapping him away from the tunnel, which is challenging but not as hard as wrapping towards it, so he was very successful! He had a couple of errors at :17 and :19: It is hard to see from the video angle, but it looks like you might have been blocking the view of the wing (and definitely learning towards the tunnel at :19). As the verbals percolate, be sure to let him see the whole wing.
His tunnel verbal is strong throughout! And the wraps were definitely a bit harder turning toward the tunnel of course 🙂 But he did really well! Good boy!! Yes, a couple of extra tunnels but that is part of the training process 🙂Food for thought for him, specifically: I suggest resisting the temptation to do a double wrap or multiwraps with him, for a couple of reasons:
– his success rate on single wraps with the tunnel right there is not high enough yet – we want to reward every single correct answer with a primary reinforcement (the cue to wrap again is at best a conditioned reinforcement, eventually, but probably not yet for puppies). So if he gets it right the first time, toy! Or cookie 🙂
– some dogs are a little wild or over-aroused, so the multiwraps can settle them a bit into a more thoughtful effort. For example, my BorderStaffy was a crazy frothing wild woman, so I would do that a little to get her to process the verbals and not just run as straight as possible all the time except the moments she was grabbing my shirt LOL! Your Robbie is pretty perfect right now in terms of the right state of arousal, so the 2nd wrap cue just causes him to slow down (also in the Smiley Face). Because he is already processing so nicely, we don’t need to ask for more thoughtfulness. If he ever loses his mind and goes wild and needs to be more thoughtful… then sure we can bring them back LOL! But right now the behavior you are eliciting is less speed (not improved quality of turn) so I suggest leaving them out for a bit. His errors were errors of learning the different verbals, not errors of over-arousal 🙂 I am happy with this session and I know he will keep getting better 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi there!
Lots of good stuff on these videos!
First up, driving ahead: He is doing a really good job driving ahead and looking forward! Good toy throws totally help that too 🙂 And that was good distance too!
Two little details:
When you will be asking him to drive ahead, start closer to the cone, right next to it and so you can move sooner. When you sent a little and stood still, he was (correctly) reading your lack of motion as a decel cue, so his acceleration to the jump started later. If you are closer to the cone, close enough to touch it… then your acceleration cue can start sooner and so his acceleration will start sooner too.
You can see that when you were way ahead of him – he saw the acceleration cue as soon as he exited the wrap and responded beautifully 🙂One other detail for the driving ahead reps: keep running til he lands (don’t decel as you throw :)) so the decel doesn’t cause him to slow down and also so he doesn’t learn to ignore when you decelerate to set up a turn. Run hard like you did when he was way behind you – it is the acceleration that will be a critical drive ahead cue and we don’t want to create any habits of slowing down too soon.
Great job here! We will build on this very soon 🙂
TracyHi!
I think the elevated target really helps! Yay! It seemed like she was really seeing it as “put front feet there and lie down” (you can see the really great decisions started at :37) Yay!! And it also seemed to help anchor her so she could resist the temptation to release on motion. That is helpful!!!Yes, I highly recommend more work on the board in terms of getting on right at the very end of it (rather than at the top of the yellow). Basically we want her to leap on and being moving into the downm all in one motion (kind of what BCs like to do anyway haha). Starting it on the teeter and around the cone is causing her to walk down into position and we only want to foster rehearsals of running to the end and driving into position. So while the understanding is growing, work lots on a plank. You can also use the target on a wobble board, and add the wing before it – that way she gets to come into it with a lot of speed (she will like that hahaha!) .
The other reason to work lots on the plank and wobble board for now is that you can get all of the mistakes out of the way on an obstacle that doesn’t matter. For example, when we use the wing with the wobble board, the dogs all fly off completely LOL!!! But better to work that out away from the teeter so it doesn’t happen when she is on the teeter itself 🙂And working the plank will make it easier to get the behavior generalized into different places because it is so portable.
When she is highly successful on the plank and the wobble board, the end position can move to the Bang Game but starting right at the very end of the board so she leaps on and lands in position.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Ah yes, she loves this game! Nice job!!!! As with the other games… I think the only hard part was the toy mechanics 🙂 She was easily able to do the minny pinny but was watching the toy and didn’t take the 3rd jump on the first rep. On the other reps, she didn’t know how to line up in the presence of the toy, so she had some errors due to facing the wrong direction at the start of the cue. And I think she also had some trouble giving the toy back later on. All of this gets sorted with those clean mechanics 🙂
So while it might have seemed like there was a LOT of questions going on across the different games, it is really only one thing that we are seeing – she needs clarity on the toy mechanics. A-ha! And that is easy enough to teach her! And I think once you have the mechanics worked out, the rest is going to be sooooooo easy 🙂 Yay!Now, disclaimer: training mechanics for us humans… those are hard 🙂 Cut yourself some slack if it takes a while to figure it out 🙂 When I started to learn training mechanics, my instructor didn’t even let me practice on animals, I could only practice by myself or with another human until he felt I was OK haha!!!
Nice work here! Let me know if it all makes sense!
TracyHi!
>>Getting Ria into position is a bit of a challenge that has occurred with a number of the games. She kind of wants to do her own thing and then after getting rewarded with a ball toss, she doesn’t want to come back to me.>>
This is also a spot that the training mechanics games will make all the difference – I think sorting out the mechanics of how to create cleaner training loops, a lot of the errors will go away. For example – you can line up, send, reward, line up as one fluid circular session. I suggest using food as part of it, even if food is not her favorite thing (incorporating food will actually help build value for it too).
So for example, using this game of a left turn on the wing then a serp on the jump:
she can come into the set up by tugging on the toy or doing tricks for treats. Use a treat to get the toy back and use a treat to line her up at your right side (she was on your left side to start and that creates confusion about which side of the wing you wanted).
Then cue the wing, cue the serp, throw the toy and when she brings it back, tug tug tug and use the toy or cookie to line her up again and do another rep. You were having her come back and line up at your side but I don’t think you were rewarding her a lot there so she was not as keen to do it as she would be with rewards.The other thing about working the mechanics is that I am not sure she fully knows how to ignore the toy in your hand (she is happy to ignore the food in the pouch) – a lot of your sends here were fine however if she doesn’t know how to *not* watch the toy, she will make the mistakes of not taking the wing when you try to move. That is why adding the clarity of when the toy is available as reinforcement versus when she should look for the obstacle will make it soooo much easier to do these – and I think it will help your tunnel games enormously too (see above). And by adding the cues so she knows when the toy is available, you will be able to have the toy in your hand and not have to worry about tucking it away or moving it too soon.
She ended up doing really well with these! She was watching the toy the whole time but you can already see how getting the line ups and being smoother in the mechanics will make it all more successful. Nice job!!!
TracyHi!
A lot of dogs think the noise of the MM is weird – her reaction to it is really interesting and actually can be useful for helping with some other things you might be seeing! Her reaction of biting it might be correlated to arousal when she sees other dogs (like the GSD you mention) so you can use the MM as a way to countercondition that response.
Rather than have her interact with it as a food dispenser, you can turn off the beep noise and just have her walk by it (on leash, so she cannot bite it) and countercondition (pairing food or toys with the presence of it). When she is happily ignoring it, you then you can trigger it like you did a bit here (the gears will grind) and you can pair that with food/toys too. This all starts at a distance, on leash, as if walking down the street 🙂Then the beep can get added back, as that might have been the hardest part for her. And then you can add the “Look At That Game” to this eventually too! All of that is designed to help her override the impulse to react or bite it (and some dogs also bite the teeter, so this can help her override that too if she would consider biting the teeter).
At some point, the MM might be useful as a reward dispenser but not for now (and it doesn’t have to ever be used that way :)) You can use a toy on the ground or an empty food bowl for the visual target aspect of it.
Let me know if that makes sense!
TracyGood morning!
Thanks for all the videos! I think there is one key to the puzzle that will actually take care of all the struggles you had here on these (except for the MM, that is different :))
The Clean Mechanics and Markers training will make all the difference in these sessions – I think she needs the clarity of when the toy is available as a reinforcement and when you would like her to line up or look a the obstacle. Without the clarity, you will both get frustrated.
This is the game I am talking about:
https://agility-u.com/lesson/clean-mechanics-and-markers/More on this concept as we work through these videos specifically:
I think that some of her struggles to find the tunnel had to do with thinking that your motion plus the toy means “run because the toy will be thrown” rather than “find the tunnel.” Good job breaking it down to get her going into the tunnel early in the session! I think she was stimulated by your running and the toy, and couldn’t quite ‘see’ the tunnel She did a lot better after a few reminder rewards, then she lost is a bit, then it came back. By adding in the marker for when the toy is in play versus when it is not, as well as lining her up so she is facing the tunnel and not looking at the toy, you will have a lot more success (the line ups will be easier if you use a cookie to line her up too, but you can use tugging to help her get into position).Having to get her into the tunnel made the turn cues late, so for example the left cues at 2:19 and 2:33 happened when she was in the tunnel and you were running forward, so she took it to mean “take the jump and turn left” Or at the end, you cued a right but you sent her to the tunnel on your right (which cues a left turn) so the line ups will totally smooth all of that out 🙂
To help smooth it out, you can set it up a little differently:
Try a shorter tunnel, and send on an angled entry so you are closer to the enrty, more towards the middle of the tunnel (rather than starting from far away and running hard) That way you will have an easier time getting commitment while also cuing the turn before she enters.And sorting out the mechanics will totally help: for example at 4:22 you had the toy on top of your head and she didn’t know she was supposed to look at the tunnel. The toy up there might also look like you are about the throw it, so when you ran, she just ran and didn’t tunnel. Being able to have the toy in your hand without her staring at it will take some training but is sooooo worth it! And you can also incorporate food for lining up. If she struggles to take food or line up with it in the presence of the toy, that is a good one to practice without obstacles so she learns the order of events 🙂
Let me know if that makes sense! The toy mechanics are the only piece of the puzzle holding you back 🙂
TracyGood morning!
“Fading foibles” that made me laugh, and so did the moment when you were getting on yourself about getting the words straight LOL!!!
The first part of the session went really well and then it got harder when the entire target was gone. She might benefit from a target in-target out – target in- target out series of reps, alternating the targeting being visible and then when she is off getting her cookie during a reset, pull it and send her right into position (then it is back for the next rep, and so on until it is not there more than it is there :)) Indoors, you can also make the target smaller and smaller and smaller.
And she might actually find this MUCH easier on grass, because the target is less salient on grass and she will end up targeting the grass which is actually ideal (same as on dirt).The only other suggestion is to have your treat ready so you can get it in before she looks up at you, rather than getting it from a pocket as that will draw her focus to your hands.
She is pretty fearless on the Bang Game, I love it! She was falling off a bit (losing some balance) when on your left, so you might want to warm her up with a couple of reps with it lower on that side then raise it back u. She seemed perfectly fine with her balance when she was on your right.
And keep starting her super close so she can leap on when it is that high – she is a willing participant when you started her further away, but she is also willing to crash and twist LOL!! So to help her have some self-preservation, no speed or distance needed on the bang game LOL!!Great job here! New games coming soon!
TracyGood morning!
I like your variation on it! Starting in the ‘neutral’ position makes it a real verbal challenge for the pups! She was incredibly successful and that is terrific! I like that she is speedy and driven but also able to process verbals.
Great job working both sides to get all the verbals in for the wing. I have one suggestion for you using your neutral position start: throw a toy out ahead so she can also be sent straight to it, either as a go or a ‘get it’. I suggest this because she was very clever and looking at the obstacle – and then you were cuing it. So to really add another layer of challenge, the toy out ahead that she sometimes goes to will keep her looking more straight, so you can then cue the wing or tunnel and she won’t already be looking at it. That way the verbals will be even truer to the obstacle and not associated with going to what she was looking towards. File it into the “trying to stay a step ahead of a really smart dog” department LOL!>>because I couldn’t envision when I would ever see a similar discrim on a course, i.e. asking the dog to go past the wing and into the tunnel without wrapping. But then, as I was editing the video, I could rationalize such a set-up>>
Yep, it is something we see on a lot of European style courses, I’ve just condensed it for puppies 🙂 And if the Europeans see it, we will be seeing it here pretty soon too 🙂 The main thing is to get the wrap and not go past the wing and grab the tunnel, especially with handler motion (not just verbals), as that is a common thing here. But the little bit of layering (past the wing into the tunnel) is coming in really handy for the distance classes in the various American organizations. And the Europeans are also shifting to big distance skills, layering, passing things to get to a tunnel… so this attempts to keep pace with them too LOL!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi again!
Nice job with your mechanics here (this game does require 6 hands) and what a great opportunity to do this with another person and another dog right there, providing a little bit of distraction.
>>. She was already looking down anticipating getting into her 2o2o>>
Your girl LOVES her end position!! She is willing to ignore all of our other crazy ideas & challenges in order to get to do her end position LOL! Good girl!!!! She did great here. And that love of end position is what will build extreme confidence on this teeter when we put it all together. I am excited she did so well here because this game is the beginning of the end, meaning this game is the key that puts it all together in coming weeks 🙂
If there was food on the target before she got there, the next step is to ask her to drive to the empty target (then you can get the food in there).
And if she is happy with that… more tip! More on this coming today. Great job here!!
TracyGood morning!
Can your friend come to my house? She is an expert rebounder and elevatorer and my dogs would appreciate it LOL!
Emmie did great here – she was generally fine with it, which is good because in the real world, it will only rebound on her once and not a bunch of times. One suggestion: you might have been doing this already, hard to see on the video, but after the initial cookie for getting into position you can keep your hand closed when the board is not moving. Then when the board moves… open the hand and feed feed feed. Then close when the board stops for a bit. And open again when the board moves. And if she is playing any of the other games and you see her deal with a rebound and push the board back down: jackpot!!!!
Nice work!!!
TracyHi again!
And speaking of things the dogs find inherently fun and easy to do: the zig zags seem to be a favorite of his! They use the same wing as the wraps, and have similar action in that you are moving, but maybe he likes moving towards you more than moving away? I think this is a harder exercise but he disagrees and seems to really love it! I point it out because while it is still really good to set up clean smooth mechanics here, you can see where we can loosen it up a little – like when you bring him back discussing how smart he is LOL!I think the hardest part here is that he is still learning the release from the stay, so when you are facing him and not moving a lot, he is not 100% sure that OK means to move forward (that is fine, he will get that sorted out really soon). The next step is to be able to fade out some of your motion: lead out to between wings an 2 and maybe walk backwards instead of jog, then eventually work it up to being able to stand still at wing 3 and point/turn your feet without having to omve backwards at all.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
He is a sponge for training mechanics, making it a really good thing to obsess on! Each dog brings their own new set of learning and I believe one of his gifts to us is really focusing on the training mechanics. Yay!!
>>more intentional lineup/start >>
yes, intentional, I love that word – every moment in the session should be intentional even if it seems casual. Dogs are masters at reading mechanics, and also masters at telling us things about our mechanics hahaha!!!!
I think the more intentional lineups and starts to the sends worked really nicely. Yay! One thing I was going to suggest from the early part of the session was something that you added in later and it covered the other thing I was going to suggest: add in a bit more engagement into the lineup process before the next rep… and let him finish eating haha!
Early on you were sending without as much engagement and he was still eating, so he was not as successful. You must have noted that because you fixed it: When you added the ready – eye contact – you knew that he had finished eating and was ready for the next rep. For example, starting at :47 – you did the ready, saw him acknowledge, sent, click, did your reward mark, then praised. Love it! Smooth, intentional and precise but also with the ‘warm fuzzy’ engagement stuff (which is actually intentional and precise because it pairs our praise and ready words with high value stuff, which ends up transferring to the competition ring when we no longer have cookies or toys right there – that is why I like to put in the various words :))
Since we are in full on obsessing mode: is your food marker aiaiai from hand or a cookie toss? I think there were both in there. Because he prefers clarity here, I will bug you 🙂 For him, I suggest different cues because knowing where to look and where to go is something he finds really helpful.
One other thing of note here, which is important in the intentional training: by adding in the engagement of ‘ready’, we are basically asking the question of “are you ready”… and while most of the time he said “yes, sure am!” he also said “nope” twice (at 1:31 and then again at 2:15). He was probably hot and tired because he is new enough to the planet that he has not had to work in weather we define as glorious but he defines as hot.
So in those ‘nope’ moments, I vote against doing a collar grab to pull him into the rep you had planned (dogs are GREAT at teaching us to change plans in the moment). Yes, from the collar grab, he did go around the wing – but I think that had an impact on the rep at 2:15 where you reached for him and he said no way. This happens even if you give cookies for the collar grab (he avoided it a little at 1:31 and avoided it a lot more at 2:15) because in that moment the cookies are unlikely to override the pairing of whatever is happening with his internal state. So in that moment of “nope, no thanks!”, I see 3 options to choose from:
– switch sides and ask if he is ready on the other side. Maybe doing all the reps on the left was too much or the session was too long or he was hot or he had a phone call lol, we won’t know from one session but we can for sure ask a different question to maintain engagement then figure out why we got the nope later on. If he switches sides and is happy – end the session.
– increase arousal with a bit of fun engagement stuff: tricks for cookies, changing to different reinforcement, moving the setup to a new spot, etc. Then if he can offer engagement, maybe asking if he is ready again. And then maybe getting one more rep? Then end the session to evaluate why the ‘no thanks’ happened.
– you can also just end the session. There is a lot of conventional wisdom and gasping when I tell people it is OK to walk away from something when the dog says ‘no thanks’. And I walk away playfully, maybe go do something else fun, throw a toy around – it is definitely not a time out moment. Yes, I am ending the session on an unsuccessful moment but that is fine for that one session: and any time I get a nope, I am going to look at the session and plan for not getting the nope again for the next sessions. Make it shorter? Change up reinforcement midway through? Ask for something easier? Change something in my mechanics? That way I can end it and fix whatever was happening. Ending the session on a nope is fine to do on rare occasions as long as we don’t make a lifestyle of getting nopes, ending sessions on nopes, or trying to push the dog past whatever the issue was.
In general, I do my best to avoid the nope answers by keeping sessions super short and super high value. If I do get a no thanks moment, I respect that and will pull from the 3 things above but then end quickly and figure out what happened (usually the dog is just tired and the session is too long).
A quick example:
I was getting “no thanks!” from Contraband in his teeter training. I think he disliked the movement of the board and the normal training loops of ‘do the thing and get the cookie’ were not working as they would traditionally be expected to do. So, listening to him say ‘nope’, I changed the approach: each session was no more than 30 seconds in total (timer running along with video to keep me accountable :)). Engagement with a favorite toy, trade for treat, cue teeter behavior, mark with ‘get it’ for thrown toy reward. He would chase the toy, take a run of the field, get a recall, later, rinse, repeat. That would take the whole 30 seconds and I got 2 reps in. Each part of an intentional moment of the loop including the victory lap. Did that for a few weeks, never pushing past it because I didn’t want to get a ‘nope’ answer (either on the cue for the teeter or the recall after the toy lap) until I saw a change in his internal state in the form of him shortening the loop by bringing the toy back immediately. Then I went to about a minute, 4 reps. By doing this, the loop gets really clean and the ‘no thanks’ moment disappear 🙂Of course, we don’t have to do this on all things – dogs definitely have preferences 🙂 But it is good to implement on anything the dog finds difficult because it really sharpens our training mechanics 🙂
Let me know what you think!
Tracy
