Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi! He did really well on these – a little question from him when he started very close to the toy, but success! Good boy! The toy or PT out there is an excellent “proof” for when you add motion (see below) I don’t use a cookie for coming in more than once or twice, because the threadle behavior is more about the in-then-out wthout looking at me or watching my motion, and less about coming in towards me. If the pup asks a question about coming in, then a cookie thrown back on the line can help.
So ideas on what to do next:
on the threadle element, leaving the same set up – add a tiny bit of motion on your in in cue. Stay still until he is starting to move, then you slowly move towards the toy. Based on his response, you can add more motion provided that the motion is all forward with the threadle body cue and no foot rotation. We want you to be able to run run run through these, eventually.Also, add balance within each threadle session with front sides and serpentines. There are 2 reasons for this:
first, I have found that as soon as the dog realizes we are threadling, they go on threadle auto-pilot and will just keep threadling LOL! So showing different cues will help him understand when to threadle and went not to threadle. “To threadle or not to threadle, that is the question…” So you can use the same set up to show threadle, then switch your position and verbal to show serpentine, then (still on landing side of the jump) switch your position to do a plain ol’ “jump”. Mix it up! First without motion and if he is super successful differentiating… then add slow walking.When you are adding balance on this set up – have 2 toys or the PT & a toy, one on each potential landing side… that way he cannot use the location of the reward to process the correct response to the cue 🙂 He will need to look at your position and hear the associated verbal. It will be quite the brain game/potential head-exploder LOL! but sets us up nicely for when we add, say, a tunnel as a distraction 🙂
second – in the grand scheme of things, the threadle is low on the list in terms of things that need value for, say, the next year with an 11 month old pup. It is in the same category as ‘running dog walk’ and ‘backside push’ – it is fine to start teaching it, but it needs to be prioritized in terms of value. First priority: take what is in front of you in extension, run as fast as you can. Second priority: turn on the obstacle in front of you when asked (physical and verbal cues). Third priority: don’t take what is in front of you (this includes backsides and threadles). Too many folks prioritize it backwards without enough balance (do lots of backside and threadle stuff with puppies as well as too much tight turn wraps/multi wraps and not enough run fast) and then when the puppies are 18 months old, we see 2 elements of fall out:
* dogs are slow on course, running in moderate extension
* dogs are not strong in finding what is in front of them, so handlers have a hard time driving lines and getting into positionSo using Anastasia’s set up of wing-threadle-wing, for example…. Use the same set up to do wing-front side-wing or wing-serp-wing – wing *in the same session*. Kind of like what we do with the rocking horses – you can do the rocking horses and throw in a threadle or threadle/RC cue. Minimal motion will help Robie read the difference with the eventual goal being that you can use any cue on this set up and he can read it while you are at a full run (eventual LOL!). When I do these games, I use a ratio of approx 3:1 to maintain the balance I want in a young dog: 3 front side cues/rewards for every non-front-side (threadle, backside push). I am confident that is how the Russians train (and Germans too LOL!) but they may not be able to show all of that in one seminar. They balance a lot and teach the dogs how to discriminate the verbals (of which they have maybe 10 zillion) while also putting a ton of emphasis on run-as-fast-as-you-can for the dogs. And that is why the Germans and Russians dominate and their dogs are so incredibly fast AND accurate on course. Inspirational!
The pup then gets a really lovely understanding of ALL the things, and you can see the understanding develop nicely in terms of discriminating cues 🙂Let me know what you think! He is ready for more of this advanced stuff 🙂
T
Hi!
The Go video on one jump is looking good! He was correct to take the jump as you were trying to turn him around, there was definite motion torwards it 🙂 He found the line to the jump really nicely! Yay! On the very last one, he looked at you (you were pretty far) but he found the line and your reward placement was spot on. Well done!2 jumps: this was harder on the first rep!!! But he was great on the 2nd rep. All part of the learning process, right? The first rep – he added some strides, having to think about it. 2nd rep – nailed it! Nice connection and motion from you, strong verbal, spot on reward throw. Nice!
Ladder at 5 feet – ooh this was hard for him! He steps in really well but gets off balance by the end (you can see his ass higher than his shoulders on jump 5 on all of them and on jump 3 on the last one. So 5 feet might be a bit too wide for now (my fault for not seeing the earlier message!!!) Try it at 4 feet and then we can see if 4.5 feet is useful.
Rocking horses:
these are wicked hard for us humans (and for the dogs too LOL!) A toy in each hand can work. I think you are doing really well on these. The step backs are looking good – they are really challenging because of the big distance and the goal is to get great commitment – I think he is doing great! And you connection looks really good, which is definitely helping. On the moving ones where you were doing the FC/BCs – great job staying in more of a smooth motion, moving in and out. And yes, sometimes you were in a zone and then were like “oh crap, I need to do a blind” LOL! But he got rewarded so it is all good. You had several moments of really strong countermotion and his commitment never waivered.>> I think I might do better on a course where I only have to do one in context of the course and not one after another after another.
YES! Course running will be 100% easier because you have a turn then you get to run a simple line, then a turn, then a tunnel, etc. The rocking horses are so hard because we can’t think – turn turn turn turn turn LOL!!!
Nice work on these 🙂
TracySorry! I just saw this! Try 4 feet then 4.5 feet for now, and then we can decide if 5 feet is useful or not.
T
Hi there!
Jump grids: some thoughts and ideas for you!
On most of the reps, she is double tapping on front feet on the release, meaning being able to put her front feet down before jump before she takes off. Ideally, we want her close enough to jump 1 so she cannot do that and she has to lift from her rear. It is a plyometric push off to engage the rear immediately. By being just a foot or so too far back, she had room to shift her weight forward. On 3 jumps, it didn’t cause tooo much of a problem but if you watch her hind end on the last interval/last jump, it is higher than her shoulders.
On the 4 jump grid, you can see where she gets off balance – watch the last interval on the 1st 4 jump rep, her butt goes pretty high and she gets off balance there (slow motion makes it easier to see). She was more balanced on the 2nd 4 jump rep but still off balance in the last interval.
That then affected the 5 jump grid – she loses her balance after 3 (you’ll see it on the first interval when she lifts her head, inverts her back, butt is higher than shoulders, kinda bucks like a bronco LOL! and then aborts mission, goes to her front and flings over the last 2 jumps. Pretty normal young dog behavior (Robie in this class did the same thing). She then planned for it and just didn’t shift back on the next reps LOL! Clever!So, let’s get her balance back. Go back to 3 jumps and set her up about 6 inches from the first jump so she has to lift right off from her hind end. See how it goes on 3 jumps, do a full session on 3 – you should see her head down, her topline being smooth, no ass over shoulders LOL!
Then on the next session, a few days later: do a rep of 3 then go to 4. When you go to 4, start by back chaining: she sits very close to jump 4, release, hop over it to reward. Then sit her in front of jmp 3 – if that is peachy keen, start her in front of 2. If she gets off balance or flings, you can move the last jump out to 8 feet then work it back in closer. I prefer back chaining it so she gets balanced at 6 feet.Then after a session or 2 of 4 jumps, start a session on 4 jumps and if that is good, go to 5 with the same back chaining concept. It will likely take about 2 weeks of sessions (because we don’t want to do this every day) to get it perfect- but totally worth getting all the power in the hind end.
On the tunnel sequence:
Yes, you can throw sooner before she looks back on one jump. So as she exits the tunnel when you see her looking at the first jump – throw. You looked pretty connected, yay! You can do 2 things on this one jump set up: keep moving that jump gradually further away. And as it gets further away, you can gradually stay further and further behind (but keep moving) so she drives ahead.On the 2 jumps: I think she needs to learn the concept with you further ahead at first, so send her into the tunnel from further away so you can be further ahead and closer to the wings. That will help her understand how to pick up that line. And throw when she lands from jump 1 and looks at jump 2 🙂
When she is picking up both jumps, you can still be ahead but add lateral distance. And then eventually you can be both lateral and not quite as ahead. She is doing well figuring it out on the single jump, so I am sure she will figure this one out really fast too 🙂Nice work!!!!
TracyYay! Nice job on these! She appears to be exiting the tunnel and driving ahead (not looking for you) and that is what we want on these. Yay! You can connect more to her, meaning look at her more when she exits the tunnel – it won’t really change what is happening here on this video, but it will help support the line as you are more laterally away from the line before she enters the tunnel. That would be the next step – while still running parallel to the line, add challenge by running that line from a more lateral position, so eventually you will be parallel but maybe 15 feet away.
Nice work!!
TracyExcellent question!
2 answers:
For the dog, using just one wing reduces the distraction level while promoting the behavior we want. A bar and 2 wings has a lot of value and we tend to get too much extension or the dogs can’t ignore the bar and 2 wings in favor of doing the threadle .
Also, a single wing has a long history of turn behavior at this stage, and we want turn behavior on these 2 cues – so using a single wing promotes success 🙂 the bar helps as a point of reference, so the dog begins to learn serp = bar and threadle = other side.
So, we are simplifying to increase success which will speed the learning process (because I’m too lazy to do a million reps haha!)For the humans: a single wing prevents the humans from putting a real jump height in or raising the bar too soon. The jumping effort is the last piece that we install – the dogs need to understand the cues before we add jumping to it. Otherwise, they will jump it poorly and are likely to tick or knock the bar, or hit the wing. So, it forces the human self-control because we humans tend to put jump bars at height waaaaay too soon 🙂
Let me know if that makes sense!
THi there!
On the ladder grid – overall he is doing well, balancing and finding the form! On parts, he is still sorting himself out 🙂 If you watch it in slow motion, right after the release, he kind of double taps his front feet before the first jump on some of the reps – as if saying “oh lordy this is gonna happen fast but I don’t really know HOW it is gonna happen” LOL!!! I think his efforts on the 3 and 4 jumps were strong!!! And when you added jump 5, he got off balance (note the double tap before jump 1) then bailed by flinging LOL! It wasn’t ugly, it was just creative 🙂 I also think he might have been a bit fatigued if this was all in one session – these grids are tiring! And also the toy was obviously well-loved, so I think he was rushing. So, some ideas:
keep working on the 3 and 4 jumps grids, he is sorting it out there nicely.
On 5 jumps, different session so he is fresh. Use a less interesting toy or the Pet Tutor. And, you can do 2 things to help him understand the joys of using his hind end between 4 and 5:
you can back chain at the distance you had here, starting him in a stay between 3 and 4. If that goes well, start between 2 and 3, then between 1 and 2, then in front of 1. His success will let you know how quickly to proceed.
The other option is to expand the distance between 4 and 5 to 7 or 8 feet, so it is more comfy to bounce – then gradually and bit by bit, work the distance back so it is back to 6 feet and he still bounces.
He is doing really well and just needs more experience 🙂On the tunnel-jump games – yeehaawwww! Fun!
>>On the tunnel drill, I think I was late quite a bit in the verbal “go”Nah, you were fine – you used the “butter” approach of slathering the verbal everywhere. You said it before he went in the tunnel, while he was in the tunnel and when he exited the tunnel. He did a great job finding the lines (we forget how young he is!!)
>>and I don’t think I did a very good job of increasing lateral distance until the end. I need to put some kind of marker out there to run towards, lol.
Yes, you can add more challenge – but it doesn’t have to be done in one session. This session was great in that he found the line and you almost always got the reward in before he looked back. You can be more connected as he exits the tunnel, look at him more as you run up the line. That will help support it as you add more lateral distance and also it will keep you from throwing the toy is he goes around a jump LOL! Overall, I think this went super well! Yay baby dog! Tons of speed and drive forward on the line.
Nice work!
TracyHi! I can imagine work is crazy! Glad to see you got some time to train!
Breaking it down worked nicely for him, it really build value for coming in on the serp before adding the distraction on the ground. He didn’t seem to have any trouble with choosing to come in for the serp versus going to the toy, even on the harder angles. Good boy! He did a nice job bending on this too, it is a difficult turn and he was effortless. Yay! And I was very happy to see him offering the wing before you were ready LOL! He is having a good time!
As you work this skill more, keep your upper body frozen: assume the serp position before the release, then release and don’t move it until he reaches the reward. Yes, it will feel super weird LOL! but it will simulate the picture he will see when you are running – that way he won’t rely on your moving your shoulders. We are building on this skill today! Nice work here!!Tracy
Hi there! He had 2 reps where he had to read the grid before he could try jumping mechanics (1st rep, and 1st rep with 5 jumps). He is thinking about it, and that is good! What was the distance here? It is hard to tell on video – he should be at about 6 feet. Set him up a little closer to the 1st jump, a foot or less from it – so he has to push off his hind end to get in. And don’t add movement yet – when you were moving, he was ticking bars, so he isn’t ready for movement quite yet. Give it another session or two – when he can power off his rear with no ticks reliably, add a bit of movement – still lead out past the last jump, but release and walk forward. We don’t want to add running yet 🙂
Nice job!
TracyHi there!
He definitely caught on fast to the concept! And I think the jumping over 8″ is no problem, either for his age or in general terms for him, as long as you don’t do a zillion reps 🙂 One thing I would like him to do it look up at you less and down at the MM more – he is looking up, which inverts the jump style. So, 2 ideas – when you release him, be facing the direction of travel (not facing him) and maybe even kneeling by the MM or trigger the MM just after you release him so he takes the line with his head really looking down to it. We can start with the early trigger then fade it out eventually. Second idea – be stationary for now – you were moving and you were interesting to watch, we need you to be quite a bit more boring for now hahaha!!! We will be able to add your motion back pretty quickly, but stand still for longer before the release and I think the early trigger/not-facing-him will work to get his head down.For the stays – with the youngsters, as soon as I see value for jumps and tunnels starting to come up, I assume that stays will deteriorate 🙂 so in any training where the pup has to stay in front of a jump or tunnel – I add in rewards for stays on a 2-1 ratio. I throw back a reward on 2 reps, for every 1 rep of the release to the jump that the dog gets. So if I do 5 reps of the grid, I throw back 10 rewards spread out during the session. I tend to edit these out but I can leave them in if you want! So, more throw back rewards will help him or leaving a reward behind him and cuing him to get it.
If he does break, the game stops like you were doing – then I like to reset the whole thing from the beginning – line up at my side, etc. On the 2nd break, you helped him into the sit by facing him over the jump and using his collar, which si not as preferred as working through the whole line up process again. For me, the stay begins with the process and not just the actual sit. I also will give away a cookie to one of the other dogs if the working dog breaks the stay 🙂 As long as the dogs don’t fight or squabble, a bit of jealousy is a helpful thing LOL!
Nice work!
TracyAh! Got it. That would make sense, that she wouldn’t be focusing on the toy in order to help herself stay in the stay 🙂
OK, I think it is GENIUS to use your kitchen to help build the turns on a serpentine. GENIUS!! Plus it is funny 🙂 LOL!!!!! I wonder if on the field you should hold the toy in the non-serp hand then drop it when he arrives? Or throw it? He likes motion when it involves jumps so driving into you when you are stationary is not that stimulating.
And yes, Voodoo was pokey as a youngster. I remember at his first trials, folks would say he was so beautiful… which was another way of saying “not fast” hahaha! I used to think he would be a medium-speed dog and I would be able to Q a lot and be great for DAM teams. Yeah, well, he matured, the switch flipped, and now he wins his classes by an average of 2 seconds. Well, at least he does when I can run him clean – not so easy when he goes that fast! I think Spot reminds me a LOT of Voodoo as a youngster. The big difference is that we have a MUCH better understanding of how to build the foundation now than we did 6 years ago. Spot will know a heckuva lot more than Voodoo did, so you will have fast AND accurate! Wheeeee!
Hi!
These are going really nicely!!!! One tweak for you that I think will answer a question she is asking:
did you notice that when you sent to the wing, she would hesitate/bounce up for a heartbeat? I think your send arm was blocking connection, so she wasn’t entirely sure of what to do. So, as you play with these, try making more eye contact with her as you send, and keep your send arm really low and very small in motion. What I mean by that is don’t really let your hand move past your knee, nice and low, so she can see your eyes more. The eyes control where your chest is pointing, which is what she is reading. The bigger send arm blocks all that (especially with the smaller dogs) so it might be why she was not 100% in those moments. Let me know if that makes sense 🙂
Nice work!
THi! She is finding it easier to pull from the front than to rock into her rear, thus the extra big jumping LOL!!! Using the 4 foot grid at the 4 foot spacing, try back chaining it:
Place her in the last gap before the reward, then release so she jumps the last jump.
Then place her in the 2nd to last gap, release so she jumps the last 2 jumps.
Then place her in the 1st gap, then release so she jumps the last 3 jumps.
Then try all 4.
If at any point she tries to skip a gap, start in that gap to show her the mechanics.
If she is still asking the question, we can spread her out to 6 or 7 foot spacing, to tell her that striding in the gaps is what we want (even if it is an extra stride, no worries) then we can gradually tighten the spacing 🙂
Let me know how it goes!
