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Hi!
>>He nailed this in the backyard earlier in the day with other dogs milling around but I didn’t have video going. So I tried it later and he started giving me a down or a stand freeze instead of a sit.>>
That is interesting. Were the jumps & tunnel out with the other dogs around too? It is possible that the other dogs running around raised his state of arousal so he did better! You can try this game after getting him wilder with tugging or send him through a tunnel and see what he does. I see the freezing you were talking about, but you did a great job of getting him back on track – he had lots of nice reps! It is entirely possible that is was too Lazy-Game-like, so it was smart to change directions. But definitely try it after making him wilder and see what he does 🙂 It is off to a good start!
TracyHi!
Goat games on the donut – these are hard, his body keeps growing so he has to figure out where to put his back feet LOL! His front feet were easy for him to offer, and I swear I snorted with laughter at :40 when he looked at you and put the one front foot on the donut LOL! “Look ma, I am TOUCHING THE THING” so cute!
We can now start to ask him to get his back feet on weird things like this – the donut might be a little tall and a little small for now to wait for all 4 feet on, so if you have several discs you can see if he is happy to put all 4 on those. And you can also put 2 donuts next to each other, or a donut next to a platform or table, just to give him a wider playing field to Get all four feet on – which we will eventually reduce to seeing is he can get all 4 feet on the single donut. Let me know if that makes sense! He looks great!Tracy
Good morning! Hope you had a great weekend!
The Blinds are going really well. It took a minute to figure out how to get him to leave you for the cookie, letting him see you put the treat in the bowl TOTALLY helped. Yay! And he was awesome about going from the cookies back to the toy. Happy dance! Because he clearly liked the cookie, you can call him too as you start moving away – when he eats the cookie, call him as you run so he turns back to you sooner (he was making sure every crumb was accounted for :))
The blinds crosses themselves look good, he is reading them nicely! You can make a more obvious connection change – have your ‘new’ dog side arm further back to get more eye contact going, then he will be able to see the change of sides sooner – when you had your new dog side arm out to the side, he was a little later making the side change because the arm blocked the connection a bit. At 1:33, for example, so he didn’t really turn til you made the side change and opened up your dog-side arm further back so he could see the new connection.
He also did well when you turned then drove forward again to the toy throw (:46) – nice tight turn, then he accelerated ahead so nicely!! You can add the Go Go Go verbal to that because he seemed to understand it so well.
One thing you can do with these is have Jeremy hold him as you run away, so it is a restrained recall into the blinds. That will help with any ‘daddy distractions’. And if that is easy, Jeremy can also have a treat in his hands to teach Disco to ignore cookies!
Great job!!
TracyHi! Great to see you here! And I am glad you have a winter training place to continue his progress. He looks terrific here.
The Lazy Game looks good! I suggest lower bars, so he doesn’t land heavy on his front during the reward tosses with food (it is a nice part of a warm up routine too, just in case it gets cold there this winter LOL!) The toy brought a lot of giddy up to the game so he was faster and a little wider – I think the wider was just that you were not turning your shoulders as early, because it is the lazy game LOL! But I really love how, when he got more excited because of the toy, he committed BETTER rather than looking at you or getting frantic. That is great to see him being able to go fast while retaining his thoughtfulness. YESSS!
Mountain Climber- Speaking of going fast but staying thoughtful – we see that here too! Yay! You had great placement of reward at the end of the board (right at the edge and with his head low), and he seemed very confident with the height! Great drive to the end but he also was being thoughtful about his feet and not flying off – perfect. That is exactly what we are looking for on this game. Do one more session like this, then if that goes as well as this one did: add a tiny bit of tip by moving the barrel a tiny bit more out so it moves just a couple of centimeters.
Wing & tunnel sends – He does like the Go on the tunnel! He was responding nicely to the left and right verbals. Your timing on those were really good, but you can show the physical cue for those at the same time you start the verbal by letting him see you turn. As you were saying the left/right cues, you were moving forward so he was getting more of a “go” physical cue. He was turning left/ right but a little wide – the earlier physical cue will tighten it right up. The sends to the wing looked good – you can add more distance between the wings and the tunnel, and stay closer to the tunnel so you can send from further away (we need to prepare for those AAC gambles LOL!). I will be posting more games using this set up later today, so you can incorporate those too.
Great job!!!
TracyGood morning!
On the motion override game:
Ah! He totally has so much value for “through” in a very similar context that he was struggling to differentiate the difference in cues! If “through” has a verbal or hand signal, you can show him the difference in this game too! Sit versus through when you move slowly (a fun verbal discrimination game). You added a little more motion so it looked different enough that he figured out the sit pretty quickly 🙂
And yes, time your sit cue at random numbers of steps – you tended to do 4-5 steps then cue the sit. And he was feeling the rhythm – note how he decelerated and almost sat at 1:18 ish: he was counting steps LOL! He didn’t do that on other reps because you were cuing the sit at step 4.5 approximately. So keep mixing it up, pingponging between 2 steps and 10 steps.
He also seems to read your hand with the cookie dropping down as a cue to come get reinforcement, so keep hands still while you praise then reward – the hand movement is likely what contributing to him moving when you praised the sit.
You can add in more motion – try it at a jog or slow run and see how it goes!And the wing game did go really well! He was at 100% success so you can totally add challenge, otherwise it gets boring 🙂 This game builds on stuff he was already really good at from previous games so I am not surprised he could work through the levels so quickly and allow you to add motion AND he nailed the race tracks – you were a little tentative on the first race track and he was looking at you, but then you ran the rest with more speed so he was really driving! You can add in your left/right more on the race tracks and then add in your verbal wrap cues at the end – he was perfectly reading the physical cue on all of it. Yay! I will be posting more Wingin’ It games from the weekend seminars today, he is totally ready for them 🙂
Great job!
TracyHi!
He cracked me up when you were late on the cheese! A bit of cheese rage LOL!!
He was going into the down a lot quicker when you were sitting in front of him! Nice! He was not quite as quick when you were off to the side, I think because he didn’t have something to look at other than you – so he was turning his head to see you, which affected the speed of the down. To help that, you can put a Manners Minder out ahead – he downs on his target then you can either reward in position or release forward to the MM. The focal point can totally help! Going back to the beginning when you were sitting in front of the teeter – he was pushing it down, getting on, then moving into the down. That will also affect the speed when he is on a full height teeter, because he is leaning forward on his front (push down) the rocking back. So, we can look at ways to convince him to rock back into the down immediately and not want to the board then go into the down. I think backing up to his target then into the down will help get the fold back down here – start it on the flat then we can have him back up onto the board. Does his backing up have a verbal cue? You can cue it then click/treat just getting back feet on at first, then back feet and the down, then all four feet on then the down (you can use your target cue for the down). Let me know if that makes sense!It was very fun to have the big speed circle set up! He did really well! The Lazy game was easy for him, looked good on the jumps and tunnels plus it is a great warm up. When you added running – wheee! So fun to see him open up! He needed a little extra connection when he is on your right side, he seemed a little stickier/looked at you more on your right, and more fluid on your left. That could be a side preference or reinforcement history or both – but it will smooth out as he gets to run more sequences like this. And yes, you can totally add the Go verbal 🙂 You were really hustling!!!
The first wrap was utter perfection at 1:45 – everything was spot on. Your 2nd wrap at 1:55 was a little later, so not as perfect but still really good. At 1:55 he was over the bar as you were rotating, and at 1:45 you were already rotated and leaving as he was over the bar.Blinds were looking good too! Yes, the first one was a little late by maybe a stride but you had great connection so he still read it really well. As you noted, the 2nd was way late LOL! It was on time for the next jump – and you were a good handler to reward him for reading it. The last one was good, he is reading them well and your connection is really helping.
Great job on these! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Great job yesterday in the live class! You were super creative with the indoor space and I think you were able to get great work in! Yay!!!
Onwards to videos!
For the teeter training – I suggest a less-is-more approach, looking at it from the classical conditioning side of things and not from the operant side of things. For any teeter game, give him a grand total of 2 reps per day: breakfast, and dinner! LOL! One rep = entire meal. It will leave him drooling for more because the pairing will be exceptionally strong, and he will only get one rep so he won’t have time to think about it. By doing lots of reps and changing the picture a lot, he is not making the pairing of “OMG THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER” 🙂 So for example – with the mountain climber game, you can put a tunnel bag on the feet/base of the teeter and cram in the holder so it doesn’t move at all (there was some whip of the board that I don’t think he likes yet) – then do one rep, using his entire bowl of food, where you recall him up the board. Then… done! Resist temptation to do more until dinner time. Same with the bang game – one rep, a one hit wonder: boom, dinner! I suggest 2 solid weeks of that, super consistent picture and set up, no changes of position or motion or anything and then you will see him pleading with you to go do the teeter games – at that point, we can add in more variations like sending him ahead, etc. Because he is not super thrilled with it, we don’t want him to think about it or work through it, we just want to make him insane for it because it is paired with amazing things. You can also do the one hit wonders for a favorite toy that he gets at no other time except, say, the bang game. When Export was learning the teeter, he would get his ‘Cuz’ ball only on the teeter. One teeter bang = Cuz ball. And I remember one session where he banged the teeter once and got an entire tin of Vienna Sausages (that was impactful, his eyes popped out of his head). Hot Sauce would get the frisbee for the teeter games = one rep, frisbee. They are now all insane for the frisbee. I will be doing the same with Contraband, who is more like Stark: “this thing is WEIRD, mom!”. (Elektra is more of a wackjob so the teeter is not as much of an issue at this point).
And when the dogs are crazy for working the teeter because it has been paired with fabulous things… the rest of the progression and games are super easy and quick to work through. You will know it is time to move forward in the progression when it becomes practically impossible to keep him off the teeter 🙂 and he goes blasting up it on the first rep.
He is super confident on the plank on the ground! Speedy and happy! When you add the angles, I think food will be a better reward for now… with the toy being thrown, he was not always thinking about his hind end LOL! You can also elevate the plank now – do you have blocks or something you can put it on, to raise it up a few inches?
Lazy gaming the tunnel is great, totally helps him drive to it! He was pretty perfect on the jumps. With the tunnels, it seemed a lot easier when he was on your right and you were ahead, definitely harder when he was on your left even when you were ahead. My guess is that being on your left to the tunnel required a right turn, which is not as natural to him. And if I remember correctly, it is also a little harder when you are running the sequences. So, you can try it on a shorter straighter tunnel so he has less of a right turn, then gradually extend the tunnel as he gets more comfy with the right turn.
Great job on these! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! How old is she now? Something all of the pups should do is a sit on small platform, just big enough to fit their butt on it 🙂 And then transfer it to a sit on a wobble disc – also only big enough to fit her butt on it. I will also be adding some body awareness games this week for the Christmas break 🙂 She is probably having a bit of a growth spurt, so you can work on the tight sits and work on backing up to something really wide – on the video with Contraband, the board I am using is really wide so it is easy for an awkward teenager to find 🙂 Let me know how she does!
TracyFound the MM video for stays with baby Contraband!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUiCW057lxUHi! I hope you end of semester isn’t too crazy and you have some free time coming up! All of your clips here look great!
Really nice work with the Manners Minder!!! He was getting MUCH more settled. (Side note – if you are getting sniffing after a tossed treat, you can use a tug toy sometimes too, even with the MM present. You can also allow. The sniffing for now – he might be using that moment to clear his head, because begin stationary is HARD. I am 1000% confident that when we need him to NOT sniff, then he will not sniff 🙂
You can add in turning and moving away as he is ‘anchored’ to the MM. You can click it as soon as you turn, and on the first step away, to help him understand to remain anchored. I have video of this specifically with the MM – I will go find them after I post this 🙂He is also doing well on the backing up! You can add in the verbal, and a context-specific cue that can help clarify. For example, since he is backing up to the target, you can sit in a chair – and that is the *only* think you shape sitting in a chair. It can allow you to elicit the behavior and name it, then we fade out sitting in a chair (or not, sometimes it is nice to relax LOL!)
Also, you can just start it by having him begin the backing up with all 4 feet on the target – the lure his front feet off or have him come off to follow a hand touch, then c/t the front feet getting back on. Then bring him all the way off and c/t backing onto it, from up close. That can help him know what you want in that context, so he can offer it. The backing up he did offer looked balanced and had a really nice head position!Yay, his parallel path prop work looks lovely too! You are on a roll! He was actually looking pretty patient here, making eye contact with you and waiting until you started the game. YAY! That is an important element because it will help with start lines, stopped contacts, tables, etc. And the prop behavior itself was great – he was actively targeting it really well. Yay! You might not have room for more speed, but you can see if you can add more lateral distance? And definitely take it to new locations and see how it goes 🙂
And yes, the transfer to the wing looked great too. He wrapped it even before you were ready: Mom, I wrap the THING! LOL! Good boy. He was a little sticky leaving your left hand, it could be because his turns to his right are not as strong as his turns to his left, or because that left hand has a TON of value. But… he did it! We build on this really soon – you can try dropping/tossing the treat ever-so-slightly behind you so grabs it then turns back and can keep moving. Also, have you tried it with a toy? Either a toy in both hands or a toy in one hand and cookies in the other. That can be a fun challenge!
Great job on these, everything looks fabulous 🙂
Tracy
Hi Joni! Hope you had a great weekend!
She did really well here! And you were super patient! Ruby is fast and likes to move… so choosing to be stationary is probably the last thing on her mind LOL! And you got it! Yay! Patience is the name of the game. You can also get the placement of reward in really fast by just dropping into the thing so she would be more tempted to stay in it. But it was definitely NOT a hot mess LOL! It took you only :44 seconds to get her lightbulb to go on so she was like “Got it! In the thing!” I think it was fine to keep going after the second success with all four feet in the box – when you tossed the cookie, she lost her train of thought and had to remember it. So you can use a release to a tug toy for a play break right next to it, which might make it more likely for her to get in and stay in – and then you can give big rewards for staying in it like you did. The cookies tossed out to the side will be great for if you want to keep her moving through something, like a running contact mat or weave pole shaping eventually.
Lovely job!!! You should totally do some type of shaping like this, once a week, it is great for the pup!
TracyHi! Sorry for the delay, the weekend of live online seminars for the other puppy group has put me way behind!
He is doing a GREAT job of ‘targeting’ the prop on the parallel path here. And you are amazingly connected, I think the timing of your marking is absolutely nailing it! Both of those will serve you well for what this builds into. I think I do want him to actually touch it, because he is going to have to weight shift the tiniest bit to do so. That weight shift simulates what he will need for jumping, even in extension, and for finding weave entries and getting on contacts when he is older. So, yes, you can reinforce touching it. But add your speed more gradually so his rate of success stays high. Handler motion is a huge distraction, so going from regular walk to faster walk to a slight jog… looking for 80% or higher on each session with him touching it. Because he is doing so well here, I think it will be an easy thing for him.
nice work!
TracyHi there! Great ‘seeing’ you this morning!!!
Nice work on the teeter, he is looking great!!
>>But I noticed he’s had a bit of a hesitation at the tipping point, so this is a great exercise.>>
I think his drive to the end here was AWESOME! Really fast up the board!! And pretty independent. And totally having to think about where all parts of his board need to be, and that is really critical at this stage.
>>1) He is slow to get into his down behavior and is still struggling a little with keeping his legs in the right place in that position. Given he’s under a year and a little leggy, I would expect some of that is just growing up.>>
Question – how did you originally train it? It is possible that he needs a target to down on, just as a target elicits as nose touch for 2o2o. That might make it more salient and faster?
>>2) Also, whenever I pre-placed a treat, he 100% ate the cheese whiz before going into a down.
Relatable! I, too, would eat first if the food was there and then do the behavior 🙂 Especially if the treat placement had nothing to do with how he learned it (I am guessing you did not use a food lure there to teach the down on the teeter)
>> When I didn’t preplace, he would volunteer a down, but still delayed. So, clearly he does not see “spot” as a full chain of behavior of running to the end and going down. I do have a black circle target there – which I first used on the ground before adding to the teeter.>>
Ah! I see, you do have a target. Maybe he thinks the teeter has to land on the ground and then he moves into the down. It might be hard for him to balance in the down when it is in the air so he might be thinking the down is for as it is landing? Very few big dogs down at the end when it is that high – they tend to rock back and then as it is landing, finish the down.
>>Should I stick with this and the behavior will get stronger with more practice/understanding. Or, am I doomed to failure >>
Totally not doomed to failure 🙂 Many many top dogs have a down on the teeter! I think you need to define exactly when you want him to start the down – is it OK to weight shift as the board is dropping then finish going into the down as the board lands? That should get good balance on the board and a nice down at the end! When I do a 2o2o, most dogs will have all 4 feet on the board and they assume the weight shifted crouch position until the board is just about landing, then they step into 2o2o. The down might be the same?
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! I think winter is fully upon us, so stay tuned for more and more indoor ‘stuff’ 🙂 Great seeing you this morning!! And yes, tomorrow will be the same general games and anywhere else the different dogs take us 🙂
Tracy
Hi! His toy retrieve at the beginning looked fabulous! Yay!
He is doing a really nice job offering his sits. Yay! and he looks like he is starting to understand to hold the position too. One thing you can add in is moving away with a little more of a normal walking gait – but the instant you begin to step away, click and throw the reward back to him. I think the only struggle he had was on your first step away. So basically, as soon as he sits, you start the game by beginning to walk away: but as you start that, click/toss in the same motion. That rewards the choice to sit & stay and also counter conditions the movement away that so many dogs reflexively go with. Then you can ping pong in more duration – sometimes instant click/toss, sometimes a couple of steps – always while you are moving 🙂 If there is too much standing still then moving, it is hard for the pups to hold the stay. If we are moving the whole time, they can’t predict or pair movement (or lack of movement) with the release or click, so we end up being able to get a lot more duration as you move away.
I think he is ready for that, which will get a nice long stay & lead out! But if he disagree 🙂 you can dial it back – the rate of success will let you know how he feels about it.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
