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Hi! Great to see you and Sly here again Yay!
First up, profile pic:
Our website software pulls profile images from a popular profile image service called Gravatar. You can create an account at Gravatar.com using the same email address that you use on agility-u.com. Then follow these instructions to upload your profile photo over on Gravatar: https://en.gravatar.com/support/activating-your-account/Great job on the lazy game! Yes, he was like WHY ARE YOU NOT RUNNING hahahahaha but then he caught on because, cookies 🙂 This game is kind of an anti-perfect game, because you won’t always be able to run perfectly near the line, or you might decelerate too soon, or you might need to send him away into a gamble. He did a great job here!!! I am adding more to this when the live seminars are done 🙂 Great job!
TracyOMG this is the cutest video! She is tiny but she was ready to RACE! Ha! I think it was easier when you were holding her harness and throwing the toy – the reps where you started from the cookie were not as ‘race-like’. Good job winning on that one rep (because she didn’t know where the toy was LOL!) but that lit her fire to go even faster! Now that she is out running you, you can add in a bit of encouraging her to grab the toy then bring it to you. You can do that by racing her to it and when she grabs it, you can turn and run the other way get her to chase you with it.
As she continues to grow, she will continue to widen her margins of victory here. Looking great!!!!
TracyHi!
>> how best to salvage handling bloopers to keep Ribsy going.?>>
If there is a blooper, I always just reward the puppy 🙂 There is a 99.99% chance that the error was my error, so I just reward as if the puppy got it totally right (because she did LOL!!) That keeps the pups going when we are sorting out handling especially at this early age. I think you did a great job here, especially since the mechanics of rewarding like that are weird and different 🙂 You were perfect on most of them. There was one where you rewarded with the dog side hand and one where you dropped the toy: but Ribsy looked like she was still having a blast! Wheeeee! My only suggestion is to do the blind cross sooner, start it as soon as she leaves the cookie and takes one step towards you. She is reading them really nicely!!!! And it was VERY smart to use a cone and long line to help with the mechanics!!
>> Thank you and you should expect 4 more video’s on this one thanks in advance.>>
Perfect! It was fun to watch, I am looking forward to more 🙂
TracyHi!
>>
When he was backing up at an angle, do you think this was to avoid the mat? Or just puppy body?>>I think it was option C: He was trying to look up at you, which was causing him to go a bit sideways and not think about his hind end. Note how after he was getting his treat from under you, his first order of business was to try to lift his head. I *think* he was watching your cookie hand and preparing to receive it in his mouth LOL! So, two things to help:
– no cookies from your hand 🙂 Toss them low and back, aiming for between his front feet so he looks down to get them.
– I don’t know if the mat was salient enough – so you can raise it up a little, either put it on another mat so it is doubly think or maybe put it on a piece of wood? That is something we will definitely be adding to backing up (a salient “destination”) . How tall is the Cato Board? If it is really low, you can even use that!
Nice job, let me know if that makes sense!
TracyHi! I agree, he is a total righty in this game 🙂 When you asked him to turn left he was all like, “um,No thanks.” Ha! With either side, you can have a lower hand so his head is in a natural position looking forward to lead him through the turn – when your hand was a little high, he was looking up and that changes his balance. That could also account for why there is no visible side preference on the flat but there was one on the planks (easier to balance on the flat :)) You can also ‘warm up’ the left turns on the flat then ask for one on the planks – then back to the flat. That builds the value and understanding of the left turns in an easier setting. Side preferences at this age are good to see, because then we have a good plan to balance things out.
On the teeter banging – I think he was a tiny bit sensitive to the noise on this one. He was in a rush to get off it when it banged and then was not as enthused about getting back on it. So you can go with that: when he bangs it especially loudly, you can toss a treat for him to then be able to get off the board immediately That helps create a nice little triple whammy of positive reinforcement (treat), positive conditioned emotional response (pairing treats with the noise & movement) and also a bit of negative reinforcement (being able to move away from the loudness). You can also put a blanket under it to dampen it: it is pretty normal for pups to go through cycles of not liking the noise, so we can head that off by dampening and tossing treats away from the board.
Nice work here!
TracyHi! I don’t know how you didn’t start cracking up when he was doing his circus dog moment of front feet on top of the thing – then when you didn’t click it, he actually pushed it. HA! I started laughing but you kept a straight face LOL!!! Smart boy. You read my mind: I was about to type that you should click then drop the treats into the bowl, to get him looking lower and not up at you – and you did exactly that. That changed the whole picture – he stopped offering circus dog tricks of front feet on the high pedestal, and he starting looking at the bowls. And what his head: he was turning his head to lead the way through the turns, which the precursor for tight turns! (More on that later in the class :)) So – do maybe one more short session on this pedestal, dropping the treats like you started doing here. Then if that goes well, you can do this with a jump wing!
Great job!
TracyThis was awesome, Joni! Yay!!! On all the reps here, you got your cookie hand to just below your knee – and she really reads that. The turns looked fabulous and then when you added in the cookie toss and decel: perfect! Happy dance! That is the sweet spot for now: cookie hand just below your knee. You won’t always need to do that, but for now it really gets her focus on the turn and she is shifting her weight brilliantly. Yay!!!! Well done!
TracyHi! I totally agree – leave in the stuff that is not as good, so we can figure out why. I would say this was a really good session! Yes, the first couple of reps were not as good as the end, but you were figuring out the mechanics. I think what was happening was that you were decelerating on time, but then your reward was too high so she was not sure what to do. But then at :26 you dropped your reward hand low and it made ALL the difference!!! You then started doing it consistently at :59, and the rest were awesome. The lower hand really helped her understand how to decelerate – you can see (and hear!) her doing it. Your last rep was perfection! So for this game, keep on slowing down nice and early like you were, and presenting the nice low cookie hand as you stop. She is small but she is fast like your BCs, so you will need to be early and clear like you were here.
Great job!
TracyHi! This was fun to see!! I know the treat finding was a pain – you can always try a mat or towel to put the treat on? Not sure how to get him to chew faster LOL! But, if nothing else, he was giving you an awesome whiplash recall away from food smells in the first part of this! And then by the time you switched to the push backs on the toy races, he was definitely motivated to get to the toy! So, feel free to skip the cookie toss because the push backs are doing the trick… he is beginning to smoke you. He is still pretty small but when the race was on, he lowered his head, pinned his ears for better aerodynamics, got low and DROVE to the toy. YES! Good boy. And you were perfect – he won one of the races but didn’t quite grab the toy…. so you enjoyed a nice victory dance. He then SMOKED you on the next one, which is exactly what we want.
I think the grass gives him the best grip for this game (I love that you still have green grass!) so keep playing with just the toy and the push backs. You can use something like a Hollee Roller so it is easy for him to scoop up at top speed.
Great job here – the next step is to throw the toy even further to see him much more he can smoke you. And you can mix in reps without the push back, so he feels the joy of being way out ahead of you.Tracy
Hi! Toy play in the great outdoors is hard! You were very enticing and got him into it. Yay! He definitely seemed to like it when you swooshed the toy around nice and low. So, as you build this, you can tie several of those cool toys together to create a giant SUPER TOY 🙂 That can be a 3 or 4 foot long toy that you drag around so he can chase. The longer the super toy, the more room to swinging it or drag it – so the easier it will be for him to lock onto and chase. That can help get you standing up without bending over him: You can be swooshing a long toy all over the place while standing because the toy is long enough to reach the ground. Now, since it is a bunch of toys tied together, you can switch up which toy he interacts with by offering a different part of the toy LOL!!! So when he chases and plays with one end, cool beans – turn that toy upside down so he can chase and play with the other end (which is also a different toy LOL!). Let me know if that makes sense. I think it can make it easy to get engagement and play in all sorts of new places.
Great job!
TracyHi! He was a good boy, really starting to figure it out!! There was a giant leap in session 2 – I think by changing your position to be lower and not leaning over him, he found it easier to offering backing. Plus, he could watch you but also keep his head relatively low, which helped get a nice body position for the backing up. When you were standing, the leaning over might have been a bit of a cue for a down. So keep on going with this with you down low like that, it looked great! And we do want to get you standing at some point – so when you go back to standing, you can drop the cookie under your knees to draw him in and jump start it – then stand upright as he backs out from under you (then you can bend into the cookie toss, then stand straight up again – you’ll get a nice little workout in hahahaha!)
Great job here!!!
TracyHi! This looks good! He was waiting for you to start it, so you can get everything ready, then toss a cookie away (or have him tugging) and then see if he will start it without you needing to put a cookie in the bowl (I think he was just watching your hands because STARVING NEVER EATEN HUNGRY PUPPY hahahaha). But I think he is definitely ready to go to the next step – he doesn’t seem to have a side preference and he is happy to go back and forth. So…. new stuff! Do a big laundry basket or something for a short session or two, then try it on a jump wing. I am confident it will be easy for him! We will be adding to it all very soon 🙂
Great job!
TracyHi! Lots of good value here too! On the non-moving plank: Get more of the value of staying on with all four feet- moving through is easy, staying on is hard 🙂 The having to stay on it and balance will be a nice challenge to revisit a lot, because he probably wakes up each day with his body slightly larger and feet in a new location! Turning around was hard – do you have a second plank to put next to it, for a wider playing field? That way you can reward him for turning around with all four feet remaining on a plank… then when he gets the idea that we want the turn around and not feet on the ground, you can go back to the narrow plank. This is also a good one to revisit a lot as he grows, so he never forgets where his feet are of how to balance as his center of gravity changes 🙂
He was supremely confident on the noisy/moving plank, yay! You can have him leap on one end and stand with all four feet on it: balance on something that was moving! It is a slightly different challenge but I think he is ready. Nice work!!
THi!
Ooh! New video location! I love it 🙂
Good job with the bed under the thing to keep it from slipping around an using your foot prop it so it would not move. He was perfectly fine getting on it and perfectly with it overturned too – his thought bubble appeared to be “ok this is different, but COOKIES!” Ha! He showed good balance and coordination! You can feed him lower so he doesn’t try to offer sits – that makes it harder to balance, and feeding high will tilt his head up which shifts his weight into a sit. He is definitely being a goat, YAY!!
Great job!
TracyHi!
VERY nice turn execution here! Your cookie was low and close to your leg, and your turn was slow so she was able to bend around your leg and line up her hind end – YAY! Then you gradually added more speed, which was spot on. You wee decelerated sooner on this one, so she was able to turn a little tighter because she engaged her hind end sooner.
When you do the doubles, think of it as front cross between the first and 2nd turn 🙂
One thing I noticed was that as you got moving faster, she started to go a little wider (yeeehaw!) so when you add speed, you can keep your hand & cookie closer to your leg to encourage her to stay really tight to you.
Great job here! She is so fun and doing so well!!!Tracy
