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Hey there! Hope you had a great holiday week! It has been gorgeous out, I am glad you were able to enjoy it with some quality outdoors time 🙂
The clicker sits are looking great! She is such a high drive girlie and yet she was able to produce a tight sit position, solid stay, no foot movement – she looked practically zen-like and meditative haha! But we know that she is ready to explode into work, which is great! The duration is looking good – the only error was when you started to run away and she was not quite settled in the sit yet… but the next reps where you had more movement were all really lovely. So to build on this:
– take it to many different places and play the clicker stay games in front of exciting things like tunnels and jumps. I add this game to tunnels and jumps before the pups really know what tunnels and jumps are, so that the stay has a chance to get highly reinforced before we introduce the major excitement and giddy-up-ing that comes with tunnels and jumps 🙂
– add in releases forward to you, mixing them into the click/thrown-back-rewards. You can do it with treats at first: your release word means come forward for a cookie, the click means ‘get it’ for a thrown back reward (but do continue to use the get it cue).
– Add toys! You can click then throw a toy back, and you can mix in releasing forward for a toy. The toy will add more excitement, which builds in more challenge for the stay behavior.Lots of really nice work on the reverse retrieve too! She had a ton of good things happening: focus forward on the toy, able to do the retrieve even with all the countermotion of you leaving early, and mostly bringing the toy to you LOL! The get it and countermotion elements were really terrific. When you are adding distance to the send away (after you throw the toy) – try to start her in the spot you want to start her in then throw the toy, rather than throw the toy then move her. The moving interrupts her focus forward to the toy and she looks at you a little, so you’ll get even better focus forward if you throw the toy further and don’t move her at all once it is thrown.
On the video, you were running it one way so she turned to her right on all the reps. Remember to switch sides so that she also turns to her left. You might find she *still* turns to her right which is unlikely but definitely worth working through. On these, she should always turn towards you and not towards her preferred direction.
The retrieve is really going well, all the way to the last moment when you want her to deliver it – then she has a little party of one LOL! So keep working the retrieve separately, where you are in a quiet area and maybe sitting on the floor, and can reward for putting the toy in your hand. For the reverse retrieve, you can cue and out when she is almost reaching you, almost putting it in your hand… then reward with the other toy – that will help make a smooth transition in the retrieve.
She did better with the smaller toy too – on the bigger toy, it got floppy and she had a puppy moment when it fell or when it flopped. It was super cute but not making your retrieve smooth LOL!
I liked your transitions where you would get the toy back and then you gave it back to her sometimes – that will help her want to give it to you! Yay! She did have the one bite-da-momma moment for the toy in your hand (ouch!) but you noted it and she immediately was back to NOT leaping for the toy. I don’t think she was frustrated when she kept for it, I just think she was a bit excited but then dialed herself back after the bit of verbal feedback.Super nice work on these!!! She is looking lovely!
TracyHi there! She did look really comfy in the new environment, yay! That is great!
On the video:
Foot targeting – she definitely was into it! You can stay a little closer to the target and drop food on the target (rather than hand it to her) – both of those ideas are designed to get her to want to look at you less here and at the target more. She really wanted to look at you AND target, as you can see form her backing up onto it LOL! Clever! So more rewards on the target will help her look at you less – and looking at you less will help when you add the countermotion skills. And yes, you can have a whole handful of treats ready for tossing then break it off and let her chase the toy while you reload.The blind crosses looked great! You are being too hard on yourself 🙂 From the camera angle, we can see how much connection that Demi could see… and that is what is important 🙂 True, it is hard to see their eyes as you are running fast like that – but you probably saw a blur of golden fur and she totally saw your connection. As you were running away, you had to disconnect for a heartbeat on the blinds and maybe that is why it felt disconnected? It looked great though!
On the mini obstacle course – yes, she was not comfy on this yet. No worries, the magic of cookies will get her comfy. I want you to banish any markers such as “uh oh” or “cheater” from your vocabulary, though – if something is hard and she is struggling, she doesn’t need to hear she is wrong – that doesn’t help LOL! Just reward ALL the things and keep telling her how great it is to try.
You rewarded a lot on the discs and stuff, and that helped! My only suggestion is to reward lower – either handing it to her lower or dropping the treat onto the item – so she has a more natural head position. You were rewarding up high so she was craning her neck up (like in obedience heeling). A more natural head position will give her more balance and also it is perfectly fine for her to look at the things she is walking over. Your ideas to isolate the wobble board is spot on – she didn’t want to touch it, even with a food lure. So, isolate it and stuff towels under it so it barely moves and doesn’t make noise. Then give her massive rewards (food or favorite toys) just for being near it, then eventually on it, then eventually moving it. Slow, fun progress will get her happy on it 🙂On the recalls – yes, she was definitely worried! It might be that she simply hasn’t had a lot of experience with restrained recalls, and it might be that she has had WAY too much experience with vets holding/touching her, and associates it with pain. Even after the first rep, she was still not comfortable – avoiding coming right back and then was all solicitous. No worries, though, we can get her happy! Here are two ideas for more happiness in restraint:
When you hand her off to someone, do the fastest recall ever. What I mean by that is to hand her off and then instantly call her. Do it within a half a second. No need for a long lead out or ready-steady-go moment – just hand off and instant recall. That will help her understand that being handed off means the recall fun and party starts immediately, so she will become less worried about getting handed off.
Another thing to do is hand her off and have the holder feed her treats (if she can eat them – some dogs are so uncomfortable in the early stages that they can’t eat the treats) – then do a pretty immediate recall, so she doesn’t have to be held for that long. Try to expand this to a lot ot different people so she gets more comfy with lots of folks 🙂On the clicker stays – I agree, sit versus down is not as clear in her head as you might’ve thought 🙂 Part of the reason was that you were leaning over and towards her – so that pressure tends to produce a down, especially if you have been rewarding a lot of downs lately. When you stood up, even leaned back a little – she was more likely to sit. And you can add a hand cue if you want to help with the sit. But if you say sit, and she downs – don’t click that because it gets confusing to her (one or two rewards for that was why she kept offering downs). And Maintain a 2 failure rule: if she fails twice (offers and doesn’t get rewarded), make it easier by helping either with less pressure or a hand signal.
When she is in the position you want, you can now start to delay the click to extend the duration of the stay. And you can take this to different places so she can do happy stays everywhere!Nice work here! Keep me posted on the upcoming diagnostics! I was happy to see her feeling really good on this video 🙂
Tracy
Hey there! Lots of good stuff here 🙂
First up, blinds… these went really well, connection looked good! As you found out, that 2nd blind of the double blinds has to come a lot earlier: the first one can happen as soon as she starts heading towards you and the 2nd one can happen when she is halfway to you.
This was a great game to play in front of the crowd, because she did really well ignoring them. It was also super high energy!She had more trouble with the crowd in the target shaping – more so because I think she didn’t really “get” what you wanted so she left for visiting. To help her, a few ideas:
Use a bigger target (more room for her feet to hit it and more room to drop cookies on it)
Stand closer to the target – this will help her move to it more and look at you less
Try to toss the treat when she is not looking at you
All of these should raise the rate of reinforcement, so she is less likely to leave for a distraction. And. Add in breaking off for a wild tug dance after every couple of treats, especially when you want her to get off the target – this will make it super exciting and she will have more focus as well.The mini obstacle course is looking strong, she was happy to do all the things. Have your cookies ready (in hand, not in pocket) so she gets cookies really fast and not when she stops and looks up at you. We don’t want her looking at you too much.
The clicker stays look amazing!!!! Woot woot!!! Next steps: do them in front of exciting things, like a tunnel or a jump (even if she doesn’t know what a jump is, add in stays because we are gonna need stays with this speed demon).
You can add in some releasing forward now, always balanced with throwing rewards back. And, you can use a toy as a reward too, on both the releases forward and the throws back. That will add excitement and challenge!
And, do clicker stays in front of people too, more value for ignoring her fan club 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
I completely agree that the ladder or cavaletti is a walking/trotting game and so should not have a lot of giddy up or excitement in it. I also like the head to be completely straight so I have some ideas for you:
Either the sound was off on the video (always a possibility living in the country where a squirrel powers the internet) or you were clicking after the food was thrown (or while it was thrown on a couple of reps) – so, be sure to click then throw in order to make the click most effective. If the food gets thrown and then there is a click, I don’t think it is detrimental but it won’t allow the click to make anything specific other than heading for the cookie. So, in terms of mechanics – have the cookie ready but completely still til after the click, then toss or drop it in.
And, most importantly – top thing to remember is to only reward when she is *not* looking at you. For example, she did a good job at 1:25 but then the reward happened when she looked up at you. To keep her looking forward, you will likely have to mark & reward really early in the cavaletti (before she can look up at you) and then tossing the treat out past the end of it.
If she has a tendency to hop or run for a tossed treat (she wasn’t doing that here), you can present only 2 or 3 rods of the cavalletti before adding back the 4th one and eventually building past 4.
Having the treats already in your hand will help too, she was following the movement of your hand to the mouth and back down on some reps, which became more looking at the hand when it was moving – which then got rewards for looking at you.
She did really well with not bouncing, but as a BC she is also a ‘looky’ dog so I like to obsess on getting through the ladder without looking up at me while also maintaining the walk/trot pace.
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
TracyYay! I am glad to hear he was able to do his tricks and eat treats at Tractor Supply – that is a pretty distracting place!!!
T
Hi there!!!
>> It was the first time he’d seen a MM so now will work on getting him off of it now that he knows the joy of it.
Yes, the MM does bring joy to so many dogs LOL!!!
Foot targeting:
He definitely is getting good value on the foot target, yay! One thing to add now is to be clearer on your transitions into it. You were moving a lot but it was not clear if you were sending or wanting him to offer the target. That is why he sometimes went to it, sometimes looked at you. So after each reward, call him back, reset, then send him to it. That will allow him to know when to offer and then you can really build in countermotion.
He did well on the tugging, especially in the 2nd tug break! On the first one, you can throw the toy around more and get him to chase you more to get the game going.Retrieve games:
glad he likes tugging on you, it builds value for end position of the retrieve 🙂 You can add in letting him take the toy and run with it as a reward for tugging up on you2nd video –
Yes, he drops when you move too quickly and did better when you were stationary – so stay stationary for a while and try not to give him an uh oh if he drops (the drop means you were late rewarding him during the training stage :))
Keep building on this turning towards you, I think this is going well! You can sit on a floor and that might make it look less like you are going to move away. Ping pong the amount of time before the reward/party: a head turn, then a step, then a head turn, then a couple of steps, then 1 step, then try for 4 steps, etc.
One other thing is to shape him to ‘target’ something with the toy. It is a great shaping challenge! For example, to get Voodoo to retrieve the ball for flyball (he would spit it as soon as I moved), I used a clicker to shape him to target the ball to a huge empty bowl. Bam! Lightbulb on: dropping the ball in the bowl got the c/t and big party. Then I replaced the bowl with my hand (targeting the ball to my hand) – and now he retrieves the ball in flyball, which works out to be approximately 75 feet! I might have video somewhere of the shaping stage.
Nice work here! Have a great Christmas and I hope Spot enjoys his party at the kennel 🙂Tracy
Good morning!
I like that you worked on a ‘thoughtful’ session of body awareness and a wild & crazy session with the blinds – really nice balance in your training!I think she was confused about what to offer on the first part of the first video – you were wanting leg bumps I believe, but the proximity of the ladder caused her to want to show off her ladder skills 🙂 It was definitely clearer when you moved a bit further away.
I love how easily she can go back and forth from food to toys!
On the leg bumps – she seemed comfy with it so you can start adding the bending by holding her near on of your hips and tapping the reward on the other side of you near your other hip, ot help her ‘bounce’ through your leg grid – that will get more speed and mechanics going on this, using your body as a mini bending grid 🙂She seems to remember the ladder! Time for more challenge – you can stand up more and walk more, letting her trot for more steps (she isn’t hopping which is great). By standing up, you can drop the treats in or toss them ahead, to help keep her head straight. When you were bending over, she was looking at you more because the food was so present and coming from your outside arm, which was encouraging a bit of curling into you. When you drop the treats in, do it from the dog-side hand so she can continue to look ahead.
I believe she is ready for a bit more challenge here too, in the form of the ladder being elevated by an inch or so – the desired behavior is still a nice balanced trot, but now she will have to think about foot placement. I am not sure if this ladder has feet you can put on it to get it a little lifted off the ground? Or a regular human ladder can work too, with rounded rungs, because those will be a little taller.She was offering backing up too (at the very beginning) so you can add in backing up out of the ladder. 2 ways to incorporate this: You can start her in the middle of the ladder and have her back up through it so she only has to step over a run or two. Or, you can start her in the ladder at the 2nd or 3rd-to-last rung, so she backs up out of the ladder. Eventually, she can back up all the way through the ladder – such a difficult skill but so great for coordination! She is showing excellent coordination already, so I believe she is ready for more challenge 🙂
Cookie recalls:
The first rep was a front cross with good reward mechanics. The second rep was a SUPER nice blind cross! You had a FC or two thrown in there during the session, but the bulk were really nice blinds with correct reward mchanics- I love how she drives straight into you on those – no flanking or asking questions or slowing down.
Your videographer was perfect – funny AND providing excellent distractions LOL!!I think the reward-across-the-body is opening up some really beautiful connection, exactly what will make for terrific teamwork out there on course in the future. It is really clear to see on the angle of the video. Lanna is relatively small (and it is harder to make good connection with the littler dogs) but it looks great here!
The mechanics might be a bit uncomfortable right now, but I think you will get more and more confy as you play with this. We will be applying it to all sorts of things as we build the concepts of handling! So fun!!Plus, because it is clear to her, she can dig in and go FAST. And fast is exactly what we want 🙂
Well done here 🙂
TracyGood morning!
OMG the background noise was AMAZING! LOL!!!!!! Star Wars, Toller edition LOL!
The boys did well here – dual training is hard ineed but it looks like you had a nice high rate of reinforcement so they were able to do it! I have also found that the older dogs have a harder time than the puppies on this game! Keep playing with this, to expand it to one dog watching as you shape something or tug with the other – I think you can build it up to having them relax and watch the other run agility courses!Good update on the Tractor Supply adventure! He sounds like is was really interested in all of the sights and sounds, in a good way. Greeting happily is terrific! Was he able to eat treats and respond to things to earn the treats? I am thinking yes, he probably was, based on what you mentioned. If he can eat treats and relax, then the tugging will follow: pouncing on the toy is a great start! And Tractor Supply is pretty darned distracting 🙂 so it is a great place to go to play little games and socialize.
Nice work!!
TracyGood morning!
Lots of good stuff here!
First up, reverse retrieve: he is doing really well with both getting the toy AND bringing it back! Yay!!! A couple of ideas for the next steps:
take a moment after you drop the toy to get him more focused on it – drop the toy, restrain him, give a little “ready, ready…” and when he looks at the toy, cue the get it and run away. That will get even more speed and build in some good focus forward on these transitions.
You can also add in calling his name as you run away, simulating what you’d be doing on an agility course – this will add even more speed on the retrieve element while challenging the toy bringing too!
When he gets to you, you can mix in tugging with the original toy – I think on all of these, you traded for a different toy (which is fine) but you can also tug on the toy he brings. Mix it all up, he is being really terrific so we can build on it.Foot targeting:
I think a couple of things will get more drive to the target – yes, you can do more of the shaping on the Baby Level, but on the sends here are some things that can help clarify for him:
Make a clean reset and transition before each send – line him up on your side, hold the collar or gently push back on his check, use a little ‘ready steady’ chatter, wait for him to look forward towards the target – then send using the dog-side arm & leg. On the first several sends, you had the opposite arm and leg sending which caused him to look at you and not send as well.So clean transitions will really help – you added that at approx 2:41 and the behavior got sharper immediately. Nice!!!I also recommend rewarding with a tossed reward out on the target for now – it looks like the value is mainly on you (rewards back at you) so he doesn’t really want to leave 🙂 So on the sends – click then toss the reward at or past the target. It will be easy enough to shift the value back to you if he drives to the target but doesn’t want to come back LOL! A larger target can also make it easier, as it is easier to get paws on it to clarify what behavior you are clicking (some of the clicks were early so he didn’t actually touch it).
Hiking around on weird stuff is the BEST possible goat trick 🙂 Great for conditioning too! Love it! Have you noticed any sensitivity to noise or motion? He looks perfectly happy here on this clip!
And yay for a good plan with Pat Miller! Sounds like she is hitting on ALL the things to help him out, and that is great 🙂 Keep me posted!!
Tracy
Hey there!
Great session!!! Super gold star to Spy for eating the cookies… usually the BCs are not interested in the cookies when the chase game is on LOL! You did a great job working the mechanics of the reward across the body – I know it is weird but it is SO useful (I totally stole it from the big name Europeans, so I figured it is good enough for us to use too haha). And yes, it does open up great connection – note how he is straight as an arrow driving to you! No flanking or slowing down or anything, just freight train straight up the line: exactly what we want! 2 of the reps were pretty late, so you can chalk those into the “momma is going to sometimes be late, please help the momma out and make the side change anyway” column (which is a game that I *do* play with the dogs :)). The others were fine and he read it really well! Also, as he gets more experienced, he will be able to respond on the first part of the head turn and not wait to see the whole picture, which will make timing much easier for you.
Excellent job here! His countermotion looked good so you can definitely add in the foot targeting games!Tracy
Hi! The Bravery Course looks a little like my living room hahaha!! It had some really fun ideas for super weirdo things for the dogs to interact with along with more normal looking things. Such great stuff for puppies! He seemed completely fine with everything except maybe having to get his leash back on LOL! He probably needs some recalls off the Manners Minder, so he learns to eat his MM treats then comes back to work then back to MM and so on – that way he doesn’t avoid being reached for when the MM is around 🙂
Nice work here! The next step would be to let him offer more on these mini obstacle courses so he can leave you more and not follow the cookie as much.
TracyGood question!!!!
I generally only reward at the target on those reps, but that is with a pup who automatically re-engages with me (lucky me!!). My previous pup did not have natural engagement like that as a pup, so I would give a small reward for coming back and engaging. Let Lanna guide you, I think she is more like Hot Sauce in that she is likely to naturally engage, so a reward at the target is all you’ll need. But it is also fine to mix it all up, keep her on her toes 🙂
TracyGood morning! She is doing well with the concepts here and the value for the target looks really strong. Yay! A couple of ideas for you:
On the sending forward (in the early part of the video) and in the step backs (later in the video), add in a clearer transition into the send so she knows when to leave you and also so you don’t have to take more than one step. You can engage her, talk to her, give her a bit of a ready steady…. then the one step (forward or backwards :)) That will also get more speed to the target.
One thing I see here (which is a common thing as we teach these skills) – she is faster coming back to you then sending away from you (pretty normal at this stage and good to identify!). To balance the speed and get as much speed leaving as driving back, balance out the placement of rewards. All of the rewards here were back at you (which helps explain the speed difference) so be sure to toss at least 50% of the rewards out to the target while you are sending and/or moving away. You might end up putting more than 50% of the rewards out there when she hits it, and that is fine! Let her speed dictate any shifts in placement of reward: if she shifts to leave you on the sends at warp speed but is slow or sticky to come back… shift the value back to rewards from your hand. That value will shift back and forth throughout the training process, so look for any speed differences.
>>I see that I am leaning over, sigh
I think you were fine, I didn’t notice the leaning over as a bad thing here. It all looked pretty natural to me. Sends tend to lean us a bit – either leaning into a forward send or leaning away from the step back – as long as it was connected and natural, it is fine 🙂 She seemed to think it was connected and natural too!
>>The run off in the middle was to a toy lying on the ground. It struck me as a frustration/confusion behavior (I’d love your opinion).
I think it was a combo of things – the toy tossed behind you definitely was a hard distraction (note how she looks at it when you toss it there). She was a good girl to head to the target (I *think* she touched it with at least one foot? Hard to tell?) and then you had turned and moved towards the toy… so she had a “nailed it!” moment LOL! She likely thought the toy was the reward – but then you reacted and she might have had an uh-oh! moment. So it began as what she might’ve thought was a legit reward then a little bit of confusion. This is where you can use the toy as a reward (starting her closer to the target so she has a better hit) and also you can toss treats out at the target when she hits it, to balance the value of leaving you to hit the target, especially when the toy is visible.
Overall, really good session! She is still targeting nicely as you show countermotion and rotation, which is going to be super helpful when we add in cones & wings and tunnels and such. Super fun!
Nice work!
TracyYes, you can use anything – a perch or shoe or any random object 🙂 We transfer it to wings/cones/uprights eventually, when the understanding to come around is fluent.
T
Hi there!
I would personally not use the RDW mat for this – the behavior that I use on the RDW mat has to do with the rear feet, and that could get messy/diluted on this behavior. For the handling games, I am happy with a “touch it anyway you need to” criteria and I don’t care if the pup pounces on it, whacks it with a front foot only, stands on it, etc – all things that are not likely to be desirable on a RDW mat 🙂 The RDW mat proofing is more likely to involve more specific criteria, so I would keep the concepts separate for now. When HS was a wee puppy learning this (before the RDW mat work), I used a baseball cap as her “obstacle” for these games 🙂 to keep the RDW looking really different.Food for thought!
Tracy
