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Hi!
Threadle wraps are going really well! They were at their best when you started him from the sit at the beginning, super tight!
On the left turn threadle wraps – When you add motion, be sure to decelerate at the barrel until he turns his head away then you can
When he was having trouble getting the right turn threads wraps, check out your feet – they were pointing to the other side of the barrel. But when you pointed them straight, he got it. Yay!
When you wanted the right turn TWs with motion: he gave us good insight into how early he makes his decisions! If you did not have the cue going when he finished eating the start cookie, he went to the normal wrap side. So having the cues started just after you throw the start cookie (or start him from a stay) will help deliver the info sooner.
When you added it to the rocking horse game: he did better turning to his left but he also did well getting it to the right after a few reps! Super!
When you were cueing the threadle to take him off the natural line (starting at 5:31) he needed to see more shoulder rotation to pull hm away from the line (turning to your right when he was on your left). When you didn’t do that, you ended up pushing him to the non-threadle side. But when you did do it, he was able to get the threadle so be sure to really exaggerate that ‘pull’ off the line – that is what you did on the last 2 reps and he got it in both directions! Yay!
Great job!
Tracy
He did really well with his retrieves here! Good boy! He was s cute when he dropped it and then caught himself and went back to get it. It seemed like he wasn’t bring the toy all the way to your hand, so you can reward when he gets close enough (like you were doing here) or even when he gets close, whip out another toy to tug on – that can really get him bringing it as close as possible.
One thing you can add to this game is to have him sitting facing you, while you dangle the toy. Then 3 things happen at the same time: release him (with a get it), drop the toy or throw it behind you, and you run forward towards where he was sitting before he passes you to the toy. You were starting to do this at the end of the session and he did great, is yo can ramp it up with even more countermotion.
Great job!
Tracy
Hi!
>When you say mix in praise. I had stopped praising him as I was leading out upon your advice. >
Yes – that was because he didn’t need praise the whole time because we didn’t want him to think of it as an additional stay cue.
>Do you mean when I lead out and stop and connect, I should praise
first and then say catch or break? >yes, sometimes: lead out, stop, connect, lift your hand…. then 3 options are available: praise then release, or just release, or throw the toy back. We will add a 4th option soon where we ask him to focus on the first jump.
>Or do I stop, praise and move again and then catch or break?
That might confuse him and cause him to break – if I lead out, stop, praise, then decide I need to move again (sometimes I am in the wrong place haha) then I will cue a stay again before moving so the dog doesn’t wonder what the heck I am doing.
>Also, I feel like I’m walking out so slowly that I might be lending to the anticipation? Should I walk more normal speed? I’m trying not to increase excitement with my motion.>
You can totally be more normal – but as you add more speed, do shorter stays so he can be successful. Our goal is that you can eventually run to your lead out position.
>And if he breaks, how should I address that. It’s bound to happen.>
The very instant he moves too soon (before the release), tell him he is very cute (truth), it was a nice try (truth) but you aren’t going to reward that (all truth). Then go back and reset – all of it is very cheerful but absolutely not cookies or toys or running the sequence. Then if you think the stay was to hard? Make it a shade easier for the next rep. Or if you think it was not toooooo hard? Try it again – but if he fails again (2 failure rule) then you definitely want to make it easier.
Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Hi!
>Question: is a tunnel threadle different from a tunnel pass or are they the same? >
I think it is just different names for the same behavior – every region has a different name for it! My tunnel threadle is basically “don’t go to the obvious side of the tunnel, come in towards me to the non-obvious side between me and the tunnel, then turn away to get into it”
>I’m a little confused on the double whammy. It looks different from a pass, is is a cue simply to turn away from the handler into the tunnel?>
It is just an ultra-simplified pass or tunnel threadle. The ‘obvious’ side here is either going back into the tunnel hole they just exited, or going to the wrong side (outside) of the handler to the other entry. It is highly unlikely but not impossible 🙂
The non-obvious side in the game asks the dog to come in between the tunnel and the handler, then turn away into the tunnel.Let me know if that makes sense!
Tracy
Hi!
She is doing great with her Minny Pinny!! She seems to understand it well enough that you actually can handle *less* 🙂 Send her into it, keep saying the verbals – but I don’t think you need to show any motion to the 2nd and 3rd wing. You can be still ,ro y can do a Fc and run the other way. When you had more handling than needed on some of the reps by going to the 3rd bar, she thought she was going straight so didn’t get the left or right turn (and rolled one of the bars on the 2nd rep.So try it with less motion and see how independent she can be! And since we don’t want her rolling her wrists and if you don’t have 3 bumps, you can lock the bars into the jump cups by the jump cup into the bar – that way they won’t move if she touches them.
>Threadle wraps- turning right with distance was harder for her so I went closer.>
Both videos were the Minny Pinny, can you resend the threadles? Thanks 🙂
Nice work here!
Tracy
Hi!
I 💯 see what you are saying about the jumping up! It was a lot with the toy but still there with the food. This is exactly why we noodle around with cones etc for so long – to smooth out the details like this!
>He jumped up and grabbed my whole arm>
OMG! He wants to be a police dog LOL!!
>He was worse this time about the jumping than on the live. I swear… even though I was frozen lol!>
I believe you! It is happens whenever your send arm gets ahead of his nose: he ‘tags’ it with his mouth as he goes past (or doesn’t go past it to the cone).
So 2 things to add:
– Take the pointing ahead out entirely. Use huge connection and keep your arm locked down and back even as he passes you so it is not part of the cue at all (for now). It will feel weird, yes, but it will help for now.
– Along with that, let’s change the placement of reinforcement. Rather than throw the reward (cookie or toy) when he gets back to you after a wrap, let’s have you throw it to the other side of the cone so the reward is far, far from your flesh. Basically: he has to leave the reward to get the reward. That can help clear up some of his confusion about it and also shift the value of the game out to the cones and away from your hands.Tunnel threadle:
Speaking of reward placement: note how as he was figuring out the tunnel threadle, he never jumped at your hands… because all of the reward is out away from you *after* the obstacle. I think the cones need that too 🙂He did well here! He had a little trouble turning away, but that is normal – you can be even closer to the tunnel to start with for now so it is even easier to turn away.
He also did really well with his stay! Yes, staying connected will help him hold the stay and not look around. it can bea soft connection, not staring needed LOL! You can definitely add the toy into this game, even if it is a little tugging at the beginning then food rewards. The toy helps teach him to do hi stays even when he is aroused, so adding the toy in and doing short stays will help with that.
Plus you can move to the next game, where we put the stay and lead out in front of the prop (as a jump replacer :))
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
Training in the dark with wind and leaves? That is brave! LOL! But he did great. He even overcame the temptation to take off with the toy!! One thing about your stays sessions is that there has always been a lot ore play than “work” and that is GREAT!!!
>Also the one time I was about to release him he looked away. I released him anyway and he did his job. I was afraid if I waited for him to look back, he might have made a different choice if whatever he was looking at became more stimulating.>
That was a good choice: get him moving to you before other choices could be made. He was really great!
>He flinched once before I said break. In retrospect perhaps I should have thrown the toy back to reward him for not breaking…note to self for next time. In the moment the cue was about to come out of my mouth>
He might have been anticipating that the release was coming, so mix in more praise so he doesn’t think that you stopping and connecting will always be followed by the release or toy throw.
He was so funny on the minny pinny: when you said the verbal a few times, he started to pull as if he was saying “I GOT THIS, LET ME GO!” Haha. Great job adding the verbal. He did well with both distances – he ticked the bars a bit on the first rep of the new distance probably because he was surprised (no problem after that).
I think he was balanced with both distances, so there is no clear favorite: you can mix them up a bit to get him reading different distances. He was a little more extended on the 2nd distance, of course, so that was good to see him still be balanced even with the extra room.For the rocking horses:
>t. I’m not sure the difference between the spin and just a blind?>
A regular blind is a full side change that begins with you turning away from him then reconnecting on the new side (starting on your left, then going to your right, for example). A spin in a FC-BC combo: you start by rotating towards him like a FC, then after that do a BC. So you will start on your left, for example… and end with him on your left 🙂 It is like sending with your left, doing a (brief) FC to your right, then an immediate blind to put him back on your left. Let me know if that makes more sense.
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
It is entirely possible that the issue is she doesn’t want to go in 🙂 My Contraband was like that for a while: he would have happily lived under a tree with his frisbee haha!! So I did a lot of being sure that getting him back in or getting his leash on was not always associated with being finished. That meant sometimes going back in then right back out, and almost always going in and getting cookies and some free time in the house – not directly into the crate or xpen.T
Hi!
Oh wow, it is rare that bad weather opens up good opportunities! Yay! And it sounds like he did have a bit of distraction with other people there and he was pretty perfect!
I think everything here went really well!!
On the first video: the tunnel sends, the cross to the threadle, and the backside slices all looked great! The physical cue overrode the verbal for the wrap when you accidentally used it.
Question:
what does ‘wrap wrap’ mean at :41 & :46 & :54 & 1:02 etc for the jump before the threadle? You were using it for both the wrap on the wing and the soft turn/non-wrap on the jump. You might not need it for both?He did read the threadle slice really well! One thing you can do on these threadle slices is to keep moving forward with your upper body opening up to cue the threadle. You were doing that when you did the blind to the threadle on the other side. On this side, you were decelerating and rotating a bit, but I think you will have more of a positional advantage if you can stay in motion on the threadles.
The threadle wrap is totally on the right track! You were started to fade out the extra handling, and that it great. The next step is to see if he will send himself back out to the jump rather than need or wait for a hand/foot cue to do it. When you were turning your feet back to the jump, it widened the turn more than needed. But if you can dcecel, turn your feet to the next line, and hold position until he turns himself to the jump: that will get the best turn and also allow you to move to your next line as early as possible. – that adds extra foot movement which changes the line (like at 1:30)
At the very end, you can the tunnel to threadle on the jump – to tighten up the tunnel exit, you can call him before he goes into the tunnel (6 feet or so before he goes in) so he turns on the exit.
Video 2 – this also looked really good! The end to the tunnel looked great, as did the blind and the FC to threadle slice. Super!!! He is very comfy with the discriminations!
When you did the tunnel to the threadle -you did call him but it was a little late. Try to call him or give a directional when he is still approximately 6-8 feet away from entering the tunnel.
After the threadle – as soon as you see him look at the correct side of the jump, you can peel away and head to the next jump. You did a spin there and I don’t think you need to do one.Great job here!!
TracyHi!
Yes, you can totally have it in a covered/closed container so he can’t just grab it. It can be on a chair or table, and sealed so you can deliver it after the marker.Keep me posted!
TracyYay! That is exciting! For NFC, you can go in with a tug toy, or even an empty lotus ball and even have it attached to another toy to make it long – then you can really have him chase it a bit. Check out the “just like home” NFC level to get started!
Good morning!!
>Oh my! I was making a joke about braces. hehehe. Babby Barry had that bonus toofer whipped out on Wednesday, and by wednesday night you couldn’t tell he’d been under a general anaesthetic that day! (it was an EXTRA toof rather than retained babby teefs)>
Oh good, that is a relief! Because braces can be hard on baby dogs!!
>Babby Barry was amazing, a place he’d never been he was pretty resiliant. He played beautifully with my friend’s Border Collie puppy. >
Yay! Another lovely experience in a new place. Super!
Looking at the video:
>But I think there’s something missing in these exercises, he’s not really engaging with the exercise part – i definitely think my mechanics are part of it, but there feels like something else missing.>
Yes, it was a hard environment with the rings running/walking and that might have made things a little harder, but I think there were other things happening that made the engagement a little harder here:
Consider the exercises to be secondary to the engagement – the exercises are just a framework for us to get more engagement in different places while we do ‘stuff’.
So at the beginning, you went to play as soon as the leash came off – super! He was very engaged.
And then live by the 2 failure rule: if he fails twice with a behavior, then it is too hard and you need to make it a lot easier so he can be success.What happened here was you got 3 failures early on (2 on the sit and one on the threadle) so the engagement dissipated, so he didn’t know what to do (and you got some sniffing).
You can structure your training sessions in harder sessions a little differently: if he can do something at home (like a stay while yo move into a threadle position), ask for at least 50% less than that in a new environment. For example, start a session with really easy stays and lots of rewards (no threadle). And then do a threadle or two without a stay. Then if that goes well? Combine them for a couple of reps.
After you closed the car up, you had a lot more success even in a challenging environment at the very beginning of that part of the session. More success = more reward. Yay!
When things came off the rails, it was about the cookie he couldn’t find 🙂 He had trouble finding the start cookie at 2:21 (I think he never found it so his brain was definitely thinking about it or smelling the scent, and couldn’t do the threadle) and I think that made the rest of the session harder – that missing start cookie was on his mind!
He found the start cookie at 3:17 but there was still one out there so he couldn’t quite come back to the game.When you are having trouble getting engagement: abandon the exercise, and just play! You can get him back on the toy, get him moving, go find that darned start cookie, then even end with play and watch the video to see what happened. With the tossed start cookies, if the pups do not immediately return their attention to the game, it usually means that they never found the cookie :).
The other thing to consider in a hard environment is to use games that involve more movement for you both. He was having a hard time here (darned start cookie) and the game itself had you stationary and facing him – which is not as engaging as if you were going back and forth and rewarding him for finding the jump in the parallel path 🙂 So adding movement is generally a good plan to get more engagement!
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
Reverse retrieve went really well – super fun high energy session! It looked like he was bringing the original toy all the way back (yay!) and he wanted to keep that toy/play with it, so you can totally play with the original toy and fade out the visual of the 2nd toy. The 2nd toy can be in your pocket, so you can sometimes whip it out as a surprise too!
He is doing well with his stays! It looks like there was a cookie in your lineup hand, so we can definitely fade that out. 2 reasons to fade it: we don’t want the cookie to be the context cue to stay, and there was sometimes some confusion if the rep continued after he got the cookie for sitting (he would stand up and move with you). So you can use an empty hand cue to get the line up and sit (like having him move to a hand target, then follow your hand into the sit at your side). Then you can reward after a stay.
If he is happy with the cookie-free hands to line up and stay, you can put the stay in front of the prop to begin teaching him that the stay-til-released overrides the value of driving to something that has a lot of value 🙂
Backsides:
Look at him tugging in the barn!!! Yay! His barrel commitment was really strong (and he was able to ignore a squeaky friend). Super!!He was not totally into the lotus ball toy as the immediate reward, it seemed like he wanted to follow your motion and come to you (maybe to play more). He did go directly to the lotus ball when you dropped it a little more around the barrel (maybe it had more movement from his perspective) so you can attach the lotus ball to a line then drop it where you did – and drag it a little for him to chase 🙂
When he will dive onto the lotus ball (or grab a toy out of the dirt 🙂 ) you can start a little further back so you are both moving with more speed. He was driving to the barrel really well, so you can build up to jogging and see how he does with the countermotion.
>Here is his tunnel slice. Auntie was sitting in a chair (and recording this). >
Auntie is a hard slice but a good choice to work on!!! I figure auntie will be around a lot so clarifying when he can run to her for reward or to socialize is GREAT! And he did really well too with a super high rate of success., and letting him visit was probably great fun for him 🙂
You can have the lotus ball tied onto a line here too, so he can chase it more because it will be moving more. He turns to you when it is ‘dead’ so you can keep it a little more alive to get him grabbing it.
I notice that he was barking more here in the tunnel session and on the backside wraps. I think it was excitement barking that is also part of the games being harder overall and not frustration. There is a fine line and it all involves arousal regulation! So it is something we will keep looking at. In general, when the pup is barking but moving forward into the ‘work’ and looking the ‘work’, we are in a good place of excitement and arousal regulation. But when the pup barks at the handler or spins when cued to do something, that might be tipping into frustration. I don’t see any of that happening!
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>the first word I said was the wrong direction but quickly caught myself.>
You caught yourself before you even let him go, so there was no issue at all!
This session went really well – he seems to really love this little game LOL! Lots of running but he is bending really well in collection here. Super!!! You can probably add a little more distance between the bars, maybe just 6 inches more so he can be a little more extended in the bounce.
The backyard stays looked really strong – excellent choice of toy at the beginning, and great job getting him playing and doing tricks! All of that helps to overcome the challenges of outdoor distractions. And he didn’t go too far away with the toy when you tossed it back to him – that is great because he had all the freedom in the world to take off with it 🙂
Nice long lead out and release to the jump – and your party for the reward is long and happy! He had a little trouble lining up when you changed directions to come towards the camera – harder visuals of distractions? Brain tired because it was taking a lot more energy than he was letting on? Both? You adjusted by rewarding sooner and that was an excellent choice.
You might not be able to get a 4 minute session outside yet (4 minutes is no problem for him indoors). I’d say he was mentally done by about 3 minutes (you can see at about 3.5. minutes he was really looking around, not giving up the toy as well, etc. So you can go to shorter sessions outdoors for now (get one great rep on each side and be finished, resist temptation to do one more :)) and you can also bring some good treats out to reward lining up. That will help extend his ability to work in the more intense outdoor distractions and then it will all be even easier.
Great job!
Tracy
