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Good morning!
He definitely liked the ball as part of this game! And he did great with the cookies too. And good for you for balancing things with the right side too! Getting a line up on both sides (and between the feet :)) is really helpful.
Since he seemed happy to have his collar touched, you can add longer collar holding now – hold his collar, praise, then toss the reward. I think it will be easy peasy for him.
You can also try food & toy together in this game: line up with as boring of a cookie as possible, collar hold, praise… then throw the ball 🙂 Or any super exciting toy. That can be a great way to start toy races!
Nice work here!
Tracy
Hi!
>I thought I had chopped up the soft chewy cookies enough, but it took forEVER for her to chew each one before she went to the other bowl again. lol>
Haha yes, it was definitely about 15 chews for each cookie LOL!! That does slow down the back-and-forth progression of the game. Since we can’t do anything about teething, are there treats she likes that she can slurp down without chewing? Small bits of cold cheese can work – they won’t be noisy as you plunk them into the bowl, but she might not need the noise any more to help her.
She was going back to the next bowl after she finished eating the treat, so that part of the pattern is getting nicely established. With the chewing, though, it is possible that little bits were falling out of her mouth or the scent was moving a lot, so she was sniffing the turf a bit.
The upright was not a problem for her at all, but we definitely want to get treats that need no chewing for the next session LOL That way she will move back and forth pretty quickly, and then you can move the upright progressively further away and then move to a bigger object. I think finding the right slurpable treat will help a lot 🙂
Nice job getting the toy involved too! You can tie that toy to another toy, to get it to be 4 or 5 feet long. That makes it easier to swoosh around for her to chase/grab without you needing to lean over as much.
Great job 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
Nice work here with driving to you! She was more than happy to come to your magic cookie hand and you showed the decel early enough that it was easy for her to decelerate too. Super! And she got back onto the toy at the end really well too. You can mix in the toy between the reps – after she gets her cookie for the pivot, you can play tug on the way back to the start spot.
We build on this game soon! Stay tuned!
Great job 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! Super nice session here!!
Lining her up at your side and between your feet made the game about the fun of getting close and lining up, with the collar grab a small but fun part of it. Perfect! She seemed more than happy to let you take her collar then throw the treat.
You can start to add a little more duration of holding the collar (you can hold it, tell her she is a good girl, then toss the treat).
And you can also line up for a boring treat and throw an amazing toy, as a way to get her to enjoy treats and toys in the same session.
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
>Sprite and Dot get along. But, Dot likes to bite her. So, I generally only allow them together outdoors so Sprite can run away. I have had Dot watch Sprite do the foot target.>
If there are treats available, it is possible Dot will use her mouth for treats and not for chewing on Sprite 🙂
Looking at the video:
She did so great with the toy races! I loved your calm, smooth transition from the tugging into the lineup at your side, that was lovely. The first race went great! On the 2nd one, I think she was a little in food mode so yes, you were the big winner! But she was back in toy mode on race 3 and 4, so she soundly beat you LOL! She did great driving straight to the toy, and not getting distracted by your motion.
My only suggestion is that if you do win and you are silly with the toy, you don’t need to go back to the original starting spot for the next rep. You can start the next rep right where you were, to capitalize on the moment of excitement 🙂
She still shows us how young she is by going into a down while tugging (such a cute baby dog behavior) so it was great to end after race 4. And you can re-visit this here and there with different toys – we incorporate it into other games coming up soon.
Great job!!
TracyGood morning!
>Ok this may be weird but the woman with the standard schnauzer July at Dash says hello and the dog at the July seminar is Deans father>
That is awesome!!! What a small world!!!!
Dean did great here! The forward focus is going really well – you can point at the entry side of the cone as the bowl moves around it so he starts to see the cue to focus forward.
He also gets a double gold star for showing impulse control by not grabbing from the bowl of the treats on the couch. He could have easily jumped up and grabbed them LOL!! Good boy 🙂
For the collar grabs: there were probably 2 things happening that caused him to need a moment at the end:
– the excitement was increasing, and the game is harder than it looks, so he needed a moment to reset himself. Ignoring the food bowl and ignoring the couch cookies is hard!
– he might not have liked being moved by the collar when you were setting him up, so he was avoiding that a little.Your plan to toss a cookie back to help him line up is great – that way he can line up and be in position when you hold his collar. Most pups don’t like being moved around by the collar, so lining him up before the collar hold is ideal.
Keep going with this game by moving the bowl further around in the next session. The goal is to see if he can focus forward on the cone and go past the bowl to go around the cone.
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
Super nice teeter offering from Miss Beat here! She was very confident about moving that board!
I was going to suggest adding in tugging and then you did 🙂 Yay! It made the mechanics a little harder because that is what arousal does to mechanics in adolescence. But that is exactly why we need to add arousal. She was great about sorting it out! You can keep moving forward with the bang game by moving yourself off to the side and letting her jump into position from the side (but still at the very bottom of the board).
I notice she seems to pay attention to bird noises so you can probably find bird noise videos on YouTube to play in the background to help her brain not feel the need to attend to the noises
>Sorta mind blowing that she’s Speedstakes legal in a week. >
Yeah…. The age rules in dog sports are just, well, ridiculous. They can be even younger to compete in other sports and that is just nuts. You are doing a good job of keeping your eye on the long term goals and not pushing her too fast.
>Planning to do some NFC at 12” in October. >
Fun! That will be a blast!
>There are so many jump skills to train these days on low jumps that it seems to take a really long time to feel “ready” for full height! >
Yes for sure. I have taken a dual approach to it with my youngsters: the skills they will use first can go to full height first. So anything they might see on Novice Speedstakes gets prioritized for raising the bars. And anything they might see in Masters Series? Well, I take my time raising the bars there. And also, I don’t enter baby dogs in Masters Series – as you said, there is just SO MUCH they need to know and that takes time.
>And then of course gotta teach obstacles. >
Yes, those other obstacles… but thanks to NFC/FEO, those obstacles can be incorporated into trials individually rather than having to have them all ‘finished’.
> I’m determined not to have a third dog in a row that can’t do other obstacles passably!>
She is going to have amazing obstacle skills! It is exciting!!
> I’m planning to sign up for max pup 4 soon!>
Yay! I am excited to be able to keep seeing her develop – gotta love the merle pointy dogs!!!
Have fun! Thanks for all the great work here in MaxPup 3!
Tracy
Hi!
>The whole session was about 4 mins. I’m playing for a long time. I gave you the last two sessions with the thing to clamber on. And cut out my playing>
I watched the whole session because I like to see the beginning and also the in-between moments. I thought it went great!!
For games that are easier and in a less distracting area, a longer session is perfectly fine as long as you break it up with play like you did here. Harder sessions should still be shorter.
You had a really good setup to have the stool there to put stuff on, and a narrow hallway to limit options so you can get good offering. The mat also provides good footing. The setup/plan really contributed to the overall success here.
He did really well getting right back onto the toy even in the cookie spot! Yay! Then nice transition back to the object. He was easily able to offer front feet on it, but it was probably too small to offer all 4 feet or back feet. So for the next session, you can add a 2nd object next to it on the ground. That can create a big enough playing field that he can get all 4 feet on something very easily.
Using 2 objects might be harder for picking up and putting them down, so you can have them pre-set on the ground and start the session with you tugging several feet away. Then as you get the toy back and switch to treats, you can move towards the objects (which is also a cue to him to begin offering).
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
Thanks for reposting it, I must have scrolled right past it, sorry!!!
Wow, it was really windy!!! I agree, he coped really well.
He did really well here with the engagement too! The great outdoors has a lot of distraction and that wind can be very distracting, but he was fully engaged. Yay! Super! And I think he had a lot of fun too 🙂 He seems to enjoy chasing you 🙂
Yes, you can decelerate a step or two sooner – because he is so speedy, you can start your decel as soon as you see him take one step towards you. That will show it to him on time, and then he will be more ready to pivot with you when you turn.
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>She had no interest with the novel object. >
Perfect! We know her brain is aware of it so overall it was the ideal object and she did great. You can keep changing the novel-neutral objects, and use different simple games to incorporate them into.
>The problem I had is using a toy whee we n she came back to me- she just wasn’t interested. So I switched to food. >
On the first video, you said something like “you aren’t going to tug when food is involved” and that seems to be correct for now 🙂 She was not able to interact with the toy when there was food in the other hand. So it was smart to switch to food, because the goal of the session was to begin the stealth self-control games.
>I’m not a very animated person and she was just indifferent with the toy.>
It had nothing to do with you being animated or not – I thought you were lovely here, trying to get her to play! The question was really more that the food is very high in value and so she was super focused on that. We can work on that separately, because we know she *does* like the toy too! A couple of ideas for you:
– tie that toy to another toy so it ends up being 5 or 6 feet long. That way when you want her to play with it, you can really swoosh it around for her to chase and grab. That will be very exciting!
– when asking for tugging, don’t have treats in your hand, she is not quite ready for that yet (this is normal, most puppies can’t tug when the momma has a handful of treats at this age :)) In a session like this where the kitchen counter is right there, you can have a small bowl of boring treats on the counter, so your hands are empty. See if she can tug with the treats on the counter. If she can’t, move further away, while swinging the toy around so she can chase it.
We often separate food from toys at this early stage, but either having the toy play happen as far from where the food is as possible. Or, by using one or the other for now: for cookie recalls, cookies only. For toy races, toys only. And eventually we can merge the toys and cookies together.
Nice work here!
TracyHi!
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Tracy
Good morning!
He is so fun to watch, it looks like he brings such joy and zest to everything he tries.The session went really well! Very nice transitions from the toy to the treat to the green object. He was happy to put his front feet on it and you got some accidental back feet on it too. We can get his back feet stepping up onto it by creating a bigger field for him to move around on – is there a 2nd similar object you can add so he has 2 things to offer behavior on?
It will probably be too hard in terms of mechanics to have to put 2 big objects down/pick them back up, so you can have them already down and do the toy play a few feet away. Doing it outside can give you more room, if the weather and the deer cooperate. Then you can transition from the toy to treats while moving towards the objects – and you can start to reward intentional back foot offering.
>other than him knocking his prop onto his head and then slipping–I will stay further from the carpet’s edge next session. >
He seemed a little surprised when it attacked him 🙂 You handled that really well with continuing the play even after the green thing attacked him LOL! So even though it was unplanned, it was actually a great resilience moment: bouncing back from something unexpected. Yay!
Great job here!
Tracy
That was pretty funny – it was like he had bubble gum LOL!!!
Another way to look at it though: the chewy or sticky treats might take longer to ingest so you can’t rapidly do another rep… but the length of time interacting with it and the high value can actually do a whole lot in building the love for moving/noisy things! I train all of my teeter work with cream cheese and stuff like that – it takes longer to eat but it makes a bigger impact than treats that can be eaten faster.
T
Good morning! These games went really well!
For the small discs, to encourage hind end – it looks like there are 2 discs so you can put them side-by-side and not on top of each other. He is not likely at this stage to be able to compress himself small enough to get all 4 feet on the small disc.
The large disc was indeed hard!! You saw him do it and then do the big shake off. This is really challenging, so you did very few reps on it, which was good. The upside down bosu ball is also very hard but he did really well getting on it!
You can use all of these to form a big play area: have the 2 small discs, big disc, and upside down bosu all next to each other. Then reward him for strolling around on top of them 🙂In the 2nd video:
It looks like he has seen these objects before and he knew that offering getting on them would pay with cookies 🙂 He got all 4 feet on the small wobble board and strolled across that little teeter really well. I think both of those objects had just enough noise that he was thinking about the noise & movement.The cookie sheet did introduce the metallic noise he would encounter on a teeter (or during tap dancing haha) and he did well!All of these little obstacles can also go into the big play area I suggested above 🙂
He appeared to have no issues with the sound or movement, which is great. We don’t re-visit them as lot here as part of the curriculum, but you will definitely want to put it on your calendar to play on these things once a week or so. That way he maintains his confidence all the way through adolescence 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>This weeks games are going to be hard since they all require getting up on something. I’ll work on it more later today.>
Watching her blossom this week – I bet she starts goat-ing around on everything and then you won’t be able to keep her off things LOL!!!! Start with easy low stuff and then make little piles for her to climb on.
If she and Sprite are doing well together, you can even use social learning: make a little pile or walkway of stuff and have Sprite walk around on it, rewarding her. Dot will be in the session too, with the freedom to follow along – and you can reward Dot when she offers to play along too but getting on the stuff, even if it is one foot getting on it. Social learning is super useful to get this stuff going.
On the fold it in game video:
She did SUPER!!!!!
Look at her look directly at the bowl when you cued it! Wow! On both sides! That is really great!!!
>There’s a big lag between reps trying to get everything set up.>
Yes, but that is fine and you were quick. You got her to tug during the in-between moments and part of the self-control we teach is for the puppy to let us adjust the set up between reps. We can’t always clean loop stuff like this, so the pups learn to let us make adjustments while they wait sorta patiently or while they play tug.
When you changed sides, you lined her up at your side with a cookie then took her collar, and I think that went better than the first side where you needed a longer arm to hold her because she was pretty far away. Plus, being closer stabilized her more: when she was further away on your left, she was a bit wiggly trying to go for the bowl before you released her. When she was closer to you on your right, she didn’t seem to do that at all – but still drove to the bowl when released.
The bowl being visible is a distraction for the tugging but that is fine – and she did great tugging when the bowl was on the ground when she was on your right! Yay!
You can revisit this game and keep progressively working the bowl around until the self-control element is harder with the bowl being visible/accessible without having to go around the cone. Bear in mind that her brain is very young 🙂 so she might be a bit impulsive about it, but that is fine – tiny increments will help build the behavior.
Great job!!
Tracy
