[Tracy Sklenar]

Keep me posted! It could just be a passing thing – a wrong step or he got himself a little dehydrated and was ‘off’. Rest is always the first answer 🙂
I am sure Jen has a lot of ideas for the lead change work. The running a-frame is complex indeed!!!

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Yes, they are slightly wicked courses in that “lull you into a false sense of security” way hahaha!!! But in general, you did a great job. There were one or two hard parts but the overall flow looked great!

Course 1:
Run 1: You can give a little more connection on push to 3. When he landed from 2, you looked forward as you pushed to 3. Try to look him right in the eyes – that connection really helps with the backside sends In training, if it goes wrong – you can do a quick fix-it in the moment by re-cuing the backside, reward, then start over. As you push to 3, try to be further away from the entry wing so you can get to the blind sooner and out of the way of his landing spot – he is polite about waiting for you, but we don’t want to make him wait 🙂

A couple of little details:
On tunnel 6 at :41 – give your verbal and start the turn before he enters so he can already be turning on the exit.
On the 8-9 line at :49
stay more open on the backside serp at 8 and talk to him, you were a little disconnected so he guessed and pushed himself back out to the other side of 9 (he was being an over-achiever LOL!)

2nd run – this was a more connected moment in the opening resulting in a better send to 3, you were further away at 1:17 and got through the blind faster. Nice!

Other little details here:
I think he will be fine if you commit him to the a-frame and leave – you were a little careful on the 10-11-12 section so he wasn’t sure and slowed down 12-13 at 1:38

Good threadle after the weaves at 1:42! Nice job keeping your feet facing forward! I bet he doesn’t even need you to move away from the 15 jump, you can probably maintain your line and just turn your upper body there and he will get it. It set up a nice ending line!

Course 2:
Run 1 – nice opening! A little more connection 4 to 5 will get him to move to the backside a 5 sooner so you can move away sooner too.
Nice weave entry! Spot on!

On the 7 jump (backside) after the weaves – you were a tiny bit in the way when he landed. It was a good choice of line, so you can send to the entry wing from more across near the exit wing to get one or two steps further ahead. Or, if he will stay in the weaves, out run him and do a forced FC or BC on the takeoff side, which will also put you further ahead for the a-frame tunnel discrimination. a forced FC or BC will also need a FC or BC on the exit of 7 to get him on your left, but that is a skill that you totally have.

I guess he saw the off course tunnel solidly on his line instead of the a-frame! You also used high energy exciting forward cues, which might have propelled him to it. An attention cue on the approach to jump 9 (I generally use the dog’s name) and then maybe a ‘right’ cue plus an arm change can get his attention off the tunnel there.

Run 2: another nice opening! I think you did a really nice job of sending to 7 at 2:53 from further away so you were all the way past the wing when he landed – he powered out nicely there!

On the tunnel-a-frame: you did a strong COME COME then scramble, but he had already come in too far and took the other end of the tunnel.

On the redo – you were REALLY terrific at 3:05 sending to 7 and getting WAY ahead!

A 3:09, another come come scramble got the tunnel – I think part of it is that you were turning your shoulders fully forward, so it is pulling him in too much there (plus the strong come verbals)

You got it at 3:35, yay! It looks like you were a little closer to the a-frame and that helps. Looking at your line there, being closer helps for sure – and I think his name plus and opposite arm (kind of like a threadle arm) can allow you to be moving in close to the frame while also pulling him off the outside tunnel entry.

Great job on the backside after the frame and the convergence immediately to the next backside! Your feet were pointing right into the gap and he nailed it, allowing you to get to the blind. You can start that blind as soon as you see his head turn towards the backside to make it even smoother. Nice connection on the exit of the blind!
Lovely ending line – that blind is really nice between 16-17!!

So the only really hard part on course 2 was that darned discrimination – that is a matter of being like Goldilocks and knowing which cue is too hot (the first run) and too cold (come come scramble) and just right 🙂 The rest looked really strong!

Well done! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

Sorry that it was unclear! You’re not being a dummy at all; I think that I never actually explained what I meant. Oopsie!

>>could you explain exactly what you mean by “threadle side” in relation to a tunnel entrance? – is this when the dog has to turn away from you to get the entry?

Yes – threadle side is when the pup is between you and the tunnel and turns away to get into it. When the pup is on the outside and you are between her and the tunnel, it is ‘regular’ send handling. Let me know if that makes sense, I might need more coffee LOL!

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!! Nice sessions here!
The movement during releases and the arm use definitely add challenge – the threadle is a new release and it has to override motion which is SO HARD!!! You did a good job of moving very slowly and keeping him successful, even dialing back motion as needed. Also, as you saw, the pups often want to release when we put our arm in position (which is why I recommend walking away from the pup with the arm already in position, so we don’t accidentally pair the arm movement with the release). It feels totally weird to walk to position with the arm already up but it helps clarify the verbal as release/cue rather than the arm movement.
He is doing really well on these, especially reading the difference in the same session AND generally ignoring the food in the bowl til cued. The next step is to *not* give the eat it cue until after he has turned back out and gone over the bar (for the threadle) or come over the bump and turned (for the serp). That will help finalize the commitment and turn as a default behavior: on the threadle, come to the correct side then turn back out AND go over the jump (then you can reward with the eat it cue, but he will probably already be eating LOL!!!)

For future sessions, one thing to consider – doing more serps than threadles. I do about twice as many serps as threadles at this age, because I really want the young dogs to look for the front side of the jump. That is a much more useful/important skill at this stage of life for youngsters 🙂 We will keep building up the threadle, but we don’t want to over-threadle because you’ll need to get out of Starters at some point LOL!!!!! Let me know if that makes sense 🙂

>>I Love how Contraband rolled over when the caption of Team Chill came up.

Haha! Yeah, he was all like “she is STILL talking blah blah blah so I will just relax here” LOL! He is actually NOT naturally on Team Chill but both he and I are improving LOL!

Great job!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!
Yes, great job on keeping your feet moving forward here! She was thinking her way through it because it is much harder without the rotation, but she was getting it very nicely 🙂 Yay! You might already be doing this – balance all of your threadle reps with serp reps, where she stays out on the line and does not come through the gap. With my youngsters, I do generally a 2:1 ration of serps:threadles. The dogs are doing twice as many serps/stay on the line as they are doing threadles, because it is more useful for them to understand staying on the line for now. Let me know if that makes sense! Great job!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! It sounds SO HOT there!!!! Eek!!!!
How far apart are the jumps on the set point? We can show it to him with the jumps further apart so he doesn’t take it as a double 🙂
Your walk through process on both of these courses is really good! My main suggestion is to add exaggerations because he is a baby dog – you won’t always need to do that, just for now as he is learning the game. Here are specifics:

Course 1 – very strong choices in the walk through, good planning, good lines! The only thing that I think you can make clearer is the strong connection on the blind cross to the tunnel at the end: as a baby dog, he is very likely to miss the detail of the head turn at fast speed there.

On the run: well, I didn’t think you needed more connection on 2 but he did 🙂 baby dog moment! We might want to revisit the lazy game with him (and also doing the skills where you run and give verbals but don’t connect) will help that 🙂 And in walk throughs, you can keep reminding yourself to over-connect, really exaggerate it 🙂
I thought the rest of the run looked really great!!! The blind to the tunnel went the way I thought it would with “normal” connection- he never quite saw it in the heat of the moment. It gets easier as he gets more experienced but for now, exaggerate the daylights out of it like you did on the 2nd run where you were kind of like “hellooooooo!” On the exit of the blind 🙂 You can also plan for a FC in that spot – the BC is a better choice in the long term but the FC is more obvious turn because he will see your feet turn and can help teach him to understand that handling might happen there – then you can go back to the blind. Even after the oopsie, try to get the reward in nice and fast as if nothing had happened, I think there was a little delay so he got a little distracted. The 2nd run looked great! Really nice execution of your plan PLUS you added heavy duty connection in the spots where he needed a little more support for what you wanted.

Course 2: another good walk through! You can exaggerate your connections a lot more – think of giving over-connection rather than smooth Pixey-style connection. Experience will reduce the need to do this, but it will help him be successful for now 🙂 That includes the backside – start the cue before he goes into the tunnel then really exaggerate it to convince him to go to the backside. I thought the walk through looked really good but because he is so ‘green’, you can plan to over-support things. My general rule of thumb with a baby dog is to over-support until he tells me that I am being a helicopter mom haha!!
The run went REALLY well, you two are looking really good! Yes, he missed the backside but he was ALMOST there on it – just hold that connection longer until you are willing to bet $100 that he will take the backside LOL!!! It looked like he was going then you moved away a step too soon. Good job getting him back on track without losing connection and then finishing strong.
Overall, I think these are looking super good – the teamwork is becoming very smooth in most places! A blip or two… but that is normal in a training environment 🙂
If you check out the custom skills sets that I posted today, you will see a bit about training to get a backside after a tunnel – lots of folks were having struggles with this, perfect timing for you and Riot too!
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>I watched some more videos so I will work on threadles and serps this week. Also will add a threadle word for tunnels, right now I don’t have a specific one for tunnels so that is new for me. Do you have a different word for both a tunnel with a threadle slice and a threadle rear cross tunnel? My guess is no, but maybe?>>

At this moment, I only have 1 verbal for tunnel threadles (2 verbals for jump threadles to differentiate threadle slice and threadle wrap/rear). I do not see where the dog would need to hear 2 different verbals for the tunnel, because the tunnel itself manages the turn of the dog, plus I can, if needed, use a directional cue (left, right,wrap, etc) on the tunnel entry to get any additional turning. I reserve the right to change that if the evolution of the sport demands it LOL! It is a current topic of conversation though – I chatted with Justine & Jessica of Shape Up about it (they are truly expert trainers and handlers) and Justine said they are moving to 1 verbal for threadle slice (applies to both tunnel and jump) and 1 verbal for threadle rear/wrap (applies to both tunnel and jump). We all agreed to a less-is-more approach LOL!! That was last October and I haven’t had a chance to ask them recently how it was going. In my less-is-more approach, I have found too many sequences where the dogs needed to know if the threadle verbal applied to the jump or tunnel, so I have 2 different verbals. I have prioritized threadle-slice on the jump and the tunnel threadle as being very important – and the threadle/wrap on the jump being much less important because, honestly, I almost never use it. I don’t want to spend limited training time and energy on something that is fun and fancy… but hard on the dog’s body and almost never used. Just food for thought 🙂

>>The word I am going to use is ‘papa’. It’s a long story, don’t think I am super weird or have a daddy complex or anything like that. LOL.

HA!!! I would love to hear the story someday. And I like the sound of the verbal – the PA sound is not something that the dogs hear a lot in agility, so it will be pretty clear and different-sounding.

>>Here is some more work with the target. I was going to work sideways and backwards sends but I saw I needed to add distance first.

I think he did really well here! Nice value and nice hits, even when you were rewarding back at you. And you did shift some reward back to the target, which was smart to help maintain value. And you had some sideways going and that really looked good!!! Yes, keep adding a bit of distance but you can also send sideways/backwards and begin moving away sooner (slowly :)) to start showing countermotion.

>>I noticed that when I did the ‘ready ready’ to get him excited he barked, nipped at my hand, etc, so I stopped doing that. Can you give me some suggestions for when he doesn’t go to the target? I’m trying to build distance slowly and maybe he is confused? I will try to do some sideways and backwards sends today.>>

Yes, I could see his arousal coming up – like at :27, it was bubbling up and it was the next rep where you had a little chomp chomp on your hand. You dialed it back, smartly – still had a high energy body position and hand on his chest but no verbal. He seemed successful in the ‘don’t bite’ after that 🙂 I love to help the dogs manage their arousal at this age and I think playing ready ready games are a good tool for that. 2 ideas: in the target work here, you can add a very soft reeeeady then send to target when he looks at it – that layers in the arousal more slowly. And, separately from the target – you can do a bit of a ready game to a toy on the ground: a stimulating “ready” and then if he looks at the toy on the ground, cue him to get it.
And separately from the target and toy: I teach the pups that ready is actually more of a self-chill game, a ‘gather yourself’ game: I will gradually layer in more and more of my insanity by getting louder and more crouched… and reward the pups for looking at me, or standing still, or offering to look at ‘work’ – rather than jumping up or delivering tooth hugs 🙂 For some dogs, I reward barking as a replacement behavior for biting me (depends on the dog and the situation – definitely for dogs that I want “more” from, and sometimes for dogs that need to ‘release’ some of the arousal that is bubbling up, like my Crollie who will howl or clack when I ask if he is ready :))

>Also you mentioned that you were going to discuss the handling differences with the serp arm for threadles vs the off arm for threadles. Did I miss that in the videos or is that still coming? I use a verbal for serps and I use a verbal and an off arm for threadles (different word for threadle slice and threadle rear cross). Thoughts?>>

You didn’t miss it – no one asked about it LOL!!! I was waiting to see if anyone wanted to know more 🙂
I train threadles to both the dog-side arm and the opposite arm. Which one you use, and when, is personal preference depending on the handler and dog. For serpentines – I generally don’t use the cross arm/off arm at all, ever, anymore. I just run and rely on trained behaviors, connection, verbals. If things are about to go wrong, like maybe I screwed something up and am late or too far ahead – I might help the dog with an off arm but that is only in emergency situations 🙂
For threadles:
on ‘easy’ threadle slice lines AND when I am ahead, I just use the dog side arm and verbal. For really hard threadle slices or when I am behind/out of position (even on easy ones) – I use a high arm across my body. For threadle wrap/rears – I use a low arm across my body (both arms sometimes!) and a different verbal. Hope that makes sense!!

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! I have de-rogued Course 3 and put #11 where it belongs. Sorry! It is being loaded up right now 🙂

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Depending on how many other jumping things you do each week, I would say just do them once a week. And count the number of jumps you ask him to do – we tend to jump the dogs tooooooo much, so just 3 or 4 reps, once a week, is fine 🙂

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!
All 3 courses went really nicely here 🙂 Your line decisions were strong (including where you didn’t want her to crash into the DW :)) so my ideas here are mainly about tightening things up – the small details 🙂

Course 1 – Little details for you to consider:
Run 1 – Can you leave 3 sooner on the threadle cue, so it feels smoother? Ideally, you don’t need to step to 3 as much and you can move forward to 4 as soon as she turns her head back 3 after coming to the backside. – On the 2nd rep – handling from the landing side of 3 worked nicely! You can play with sending from the exit wing so all you need to do is run directly forward.

Another small detail that can help get you further ahead: On the exit of 8, heading to 9: stay closer to 8 with your shoulders open to it, handling more as a serpentine – don’t pull away fromm it then push back – that delays you from leaving. Staying close and handling it like a serp will help automatically turn her to 9 (plus it helps with convergence) so you will be able to leave as soon as she turns her head to 9 🙂

15 should be on the other side of the jump after the weaves 🙂 From the front side of it – the FC at :23 was a little late getting started and you were moving backwards so she was wide on the line there. You can probably trust her weaves and head directly to it.

Course 2: I think you might have made the opening more complicated than it needed to be 🙂 You can handle it all dog-on-left: send to 2 (or spin to tighten it) then serp 3 on the landing side. The FC on 2 then the BC 3-4 was hard to time so the turn on 2 was wide and you ended up breaking connection/being a little late on the BC so the bar at 3 came down on the first run.

Converge sooner 11-12 and start the blind as soon as he hear turns into the gap (or threadle to 13). The FC there at :35 workbed better because she can see the foot rotation sooner, but the convergence will help make both choices easier: as she is heading around 11, you feet can already be facing into the gap and motion moving into the gap to 12, before she takes off for 11.

On the ending line: You might be able to get a BC between 16-17 there, but that is where I would put the RC (rather than on landing of 18 to push to 19) – the RC in there will tighten the line 18-19 and you can get it by sticking closer to the 14 tunnel and the 15-16 jumps. Also, be careful of using go for all of it – I think go for her is a straight line cue and there were a lot of turns here – for example, 18-19 is a right turn so you can use a right cue or a get out to move her away from you.

Course 3:

Ah I see what you mean about the DW being right there – the wrap was definitely slower on 4 but still better than running into the DW plank 🙂

You can see if she will take the 7 jump after the weaves on a verbal (and connection) only, so you can get further up past 9 to cue the 10 wrap (which is slower but still better than a faceplant on the DW :)) You took a bit step towards 7 and that put you a tiny bit behind on that line, making the wrap info on 10 a bit late.
You can handle the entry of 12 (2nd tunnel) from further away, so you are at the exit when she enters… which puts you right in position for the wrap on 13 to get it even tighter.
15 should be a backside here 🙂 You handled it as a RC (which is what I think will work really nicely on course 2) – doing it as a RC on the front side, try not to pull away from the wing of 15 – that made her jump a bit wide on 16 because the RC diagonal was late. Stay near the wing of 15 so you can get on the diagonal to 16 sooner, which should cause her to jump the inside wing of 16 to 17, rather than center of the bar (and resist temptation to use a GO verbal on the 16 jump here, it is a right or a turn away cue – she heard go and went straight (correctly) so had to turn to 17 after she landed).

Great job! Let me know what you think of all these little details!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Whoa this was harder at 16″ on that first rep, he totally was surprised 🙂 He sorted it out nicely after the first rep and got his good form back – and the next reps were great! Good job Cody, this is a challenging grid!! You can now move to the next step – instead of having him facing the first jump and taking it from the front side, you can start with him and push him around the backside of that first jump so he does the grid jumping in from the backside. It takes the grid from the ‘difficult’ category into the “holy cow wicked hard’ category 🙂 Start it on 8” jumps so he can sort it out and then you can work back up to 16 – might take one session of a couple of reps – or several weeks 🙂 He is really great with this grid and that is unusual for such a big dog!!!

>>Weather is finally turning for the better, 80 and low humidity, so hopefully I’m not out of time.

We still have time! I figure we will look at videos into September so we can all make it through the bad weather and crazy schedules 🙂

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Yes, a bit of jump proofing is always good (I have some stuff coming on that today) but no rush – after seeing his course video, I would let him rest and see if he was sore. I didn’t see any soreness or compensation in the zig zag video, but he was jumping very differently in the course video.

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! I thought you were using the italics because it was an important moment LOL!!

>>I set up the Masters Course and I think he was over faced. At any rate, it was a serious goat rodeo. I’m putting up a video showing what happened and I mostly want a quick piece of advice:>>

Looking at it by watching it straight through in real time…. I don’t think he was over-faced in terms of skills, I think he is sore. He was not moving the way he normally does – it looks like he was trying to use his front more than his rear, and in places that had nothing to do with handling (like the jump before the curved tunnel on the first run, for example). Handling-wise, there was nothing he could not do on this and some definite challenges for you (like handling the jump before the poles) but he just wasn’t moving as well as normal – not only on the backsides but also on some of the simpler front sides of jumps.

>>Should I just renumber for course #2 or should I build and work on the Novice courses?

You are, of course, welcome to do the Novice courses but I don’t think this one was technically too difficult – instead, I would suggest giving him a couple of rest days and maybe getting him into see a massage person is possible? And then revisiting this to see how he is moving.

>>PLEASE keep in mind that the contacts are still a work in progress. I’m not really worried about them (yet). Although, because I was watching the running A-frame I was late on the next line. And all of his A-frames were awful.>>

I haven’t watched it closely enough yet for the a-frames LOL!! I found that a beeper mat sealed the deal in terms of a-frame understanding because my dogs were not understanding it on striding alone – they needed a clear in-the-moment bit of feedback on if it was correct (beep!) or not (no beep).

>>I have no idea why so many bars went down.

That is where I think he was not moving right – not necessarily handler induced, he was just having trouble organizing himself – possibly trying to compensate for a bit of soreness. I didn’t see anything weird in terms of handling that would account for all of it.

>> I wasn’t able to get far enough ahead on 10 to 14 because I was watching the truly awful A-frame performances.

For handling, you can send him into the tunnel and try to get ahead (rather than the frame) The other thing you can do it work it as a get out from further back. You said Go the first time, which is more of a straight line indication and it is a definite turn away, so the get out later on really helped.

>>So maybe the best thing to do is to glance at this and suggest I go do the novice work. Which would be fine.

I will go take a longer look at it, but if he is a little sore then the novice won’t go well either. We have time on our side – if you give him a rest break for a few days, you will still have plenty of time to get everything posted – there is no definite ending date for posting here 🙂 Package 5 is the last big training package but we have skills sets coming. I figure we can be playing around until mid-September 🙂

Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
She also did a great job here! I agree – she didn’t seem to have any confusion on the release – you used ‘over’ as the release to the first jump and she was just fine with it 🙂
On your in in, try to keep your motion moving forward and not turned into her. She was seeing your feet turned towards her here – that totally works, but I have found that the dogs tend to start to wait for the rotation (rather than responding to the verbal) – and the rotation causes us humans to slow down a lot, so we get behind on course. So as you say your in in cue, keep your feet facing to where the next line would be (or where the reward would be) and move slowly so she can process the cue. You did the least amount of rotation on your last rep at :39, so that is the starting point for the next session – and then reduce the foot rotation even more. Your upper body can & should still rotate towards her a bit, but the lower body moves forward exactly the same way it would as on a serpentine.

Great job!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! She has terrific commitment here – totally allowing you to send and leave super early. It didn’t matter if she saw you or not – she understood to finish her job, which is *exactly* what we want. NICE! She is still enjoying chasing you more than she is enjoying heading to the wing (she is faster coming back than leaving you) so you can mix in thrown rewards to the wing (or barrel) for as she is heading there: sometimes have her chase you like you did here, and sometimes throw a ball or anything she loves out to the wing/barrel as she is on the way there. This will help to get her running to the wing as much as she is running back to you 🙂
Great job!!!!
Tracy

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