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Hi!
The tunnel exits are looking strong! He was really flying – the only part he was not loving was the wing wrap that started with him facing away from the tunnel LOL! To help him love those more, you can surprise him by sometimes throwing the ball just for those start wraps 🙂
Looking the GO exit reps – super nice job with the GO verbal and acceleration, plus the connection on the exit of the tunnel to get him to the next wing. Yay!
He turned on the exits well too – you can be earlier with the cues (using your lefts and rights while he is still about 6 feet from the tunnel entry, before he goes in) but also, I think changing the delivery of the verbal will tighten the turn too – the GO should be big and loud and high energy like you were doing. For the turns, you can be quieter, almost like a casual conversation. That volume difference will help him differentiate the Go versus the turns.
He also had really strong commitment to the wings after the turns, and especially on those super nice blinds between the wings on the last couple of reps!
Excellent session with the ladder grid! Great job backchaining it then adding the moving target. His stay looked great and I am happy with his form (and he even caught the cookie when you tossed it back :))
How far was he from jump 1? You might need to be an inch or two closer so he can push off from his rear more. He looked like he was trying to figure out if he needed to do something with his front feet or just push from his rear, so being 4 or 5 inches from the first jump will help.Next time try moving the bars up 2 inches and see how he does!
He was really good about coming to your hand!
He was doing it but you can see the food rewards were just “ok”. Since we know he is a ball fiend… you can play this exact game but throw a ball instead. It will end up with fewer reps because it takes longer to chase the ball and bring it down, but he will be much more passionate about putting his collar in your hand. And it might help him ignore passing dogs, because he will be so locked into the game.
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
I think he will like the colder weather, as long as there is no snow 🙂
Zig zags: these looked really good and his stay is looking good too! Just be sure that you don’t accidentally pair the reconnection of looking at him after you lead out, with the release – because the looking at him will become the release 🙂
He seemed to have no questions about this at all – super! When you revisit it, you can move to the next steps where the bars get added.
He also did really well with the set point and moving target! The toy is VERY ENTICING 🙂 So you might only want to do one or two reps with the moving target then end the session – he did the first couple of them GREAT but then started to release early, so you started to release right at the toy got to the ground (which will become the release if that is the consistent moment). So shorter sessions will solve this problem: 2 reps then be done before the toy excitement takes over 🙂
The jumping itself is going well! When you are outside on grass, you can add in a thicker jump bar (which adds a little height) and then a bar on the lowest setting (no more than 4 inches).
He did a great job finding the jump – he got faster and more certain on each rep. Love it! He was happy t go to the toy at first – you can throw it but have it on a long line so you can keep it moving for him to chase. He thinks a ‘dead’ toy is a little dull here so wanted the food – you can also throw a food toy!
Since this went super well, you can start to add more and more lateral distance away from the jump to see if he can find it even more independently.
Great job!
Tracy
Good morning!
These are going well! They are basically post turns around the wing, then the tunnel threadle to get the end of the tunnel yo want.
On the first few reps, the threadle part of it was correct but you were starting on the other side of the wing, so you did a front cross to gt to the threadle.
When he was on your right for the next reps, those were regular tunnel sends so no threadle was happening there.
I think it will make more sense if you do it in sequence: send to the tunnel normally, go to the wing – wing, then at the 2nd wing, do the tunnel threadle cues to get back to the tunnel (the side he just exited). In isolation it might feel weird but it should feel good in flow.
Nice work here!
TracyGood morning!
I am excited to see you at CanAm!!! So fun!!! Hopefully Payson is not too far out of the way to Indiana 🙂
>lol the girls have no patience for this lack of preparedness.>
This is totally true. And the purebred whippets also have no patience for that. The male mixes are far more patient because they are momma’s boys LOL
Looking at the video:
>I’m so uncoordinated, I figured I would need a lot of help with these types of games.>
You are actually not uncoordinated AT ALL, stop telling yourself that! The decel went great. You got your cookie hand right down to her nose level so she drove directly to your side. And you remembered to break it up and play with toys. Great session! The only thing to add is to decelerate sooner (when she is maybe halfway to you) – if you decelerate just as she arrives at your hand, her butt swings out wide because she didn’t see the info in time. When you were earlier, she was able to be nicely straight! You can add the pivots to this too now.
>I apologize for my terrible video. I didn’t realize I was out of the frame for a lot of it. So, you aren’t really able to see a ton. My house has tiny spaces!>No apologies needed, I saw plenty! I often have to put a small marker on the ground so I manage to stay in the frame.
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
She seems very confidence on the plank – yay! The 180 turns and the 360 turns were both really good. She has good balance and fits nicely on the plank 🙂 You don’t need to do any end of plank work on the elevated plank, where she exits to a treat on the ground – it was causing her to land hard on her shoulders. You can keep the plank on the ground and have her run straight off to a target that is 2 or 3 feet away, but tear is also something to save for further down the road 🙂
Great job on these!
Tracy
Hi!
The forward focus game is going really well. Yes, remember to look at her, because that is the bedrock of future connection on course 🙂 You can point at the toy on the ground, as long as you keep looking at her 🙂
She was having a little trouble picking it up when you turned and went the other way before she got to it – so you can run forward and play with her with the toy, and you can mix in running the other direction after she has it in her mouth.
Once she is really good at grabbing it, you can move to the next steps of winning the race 🙂 but no need to do that until she can easily grab the toy off the ground.
Barrel wraps:
She is doing a great job wrapping, no questions at all even with the bigger distance between you and the barrel. You can now start to change your position: do a short session where you are sitting on something low, rather than on the ground. If she is happy with that and has no questions, you can move to standing up 🙂 That will make it easier when we start adding more of your motion : )The decel game is also going well! When you were showing a clear obvious decel when she was still a few steps away, she was able to collect and stay straight, which also set up really nice pivots. When you were more abrupt with the decels (the first couple of reps) she didn’t have as much time to slow down so her butt swung out a little wide. But you adjusted and the rest looked great!
For the blinds: she reads them when you are doing the small version of them, but we want to get you both flying: you can ask someone to hold her for a restrained recall, or do you have a long carpeted hallway where you can throw a treat really far? That will give you both room to really run 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
She did great targeting her frog hat here 🙂 Yay! She has really good value even with the hat being a bit of a distance away from you. Super! You can totally move to the next steps:
– do a short shaping session with you standing, to be sure that it doesn’t change the picture too much
– Move to the sends 🙂Great job!!
Tracy
Good morning!
The resilience walk looked like it provided a lot of opportunity to investigate all sorts of things in the environment! There were some interesting noises too (people, dogs, etc). She seemed happy to lead the way. It was interesting to see the differences in her tail set!
She was very good about creating space for herself when the person tried to greet her. I’m glad the person didn’t try to keep coming towards her! Letting her create that space for herself was very good! She doesn’t want to visit unknown people who approach her and that is perfectly fine. We have games coming soon that will help her ignore them even more happily 🙂
Goat tricks:
She did well getting her front feet on the pillow! She was not quite as comfortable getting her back feet on it along with her front, and that might be because she would have to really compress herself to do that.The cushion was much bigger so she had more room to get all 4 feet on and balance. Try to reward either by throwing the cookie off the cushion so she gets off and gets back on, or keeping the cookie lower and more forward so she doesn’t sit. That way you will get more movement and balancing.
You can combine the cushion and pillow into a giant thing, maybe slightly overlapping, for more challenge and as a way to more easily get her hind end on the cushion.
SSC games:
The treat toss warm up was easy and fun 🙂>She did investigate the tripod as soon as I put it out on the floor before I started recording.>
For the neutral object, ideally it is in the room before she enters and she doesn’t see you place it. If she sees you putting it into place, that can draw attention to it or even accidentally cue her to interact with it (in shaping, we often place the object into the session as a way to elicit interaction.
She seemed to not have any trouble with it once the game started, so you can move to a differ neutral object placed somewhere else on the floor.
>should I work through the first games package again and try the advanced versions as appropriate before moving onto the next set of games?>
Definitely work on the advanced levels of the prop send, and work up to standing on the wing wrap foundations (while she goes back and forth).
Great job here!
Tracy
Darned youtube! I’m glad it was only kidding about the limit 😆
>The last video was a second session after a long break when he was in his crate in my office. >
He’s so young and still very knew to training, so he probably needed to sleep for a few hours and not come back out after the break. The brain development and mental stamina is not yet in place, and he will actually do a lot of learning in his sleep (that is where the brain locks it in)
>This is what I have had issues with (granted I have had him a month and he just started going after the toy last week) we have been working hard on toy engagement.>
Less is more! It has only been a month, he’s very much a baby dog. The engagement will come more and more. So avoid any situation where he might disengage for now. His brain will mature rapidly and that’s what we are waiting on more than anything: can’t train behaviors or impulse control when the neurons needed for it don’t exist yet lol
>I’m not sure if it was hard for him to engage at first b/c he was aroused/distracted by Spotlight and the dog that had just trained before we came in the ring.>
Both, all of the above. He was all out of brain juice for arousal regulation. Pretty normal, no concerns- just a bit more time needed. He’s pretty new to toy play at LUDS so the new behavior of that was too hard with him being brain-tired and aroused from the other dogs. That will all get easier very quickly.
Keep me posted!
TracyHi!
Doing simple fun stuff when you are tired is still terrific!The 2 two game went really well – he was super good about switching toys! He was really into the toy in your right hand. Maybe it was furrier? Tugging like a fiend! He liked the other to too, which is great. And you got lovely tugging without having to run around or have a really long toy.
>I did smack him on the rear when he wasn’t paying attention to the live toy lol. >
Ha! He wasn’t offended LOL
Rather than smack him with it, you can turn the tables by making a huge fuss over the live toy as if it is YOUR favorite thing on the planet and he can’t have it… because then of course he will want it 🙂 You can play with the toy, talk to the toy, all sorts of silly stuff which puts all of your focus on it so he will really want it 🙂Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
>Probably because I’m a leftie and usually use that hand to deliver food! >
Southpaws rule! Yes, I am biased haha
>Next time I might try to use cross arm to hold her collar so the closest to her head points out the line. That would be the back of my hand at least. I’ll try the fist and point method too.>
Play around with different things and see what feels natural. Eventually, you will be on course pointing at jump 1, if that helps inform your choice of hand signal now 🙂
She did well with the goat tricks – she seemed especially happy on the moving plank 🙂 Very fun!
>She was less fond of the nubs or inflatable items.
>This is something to revisit here and there with the nubby things and inflatables. You can under-inflate the inflatables for a while, so it feels less weird. The tip of the mini plank doesn’t feel weird but I bt the inflatable does! And many dogs find the paw pods to be ICK because the nubs are very hard. You can cover them with a towel to see if that is a better feel for her.
She did great with the toy races! After you won once by sending her to the treat, you can try to cheat-to-win again the same way – and see if she kicks into a higher gear of speed 🙂
She was pretty good about not running big victory laps when she got the toy. To help her drive right back to you: as soon as she gets the toy, you can do a front cross and run the other way, calling her. And as she starts to bring the toy to you, you can either trade for a 2nd toy or play with the original toy. Do that running the other direction before she makes a decision about bring the toy back or not, so the excitement happens all the time and not just when she decides to move away with the toy 🙂
>She has more speed in her than this. I’ve seen her race around with Sprite.>
She was being kind to you, only winning by a mile LOL!! Actually, she had to slow down to get the toy which is why it didn’t seem as fast as when she is racing with Sprite 🙂 She looked great!
Nice work here!
Tracy
Hi!
>Would a blanket be ok for her to do the shaping on ? I think she would fit fine on that!>
Yes, if it is a big folded-up blanket that she has to step up onto 🙂 We want kinda big, super obvious things for the goat games.
The stealth self-control games went great! The behavior looked pretty much the same in both videos, which is ideal.
>I used a little pumpkin basket but she had zero interest so I will have to try something else I think.>
Her brain knew it was there, though 🙂 So even though she didn’t actively investigate it, her brain had to ignore it – good job, puppy brain!!! So it is still a very helpful session.
Yes, you can move to different neutral objects but she doesn’t need to interact with them, and you don’t need to throw the rewards near them – her brain is actively dismissing it from getting any attention. Yay!
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
The recalls/blinds/toy play videos all looked great! It is very cool to see him driving for the toy and doing complete sessions with the toy 🙂 Your blind cross mechanics looked really good!
Two things about the recall w/ blind videos:
He was at his most engaged when you ran around him once or twice before taking off. Sorry not sorry to make you run more LOL!! He REALLY liked it!
When he gets to the toy, play more rather than go directly back for the next rep. What I mean by that is: take a few moments to really engage, keep the toy low, just you and him, letting him pull back on it, doing a little smack da baby 🙂 That was when you got your BEST tugging. You can see that at the end of the first (short) video. When you were going directly back to Maddie (hi Maddie!) there was tugging but it was more of a transport back to the start, and not as much true play.
The first video posted here was the decel video (I think it is mislabel. He did awesome! Keep your hand as tight to your leg as possible – it can be touching your leg. We want him to almost knock you over with how tight he comes into the turn so keeping your hand in extra tight totally helps that.
>I have one more video from this morning but apparrently I reached my limit on uploads. >
That is weird – was that a YouTube thing? Or Agility U’s site? Let me know and I will make sure it isn’t AU.
On that last session: was it after the other 3 sessions? Between the additional distractions and having done 3 sessions, his young brain was struggling to balance it all. He was engaged with the toy but it is a different mental energy than needed for food. The other thing to note is that this is also the longest session – so if it is later in the training plus there are more distractions, make it the shortest session with the toy. And you can save a crazy high value toy for the last/hardest session – he does love the toy you were using but has he seen the squirrel toy or a raccoon-on-a-bungee? That might be VERY EXCITING and help break through any mental fatigue or distraction.
At this stage, the food is able to break through the distractions, plus the mental energy to eat is a lot less than it is to tug 🙂 So if it is a big distraction moment or the baby brain is tired, food is a good choice (along with keeping the session very short so he doesn’t check out).
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
I agree, this session went really well!! He was happy to hold his stay and find the line. Maybe latent learning? Maybe the visual aid of the target? He seemed very clear about what he should do, and that helps the stay behavior because he was not frustrated at all. Yay!
>He did forget a couple of times that looking at the jump is not the same as taking the jump but overall he was excellent.>
Yes, that is an important element 🙂 You can mix in some slow, quiet praise when he looks forward before the release, so he doesn’t anticipate that the next word is the release or that he doesn’t pick up a rhythm of cue – focus forward – release, and release on the rhythm. Dogs are REALLY good at picking up our rhythms that we don’t even realize we are doing LOL!!
Great job here!!
Tracy
Good morning!
I am sorry to hear about the crummy ending to August. Definitely not the way a great summer should end 🙁 and totally understandable how it would be a struggle to get motivated. I am glad to see you back out there with Skizzle – he is such a joyous presence that he always brings a smile 🙂 Any time I need a happy moment, I am going to pull up this video of Skizzle scampering around with his toy toy. So cute!
The remote reinforcement tricks went GREAT! Is your marker word “Shazam”? LOL! Love it! The tricks were easy for him with the toy behind him, and he also did great in front of the jump. He has a bunch of super fun tricks! You can also do this with good rewards, so he is happy with both tools (food and toys).
One thing you can add to this is the leash: He can enter the environment on leash, see you put the cookies or toy down, move to the jump, so a trick or two, take the leash off, do another trick or two… and then you can mix in the Shazam marker before or after lining up up to take the jump. This will simulate what a trial will be like.
Great job here!
Tracy
