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Good morning!
It was SUPER convenient that the universe provided someone to walk past! That was a very useful moment for this game and she did GREAT! The game is functioning exactly as designed: to give her a framework that allows her to assess the environment and engage with you. And it gives you a good view of what she is thinking about. She was terrific here!!!
I think you mentioned that she did this when you were at Sprite’s lesson. Have you tried it at the agility trials too? You can start as far from the ring as needed then over time you can work to get her closer to it (even if there are no dogs running, it is valuable to play this near the ring).
> It’s easy inside >
Yay! And you can play it inside every now and then to keep it ‘neutral’ so it doesn’t get consistently paired with the excitement and arousal of being outside or at agility locations.
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
His Minny Pinny work went really well! Anything that involved turning towards you in both directions was lovely! The turning away was a harder concept to add but he solved that puzzle really quickly! So proud of him!
You can revisit that a bit, and keep working towards him being more centered on the wings and in neutral position between your feet (that takes a while because it is HARD!)
>However, he did not appreciate it being held for too long. I did try holding him longer when first attempting the turn away from me and he just stared daggers into my eyes, incredibly offended I was continuing to hold him and refusing to look anywhere else.>
Ha! I could feel the rage coming through the computer screen LOL!!!!
You can mix in randomly rewarding for being held by just chasing the reward rather than doing the Minny Pinny. That can be a happy surprise which leads to move motivation to be held. He might be ragey about it because he understands the assignment and wants to go go go!!!!
Nice work here :)
TracyGood morning! She did well here and was definitely figuring out the serps!
>Off setting the jump a bit helped her understand,>
Angling the jump a little totally helped. You can start the next session with that angle, and leave it angled as long as needed so you can add more motion.
>I’m going to need to send her to the wing from a further distance in order to be in position and in front of her for the slice.>
Yes, sending will make this a lot easier 🙂 Trying to start with her at the wing made it hard to outrun her o show the serp. Starting at the middle wing (wing on the jump) then send her to the purple start wing will make it a lot easier for you to show the position and connection of the serp, like you had at 2:25. That was spot on!
You can also alter the MM placement a tiny bit: have it more on the same side of the jump that you are on – that way she comes over the bump then goes back out to the MM (and will be less tempted to go straight to it). That will also help with rewarding the balance reps of doing the FC wrap on the wing so she follows your line and does not take the jump.
Nice work!
Tracy
Good morning!
She is doing well with her prop game! She was able to hit it with both the sideways and backwards sends – super!! The value is getting higher and higher which is why this is happening:
>I struggled a bit getting her back to the ‘start’ tonight. >
You can change the reward placement to have her come to your hands for the reward (food or tug), rather than deliver the reward to the prop. And if she heads to the prop before she is sent you don’t need to reward her 🙂 You can call her back to you and send when you are ready. You can totally have treats in your hand a part of this – the send hand can still be empty, but the other hand can have the treats for rewarding in front of you when she gets back to you.
She is a plank superstar! Her pervious experiences with the planks and other stuff definitely benefitted her here: she was super confident getting on it and more than happy to try turning around too. I think turning around will be easier if you are standing, because you will be keeping your hand lower rather than having to raise it up when you are kneeling. She will have the most balance turning around if you can keep her chin parallel to the ground or even a little downward-pointing, so when you are standing up you can lean over to have your hand really low for now. You can also ask for sits and downs on the plank.
The wing wrapping is going GREAT!!!
She worked through the challenge of the barrel getting further away really well. You can try moving it out more slowly, like an inch at a time. The changes in distance might have been a little too big in each change, so smaller changes can get her being more successful.>She struggled going from my right to left (like she did with the cone) when I increased the distance. >
Yes, the left turns are a little harder for her but she did do a lot of lovely left turns! So we can slowly add distance but we can also add two other things:
– changing your position to sitting then standing, using this barrel which will be perfect for upcoming games. You can use the Klimb to sit on (keeping the barrel close for now) then if she is happy with that, move to standing.
– you can also like the bowls a little further back so she has more room to turn around for the next wrap. You can slide them back to be next to your heals (and this also helps us start to fade them).
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
He was so cute waiting on the Klimb behind you at the beginning!
Even though he was hungry, he did great with the fold it in game.
The cone tower is perfect for this. His forward focus looked good too! He wa a little impatient when you were cueing the forward focus: ‘let me go, I know what to do’ LOL!! Good boy!
You can replace the go verbal with what you’d like your wrap verbal to be. Go will indicate a straight line, so we can name the turn even at this early stage. You were using ‘get it’ when you switched to the other side which is helpful here for sure! And the wrap verbal will emphasize the line when the bowl moves to a really hard spot and is visible on the other side of the cone.
He was brilliant after the tug break and he offered a cone wrap to keep playing! Love it!
The line ups and collar grabs looked great. There were a ton of collar grabs in the ‘fold it in’ game and also after the line up. He seemed perfectly happy to line up and have his collar held. So we can work on his impatience when he knows what the game is and wants you to let go: try giving him multiple cookies during the collar hold. Do this as soon as you hold his collar and more importantly: add in a couple more cookies after you have tossed the cookie ahead so you can help build the love for standing still when you hold him, even when he knows what is coming next (being released to a thrown treat or toy).
>I think I need to add in some more noise for him. I am finding times that he is getting startled. >
Be sure to have food with you pretty much at all times now, so you can pair the weird noises with food, and then move away from the noises. So when the snow plow comes roaring down the street? You can toss a bunch of cheese on the ground, or hand him a big piece of something great. And moving away from the scary noise is fine too after you present the food.
>He stopped to look at them and determine what was the noise. Then went forward but was still good distance away and watched. The boy lost the ball and it came rolling towards Dublin and he got spooked.>
Poor Dubs! That must have been weird. But that is where you can offer him big pieces of cheese, for example. And he also has the option to move away and take you with him, if the noise is really weird.
I worked through intense noise sensitivity with the smaller black & white demo pup in this class by having an Egg McMuffin with me when we were possibly going to encounter a weird noise. And when there was a noise, she got a huge bite of the Egg McMuffin LOL She grew up to be a confident beast 🙂
Also, do you have another dog that is rock solid and will not react to noise at all? Helper dogs like this can show Dublin what to do in noisy moments. You can have the helper dog with you on walks or at stores. When there is a noise, Dublin will look to the helper dog and see calmness and zero reaction, which Dublin is likely to present as well in those moments. It is an example of social learning and it is incredibly powerful. If you don’t have a dog like that, does a friend have a dog that can be a helper dog? Or come to Virginia, I have some great helpers and we can take the pups on shopping trips 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
He did really well here! This is a hard game and he made it look easy!
>Talk about the inconsistent use of marker words! I vow to do better! I think in this situation, I would/should use ‘yes’ as I did a few times. >
You were using ‘get it’ mostly and that is perfect for this game (‘yes’ might be too general and not specific enough). My suggestion with the marker is to start to delay it now, as the toy/bowl gets further and further around the cone: his forward focus was looking good so you were releasing him. When you release him, you can either be silent or use a wrap cue. That cues the behavior of moving around the cone, then when he does you can use your ‘get it’ marker.
The reason for the delay is that as the game gets harder and the toy or bowl are super visible on the ‘wrong’ side of the cone and he has to pass them to get to the cone – if you say ‘get it’ when you let go of him, he is theoretically correct to go directly to the reward. So delaying the marker until he is definitely committing to the cone will make more sense to him.
>Once again I started with a toy and wasn’t getting much of anywhere.>
Maybe because the toy was too stationary? You can toss it and send hi to it as soon as the to lands to help pump up the toy value here.
>I should add that I discovered that I had posted two previous times to the header for the exercise, not under Rusty and Sally. Can you correct that?>
I sure can! Do you want me to re-title them, or move them here into your main thread?
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
It was fun to watch the backing up and the food markers!
Is “snack” a ‘stay there I am bringing food to your mouth versus “yip” which is ‘come to my hand for food’? That is what it looked like here. And get it was definitely the tossed treat 🙂
His backing up is going really well! You can start to move a little further from his cato board so he backs up longer and longer distances. He is using his hind end really well, so adding more distance will get even more independence.
Great job!
Tracy
Hi! Well done here! So many fun things happening!
Look at his response to your first “yes” – he seemed so surprised! But that is exactly the ‘happy surprise’ that releases the dopamine and encodes learning/motivates him to repeat the behavior. Yay!
Turning the plank definitely made it logical for him and he was brilliant about getting all 4 feet on early in the session. Then he was getting on with all 4 even when the plank was not turned to make it easier. Good boy!
He was able to turn away from you to his left while keeping all 4 feet on the plank: wowza! We don’t normally see that in baby pups! His right turns were not as easy for him (they were normal for his age and experience :)) but I think that will come together easily in future sessions.
>This is another one where we are stuck between too big to sit on the floor/too small to stand.>
You can stand for this one as long as you can get the rewards in nice and low when rewarding him on the plank. You can also use a ‘get it’ marker and pitch treats off to the side, so he can then come blasting back onto the plank. Do you have a longer plank? He will need that pretty soon 🙂
Nice work on all of these!! Stay warm!
Tracy
Hi!
>So I spend most of the video randomly crawling around!>
OMG totally agree that the mechanics of this game can be AWK.WARD. It will b 1000 time easier when we eventually add in a stay but for now, it is like we need 4 arms to do it.
Happily Rye seemed to enjoy having you crawl around with him and his forward focus was absolutely brilliant. You were able to quickly progress the bowl around he cone – he was completely understanding what you showed him here.
Because he was a rockstar… you can move this game along pretty quickly. What I mean by that is you can move the bowl further around the cone after each rep when he tells you it is the easiest thing ever.
You will hit a spot where it is harder: he will have to consider cone or bowl? That will probably be when the bowl is visible on the ‘wrong’ side of the cone. In that stage, you can go to an empty bowl then plop the treat in after he wraps. That stage solidifies the forward focus as being on the obstacle and not on the reward.
Nice work!
Tracy
Good morning!
>Winter weather in the south sucks! >
FOR REAL!! This winter has been GROSS and I am ready for it to be done. I hope you are staying warm!
He is growing like a weed!! But still super adorable 🙂 The collar grab session went great, he seemed very happy to come into your hand. He might have been thinking it is a nose touch to your hand if you’ve taught him that but then he was great about letting you hold his collar. Super!
>The boy is like Tarzan. Very anti-“clothing” but doesnt seem to mind me grabbing it.>
Ha!!! That is o funny 😄 He was aware that it was a collar game – note how he had a moment of scratching at the collar. I don’t think that was stress, I think he was just aware that his collar was engaged (especially if he is usually naked).
Since this went so well, you can add the little games like lining him up at your side (hand touch to follow or cookie lure are both great for this) then hold his collar – then throw a cookie or toy for him to chase.
Great job!
Tracy
Good morning!
OMG he was so funny on the treadmill. I laughed out loud when he was just hanging out and it was just moving him down the line.
>I found this cute extendable plastic fist target that I’d forgotten about so decided to teach him a fist bump for fun. >
The fist bump toy is adorable and clever! He did well putting his foot on the pod which seemed to lock in that you wanted one foot – and then it was a pretty easy transition to get it onto the fist. Smart boy!
That was all right leg, so now the challenge becomes: can you get him to do it with his left leg too? You might need a longer plank to do this on soon – he is getting long and was a little crunched up here!
The big boy tug looked like a lot of fun 🙂 The ‘grab it!’ is going well – I really love that type of marker & presentation because it helps pups learn to grab the toy but avoid our flesh LOL! Two things stood out to me as far as the tugging:
One of the things that Ripley did was to maintain a pretty constant tension so Vibe could really pull back on it. You were doing that with a bit of hand-over-hand sliding (pulling but not pulling) from :16-:18 approx as well as at the end, and he really leaned back into it!
At 1:12-1:14 approx you had low steady tension back and forth and he was really pulling back hard there! When the toy was moving fast, he was more in chase mode (weight shifted forward, bite didn’t look as hard) – this can be useful for other types of reward and placement too!
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
Super nice transition from tugging to the shaping here! I think your hands were fine in terms of where they were… so why wasn’t she looking at the bone? Maybe because you were sitting so she was in hanging out mode with you. She was so cute! Also very cute when she grabbed the toy at the end LOL!
You can try it with you standing or you sitting on the couch – my guess is that she thinks of you standing as the cue to offer behavior and you sitting is the cue to hang out 🙂
On the 2nd video, you were kneeling and that was a definite context cue for offering behavior She was great on the first part! It took her a moment to re-focus on the shaping after the tug break but click/treat to you for being patient and then she got into the offering again really well.
That is good to know: you need to be kneeling (or maybe standing) to cue her to offer behavior. We can teach her how to offer behavior when you are sitting like you were on the first video, but I don’t think we need to 🙂
Wrap shaping: this also went well!! She seems to be more of a lefty (turning to her left better here) – she got ‘stuck’ a bit more on the right turn (going from your left to your right) but she always figured it out!
I think she is ready for you to start changing positions: when you play this game again, try it with you sitting on the couch. And if that goes well? Add in you standing! It might be even easier with you standing because she really wants to go into ‘hang out mode’ when you are sitting on the ground 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
>I may have to switch to a retired dog for a seminar so we did some practice and he enjoys blinds.>
Fun! I am glad he thinks blinds are fun!!
Looks like the novel-exciting game went well! She was aware of the object when she entered the area but got right to work and was able to process it without having to go to it. Super!!
>hould I only mark a front foot touch or is back foot ok? >
Back foot is perfectly fine here, especially with the added distraction of the bag of treats on the ground.
>I think I confused her a few times when she got a back foot but I waited. I then went back to parallel path but she’d stop and look at me. >
The looking at you will go away on the parallel path game if you are consistently throwing the reward out ahead of her. On some of the reps here you were throwing it ahead, and on others you were throwing it back towards the direction she came from – the was unpredictable so she was watching you to be able to see the throw.
>It doesn’t happen often but when she gets confused I think I need to stop and go inside or play, etc. >
If she is confused you can definitely take a moment to play, and then reset with a higher rate of reward for the rest of the session. Or, you can stop and watch the video to see the bigger picture of what she saw because that will help you make adjustments to help her out.
On the turn and burn video:
She turns so tight! It is really cool to see how she gets low and suer tight around the cone. Wow!>It’s hard for her if the toy is across my body. She snagged me a few times accidentally and I couldn’t keep my hands still which created more leaping.>
Do you mean when she was grabbing for it before the sends?
I think a clearer lineup will make it all so much smoother:
For example at :08 you were facing her, she was facing you… then you tried to turn and send her to the cone but she didn’t understand that so she went to the toy hand.From :17 – :31 you were facing her but waiting for her to offer the cone wrap but she was confused.
Compare to the reps when she was on your right – you were facing forward more on those and she was terrific!
So for the next session: line her up at your side, so both of you can be facing the cone. Hold her collar, say the wrap verbal a few times then let go so you can send to the cone with arm and leg. I think will make things very smooth and eliminate the toy grabbing.
Nice work here!
Tracy
Hi!
This was fun to see! On the first rep, you did a blind then a send to the prop. On the 2nd rep, you did a parallel path line where he drove ahead to the prop. Both were really good! He has a lot of value for the prop – the only thing I would add is throwing the reward straight ahead on the parallel path game, so he doesn’t look at you.You can mix in using a start cookie on the parallel path so you can be ahead of him or adding distance by being lateral from him. And you can also try starting right with him so he drives ahead. This will set us up nicely for the rear crosses.
Great job!
Tracy
