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Hi there! Hope you enjoyed the holidays!
Foot targeting:
She does like to look at you, so a couple of ideas:
Make a clean transition into that first rep by gently holding her collar, getting ready, then sending. You plopped the target down and so she’s not entirely sure when to start. Same thing for when you called her back and wanted to resend: line her up, then send.
On the one step sends- yes, you were too far 🙂 start closer and the other thing that will help is if you make more connection and not look at the target. It will feel weird to look at her as you step forward but it helps point your shoulder to where you want her, so she will send more easily.
Also on the sends, make the clean transition by holding her collar with her facing the target & looking at it so she knows exactly when to start and leave you for the target.On the recalls:
Great job with the fast transitions of the hand off!! And using different helpers too, it all helps her! She seemed much happier to be held. Yay!!!!
About getting to you then leaving… I think it is about the reinforcement. When you were chucking food, she didn’t leave you. When you presented the toy, she left to check other things out. So, in this situation, the toy is not high enough in value – so use a food reward 🙂 eventually you might be able get the toy involved again, but no rush – the goal is to make it super rewarding and the food will accomplish that.Perch work:
I like how happy she is to hop right on the perch and play this game!
You will owe me $10 every time you say uh oh to her! Break that habit 🙂
With the clicker, try to isolate hind end movement rather than getting off the perch (your release word can help her get off it). That will help get even better hind end, especially on the side that was more difficult. On the easy side, try to fade your movement a bit so your foot is reaching towards her but you aren’t stepping as much towards her. On the harder side, you can help her more but click and treat more often too, for every rear foot movement.Foot bumps:
She was a good girl here too! Because of her size, you can start to throw the treats further away from you, so she can hop more fully over your leg. Then after she gets the treat, you can tap on the outside of your other leg so she can hop back across both legs (then throw the cookie pretty far). This will add more speed and be super fun!Nice work here!
TracyHi!
He’s very clever! I think he is going there because of all the value – every time he gets there, you click and throw the reward back behind you. So, while it is fine that he lines up there, two thoughts:
– add motion away, moving forward, even if it is a tiny step.
– be sure to work both left and right sides, so he can line up on both sides. Also, you can cue him to sit so that he doesn’t offer backing up or only going to your left side.
Keep me posted!
TracyHi! Because toy train with so much reinforcement, AND you video sessions, AND your sessions are short… you are not going to break the dog 🙂 sometimes a session goes sideways but it is easy to catch and fix for the next session. And your sessions really don’t go sideways – some just aren’t as perfect as others LOL! Overall, he’s doing great!
TWoot woot! he is making his retriever ancestors proud 🙂 The retrieve is looking good and yes, he totally gave you the look of “what’s the big deal, I do this all the time” haha!!
Be sure to work both sides so that he turns both directions to chase you. And you can start with a bit of restraint by holding his collar while throwing the toy, letting go after the toy lands – it builds even more drive to it. You can also try the harder version which is to drop the toy next to you and let go and run away at the same time – it will be more tempting to just chase you and harder to do the retrieve, but I think he is ready for that.
Nice job on all of these!
TracyHe was so clever here! Good boy, check out him reaching for it with his back feet! Any hind end awareness game is a good game 🙂 I realized you can also do this on a balance disc if you have one: perch work exactly the same way, except now he has to balance his front feet on one of those discs – much harder and great for core strength!
T
hi!
He is indeed doing well here! You did take a little long to release him on the first go-round but I think it was mainly because you were trying to get him into the camera frame 🙂
Now onwards to the next step of fading your movement: rather than move your whole body, try just moving one of your legs – reach out with your toes towards his back toes and reward any movement. The goal is to get him to move around with his hind end without you having to move.
You can also add a jump bump for him to step over, I think he is ready for this. When adding the jump bump, continue to use your movement at first to help him move, so he get the hang of stepping over the bump. It is a great body awareness and strengthening thing to have him do this!
Good job!
TracyHi! I love the clicker sits too 🙂 And yes, totally tell him to get it (I am surprised your partners-in-crime didn’t remind you during the training session LOL!)
Start to add in more movement right away – the goal is that you are walking away almost immediately, rather than standing still. And walking away confidently, even if it is one step. When you were moving away, you were careful, so he wanted to come with you. So when he sits, start taking a confident step away but click & throw almost immediately.
You can also add praise between the sit and the click – he offers the sit, you praise and then click/toss. That can help bridge the gap as you add more movement too.
You can resubmit if you like, but it doesn’t have to be the same thing – you can post a video of the next steps of adding motion & duration.
nice work!Yay, he totally was fine with all of these. Nice! As with the mousepad shaping, have a handful of treats ready so there is no delay and you can get the rewards in really quickly. When you go to get one out of your pocket, he ends up looking at you – and we really don’t want the agility dogs looking up at us at all.
Because he is so confident with the different textures and movements, you can add sounds to these – get some bubble wrap to put under them, or put the wooden ones on a hard wood floor so there is some crashing and banging – that will all help prepare for the teeter 🙂
Nice work!Yes, this was much better! You did a nice crisp blind and he was less distracted by all the stuff in the environment. Did you switch to a different toy? That might have contributed to. This was a nice rep!
Hi – I am not sure if it was disconnection here or if there was too much visual ‘clutter’ for him to find the side you wanted – with the other obstacles out there, he was probably seeing too much stuff and not able to isolate where you wanted him. It looks like he does like the toy, right? A high value toy will help and I think he likes this one.
Hi! He totally like the mousepad! As with the suitcase, you can drop the reward right on it rather than feed him from your hand – that will get him looking more at his ‘work’ and less at you. And have a handful of treats ready in your hand – there was a bit of a delay between him hitting the target and you reaching into your pocket. Have those cookies ready for faster treating 🙂 And when you want him to get off the mousepad, remember to use a get it cue when you toss a treat. Small details that will help in the long run. I think he is ready for the next steps!
nice work!
TracyHi! He was really into that toy at the beginning! If he chomps fingers by accident, you can reward the out or trade for a treat so he backs off a bit.
Yes he was a little hesitant at first, I guess he thought the suitcase was a little weird with the bars as you mentioned. One thing to help him would be to tweak the placement of reinforcement: rather than hand it to him, try dropping it into the suitcase after the click. That will encourage him to get even more into the suitcase to get the treat. And then even when he was happy getting all the way into it, you can drop the treats in and that will encourage him offering a down. This is a fun trick to build on – you can shape him getting in and going into a down – then you can teach him to pull the lid closed on himself LOL! Nice work!
TracyOh this is really nice! And good girlie for not flinging herself at the manners minder! Yes, this was nice and balanced. I didn’t want to suggest a MM because I was worried she would not want to trot, but she did really well! it certainly makes your life easier to use the MM! And it bodes nicely for RDW training that she doesn’t lose her mind over the MM and fling herself at it.
You can build on this by angling the bars on the Canaletto – she still trots through but the bars present a different visual by being more zig zagged – you can create it by moving the cones supporting the bars closer or further from each other. Let me know if that makes sense.
Nice work here!
TracyHey there! Hope you had a great holiday week! It has been gorgeous out, I am glad you were able to enjoy it with some quality outdoors time 🙂
The clicker sits are looking great! She is such a high drive girlie and yet she was able to produce a tight sit position, solid stay, no foot movement – she looked practically zen-like and meditative haha! But we know that she is ready to explode into work, which is great! The duration is looking good – the only error was when you started to run away and she was not quite settled in the sit yet… but the next reps where you had more movement were all really lovely. So to build on this:
– take it to many different places and play the clicker stay games in front of exciting things like tunnels and jumps. I add this game to tunnels and jumps before the pups really know what tunnels and jumps are, so that the stay has a chance to get highly reinforced before we introduce the major excitement and giddy-up-ing that comes with tunnels and jumps 🙂
– add in releases forward to you, mixing them into the click/thrown-back-rewards. You can do it with treats at first: your release word means come forward for a cookie, the click means ‘get it’ for a thrown back reward (but do continue to use the get it cue).
– Add toys! You can click then throw a toy back, and you can mix in releasing forward for a toy. The toy will add more excitement, which builds in more challenge for the stay behavior.Lots of really nice work on the reverse retrieve too! She had a ton of good things happening: focus forward on the toy, able to do the retrieve even with all the countermotion of you leaving early, and mostly bringing the toy to you LOL! The get it and countermotion elements were really terrific. When you are adding distance to the send away (after you throw the toy) – try to start her in the spot you want to start her in then throw the toy, rather than throw the toy then move her. The moving interrupts her focus forward to the toy and she looks at you a little, so you’ll get even better focus forward if you throw the toy further and don’t move her at all once it is thrown.
On the video, you were running it one way so she turned to her right on all the reps. Remember to switch sides so that she also turns to her left. You might find she *still* turns to her right which is unlikely but definitely worth working through. On these, she should always turn towards you and not towards her preferred direction.
The retrieve is really going well, all the way to the last moment when you want her to deliver it – then she has a little party of one LOL! So keep working the retrieve separately, where you are in a quiet area and maybe sitting on the floor, and can reward for putting the toy in your hand. For the reverse retrieve, you can cue and out when she is almost reaching you, almost putting it in your hand… then reward with the other toy – that will help make a smooth transition in the retrieve.
She did better with the smaller toy too – on the bigger toy, it got floppy and she had a puppy moment when it fell or when it flopped. It was super cute but not making your retrieve smooth LOL!
I liked your transitions where you would get the toy back and then you gave it back to her sometimes – that will help her want to give it to you! Yay! She did have the one bite-da-momma moment for the toy in your hand (ouch!) but you noted it and she immediately was back to NOT leaping for the toy. I don’t think she was frustrated when she kept for it, I just think she was a bit excited but then dialed herself back after the bit of verbal feedback.Super nice work on these!!! She is looking lovely!
TracyHi there! She did look really comfy in the new environment, yay! That is great!
On the video:
Foot targeting – she definitely was into it! You can stay a little closer to the target and drop food on the target (rather than hand it to her) – both of those ideas are designed to get her to want to look at you less here and at the target more. She really wanted to look at you AND target, as you can see form her backing up onto it LOL! Clever! So more rewards on the target will help her look at you less – and looking at you less will help when you add the countermotion skills. And yes, you can have a whole handful of treats ready for tossing then break it off and let her chase the toy while you reload.The blind crosses looked great! You are being too hard on yourself 🙂 From the camera angle, we can see how much connection that Demi could see… and that is what is important 🙂 True, it is hard to see their eyes as you are running fast like that – but you probably saw a blur of golden fur and she totally saw your connection. As you were running away, you had to disconnect for a heartbeat on the blinds and maybe that is why it felt disconnected? It looked great though!
On the mini obstacle course – yes, she was not comfy on this yet. No worries, the magic of cookies will get her comfy. I want you to banish any markers such as “uh oh” or “cheater” from your vocabulary, though – if something is hard and she is struggling, she doesn’t need to hear she is wrong – that doesn’t help LOL! Just reward ALL the things and keep telling her how great it is to try.
You rewarded a lot on the discs and stuff, and that helped! My only suggestion is to reward lower – either handing it to her lower or dropping the treat onto the item – so she has a more natural head position. You were rewarding up high so she was craning her neck up (like in obedience heeling). A more natural head position will give her more balance and also it is perfectly fine for her to look at the things she is walking over. Your ideas to isolate the wobble board is spot on – she didn’t want to touch it, even with a food lure. So, isolate it and stuff towels under it so it barely moves and doesn’t make noise. Then give her massive rewards (food or favorite toys) just for being near it, then eventually on it, then eventually moving it. Slow, fun progress will get her happy on it 🙂On the recalls – yes, she was definitely worried! It might be that she simply hasn’t had a lot of experience with restrained recalls, and it might be that she has had WAY too much experience with vets holding/touching her, and associates it with pain. Even after the first rep, she was still not comfortable – avoiding coming right back and then was all solicitous. No worries, though, we can get her happy! Here are two ideas for more happiness in restraint:
When you hand her off to someone, do the fastest recall ever. What I mean by that is to hand her off and then instantly call her. Do it within a half a second. No need for a long lead out or ready-steady-go moment – just hand off and instant recall. That will help her understand that being handed off means the recall fun and party starts immediately, so she will become less worried about getting handed off.
Another thing to do is hand her off and have the holder feed her treats (if she can eat them – some dogs are so uncomfortable in the early stages that they can’t eat the treats) – then do a pretty immediate recall, so she doesn’t have to be held for that long. Try to expand this to a lot ot different people so she gets more comfy with lots of folks 🙂On the clicker stays – I agree, sit versus down is not as clear in her head as you might’ve thought 🙂 Part of the reason was that you were leaning over and towards her – so that pressure tends to produce a down, especially if you have been rewarding a lot of downs lately. When you stood up, even leaned back a little – she was more likely to sit. And you can add a hand cue if you want to help with the sit. But if you say sit, and she downs – don’t click that because it gets confusing to her (one or two rewards for that was why she kept offering downs). And Maintain a 2 failure rule: if she fails twice (offers and doesn’t get rewarded), make it easier by helping either with less pressure or a hand signal.
When she is in the position you want, you can now start to delay the click to extend the duration of the stay. And you can take this to different places so she can do happy stays everywhere!Nice work here! Keep me posted on the upcoming diagnostics! I was happy to see her feeling really good on this video 🙂
Tracy
