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Good morning! Congrats on Benni’s NW3 title!! That is a BIG accomplishment!!!!
>A couple of these games for week 3 were very humbling for this handler!>
Yes – so many mechanics and we humans have to be correct because the puppies don’t have enough knowledge to cover us if we mess up LOL 😂😝
Toy races – going great!
>tried the toy race game…I lost. >
Ha! Yes, he is super fast and I love it!!
One suggestion, for smoother starts so he can go straighter and even faster: have him wear a collar or harness because holding him by the chest is making the start of each rep off balance. He almost went behind you on the first rep (it was hard for him to see connection) and was moving away from you on the 2nd rep. This game can go outside or two other locations!
Parallel path – good job adding the rear crosses! We can adjust the reward timing so you get less looking at you, not more, which will help the drive to the prop on the RC:
You can be a tiny bit earlier on the marker and reward: he was looking at you already when you marked the behavior. Think of the prop as a jump-bar replacement, so you can reward commitment to it as the priority here: You can see him heading towards and arriving at the prop, and mark/throw before he looks at you.
We can also get him more excited so it is less of a trotting game and more of a running game: use the toy a lot more often! Have a tug break after every couple of treats, and you can also use the toy as the reward (fling it like you flung the treats :)) Then before you start moving forward, add a bit of ready dance to pump him up 🙂
That can help get him exploding forward which will help you get the RC cues in sooner. All of the RCs here were to his right, so his questions were about timing and not about side preference.
At 1:17 and 1:34, you were visible enough doing the side change that he was able to switch gears and turn right! Yay!!!
At 1:26 and 1:44, you were still visible on the left turn side so he turned left – then completed the circle to find you. Good job rewarding him there!!! So if he explodes forward more, you will see that you can get to the other side before he arrives at the prop and then he will get the RC right each time.
Collection sandwich:
Yes, this one does require 3 or 4 arms LOL!! A little bit of chaos is actually useful here because agility handling can sometimes be fast moving chaos 🙂 On the harder side, you can give yourself a walk through without him to get it all sorted out. But overall, this went well and I think he enjoyed the craziness of it all!
One suggestion here: after the blind, decel sooner (almost immediately as you finish the blind) and then have your hand closer to your leg. You can let your elbow be touching your side so it doesn’t extend away.
When you were reaching out to him, it was pushing him away a bit. When you had your hand closed and closer to your side, he turned a lot better on the pivots!
He drove really well to the toy at the end of each rep, so you can add your go go go verbal!
This is a good one to take outside so both of you can really run run run!
Barrel wraps:
He is understanding these pretty well! You can change the orientation of this game so it is lengthwise in your training area – that way you can run away for real, and not run towards the wall.
>I think I did it all backwards as far as the line placement on the floor. >
Yes, – you were moving it towards you when it should move away from you around the barrel (towards where he is starting). That will give you the visual of when you can do the FC – when you were doing it too early here, he was coming with you. When you were doing it more as he exited the barrel, he was able to complete his commitment really well!
When you changed sides, you started with it more in the center and that was the right placement to add earlier timing on the FC!
That is the only adjustment I’d suggest: having the line on the ground start at the exit and move it gradually around the barrel away from you, so you can start moving through the FC earlier and earlier.
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>Oh, do you think she’s a righty? I think so. But, I’m not sure.>
Based on the barrel session here, yes – it seemed the right turns were easier, and when in doubt: she offered going to the right.
>The first part was too hard. Difficult environment and I had the bowls too far back. Epic fail!>
Definitely not an epic fail! It was actually GREAT information about mechanics. Two things were happening (video is great for giving us a bigger view):
– when she scooted between you and the barrel, it was happening in one specific instance: you were accidentally enhancing the other bowl. She was eating from one bowl (usually by your right hand), she saw you drop the treat in the other bowl. Or, she saw you moving the bowl. Those were basically a cue to just go directly to the other bowl, because the hand movement and cookie placement enhanced it. So she wasn’t wrong (based on her current frame of reference).
Easy fix: don’t let her see you put the treat in or move the bowl 🙂 You can toss a cookie away for her to go find in the grass, or take a tug break, and move the bowls or adjust the setup in a way that she is not in the middle of offering and can see the bowls moving.
– she did a bit more thinking when she needed to turn left (going from your right to your left). Don’t help her 🙂 Let her make a decision that involves some type of movement and not standing still and looking up. The reason you don’t want to help with a hand cue there is that what actually gets rewarded is standing still and looking up, when we want her to thinking about offering left turn movement. It can be any movement that gets rewarded – turning left for one step, even a sit or down can be rewarded with a treat in the bowl. Movement gets rewarded. Standing still gets us waiting for movement 🙂
If she has a harder time on the left turns, you can have the bowl more visible on that side to make it easier without adding cues or reinforcement for standing still (and the right turn bowl can be less visible since that is currently the easier side).
Overall it went well, especially outside! The tug breaks were also really good! And yes, trying one more object is good before you progress to turn and burn.
>Can you guess the out if tune TV theme song in the prop video? >
Hmmmm it sounds familiar but I think more coffee is needed to figure it out!
The prop game went great! She was immediately ready to interact on both the left and right turn side. Big progress!
She was so funny on the sideways and backwards sending, starting it on some reps before you were ready! So add in the ready dance on the right turn side (first part of the session) to get a little more handler focus so she doesn’t start without you. You had the ready dance on the left turn side and she did great!
>I know… I went in too long. But, you can see our struggles. Better though.>
I don’t think it was session length in general, I think she got a little distracted when you did a whole bunch of cookie reps in a row. She likes cookies and all, but it was a lot of the same thing for the same cookie, so you can do 2 or 3 then take a tug break! You can also have a ‘trail mix’ of treats, so different treats are happening which keeps things interesting.
Or, play this game for a toy which will make it very exciting and a little harder 🙂 She seems ready for that!
>Dot was distracted by water. She’s drinking a lot these days.>
It was right there and dry treats can make her thirsty, so she stopped for a sip 🙂 I think you moved the water? That was good – and something to note that water can be a good distraction in the future!
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>We are playing a pattern game where I am placing food on my shoe. >
Yes – that is a good one too! There are lots of good pattern games. This one is ‘up and down’, which is super useful for tighter situations and also for resetting certain brainwave patterns. I am glad it helped him tune out distractions!
Try to be perfectly stationary when you play it – you were moving your feet before he looked up at you, and we don’t want the foot movement to become a cue by accident.
The back and forth game (with the tossed treats) is great for exploring the environment and for letting him move more, which is super useful especially for adolescent dogs 🙂
>Blind Cross: I need to do more work on my throwing mechanics,>
Your placement was really good – you just needed to throw the cookie further on the 2nd rep so you had more time to do the blind cross 🙂 You were stationary on these reps – he is ready for you to add movement. As he is heading towards the thrown treat, you can be walking forward then when he eats it: run! That will give you plenty of time for the blind and also make it easy to add the decel when you play the next game 🙂
>Goat Tricks: This was brand new for him. I am using three different objects.>
On the first object, I didn’t see the transition into the shaping session – he was sitting and looking up at you, so he might not have been immediately sure he was being asked to offer getting on it. You can start the session with a cookie toss away from you then out the object down – the cookie tosses in the next part of the session worked beautifully to get him moving and offering!
>Tribute grew since then so, even though he can place all four paws on the platform, it wasn’t easy and my treat placement wasn’t helping>
I think it was a little too small and he would have had to crunch up to get onto it – but you can combine it with the other object you used here to make a bigger playing field, so he would have more room to get all 4 feet up on it.
He got all 4 feet on the longer step you can use the step – so now you can challenge him to stand on it and turn around (following a cookie lure hand).
And you can squish all of these objects (and any other random things you can find) together for him to walk across and climb around on.
The smaller round bowl is perfect for front feet – we will be teaching pivoting pretty soon, so that seems like the perfect object for it!
The retrieves at the end looked good!
>He is bringing it back somewhere between 55% and 60% so I don’t think it is a solid behavior but there appears to be some understanding.>
To get the rate of success higher, you can add your motion – when yo throw a toy, take off and run the other direction so he chases you with the toy 🙂 He might think that is super fun, which will help entice him to bring the toy back 🙂 And if he is really loving tugs, you can reward the retrieve with a 2nd toy 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
This is exactly right! Super! She was able to maintain her speed and commitment, even with you running the other direction. She seemed surprised at how tight the turn would be – she might have been expecting that you would throw the frisbee on her line on the first rep so she was heading that way.
She was already tighter on the next rep – yay! The more you show her the countermotion, the more she can tighten her turn and chase you line.Looking great!!
TracyHi!
>Are you good with two videos per post? If not, I’ll go back to one. >
Totally yes! My motto is: if you have ’em, post ’em! So if you have a couple of videos ready to post, put them all in. No one-video-per-post rule 🙂 and you’ll get quicker feedback that way too.
Parallel path – the Flintstones was today’s tug song hahahaha! Cracks me up!
This went pretty well overall – I think during the early part of the session, she was thinking it was about looking at you. But when that didn’t get rewarded (looking at you and passing the prop), she offered a lot more looking at/towards the prop and touching it. Yay! I agree that she had a harder time on your right side – no clear reason why, other than perhaps you had less room moving that direction, or it is a mutual side preference 🙂 So you can stay close on the right and add a little bit of distance on the left side reps.
>. I tried outside which was an epic fail for parallel path. She couldn’t touch the object at all. Walked right on the outside of it. >
The prop might not have been salient enough in the outdoor environment, so you can make it more obvious by placing it up on a rolled up towel or something similar. Or have her do it on leash, on the sidewalk so there is no grass distraction (before the sidewalk gets too hot). And she might have needed a refresher on just hitting it outside, so you can always start with that.
One thing we add with pups who want to look at us is marking and throwing the treat for the forward focus and intent to move to the prop – mark and throw on the line, just before the pup actually hits it and before the pup looks at us 🙂 Hitting the prop is not terribly relevant here because we are teaching the pup to stay on a line to a ‘thing’ as we get further away. The ‘thing’ will eventually be a jump or tunnel 🙂
>We are still not great at send to the prop or going around things. I’m not sure if it’s my mechanics or she’s just a little young still.>
I think it is coming along nicely! She has more and more value and commitment each time you try it. And nothing needs to be perfect in order to move forward – it is all about exposure to concepts. And also we are developing neural pathways, and the first ones she had to develop were all about how we humans like to structure our sessions! Then the brain gets to work on the concepts like wrapping a barrel. An 8 or 9 month old pup has the benefit of “this is how we work with humans” pathways already developed and the 10 week old pups are starting from scratch 🙂
She did well with the novel-exciting objects here and the pattern game. On a couple of the reps, you were saying ‘find it’ while she was looking at the object at the beginning – I think some of that was you getting into a rhythm 🙂 So you can wait a heartbeat longer until you are seeing her head lift up and orient towards you.
You might have noticed that she approached the novel-exciting object first thing when you let her out of the xpen. That was probably because she was released and there was something new and exciting, so she went to it of course. Since we want to avoid her going directly to new/exciting things, you can change up how you release her into the session:
– you can release her from the xpen, get a reward or two in for a behavior like the pattern game here, then toss a treat off far enough that she has to really go find it – then you put the novel-exciting into the environment and continue the game as if it is not there.
– you can bring her into a room with the novel-exciting already in place, and begin the game as you are entering the room.
Great job!
TracyHi!
He did really well touching the prop here! He was being thoughtful about it, and it is possible that he was processing finding the treat in the grass (and chewing it haha) and ignoring outside distractions. And figuring out if he should look at you or not – so much to consider! He did really well with all of that! So you can add some toy play before the session and after every 3 or 4 treats here, so he can be really ramped up for it – that will help the environment fade into the background and hopefully help him gobble the treats LOL!The other thing you can add now is to switch from a ‘yes’ marker to a ‘get it’ marker, so he can look forward after smacking the prop. And then you can throw the treat further away, because he is already looking towards the line expecting it to drop out ahead.
Great job!!
TracyHi!
He looks so cute with his new hair style!!!The forward focus to the toy is looking great – he was more than happy to look at it, then run to it and tug tug tug. Super!
I think you can now throw the toy further – fling it as far as possible and when it lands, if he is looking at it, let him rip to it. That will also add in the toy races, where you try to get to the toy before him (and if you do, have a toy party without him haha). I believe he will get there first, and you’ll see some big big acceleration. I am also excited about how easily he went from toy to food to toy! Yay!
Great job!
TracyHi!
Yay for youtube! The videos look great!!! And I agree – Goose is super quick to learn and so much fun!! Who are the two cuties right in front of the camera?She is driving around the object with a ton of speed here, I love it! No questions from her at all – the frisbee is VERY motivating 🙂 Towards the end she was not sure which side to be on – that is where you were pointing forward more than looking at her. As soon as you looked at her more (connection!) she got right back to going around. Super!
The next step is to change your running line – if she starts on your left side, as she is going around the object (moving to the left hand side of the screen), you will do a FC, running back towards where you started (towards the right side of the screen, instead of towards the top of the screen :)) That will add the challenge of countermotion, where she needs to complete the wrap even with you already going the other direction. And then when she catches up to you, throw the frisbee or let her tug from your hand.
Great job!
Tracy
Hi!
She is getting the idea beautfully here!! She looked at you a bit on the first rep, perhaps surprised that you were running too. But then on the other reps she drove ahead perfectly. Super!!! You can keep adding distance (maybe do long distance rollers and hold her longer before letting her go, to get the toy even further before the game starts). And you can expand the reward toolbox and try this with other toys too!
Great job!
Tracy
Hi!
The teeter plank was perfect for this!! She started off really super but then got distracted by something under the board… at which point her feet were going every which way LOL!! She got back to focus and balance really well after that though. Turning around was easy! The down was harder for her but she was able to do it.
Lifting her to stack her actually put her off balance (she almost fell off at the end LOL!), so you can let her find the stack with her own balance.
The next thing to add is getting her to play tug right next to the board… then hop on it and walk across it. That will challenge her to maintain her balance and footwork even when she is more stimulated, and that is perfect for dog sports!
Nice work here!
TracyAha! Good catch here! I am glad she is really considering her markers – yay! So yes, being consistent will prevent confusion.
T
Hi!
Parallel path – this is going well! The only adjustment I’d suggest is to throw the treat further so she really chases it, rather than drop it. That will get her really driving ahead of you to the prop. A thrown toy might also work well to get her blasting ahead – I guess whether to use it or not depends on how long it will take her to bring the toy back LOL! But then yes – once she is driving ahead of you to the prop, you can do the rear cross. And when you start the rear crosses, be sure to keep rewarding even if she turns the ‘wrong’ way – we handlers are often late on the rear crosses as we begin them, so the pups are actually correct because they didn’t see the info in time to make the adjustment.
Countermotion – this went well too! Her better reps were when you started a little closer to the prop towards the end of the video. That is perfectly fine, because it makes the countermotion even more obvious as you move away right near her.
She did great with the plank here! You can add challenge to her mechanics two ways:
– play tug with her before the shaping part of the game. Adding arousal makes it a little harder, but also super useful because we want the pups to be able to have great body awareness even when they are stimulated!– she was happy to go to the end of the board and turn around, so you can add a little challenge by having her jump on in the middle of the board, then turn around right in that spot, doing a full 360 in both directions. You will probably need to help her out by letting her follow a low & slow cookie hand 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
> We’re getting in some practice, not always video.>
It is hard to always catch video, but it is fun to have it! Lots of lovely stuff on the video here!
Barrel wraps:
The back and forth at the beginning of the video looks awesome. You have just enough distance away that she was not always sure that she should offer it without a cue… which means she is ready for the turn and burn game!You did that later in the video and it went well! Be sure to have a line on the ground to give you the visual of when you should move – otherwise the timing of you doing the FC and running away doesn’t really progress the game, because you aren’t tracking if you are leaving earlier or not (spoiler alert, you were not leaving earlier to add challenge, you were actually leaving later LOL!) You can move that line on the ground to start off easy and then get progressively harder, adding more countermotion by doign the FC sooner and sooner. She seems to have lovely commitment so she is ready for more challenge in the game 🙂
On the rep where she didn’t finish the wrap, it was because her attention was split between the game and the noises outside – she got distracted then saw you in the new spot and you said yes, so she came to you. She was great on the other reps!
Forward focus: The forward focus went really well and I give yo ua big click/treat for moving that bowl around the cone pretty quickly! That keeps it from getting boring or repetitive.
Most of it was really easy for her. On the reps where she grabbed the treat without wrapping the cone, she never really looked away from the bowl or towards the cone. She was better with it after a couple of reps where you helped with an arm block –
She has a cute little head toss when she thinks she has locked onto the correct line… just be sure she is also looking at it because if you let go after the head toss, she will go wherever she is looking LOL!Backing up:
In the background, there was some beeping (construction vehicles?) so that was a little distracting to her in this session and she was looking away. In the next session, you can try having your back near a wall so it is easier for her to back up away from you. And also, keep your hands really low, as a focal point: if you stand up, she stops moving backwards and looks up – the higher head position inhibits moving backwards. But if you keep your hands lower, maybe juts above your knees, she will be able to focus on that, keep her head low and move backwards.Great job here!
TracyHi!
Yes, Ramen who appears in some of the videos is a whippet. My other whippet (Larry) came to me as an adult, so he is not in any of the videos. But you will see a number of lurchers in the videos too! I am just obsessed with sighthounds of all types 🙂
For the profile photo: Our agility-u.com website pulls profile images from a popular profile image service called Gravatar. In order to change your profile image displayed on our site, you can create an account at Gravatar.com using the same email address that you use on agility-u.com. Then follow these instructions to upload your profile photo over on Gravatar: https://en.gravatar.com/support/activating-your-account/
Let me know if you have any trouble posting the photo, and keep me posted on Carmen!
Tracy
Hi!
Oh no, poor buddy!!!! I am glad he is feeling better, that must have been scary!!
Using the toys here certainly helps prevent more GI upset and I think he enjoyed it too! He did well letting go of the toys and NOT trying to re-grip the toy or your flesh 🙂 He was better letting go of the toy from your left hand (really quite good!) and not as good at letting go from your right hand to go back to your left. That might just be a bit of learning history, maybe he gets more tugging from your left hand, so needs more practice with the out of the toy from your right hand. It sounds like you did cue the out on your left side a bit but not on the right, so maybe the cue will help.
He did really well going back and forth, especially from your left to your right (possibly linked to being better at letting go of the toy on that side). The next step would be to have you standing – then onto the turn and burn game. Because he is speedy, try the turn and burn in the grass so he can really dig in without slipping.
Nice work here!!
Tracy
