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Sounds like a fun trip! And yes, all the weird holiday stuff certainly makes for different visuals for the dogs 😂🤣😂 so I am very glad she did well! Super!!!
Tracy
Hi!
>t I’m finally starting to see her look ahead and focus forward in this exercise.>
Yes! She is starting to look forward for sure! Yay!
>This is another exercise where I have some trouble with reward timing.>
Clarifying the stay and release will help get more forward focus while maintaining the stay, making the reward timing easier. The releases here were ‘yes get it’ for the most part, and I don’t think we want ‘yes’ to be a release. ‘Get it’ is a useful release, or you can use your regular release or even a jump cue. For now, the timing is to say the release as soon as she looks forward. You can have a treat in the bowl already so she is more likely to look at it (and less likely to watch the treats in your hands :))
When she can do that consistently, you can get more duration on the forward focus by adding very quiet praise (something like ‘yesssssss’) then release her to it (or sometimes throw the reward back to her so she still gets lots of stay rewards).
Great job! Have fun at the seminar!
Tracy
Hi!
> closing my eyes and visualizes how it would look on a bar>
Turning her away on the flat here is easy peasy for her to her right, almost like a goofy trick 🙂 You can use that as a way to help her come in to line up as I mentionde in the post above.
Turning away to her left was much harder, so move your hand very slowly to draw her a little past you then soooo slowly soshe can follow your hand to turn away. You can even have her nibbling on the treats while you do that. When your hand was moving slowly like that (like at 2:05) she was able to turn away. But when your hand was moving fast, it was not really turning her as much as it was moving her away (like 2:08) so she didn’t get the turn. Slow and low is your mantra, like you did at 2:18 and 2:25 and a couple of times at the end, where you drew her a bit forward then slowly turned her away
But if she freezes and does NOT come into a hand cue (like at :40, 1:40) – don’t drop a treat on the ground to get her to come forward, because that inadvertently trains more of the freezing behavior by rewarding it. I don’t think she is freezing because she is stressed – I think she is standing still there because she legit thinks the cookie drop is the cue (and also a reward) which is why we are seeing more and more of the standing still rather than coming to your hand.
> closing my eyes and visualizes how it would look on a bar>
When this gets added to a barrel, you can totally put a leash or something on the ground so you have a visual of where the bar is!
Nice work here!
Tracy
Hi –
She is getting the idea of the serp! Two next steps here:
– get the reward to the ground and not from your hand. What I mean by that is to have a bowl on the ground for her to go to after she comes over the bar, so she does the entire in-then-out movement before you move at all. Then you can drop a cookie in the bowl. Or you can have it placed in the bowl already but that is much harder 🙂 A toy or a treat hugger can be used for this as well!
– with an eye on adding movement in the future, separate the hand moving into serp position from the verbal release. Slowly put your hand into position (so she doesn’t think it is the release) and when your hand is in position, say the release (but don’t move).For now, resist the temptation to add handler motion to this game – she is not quite experienced enough with the cues for the serp behavior to override motion. And be careful of your start position – at :17 she was actually correct to not take the jump: you started in threadle position (your arm was visible outside the entry wing) and you were moving fast, so she threadled. Good girl! On the other reps where she had questions about the movement, it was just her needing to learn move about the serp before you added any movement.
She did really well finding the serp from the different positions! Yay! One suggestion is to lure her into a lineup next to you and reward from your hand. She is not coming in close to line up and I think it is because she is used to food getting dropped on the ground to get her where you want her… so she waits away from you until you drop a treat. We don’t want the treat drop to be the cue to come in close and line up, so using a cookie lure is perfectly fine for now and very easy to fade 🙂
Nice work!
Tracy
Good morning!
>So if I need essentially a left and right for wraps do I also need them for backside wraps? Threadle wraps? Soft turns? HELP…>
Yes – they all get gradually introduced here in MaxPup 1. Reading this list might be a bit overwhelming, so I encourage you to read it then ignore most of it for now. It is very easy to teach them all one by one as we do here. Trying to teach them ALL at the same time is too much for us humans.
Basically what we need nowadays for success in AKC, UKI, USDAA, ISC would be the following for front sides. You’ve already started most of them and we hit on the soft turns soon here in a very easy way to get them added:
wrap to the left
wrap to the right
soft turn to the left
soft turn to the right
Go (straight)
Get outAll of my front side directionals are ‘absolute’.
For backsides:
These are relative directionals, relative to handler position:
Backside push wrap
Backside threadle wrap
Backside push slice
Backside threadle sliceWith the current course design trends in agility and things getting more and more massive in terms of course size, there is a movement towards ‘absolute’ backside verbals instead of relative backside verbals. That is something to think about but not worry about yet.
One other thing to consider is contact & tunnel exit verbals – either teaching a specific set of verbals for contact exits (like RDW) and tunnel exits, or using stacked verbals and good timing. For example, I give all of my exit verbals & physical cues before the dogs enter the tunnel and before they are on the top ramp of the DW, so I can stack them with no problem and have not needed to use additional verbals that are different from jump verbals.
I also have a ‘jump’ verbal which is basically just “take the jump, mild turn” which is super useful for discriminations
And also a turn-away-into-layering verbal that we get into in later MaxPup classes.I might be missing a couple, more coffee needed LOL
Onwards to the videos:
She is doing really well with the parallel path game!
Getting her pumped up with the toy (instead of tossing treats) before each rep totally helped diminish the sniffing, so definitely engage with the toy like it was a tug toy before starting each rep. Having two toys helped too! If there is a tug that is easy to throw or a ball she likes, you can totally use that too. Keep adding in more lateral distance, and also you can start right next to her (no distance at all) to see if she will drive ahead. That will set things up nicely for rear crosses!> I have two treat and trains but putting them out there seems like setting a target. Is that ok?>
I am not a fan of the treat and trains for this, because they are way too much of a lure 🙂 So keep throwing the treat huggers, or try a toy and see how that goes.
Nice work 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
>No, we haven’t done that one at all yet. So we tried it tonight.>
I must have made it up in my mind LOL! Oops!
>Had a little trouble getting things going, thought it might be the toy as a distraction in the other hand but a couple when I hid it she still had trouble going around.>
I think what you were seeing here was what cues she reads versus what she doesn’t: On the forward sends, you were stepping to the barrel but on the sideways sends you were not stepping (at least not at first). So the cue she reads was the step, not the hand pointing. That makes sense because in general, hand cues in agility are not as helpful as leg cues. When you got closer and your leg was at the barrel on the sideways sends, she sorted it out and offered the wrap (probably because of the proximity to the barrel). But when you got your leg involved (like at 3:31, 3:49, 4:53 for example) she had no questions. So definitely get a big leg step involved as an important part of the cue.
Having the toy dangling was a bit hard but that might have been partially because the hand cue was not strong for her so she didn’t know where to look. She did much better with that when you were stepping into the cue with the leg, especially on left turns. Right turns and ignoring the toy were a little harder.
She had some trouble releasing the toy here, so you can food reward it rather than grab her collar, especially if there have been a few errors. You kept saying ‘easy’ and at one point said she was ‘higher than a kite’ so my guess is that you were feeling a change in arousal and/or teeth near your hand. That is possibly related to a bit of frustration from the errors and the challenge of the game, plus you were lifting your hand even at the beginning of the session, so she was jumping up to retain her grip – food rewards will help regulate all that tremendously, and she is quite excellent at going back and forth from toys to food to toys.
The parallel path concept transfer went really well! No worries about the one miss – that one miss can be just as informative to the dogs as all the successes are. It serves as an important, informational contrast 🙂 You can keep building distance and you can also go all the way to the reward with her, let her finish eating, then move up the line starting next to her. That will challenge her to drive ahead of you (and sets up nicely for future rear crosses). You can also throw the toy as the reward!
>In the video for this you were using a clicker, I haven’t used one in training her to date (haven’t even done the pairing to one). Should I use one do you think?>
Nope, no need to add a clicker at this point – mainly because we take the clicker out after the first session or two anyway, and replace it with the marker to go get the reward. Clickers tend to get the dogs looking at us and the markers are very useful for looking ahead, like you did here. Yay!
Nice work 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! This game went really well. It didn’t seem to matter to her that there were outside distractions.
Poor Spritey, knows all of these games and wants to sing along! LOL! You can rotate the girls – it is always good for Reese to watch a bit before her turn, as that can shift arousal and add a touch more challenge to this game.
She did really well here, even wih the treats at nose level 🙂 You can see that the game gets harder after about 45 seconds – that might be when she realized that there were no treats with you and they were all on the table 🙂
That level of difficulty lasted for a short burst (some sniffing, some delayed response to coming with you as you move away) but then by the end she was back to full engagement and speedy responses. SUPER!!!This is a game to revisit a lot, here and there, adding in things like more tricks or skills she can do really well when the food is in your hand & pocket. I also encourage adding the leash in as soon as possible – that darned leash coming off becomes a context cue in trial environments that works against us, when the leash only gets used on courses. So adding the leash in SUPER early can lay the pathways for engagement and arousal regulation when ti comes off, rather than arousal spikes and engagement challenges we often see when the leash comes off. In other words: yes, use the leash even in your living room because it will benefit us in the long run 🙂
> If you use a toy do you use your remote reinforcement cue and then the strike the toy cue once you get there?>
Great question! I think it really depends on the dog and the safey of your hands 🙂 For the dogs that might grab my hand as they grab for the toy (ouch) especially when they are hyped up after a run, then yes – ‘let’s go’ for heading to the toy then the marker to take the toy when we get to it. I often use a get it for that because they are usually pulling me to the toy, so I just say get it and let them grab it rather than getting my poor fingers mixed up in there 🙂 I don’t want to askfor MORE self-control, but also I don’t want to accidentally get bitten, so the extra marker can be very useful. Safety first! For dogs that are gentle with toys and even a little too polite? No extra marker needed, let’s go is permission to grab the toy too.
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
>Today I rolled out of bed and before I even went downstairs I built a new ShPile!>
Ha! Did you do it before coffee?!!?! Maybe you don’t share my morning coffee addiction 🙂 This game is very motivating LOL!! It is actually a flyball foundation game but the proprioception-in-arousal that is needed for flyball is also super helpful for agility 🙂 This game was added to MaxPup about 3 years ago… and the pups that learned it early on have had an incredibly easy transition to the trial environment in terms of maintaining excellent jumping/weave/contacts mechanics even in the higher arousal/more distracting environments. And dogs that struggled with mechanics? We went back to this game… and that dramatically improved those mechanics.
>I made sure to get her amped up with some tugging first this time too. >
Perfect! The arousal is the key element Getting that arousal going before a bit of offering and shaping is what we want. Tugging at the beginning is great! She might not tug again with all of the cookies present, so you can break off the session and do cookie recalls to get that arousal more stimulated too 🙂
She was super about offering all sorts of moving around on the shpile 🙂 The arousal helps with bravery too, because a more optimized arousal state often helps the dogs be less concerned about what they are moving around on and more excited to offer all sorts of behavior.
>By the end of our session the movement of objects beneath her feet was almost a non-issue.>
Yes! It was very cool to see!!! You can do a different shpile each time you try it. And you can rotate having Darby & Brodie join in, it is great for them too and tons of fun. You can add in the tippy board… as long as it does not tip at all at first. It can either be the flat board, no movement, or it can be fully propped up so it is a mountain 🙂 but it doesn’t move at all for now.
Great job!
Tracy
Hi!
>I have to say I feel like this was latent learning hard at work! >
Yesssss 🙂 The brain is really cool! Learning continues ‘under the hood’ even when we are not in an active training session!
>We haven’t worked a ton of backing up recently and I’ve felt like we didn’t really make tons of progress in the sessions we’ve done.>
Well, you fired the neurons and also have done other proprioception games – all of that comes together to create the behaviors. Yay!
She had some questions at the beginning and was backing up when your were pushing into her with your hands. Being parallel to the shelves totally helped because it gave her a lot more room to be able to back up. Super! Then you are able to fade out the hand movement and she offered brilliantly! YAY!
When you revisit this, you can elevate the mat the tiniest bit (putting a slightly folded up towel under it is all she needs). And, to keep her backing up straight, you can alternate the cookie throw hands. I am guessing you are right handed because all of your throws are from the right hand: so she locks onto that hands and backs up from it, which creates a curved line from you. So if you alternate tossing from the left and right hands, she will focus on both hands and back up straight.
Nice work!
Tracy
Hi!
I think on this session you were better about using your leg at the beginning and again at the end – the cues were indicating a right turn and that is what she did at first for most of them (and again at the end). Then at about halfway through, I think you were wanting to use the right arm to cue left turns? Then after a cookie reset, the left arm and leg did indicate the left turns, and that went well.And you used your leg to step with the arm cue a LOT more here, and got a lot more success. Legs for the win!
I do think having her come into you for the reward from your hand at your side will make a BIG difference. There are a lot of treat tosses so she kind of hangs out away from you, waiting for a cookie to drop, looking at the floor. So you can shift that by rewarding from your hand a lot more. And if you do throw a reward, use a clear marker like ‘get it’. Otherwise she hangs out waiting for cookies from heaven to land on the floor 🙂 and doesn’t come back as easily to line up for the next rep.
Nice work here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>So this class has really helped me better plan my training and find opportunities for short training sessions. I’ve been trying to do a few minutes every mornin morning before I get too wrapped up in my work day. >
This is great! You will make quicker progress with these more frequent, short blasts.
>I’m also writing in my planning and training journal again after nearly two years of going dark! >
This is HUGE!!!! That is also really helpful for training plans, and also great to look back and see the progress 🙂
Looking at the rotated sends video:
She has a ton of great value & commitment but I agree, she was not sure which way you wanted her to go around the barrel.
Two things to help clarify that for her:
Watch your legs here. On most of the reps, they were not moving so she was guessing a bit about where to go, and defaulted to the easier direction sometimes. I think if your leg steps to the side of the barrel you want her to go to (along with the hand cue), you will see a dramatic increase in her being able to wrap the direction you want her to.Another thing that will help: line her up on the side you are going to send on. She wants to stay out a little away from you, or face you – but that makes it hard to clearly indicate where you want her to go.
So for now, a giant cookie lure to get her to the send side, nice and close to you, then send her. If she is hanging out further away, she is just indicating where the reward has been (the cookie throw and also the cue to start the next rep) so using more reward and luring a bit will get her where you want her for the send starts.
So to answer the questions:
>Should I be sending her with a particular hand in the rotated sends?>
Yes – the hand that is closer to the side of the barrel you want her to go to, but more importantly – the leg too. Arm & leg move together.
>Should she be going a certain direction? Should that direction be different based on the hand I use?>
Yes and yes. Basically the sideways and backwards sending are the ends of front and blind crosses. So if my back is to the barrel and she is on my left side: I send with my left arm and left leg, and she should go to the barrel and turn to her left around it.
And if I am sideways to the barrel with my right side next to the barrel, the right arm and leg are closer to the barrel – so you will send with the right arm and right leg. She would then go to the barrel and turn to her right.
>When do I start using directional verbals?>
Start them as soon as you can get the turns in both directions, so work the mechanics first without the verbals, then add the verbals.
> …. And of course *ugh* do they have to be absolute? I’ve always taught relative directionals….>>
Well, it depends on your goals in agility of course but based on what we see on course design and what I think the future holds… yes, they need to be absolute 🙂 Relative verbals require you to be very much in the picture and very perfect in handling. That is pretty impossible nowadays: courses have designed to have big distances, layering, etc and Rory is going to be super fast. So I vote for absolute directionals. I use them and I LOVE how well my dogs can respond to them even when I kinda suck with the physical cues LOL
In this session, I think you were saying Zoom as the word or wrapping in both directions? If it means both wrap-to-your-left and wrap-to-your-right, then the handling has to be perfection (and even then, the same verbal for 2 different behaviors with a speedy dog might cause questions). I recommend 2 different wrap verbals so she gets very specific info 🙂 Yes, more words! And that is a pain LOL but it will be TOTALLY worth it in the long run.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
The handling combo went great! Nice job with the handling & mechanics: rewards for leaving the toy, clear send to the barrel, clear decel and turn, then clear acceleration to get the toy. Then tons of play. Yay!
You did say something to her about stopping at about 1:50 – you can totally finish the session there. It is like running a course: you run it twice and nail it, no need to do any of it again. The 3rd & 4th reps were not quite as clean as the other 2 (the decel was late and getting the toy back was not quite as easy :)) so you can totally get those 2 perfect reps and be done rather than switching sides (especially since impulse control is like a bank account with limited funds LOL)
>So should I start adding distance from the barrel so I can try the blind cross and other things or move on to the rotated sends in prep to do rocking horse?>
Do I remember correctly that she already does the rotated sends to the barrel really well? If so – move on to the rocking horses. The novelty of it will be super fun for you both, and the distance & other handling moves all get revisited there. She looks ready!
Lap turns: Going really well! Having the arm/hand cue very visible and the slower movement helped make it very smooth. Her only question was sometimes getting back on the toy after a treat –
To get her back on the toy after a treat, you can move a bit more like you did after the last rep: getting her to chase the toy is exciting 🙂 and that also moves her away from the treat odor that is probably pooling right there.Lap turns are also going really well – she has the idea of this. Breaking it up with more tugging was good because it allowed you to set up the rep more easily rather than trying to rush into it because she is fast to get the reward cookie 🙂 You can be moving up the line even sooner, no need to wait until after she has gotten the reward cookie – you can throw it and start moving up the line, showing the cue.
These games are going really well so you can shelve them for a bit and move on to the last prop games. These games come back out when the rocking horses are well underway.
Great job!
Tracy
Good morning!
>would you put a towel under the wobble board? >
Yes – to minimize the movement, and also to make sure the end she is backing up onto it on the ground rather than up in the air.
>We haven’t done that much. >
Shaping being on the wobble board is a good start before adding backing up onto it. I think it will be pretty easy for her.
>Reese doesn’t have position changes under a verbal cue yet. I can lure them though.>
A lure is good! And you can lure a stand then let her offer a sit, or have her follow your hand to turn around.
Speaking of following your hand to turn around: the start of the TW flatwork was easy in both directions. Your hand cue was really helpful for her. The full circles and the ‘u-turns’ were both really strong.
Adding motion was pretty easy for her – she probably thought this was the easiest game ever 🙂 For the flatwork – you can add moving fast, decelerating… then turning her away. This will simulate the cues for when it gets applied to courses. This will work best outside. Finding thrown treats in the grass is hard but you can tweak the game to use a toy: turn away with an empty hand, throw a toy – then keep moving away to encourage her to bring the toy to you 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning! I am glad he is almost ready for full speed 🙂
The backing up looks great 🙂 The flat mat on the floor was pretty easy for him so I was glad to see you going to the mat setup that had more movement.
The only thing he thought was annoying was releasing to the cookie to come off the mat to start the next rep 🙂 He was eating the cookie happily after the click when he backed up, so something you can try is releasing him forward to a small tug toy, play a bit, then cue then next rep.
I suggest this for 2 reasons: I think he will like it more 🙂 and also it will challenge him to be able to back up even when he is a lot more excited.
And a 3rd reason: it builds in doing body awareness work with a toy on the ground, which gets us closer to him doing his teeter work with a toy on the ground too.
You can also start to add backing up onto a wobble board o r something that moves a little more. You can support the board with mats or towels under it so it only moves a tiny bit at first.
Wow, stays have made tremendous progress!!! You are able to move around a lot more and he is solid and not barking. At first it took a little get him to sit after tugging but he did better with responding to the sit cue when you were using more food.
With that in mind – keep doing lots of toy breaks because we do want him to sit and hold it like he did on the last rep, where he tugged, sat, then you even had the toy on the ground. Excellent!
Have you taken the sit stay outside yet? That would be the next step – doing some stays that are a little easier than the stays indoors, outside. Not in front of equipment yet – let’s get him staying outside and then we can add it to some equipment to start building lead outs 🙂
The come to hand video is going well. He wanted to to break. The stay when you moved your hand in, so shifting to a cookie toss start was a good choice in the moment. You can also put your hand in but throw the cookie to him for the stay, so he doesn’t think the hand position is the release.
At this point, you can take out the clicker (or put it in the other hand) so when he is coming to your right hand, so he sees the empty hand. You can also start putting the reward on the ground for him to go to automatically after he comes to hand: it can be a food bowl at first so it is not too hard, but then it can be the toy 🙂 This game can also go outside onto a jump!
Great job here :)


Tracy
