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Hi!
I agree, this went really well! Throwing the reward back mixed in with releasing forward went well. The rep where he came off the end of the board then looked back at it like “oops! Oh crud!” was so funny 🤣 😂 He is getting much better at holding position as you move forward. Keep adding your motion, you can be anywhere you want when you reward him except next to him at the end of the board 🙂 And you can also hang back and be behind him as he gets into position.Great job here!
TracyGood morning! He did really well here!
Drive to toy: his little pounce when he gets to the toy is so cute!
He was great about looking at the toy as you threw it, and moving to it when you let go of his leash/collar. He might think dragging the leash is weird, which inhibits going really fast – so you can start to fade out the leash. You can use a short tab, perhaps, so it extends maybe 6 inches from the collar but doesn’t drag: that way you can keep building the love for being held/gently restrained while fading out the leash dragging behind him.Drive to handler:
This was easy peasy for him! I think his previous learning of taking food from your hand while walking definitely helped here, as you mentioned.
Yo can add in throwing the cookie ahead after he comes to your hand, to keep things exciting and add more running 🙂He did well with the toy – he looked surprised on the first rep where the toy came out, but then did great with it as the reward.
The pivots also looked great – so now he is ready for you to add your running to get him running. As soon as he gets the start cookie, you can take off running – then you decelerate as he starts running to you, so he can decelerate too and be ready for the pivot.
Now that all of these games can have more running, you can move them out to grass or carpet or grippy mats. This floor is really cool but it might be slippery for him to run on? If it is not slippery then totally keep using this room!
Prop sends: He has strong value for the prop so now we can ramp this game up too!
>He was not that keen to get the food from my hand although he did follow through. >
He might have been expecting the food out on the prop or tossed, so the placement surprised him at first. You can hold the cookie in your hand til he gets close to it, then toss the cookie for him to chase: that can reward him for driving back to you hand 🙂
He is ready for the next steps here: Rather toss a cookie away to start the rep, start the rep with you doing the ready dance with him: he is in front of you, looking at you while you are doing a bit of ‘ready ready ready’ – then you can show a big arm and leg step to send to the prop. That will get the excitement level high and he can explode to the prop more directly.
>We also tried some toy which he seemed to enjoy. Interestingly, he was more keen to take the food from my hand after some toy reps. >
Yes! The toy play was exciting 🙂 which is why we want the ready dance in here too – build up the excitement of being send, and helping him shift from handler focus (during the ready moment) to obstacle focus (sending to the prop). And because the excitement level was higher, the food became more exciting too. Super!
>However, as he had had enough by then I was not able to see if that was a consistent pattern. Might experiment more with that later.>
Definitely keep playing with that concept, I think you will see it is a consistent pattern for him.
Great job here!! Let me know what you think.
Tracy
Good morning!
This session looked great, he was terrific with all the elements from the lining up to the collar holding to the forward focus to bringing the toy back (or at least not running away with it LOL!) Good job working both sides!
He looked back at you on the last rep – maybe the throw was further than the other reps, or he was tired? No worries, though, you can keep adding distance to the throws (and mix in some short ones too so it is easy on some reps). You can also add in the GO verbal to begin building up that cue 🙂 The get it here worked well so now we can move to the GO GO GO cue.
One subtle detail: he turned to his left on every rep here, even when starting on your left which should create a right turn back towards you. I think this was a combination of him being a lefty 🙂 and also the line you were running was directly towards the toy, which put you behind him and ended up looking like a rear cross which cued him to turn to his left.
Because he will bring the toy back and not run away with it, you don’t need to run at the toy as much, which should help your line *not* look like a rear cross. (Side note, rear crosses to the left will be easy peasy 🙂 )
Instead, you can run on a parallel line to his line and a few feet away (rather than straight behind him or accidentally changing sides). You did this when he was on your right side on the last 2 reps. When he is on your left, it will possibly be harder to get him to turn to his right, so as he is arriving at the toy you can veer away to *your* right, which should encourage him to turn to his right. If he might not bring the toy to you, no worries, you can have a toy stuffed in your pocket and reward him for turning to his right with that 2nd toy.
Let me know if that plan makes sense, or if I need more coffee hahaha
Great job here!!!!
Tracy
Good morning!
This went really well! Bokeh has pretty impressive hind end use on your left side, coming in tight to you without swinging her hind end out at all. Usually puppies are not this coordinated! It might be a combination of naturally good hind end awareness, good timing on your part, and previous learning history. But you should definitely consider obedience for her along with agility and other sports! She is a multi-talented girlie!
She was not as tight to you when she was on your right, she was more normal with her butt swinging out a tiny bit. This might be mainly due to the timing of your deceleration (you can slow down sooner, after her first step or two towards you) and you can keep your right hand closer to your leg so she comes right into your side.
The pivots on both sides looked fabulous, she was nice and tight on both sides of you! As you add more and more of your speed & running, you will want to slow down/decelerate sooner so she can organize her deceleration. if you slow down too late, you will see her pop up a little as she tries to decelerate and collect.
For example, compare the rep at 1:10-1:14 (she was on your left with good decel timing and pivot timing, so her turn was gorgeous) with the rep at 1:37-1:40 (this had a slightly later decel so you can see her pop up a tiny bit as she decelerates into the turn at your side). For now, you can run away and then make a big obvious decel after her first step or two towards you.
>forgot to say get it. I’m trying to be better with using words. >
This is relatable LOL!! Words are hard especially with a new puppy and all the mechanics of new games. So yes, add in the get it next time (I often write the verbal on my hand to help me remember it LOL!) and soon enough the verbal will be second nature 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
He is so fun to watch! And I agree, he did great with everything here.
>He does not like too many repetitions of and exercise before he wants to do something else.>
Yes – too many reps of the same darned thing might be boring 🙂 so changing things up by adding challenge or just doing a different game is great. For example, you generally alternated short blasts of a ‘thoughtful’ game with a ‘running’ game here, which kept things really fun and he was engaged the whole time. Yay!!
Drive to handler: this looked really strong – the hardest part was waiting for him to finish eating the cookie 🙂 Has he been introduced to a Treat n Train yet? You can send him to it, then call him back from it into the game with you.
He is ready for the next steps here, which involve you moving pretty fast away from him as he is getting the start cookie – then before he gets halfway to you, show him a big obvious decel so he can collect and turn when he arrives at your side.
Driving ahead: the went really well too! His forward focus was stronger when you watched him as you threw the toy – he immediately focused forward and maintained it. When you looked at the toy during the throw then back at him, there was a slight delay and he would glance back at you. So for now, keep watching him as you throw the toy to really get him to maintain the forward focus.
He is driving ahead here, but I think there is more speed in him that we can pull out in this game. This is a good toy: does he have a favorite toy that makes his head explode with joy? It doesn’t even have to be something he brings back or that you play tug with 🙂
Also, in a separate session, try a lotus ball with high value food and see how he feels about it. If you have one that rolls, you can let him start running to it while it is still rolling, because that chase element can be super fun. The food for driving ahead might be higher value then driving to the toy for now – and the toy can be used for the games where he gets to chase because playing with you is already super high in value 🙂
Prop sending:
He does love his pillow and has great value for it! Good boy!When you add distance and you are relatively close to his line, he wants to turn to his right, even when he should ideally turn to his left (towards you) based on the handling.
For example, at the beginning when you were a little off his line and sending forward he turned to his left perfectly (2:03-2:06 approx).
When you moved further away and sent sideways, he turned to his right consistently (2:08-2:20 approx). When you changed sides and sent from a distance and sideways, he turned to his right, correctly (2:25 – end of the prop session).So that likely means he is a righty 🙂 and when you are close to his line, he could see you easily on his right shoulder which helped him turn to his strong side. This is good to know!
To help balance his turn sides, you can do 2 things to get the left turns: stay closer to the prop, and send from further off his line. Start with a couple of forward sends, then you can be sideways but still off the line to get the left turn towards you.
It will almost feel like a triangle: he will be on a line to the pillow, and you will be a couple of feet off to the side to exaggerate the left turn and reward there. If needed we can even add a bowl as a target to give him a left turn destination, but I don’t think we will need it.
For the right turn side: You can keep going with the distance and sideways sending 🙂 And I think the left turn side will catch up really quickly.
We are also seeing the right turn preference on the wrap shaping! His reps going to his right (from your left hand to your right hand) were perfect! His only moments of not going around the cone were when he needed to do a left turn around the cone (going from your right to your left) and you were a couple of steps away. You noted that in the moment and stepped in closer, which really helped him get the left turns.
So for now, let’s solidify the left turns to be as strong as the right turns, but keeping you close enough to it that he gets lots of rewards for turning left as well as turning right (rehearsal builds the mechanics so we want lots of good rehearsal). And you can add challenge by changing what he goes around (instead of a distance challenge): he had the cone here, and you can also use a wingless upright, a laundry basket, a rolling suitcase LOL! Anything except the real wing: we will save the real wing for when he is more balance in right turns and left turns.
Adding the novel things to go around will be better for generalizing the behavior, so it is more useful than adding more distance at this stage.
Blind crosses: He said it was super fun to chase you 🙂 As you finish the blind, you can connect to him by looking at him more on your new side before putting your cookie hand out – the connection is what will create the side change in the heat of the moment, more than the cookie hand. So as you finish the blind, you can point the dog-side hand back to him as you look at his cute face, then the cookie hand can come into your side to set up the turn or decel into you.
You can also add more distance by throwing the start cookie further away (a mat or bowl can be a good visual aid if he loses it in the grass) or having someone hold him. That way you have more time to do the blind – when he was close to you at the start, he was catching up pretty quickly LOL!! That made the blind harder.
This might be a good game to try to get toy play and cookies in the same session! He was able to alternate toys and cookies across the various game on this video, so now we can gradually try to get them in the same game. The start cookie can be the most boring cookie ever (if such a thing exists for him haha). And the toy reward can be his most favorite toy! You can throw a super boring tiny bit of food, then take off running and being silly – then without any food in your hand or pocket, throw the toy or drag it so he chases the toy a bit. Let me know how he does with that because it would be useful to be able to have food and toys in the same session (but I don’t want to lose his lovely tug drive, so we don’t need to add too much pressure to it).
Goat games – he was definitely happy to offer behavior here on the disc! You can keep things spicy by letting him offer behavior on a series of these objects, piled up or strewn around. Another thing to do because he is old enough: play this game with a toy! The toy brings added arousal, so playing with a toy will challenge him brain to maintain good mechanics of movement while in a higher arousal state. And that is exactly what agility will be: maintain your excellent mechanics for jumping, weaving, turning, contact, etc, while you are in a higher arousal state 🙂 His mechanics might not be pretty at first when he is more stimulated, but that is fine (and that is also why we start with easy stuff :))
It was fun to watch the stealth self-control game! He definitely noticed the novel-neutral object when it was behind him (he looked at it a couple of times as you moved away). He did not look at it when you moved it so he could run past it. My guess is that he brain was still processing it, but he didn’t need to turn his head to look at it because he could keep it in his field of vision as he ran to you. When it was behind him, he could not watch you AND assess the object, so he turned his head to look at it. This is all good, though! He had a fantastic processing opportunity and did great! You can randomly add a novel-neutral object to games he is great at, to see building up the pathways needed for self-control.
Great job here!! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
>I’m used to posting the videos in the field guide comment box from brain games but better here in the forum now correct? >
Yes, the forum is the right place on Agility U 🙂
This session went great! He was so focused on the toy that he was watching it from the moment you took it out of his mouth to get ready for the next throw. Yay! That gave you time to get it thrown and connect by watching him before letting him go. And adding your motion and the go verbal was easy peasy, looking great.
>I’m pretty sure I could add more distance to this when we take it outside.>
Yes – you can totally add more distance so you both are really running 🙂 At that stage, he is likely to get to the toy before you: if he stays at the toy, you can grab the other end and play like you did in this video (it was a great choice of toy). Or, you can let him grab it then start running the other way – he might bring it to you or towards you, at which point you can whip out another toy (that you’ve stuffed into a pocket :)) and have him come to you for tugging. It can be a fun way to sometimes add a retrieve element.
Great job here!
TracyThis was great!!!! She is just adorable to watch too. Your mechanics really helped her: you put the big mat down with considerable emphasis, nothing subtle at all. And that immediately drew her to it – perfect! That allowed you to get good rewards in. And the best moment was at about :49, where she seemed to very deliberately put her foot on it. You nailed the timing of the reward AND nailed the placement by having the reward across the mat, so she was able to get all of her feet on it to get the reward. Love it!!! S
It is fun to see her figure out that offering behavior brings out the cheese 🙂 She is doing great – and she hasn’t even been home with you for a week, right? Most of this first week or two will be teaching her that offering behavior is a good thing to do, and getting to know how she moves and thinks. Then the rest will be easy!
Great job 🙂
TracyGood morning!
Borderwhippet! Tell me more! 2 of the class demo dogs are BorderWhippets (one is Papillon-BW). And my puppy is a BorderWhippet. They are wonderful (maybe I am biased hahahaha)
Great question about the hand – I agree with your assessment that the pup might be looking at your hand because of the history of it having food in it, and reward history of hand touches. Doing the step without the hand was very smart! 2 more ideas for you to try:
– you can change what your hand looks like so it looks less like a cookie hand or a hand touch cue. You can use a closed fist with a pointing finger and see if that helps. If that is what you are already doing, you can try an open hand with your palm turned up to the ceiling – so he sees it is empty and also so the palm position doesn’t look like it is inviting him for a hand touch
– you can do a couple of reps with a forward focus approach: hold his collar, toss a treat onto the prop with your other hand, then let go and point to the treat. That can help him leave your hand to go to the prop.
Question: was this his first session? If so, it is possible that latent learning will kick in and he won’t need any help or changes at all. BorderWhippets and Whippets don’t always appear to ‘learn’ something in the first session… but no worries, when we come back to it a couple of days later, they know everything we want them to know and have figured out the next few steps. It is the craziest thing LOL!! I have seen it in all breeds/mixes but the level of it happening with whippets and whippet crosses is the most incredible I have seen. So you might want to do a rep or two exactly as you did it and see if latent learning has changed his focus from your hand to the prop.
Keep me posted!!!!! I am excited to hear more about your pup!
Tracy
Hello and welcome! Kaida sounds AWESOME!!! You will see a couple of my Paps appear in the demo videos – they taught me a whole lot about training tiny puppies 🙂
Have a blast!
Tracy
Welcome! She sounds like so much fun!!! 4 months old is a great place to start. I think the Baby Level shaping will be pretty broken down, and we can totally break it down more as needed – or move ahead to the Advanced Level when she decides the Baby Level is too easy 🙂
Have fun!!
TracyHi!
She did great with the threadle wraps! She found it easy to come to he correct side of the wing. I think she was waiting for you to flip her away, so you can slow your motion by the wing (for now) so she flips herself away, then reward her 🙂 If she turns herself away, you will find it easier to do the blind cross on the exit of it – she is so speedy that you didn’t have time to do the blind as early when you were helping her turn away.
>. Is there anything in particular we should focus on in preparation?>
Looking at the last few weeks of MaxPup 3, these are the games that will be best to prepare for MaxPup 4, then the other games can be done whenever you have time 🙂
Week 5: Tunnel entries & exits
Week 6: Lead Outs
Week 7: all of the sequences, there is a lot in this week 🙂Great job here!
TracyHi!
He is definitely getting the idea of moving into position! And I think he is enjoying it too 🙂I think his questions were more about when to release, as you mentioned. He is looking at your hands a lot, and then when your hands move away, he wants to move with them (especially if you have said ‘yes’). So we can clarify the release which will help him hold the position:
– as he is moving into position, keep moving forward (very slowly for now) and when he gets into position you can throw the reward back to him rather than hand deliver it or turn towards him (which is keeping your hands in the picture more than needed). A marker like ‘catch’ will help him know it is coming back to him and to stay at the teeter for it (rather than move forward with you). He is allowed to move after a ‘catch’ reward so you would then reset for the next rep.
– And you can mix in sometimes *not* throwing a treat back. Instead, when he is in position and you are moving away, you can use your verbal release word so he can come off the board and come to you for the reward. I like to mix in both of these, so he gets value for hitting and holding the position.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Don’t wave that white flag yet! You are *thisclose* to nailing them!!! I grabbed screenshots of the moments discussed below, they are here:https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bsElkKPNOnFtdhJXSDhrXxJgNGPpDYdwt7rwedqaa8Y/edit?usp=sharing
>today I tried the tight turn verbal cue and being deliberate with the “fast forward, slow forward, rotate” set of cues for a tight turn>
Your timing of the cross was spot on!
What was missing was the exit line connection on the new side. You started and finished the blind on time in terms of what you could see (looking over your new shoulder). But your dog-side shoulder was closed forward so she didn’t see the connection – and your motion was sideways towards the next wing so she had to make a choice based on motion.
Ideally you would start/end the cross at the same time as you did here, but keep your dog-side arm back towards her (not at your side) and put your other hand across your stomach so it really helps her see the connection while there is still a lot of motion.
You did that a bit at the end of the FC but then you were PERFECT with it when you did the BC at 1:00 – you were a little far from the line you wanted so didn’t quite get her to the side of the wing you wanted, but you were on a better line at 1:13 so got it. Your dog-side shoulder closed forward on that last rep at 1:14, but that was mainly as a send as she was passing you, rather than blocking her view of connection when she was behind you.
> other than the first rep I got the same result in that she kept going wider and wider as the session went on. >
I think she was reading your change of demeanor there – she knew it was not quite right so was going wider to get a better view of the handling.
> It also feels like so much more work to change sides that way rather than rotate into the dog with that kind of approach angle.>
This smaller sequence makes it so that the BC or the FC can both work really well. The BC will be at its most useful when you have to keep moving across the ring on a bigger course, and the FC rotation will slow you down/cause you to fall behind.
Nice work here! Don’t give up on the tight blinds!!
Tracy
Hi!
This was a really fun session to watch! I think he was surprised at first that the decel was the main cue. He jumped a little long on the very first rep, then also on the first when you added movement. But then he did great on the other reps, setting up really nice turns with very little help needed. Good boy!> I KNOW I need to keep my arms from flapping, I just can’t seem to do it.>
I thought your arms were good here! You used them to send, but in a good way: traveling with him rather than pointing ahead of him, or pointing up to the sky 🙂
He really liked the turn and burn front crosses (like at :54) when you exited the wraps. He had fun chasing you!!!
There were a couple of spots that made me think he has an easier time turning to his right than to his left – he was jumping a little longer on the left turns at the beginning and naturally turning tighter on the right turns. Then at 1:00, he went behind you to set up a right turn – it was hard to see why that happened (maybe connection was a little too soft?) but it is was interesting to see him go to the backside to set up the right turn. And the other spot was at 2:15, when you did a FC/turn and burn on the left turn wrap and he back jumped (possibly because it was easier than finishing the left turn).
So he might be a righty! And that means you can do harder stuff to the right, and support him a little more when he has to turn left. You won’t have to do that for long, because it will all even out.
Nice job working through the timing of the sequence at the end:
At 2:38, your rotation on the FC was too early (he had not gotten much past the landing of the previous jump when you turned into him) so he didn’t take the jump.
At 2:50, your decel was a late (he was halfway to the turn jump) so he was wide. Your decel and send at 3:00 was timely starting it and you held it til he committed, so he had a lovely turn there!
Great job!
Tracy
