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Good morning! I love that shirt you were wearing!!!
The session got off to a great start! Good catch on your feet on the first rep – the next reps were great!
You can extend your arm fully away even more, locking your elbow – as far as possible while still keeping it low enough to touch for now.
>>don’t go train in the basement when the husband is due home…big distractions above us plus the lovely driveway sensor which I thought had finished going off but no…>>
Then the daddy’s home distraction happened when you changed sides – didn’t he know you were training the puppy? LOL!!!!
I was expecting a bit more chaos and distraction based on your description but overall, he got back to work really really well!! GOOD BOY!!!!! And after that moment of distraction, he worked the rest of the session beautifully.
He did seem a little distracted so it might have been that his attentional state was a bit split by the distraction upstairs. But also, you had the toy in your hand for that part of the session which is definitely more challenging than the cookies in your hand. But again, by the end of the session, he was able to directly drive to the target hand even with the toy fully visible. Super!!!!
For the next session, 2 things to add:
– you can add a toy marker (“bite” or whatever you are using for his ‘grab the toy’ marker instead of ‘yes’
– You can have the toy attached to a longer toy, so you can hold one end and the other end can rest on the ground as he is coming in to the target. Or you can put an empty food bowl there – he will be happy with both as rewards and they will add plenty of challenge to prepare for the next levels too.You were smart to finish up when you did and the sensor at the end was funny LOL!!! I think you were more annoyed by it than he was LOL!
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
She is driving ahead REALLY well! And finding her treats in the carpet so this session went really well. For the outdoor session, you might need to use giant cheese chunks or those orange crunchy cheese balls. Or… a toy! More on that below.
She is definitely a lefty 🙂 with the left turns being really good when you got to the new side early enough. Try can see that at :19 and :40 where you were far enough across the line that she was able to get to the left turn.
At :10 and :30, you were still on the right turn side when she arrived at the prop, so she correctly turned right. Great job continuing to reward, because that keeps her in the game as you work the timing. It would be confusing if she read your cues correctly and then didn’t get rewarded!
So to get consistent rear crosses, start right next to her and maybe a little further from the prop. Then as soon as she starts moving, you are going to cut behind to the new side (rear cross :)) as soon as possible, ideally no later than when she is halfway to the prop. And if you are using a toy to reward, you can start with a hand in the collar rather than a cookie toss.
When you do the rear cross to the right turn, which is harder for her, you can do the rear cross as early as possible and if she turns correctly – reward even if she doesn’t hit the prop 🙂 Since the right turns are harder, we can also have you help her with either a hand lure with the reward, or you can put an empty food bowl on the ground on the right turn side to give her a visual aid to turn to the right on the RCs.
Great job here! Keep me posted on how the other games go!
TracyGood morning! She did great! I love that she wa able to hit the hand target with complete focus on it, even with the beloved frisbee tucked under your other arm. YAY!!
Since that went really well, you can go to the next step: rather than have the frisbee (or any toy that she likes) tucked under your arm, you can hold it in your hand at your side. This will make it more visible and will ramp up the challenge: can Goose do the hand touch even with the visible frisbee? And then you can reward with the frisbee of course. That will set things up well for the levels where we add more movement and challenge.
If she can’t do the hand target with the frisbee more visible (frisbee is LIFE so it might be distracting!) you can start with treats in the other hand and visible to show her the concept, then work back up to the visible frisbee 🙂
Great job!
Tracy
hi!
The games build up on each other, so I think everyone grabs a minute or two here and there. You are doing great!!T
Totally relatable! I have all of these markers, yet half the time YAY comes flying out of my mouth. My dogs are very good to put up with me hahahahahaha
Hi!
The suitcase is the novel-neutral object, right? It is a novel-exciting object for me LOL! Vacation associations!
He did perfectly especially going right past it to get the tossed treat and slamming his bum into it when tugging LOL! We can see him processing here – after getting the tossed treat, he is not exactly engaging with the suitcase, but he was sniffing on the way past it on some reps, or sniffing behind. So he was investigating/processing and that is great! Yo can keep introducing novel-neutral into his existing games. And you can also take a look at the novel-exciting game we posted last week.
Nice work!
TracyI can relate – my adults play brilliantly with the puppy! But one of the 2 year old dogs is starting to hump the puppy, so I end the game LOL!!
T
Hi!
Yes, 6 months for a smaller breed, right on time LOL!!
>I did not expect him to be the type of boy to go off food based on his food love up until now, but he’s full of surprises. Last week he went off his meals for a couple of days which was a drastic change. >
That is interesting! Yes, we do see shifting sensitivities to the value of reinforcement in adolescence, but usually male pups that are food driven don’t go completely off their food or lose a lot of value. So keep an eye on things to be sure he is not sore anywhere – puppies make poor life choices that can result in slamming themselves and being ouchy for a day or so.
>>During the plank session, the person who appeared was someone Aelfraed knows but neither he or I expected her to appear at that time (plus she was eating a snack) so I didn’t really have a plan for distractions and it didn’t bother me that he left, but I can certainly try a pattern game in the future.>
I thought you and Aelfraed handled that distraction really well! Many puppies/teenagers would have alarm barked even if they knew the person (sudden environmental change can be startling) and he was great!
Toy races are going well! He was more explosive for sure here! One other thing you can play with – since he has human friends, maybe a human friend can take off running and dragging a long toy while you hold him – then let him go and see if he will leave you in the dust to drive to the toy? That is a training game we use in flyball to get the drive away from the handler, and puppies generally love it!
Parallel path – it looks like he was getting some good lateral distance here!! He gave you a bit of sass at the beginning when he was on your left and moving to the prop (and looked at you more on when he was on your left side than on your right side) – I am guessing that he was looking at the toy under your arm 🙂 But he worked through that really well and then he was able to ignore the toy and work equally well on both sides.
You can start building to the rear crosses, by starting far from the prop and really close to him, so he drives ahead of you to it. That will lead into cutting behind him before he is arriving at the prop, so he sees it and turns the new direction.
Turn and burn barrel wraps:
Starting with showing him the toys as rewards went really well! He was able to transfer the understanding very quickly without the visual add of the treat plate. I think some of his barking might just be excitement here, especially when he is turning to his right.>He sniffed the ground partway through because he found a cookie he had left behind from his parallel path game.>
Ha! No cookie left behind! But then he went right back into it!
This went super well – onwards to adding the turn and burn game!
Great job 🙂
Tracy
The collection sandwich is looking strong! After the blind, decel almost immediately so he can collect. You were decelerating as he was arriving at your hand, so he was a little wide.
>Then I printed up the diagram this time (um should’ve done that the first time!)>
Field guides for the win! Yay!
>.due to the show coat I don’t keep a collar on him so I just plain forgot so I lured him into position with food for this video.>
Maybe leave a collar with your barrel so there is one available when you train? Or have one with the toys, or just floating around the training room? He didn’t like being reached for to be held without it.
>I think the food slowed him down on the send perhaps because he was thinking about that.>
Luring with food was helpful to get him to your side but it was harder to indicate when exactly he should start the rep – so he would often start a little early and didn’t explode into it as we know he can 🙂 He was not really sure about when to start, which is why he was moving slower.
And since we are adding wrap verbals this week (and he needs to hear the verbal before he starts moving) you will definitely want an easy way to hold him.
Once he got moving to the barrel, his commitment was really strong! Your timing of starting the FC was spot on as the line moved around the barrel, allowing you to do the FC earlier and earlier, and he seemed to have no commitment questions. SUPER!!!!
Since he did so well with both the collection sandwich and the turn and burn, you can move to the next game added last night! The handling combos basically combine turn and burn with the collection sandwich, while adding in verbal wrap cues as well as some self control too 🙂
Great job!!
Tracy
Good morning!
Thank you for the kind words!!!>Long-track speedskating. Maybe the flyball equivalent in dog sports?>
FUN!!!!!!! And fast! I love watching it!
>Repetitive movement where good technique makes it look effortless and has a huge impact on performance.>
Right – the technique is where the speed probably comes from, just like in flyball. Done right, it might even look “slow” but it is most definitely not slow 🙂
>his specific changes of behavior are easier to pick up with slo-mo.>
That is a great application – he is small and fast, which might also make it harder to see some of the indication behavior.
I am glad you enjoyed the webinar!
>also the general theme: Reward the dog, because it’s probably the handler’s fault!>
Yes – that is why I did the webinar. There is too much blaming of the dog and the reality is that the dogs are correct almost all the time (and when they are incorrect, it is still likely due to human error :))
> As a hope-to-be novice agility handler – important for me. I have so many mistakes to make before I figure things out!>
And agility is a sport that keeps changing/evolving! Handler errors are made at every level – watching the world championships last weekend, there were plenty of small handler errors that would take a run off the rails.
>It seems like the efficiency should almost double by reviewing mid-session – because you can fix-yourself before the next session. I imagine Skizzle would also appreciate the break!>
Absolutely yes! My efficiency has more than doubled which is good because I have a lot of dogs that need some training time LOL!! And the other benefit is that reviewing video frequently trains my eye – so I can recognize errors in the moment. That creates a nice cycle where I don’t always need to watch the video because I already ‘see’ what happens and can fix it on the spot.
And as you mentioned – the ability to make fast adjustments gets behavior change very quickly, like the slow motion demos of the change in the box turn position for my Whippet.
Looking at the video with the distractions:
Those were all relatively quiet environments so the noises really stood out – and the noises were higher pitched and could be interpreted as anxiety or distress (the kids in the part were not distressed, but he didn’t know that :))
>In this video, she’s quiet initially, but then whines when the intensity increases, and Skizzle reacts. >
Yes – when you started to run and things got more excited, your new girl started making noise. And he didn’t know how to process that, especially because the noise indicated distress (FOMO is distress LOL!).
>We haven’t done so much work in busy places, but I feel like we need to work towards it. >
Yes, getting him into these busy-but-quiet environments is great! You can get him assessing and processing the environment with pattern games as the first order of business. The games provide a framework for him to be able to process and ignore the distractions.
You can find them here:
>It seems like this is something I need to start working on for our future sports career. Trials are noisy with barking and whining!>
In some ways, you might find that dog sport environments are easier because they are busier, so one dog making noise doesn’t stand out as much as your pup in the car. And since no single thing stands out, the dogs have far fewer distractions 🙂
Let me know how he does with the pattern games in different places!
Tracy
Sometimes puppies just have a day where they need to chill 🙂 Maybe that is what was happening. And also, if she was not sure where to go outside in terms of treat throws, you can use really big chunks of food sp they are very visible? Definitely grab some video so we can see what was happening 🙂
T
Hi!
He did really well here – yes, he was looking at the bag a bit but he never actually grabbed for it which would have been easy to do 🙂One of the reasons he might have been looking at the cookie bag at the beginning was because even though I think you were clicking for his feet on the disc…
the clicks were coming when he was looking at the bag at the beginning. The first few clicks had his feet on the disc and then also he was looking at the bag – so you might have been thinking of his feet but he added in looking at the bag because that is what was being clicked. He is a clicker savvy dude!!Then the timing changed a bit and he topped looking at the bag – you were no longer clicking when he looks at the bag and so he stopped looking at the bag 🙂
He had a little trouble getting all 4 feet on the disc – The disc is fully inflated here so it is hard for a puppy to stand on it especially when attention is split away from mechanics a bit, thanks to the exciting distraction 🙂
When you added the cookie recall games past the bowl and then past the cookie bag in the bowl:
>I don’t know if you can tell in the video how much he looked at the bowl when I worked recalls. >
Was he flicking his eyeballs to it? He was great about not turning his head to it or moving to it! All of your clicks were for driving back to you and that really clarified what would get the reward. Yay!
Great job here!!
Tracy
Good morning!
He was fantastic with the big bag!! And he did great with it in class last night too. It reminds me of a foundation element for a wall jump LOL!!
It took him about 45 seconds to realize that the bag was for wrapping, so he did some toy grabbing and bag smashing. But then he had a lightbulb moment and it was mostly smooth sailing after that.
Your timing of doing the FC and running away was great! Waiting til he was at the line at the exit of the wrap? Great!
When you moved the line (or kong toy or whatever it was LOL!) so you could do the FC sooner then sooner again? Great! His commitment is looking strong!He had a couple of questions where he didn’t wrap and instead jumped up at your hand (2:12, 2:30, 3:16). In those moments, your hand cue was ahead of him a little too much, which caused your connection to break by turning forward. And that also turns your shoulders to the bag in a way where he is not as sure of where to wrap.
On the wraps where he had no questions, your hand cue was lower and moving with his nose, so your connection was clearer and your shoulders showed the line to the jump. So we can take his jumping up in those moments as feedback that you are a little disconnected (even though you could see him, he needed to see more of your eyes) – you can try these games with as little arm send as possible!
You can also add your wrap verbal that you added last night, and try it on the other side as well.
Great job!
TracyIs that a tug Leah? Cool! I love the color!
The hand touch session went well – she started out with a very strong nose bop and you were delivering where the delivery would be in the strike a pose game. Yay! Then I think she was anticipating the placement of reinforcement so went more to side-swiping it. And that is fine for the purposes of the game we are using the actual target for 🙂 If she starts missing it completely, you can switch to placing the reward back into the palm of the target hand (and that is something to do when you are doing hand targets without the target – the target itself is a cue to do the in-then-out behavior we are looking for.
To get the out of the toy by getting passive, have your hands lower – when you went to passive hands, they were high enough that she could still hang off the toy. So lower hands will make is easier for her to let go of it quickly.
She is ready for the next step that we introduced last night – it is basically what you were doing, except you can add in your feet facing the cookie hand. And you can try it with a toy!
>I suspect you’ll know today’s song!>
Ha!! Yes! Her name fits nicely in the singing of this song LOL!
The wrapping game is looking really strong! Super! I think she is ready for the next step. True, there is not a ton of distance yet but we can add that in the other games too.
So you can start the Turn and Burn game – use that line on the ground on the exit line, and to help her make the transition you can also put one of her bowls on that line! That provides an easy visual. The difference is that you would not put a cookie in the bowl – you would do the FC and run 🙂 And the bowl can stay there as the line moves around the barrel. The line is your visual aid, and the bowl is her visual aid 🙂
The only other suggestion is that now that she is doing really well tugging with food more in the picture, you can start to incorporate a bait bag or cookies in your pocket. In the transition from the tugging to the treats in some of the games, having to get treats from a bag on the table can delay the transition (and distractions can pop up, or arousal/attentional state can change). I think she is ready to tug with food on you, to speed the transitions.
Great job!
Tracy
