[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

> Not sure how you feel about using a prop in this manner but it’s how I taught Benni his back up so I thought I would try it.>

This is one of the ways to teach it for sure, I like it! On this version as well, throw the treat lower: we don’t want his head up high in anticipation of the treat being thrown back behind him – that is what start to happen here: after a couple of good reps, the reward placement started to change his position so at first his end was high, then he was turning around to where the reward was thrown. He wasn’t cheating 🙂 he was giving feedback on the reward placement 🙂

To keep his head down and get the backing up extended, toss the treat low, aiming to get it between his front feet like you are trying to score a goal in hockey, and the goal is between his feet LOL 😂😝

And using a destination target to back up to can help get him backing up more and more.

Looking at the prop games video:

Parallel path – He is committing really well to the prop! One suggestion: instead of using the “yes” as the marker (which gets him looking at you) and rewarding from your hand (which gets him wanting to stay near your hand), use a ‘get it’ marker or whichever one means “the reward is thrown ahead” so he doesn’t look at you and blasts straight ahead after ht prop to get the reward. That will allow you to get more distance and also get the rear crosses (more on that below :))

Countermotion is going really well! He has very clear smack of the prop on these!
It took a little convincing for him to stay in handler focus, so you can actually feed him a treat for sticking with you and not sending himself 🙂 I think he would prefer the reward for staying with you over being touched – when you were touching him, he stepped away.

As you added distance, he did best with the countermotion when you were moving away slowly. When you were quick in your motion, he didn’t always commit to fully hitting the prop – so think of your motion as a slow slide away and not a quick step away. We can add quickness soon 🙂

>Not sure how to get him to drive ahead of me to attempt the rear cross. It feels like when I try to hang back he matches my speed or something like that.>

Two things were happening here when you were thinking about the rear crosses:
– he had just done a solid 3 minutes of movement and work, so he was tired and the rear cross can of worms was probably not good to open at that point 🙂 Start rear crosses at the beginning of a session and as the only behavior in the session so he can really think about it and give feedback on what he is seeing.

– he was squarely in handler focus because of all the rewards from your hands. Yes, the countermotion puts them in handler focus with hand delivered rewards because it is a turn cue, so don’t do rear crosses in the same session. And since the parallel path game is the pre-cursor to the rear crosses, let’s get him out of handler focus on that by throwing rewards (no rewards from hands on this one, at all :))
When he understands to drive ahead for the reward and not stay locked onto your hands, the rear crosses will be much easier. That way you can start next to hm, he will accelerate past you to the prop, which gives you time to changes sides behind him before he reaches the prop. But don’t start the rear crosses until he has had at least one more session of parallel path with the thrown rewards.

And when you do start the rear crosses, reward him anyway even if he turns the ‘wrong’ direction 🙂 The timing of the rear cross cues is challenging at first, so the pups are generally always correct based on what they see from us handlers before the arrive at the prop 🙂

Nice work here!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!
He was such a good boy here with the target! He was ‘looking’ for the target with his back feet! YAY!!

One thing to remember as you work this skill or any shaping skill:
Don’t move your hands til you throw the reward 🙂 Let him offer. When you move your hand, he will lock onto your hand and then rely on it. He did much better when you were not moving your hands to get him to move.

I would stick with this target option to keep building distance because he was really thinking about his back feet (we build on this for contact work too, stay tuned!)

When you did the stand up version, I think he had a valid question: the target he was just getting reward for working on was still right behind him, so he was thinking about that for the first few reps.

And, keep your hands low here, the whole time – we don’t want his head all the way up because it inhibits the backwards movement and also, I think he was perceiving the reward as being for stopping and lifting his head because that is what was happening when you threw the reward. That is why he offered the bow when you stopped rewarding, he was like: “I did the behavior, are you waiting for the bow now?” Good boy!!

So when you bend down to put the first cookie in place, stay there (you can rest your elbows on your knees) and leave your cookie hands right there, at nose level. That way you can very quickly get the next reward in by just flicking the treat between his front feet before he stops moving. Yes, he will need some impulse control to back away from the cookie hands, but that is good for him to figure out 🙂

When you got low with your hands behind your back, he probably also thought it was a bow offer session. But then at the very end, you were standing and your hands were lower, and the backing up came back. Yay! So definitely keep your hands low for quick reward placement, before he stops moving or lifts his head.

Nice work here!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>[this is me trying to convince myself that I can use the clicker to bring the “pretty” back to his backing up]>

Think of it as a fun training challenge! He will enjoy it because of all the clicks and treats 🙂 and it will be a good physical and mental workout for him. My advice is to stare at where you want his back feet only, rather than trying to see all of him. Our brains are not good at processing the big picture but our brains are great at staring at a spot and marking the instant the foot appears in it.

Looking at the video – I love playing with markers! And it is fun for the pups too – lots of rewards!

>Besides saying the words in a voice that could be heard and waiting for him to finish chewing his food,>

I think your verbals were very clear, they sound different, and you were saying them with intonations different enough, which helps him differentiate. And yes, letting him finish chewing is good for processing 🙂

One of the things we humans do with markers is we either move the hand before the marker (or somehow indicate the reward with a physical cue) or at the same time. That can muddy the verbal understanding – these are subtle movements to us and we don’t even realize we are doing it, but the pups see al of that because they can process it as if they are watching us in slow motion.

So with that in mind I watched this in slow motion to see what he was seeing before or during the marker. (Side note: in training we *all* move before or while saying markers, so don’t worry too much about being perfect or you’ll get paralyzed! The dogs learn them – so yes, we try to be super precise when working on them but don’t drive yourself crazy :))

On a couple of them, you were moving the reward just before the marker (the ‘toy’ marker and the ‘get it’ marker). So for those 2, try to keep your hands perfectly still as you say it: verbal, wait a heartbeat, then throw or indicate the toy.

>though he seems to understand “catch (food or toy headed behind you)” by where he’s anticipating the treat going.>

Yes! The ‘catch’ marker also no perceptible movement from you before or during the marker – so in your training, you might have isolated the verbal better which would lead to the understanding we see here. Yay!!!

The ‘here’ marker also had no perceptible movement til after the verbal, but he was already facing you and your hands were moving back to the treat after the hand touch, so you can stand perfectly still, hands at your sides, while he is facing away… and say the marker and see what he does in terms of orienting to your hands.

>For “cookies” – he misses the cue twice. It’s one I’ve practiced more with a pause, which I didn’t really have for these misses.>

That was the hardest one for him here! It is possible that it is the one that requires the most impulse control, so there is an extra layer of challenge. It also might be that you have a small physical cue built into it as well – on the 2 misses, there were no physical cues. When he did go to it (like at 1:10) you added a turn/lean towards it and a slightly different sound to the verbal. So maybe he was waiting for the additional physical cue?

Or perhaps placing the cookie in the bowl is actually a cue to *not* go to it (impulse control, good boy!) so he was making double triple sure that the cookie was available. You can try it with an empty bowl and then throw the treat into it, taking out the self-control element somewhat. Then when he is driving to the bowl, you can add the cookie back.

He will give us feedback on this for sure, so definitely get video and watch it in slow motion to see when the verbal comes in relation to the movement.

Great job here!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>She had a hard time finding the treats for our Collection Sandwich. >

Finding treats in the grass is definitely a learned skill for puppies! You can use a big towel spread out on the grass as a giant target to toss the treat onto for her to run to – the bigger the towel, the less accurate your toss has to be 🙂

Also – check out this week’s resilience game. It is a pattern game that I also use as a framework for teaching pups to find treats in the grass quickly and return engagement to whatever we were doing. You can teach the game indoors where it is really easy, and when she is able to grab the treat and re-engage quickly, you can move it outdoors onto grass 🙂

If you watch her eating as you run away, she is doing a really good job of grabbing the food and returning engagement to you! She responded pretty immediately to your name call too! So making it more visible on a towel will be even smoother.

>It looks like rather than waiting till she finishes the treat I should continue moving away so that there is more distance for me to complete the blind – >

Yes – and you were moving away really well on these reps. I think throwing the treat further away to start the game will be even easier, giving you more of a head start.

>most of these are late (again). Also I’m not sure if I’m decelling enough before we turn. >

I think the timing of the blind was good! She knew where to be on each rep and didn’t end up on the ‘wrong’ side of you at all. Nice connection as you finished the blind!!! That really helped.

What can come earlier is the decel into the pivot – because she is so fast, you can start to slow down as soon as you finish the blind, so she sees that sooner and can collect into your side better. The decel was happening as she got to you (which is a little late), which is why she would sometimes be a little wide, or sometimes pop up.

She was fantastic about going back to the toy race after the pivots! Yay! She looks to be able to use food and toys in the same session and that is GREAT!!! It gives you so many options to choose how you want to reward while also keeping things super fun 🙂

Lovely work here!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Those stairs are cool! And hard, especially when in higher arousal like he was here! He is a brave dude!

The stairs seem to challenge him to balance, isolate his feet, and also move slowly because the stairs are narrow enough and light enough that fast movement would lead to him tipping off by accident or making the stairs wobble.

Front feet seemed really easy. I LOVE how you positioned yourself in front of the stairs to help give him a safer feel – that immediately got him offering all 4 feet. And then you were able to move yourself out of that position and off to the side while he maintained his bravery. Super!

When releasing him off the stairs, wait til he is calmly all four feet back on the ground before being really exciting with the treat toss or toy – when he tries to explode off the stairs, they tip and I don’t want him to have a weird landing (ouch!) or get concerned.

These stairs would be fun to incorporate into other goat games – you can do stuff like make a trail of crazy objects to go to the stairs, then he goes up the stairs and onto a plank that is a little elevated to walk across. The plank can be straight off the stairs, or at a 90 degree angle so he has to balance and turn.

Great job!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>’m sure the food was in my hand. Am I supposed to use a bait bag?>

A small bait bag is fine, or a few treats in a bag in your pocket for easy access – but having the treat already in the opposite hand will be faster to be able to reward her.

> Or, just be sure it’s in the opposite hand from the send? >

That is the priority – empty hand on the send, so for speed of reinforcement. And if she still has trouble leaving your hand (hands have a LOT of value for puppies!) you can send and then toss the treat to the prop rather than reward back at you. That can help balance the value.

>I feel like I can’t do many of this weeks games as I don’t have a send to an object.>

You can definitely do the parallel path game – this is the basis of 2 of the new games and there is no send needed. And you can keep noodling with the sending, and start to rotate a but. The rotated sends move easily into countermotion.

> I’ll try the collection sandwich and see if she can do that. But, I feel like I’ll need to feed the turn still.>

You can feed the turn the first time or two, then try a rep without feeding, just having her follow your hand, and see how it goes.

Looking at the video:
There is definite value in the barrel setup, that is great! It made tugging harder at the beginning, so you can keep the barrel and bowls out of the picture for now (up on the couch, for example) and then put them on the floor when you are ready for that part of the session. That will also make for a clean transition into the shaping so you will be ready with treats and in position before the barrel and bowls are presented.

She did really well with you standing! You can move the bowls a tiny bit further back, closer to your feet, so she wraps a little more. The bowls can get further and further back by your heels in each session.

You broke off the session to play at a good spot, and the tugging looked great! In that moment, I bet you could have gone back and done a few more reps t see where she was after the first part of the session. It would have probably taken the session to about 2.5 minutes, but based on how she was doing I bet that would have been perfectly fine. She was on a roll and you can see her look at the setup and start to go back to it right after the tugging at the end 🙂

So if you are still in ‘short session’ territory, meaning you haven’t gone past 2 minutes or so, you can do a bit more. And it will be fun to revisit it today or tomorrow to see what she locked in!

Great job :)

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

She did GREAT on all 3 of these videos!!
The first 2 were her turning to her left, which seems to be her easier side but she did super well turning to her right on video 3!

The timing of your FC and run worked best when you had the line on the ground, because it kept you from leaving too early or too late 🙂 So definitely keep that line on the ground and keep moving it, so you can have both a visual of when to move and also a way to make it progressively more challenging.

She really loved it when you ran!! I bet you can get even more excitement using a toy reward. She might not be able to go from food to toy yet, so you can either use a toy only in the session, or you can use one of the most boring treats ever (if there is a boring treat for a Dalmatian haha) and the most exciting toy, and see if she can go back and forth.

The only other suggestion for you: you can give her a cue to start wrapping the barrel. I think she was waiting for a cue to start, especially on video 3/right turns. So this is a great game for adding a cue: get her excited, get her on your side (you can gently hold her collar when she is on your side too) and the step to the barrel and give a small hand/arm cue to the barrel. That will be clear for her and also that can get even more speed.

You gave her a cue on the last rep of video 3 (it was a verbal ok) and she exploded to the barrel, tons of speed and excitement! So adding the physical cue will be useful for her too.

Great job!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! I am looking forward to your videos!

In case you didn’t get my email yet – the easiest way to put videos here is to load them into Youtube then copy/paste the link here. That will also bring up the preview of the link. Or, posting an iCloud link is great too!

Thanks,
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>The hall is in a church where I teach some puppy classes.>

Ah! That is a great puppy class location!

Backing up: this went really well and he was straighter! And you had both hands involved with rewarding: super!

He really only had one question: when to start offering the behavior at the beginning.

You can make the transition from the tugging into the backing up smoother by making the context cue (the target and your position) more salient:
Tug in a separate spot then move into the sitting position at the target. That will basically cue him to start backing up 🙂

Looks like you were beginning to reward him for getting front feet on the target here which is great – he has to back up more to do this, and has to have good hind end awareness to know that he has touched the mat and to keep going. YAY!!!

Since you can reliably predict he is going to back up, you can start adding a verbal cue to it if you want to.

For the forward focus: This is going really well in terms of the impulse control to look at the line and not at the treat or toy, then go around the cone to get to the reward. YAY!

>The release timing was a little tricky as it was hard to tell sometimes if he was actually looking at the cone. I figured generally looking forward was ok?>

Yes, generally looking forward is good but when you put the treat in a harder position I think it was easier to see where he was looking. So keep going with the harder challenges because it was actually easier for you both. And it is a good way to sort out what the mechanics look like when he looks forward – seeing small dogs on course is harder sometimes!

On the reps where the treat plate was not too far around the cone, he could probably see the cone and the treat in the same field of vision, so didn’t really need to turn his head much.

But when you moved it so that he had to look away from the target and at the cone (like at :26, :49, :55 with food for example, and also when the toy got pretty far around the cone) there was a much clearer head turn to look at the line.

He is so expressive though – when it was hard, he looks away entirely as part of the forward focus game. It happens consistently and reliably so I don’t think it is coincidence LOL!! It might just be a superstitious behavior that got built in because you would mark and release when he looked away, so by the end he was looking away on each rep. Too funny!

So to remove the looking away, you can watch where his nose is pointing. With the toy/treat in a hard location, mark only when his nose is pointing to the line – not to the treats/toy, and not away from the line LOL! Shelties have a nice pointy snout so that might be easier to see!

>For the last week, Aelfraed has been getting extremely excited when he sees me pick up the tripod. He knows it means we are going to play fun games.>

That is so fun!! He must be pairing the tripod with all of the reward and play 🙂 He definitely likes being the star of Aelfraed TV!

Great job here!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Adding the toys to the wrapping was lovely! I think the hardest part for her twas to realize that it was still a wrap-the-thing game and not a go-directly-to-the-toy game 🙂 She did really well! You an also incorporate getting the toy back with a treat – then letting her offer going around the barrel to the other toy. She was really into the toy then it looks like he almost lost her chain of thought when she let go of it LOL! So a few seconds of tugging then trade for a treat – then let her offer – might be the quickest way into the next rep while keep it fun and successful.

You can also move to standing up too with the 2 toys – that will lead you into the turn and burn game really well too!

Nice work!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! So much great stuff here!!

Moving the backing up to a new spot is great! He was doing well about offering to back up and you were able to start adding the cue. YAY!!! I want to see if we can get him to do more steps by keeping your hands lower, but I also don’t want to make your back angry from staying bent over the whole time. When you were standing up after the start cookie, he was lifting his head up to look at the cookie hand, which might have been inhibiting the number of steps he was taking. So you can try sitting on the agility table that is visible behind you (giving him room to back up, of course) – that way can can keep your hands low by resting your elbows on your legs rather than having to bend over a lot.

You can also get more steps backwards by using the ‘destination’ approach: you will see it in the Adding Challenge section here and at about :40 in the demo video:

Hind End Awareness: Backing Up

The turn and burn session looked strong! He did well on the ‘harder’ side – he is pretty balanced! It was SUPER interesting how at about halfway through the session he started offering his stronger side. That is possibility an indication of how hard it is to turn to the harder side, even though it looked easy!

Click/treat to you for using the line on the ground to be very systematic about adding your movement – based on how well he did here, you can move the line after every rep!

Also, be careful of when you use your reward marker. “Yes” seems to mean, to him, to come get the cookie from your hand. So at 1:44, you said “YES!” then moved the treat, so he was not necessarily wrong to come directly to you without finishing the barrel wrap. Note how confused he was when you did not give the reward at 1:46 – he was like… wait, what? You said “yes!” LOL! Very expressive dude 🙂

The same thing happened at 2:08, and he was definitely trying to sort out what the ‘yes’ marker meant.

So you can start your motion when he arrives at the line… but you don’t need to mark until he completes the wrap. This will be useful as the challenges get harder. You can also dial back the countermotion challenge to do a FC without the full 360 around the barrel.

I love how he got back onto the toy at the end, after all the treats!! SUPER! You can use a toy as the reward for this game too – starting without any food at first, then if he likes that we can add a tiny bit of food so he gets comfy using food and toy in back-to-back reps.

Rear crosses are the hardest thing we have done so far! He was turning toward you here like a FC because he as not seeing you on the new side before he arrived at the prop (good job rewarding him because he was correct on these reps).

A couple of ideas for you to help him turn the correct direction. The goal is to get him driving way ahead of you to the prop from further back, so you can change sides and be visible on the new side before he arrives at the prop:

The main thing will be to get the reward out of your hand and thrown ahead of him pat the prop. With the reward in your hand, he will drive ahead a little but not a lot 🙂 And since you need the space, working outdoors is great – using his Lotus ball should make it easy to find the thrown food so it doesn’t get lost in the grass.

When he is leaving you in the dust to race to the prop then getting the treat from the lotus ball, you can start to add the RCs:

Be 15 feet or so away from the pop – start next to him and move forward. As soon as he is past you (heading to the prop) you can do the RC then keep moving forward to support him continuing to the prop with you on the new side. That should get the turn to the new side.

Plankrobatics looked super fun! He really likes it, so be sure he turns around before you give his 2o2o cue (otherwise he tries to drive down to position AND turn around, which led to some slipping off the side a bit). The other thing you can add is turning him around, giving him a treat and asking him to stay there on the plank… then you can move away so you are able to cue the 2o2o with you laterally away, or behind him, or ahead of him, etc. He seems ready for that!

Great job here!!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Your outdoor space is just gorgeous! And this game is well suited for that spot: the prop is very visible and the treat was visible too.

I agree – she did really well here!! Yes, the treat was bouncing but I don’t think that was a problem because it just changed her angle for the next approach and that is a good challenge 🙂 You can try small cheese chunks of her GI can handle it? Those won’t bounce. I freeze them before use, so they don’t melt in the heat.

She did have a few questions about the reward placement on the parallel path game – the click seemed to indicate that she should look at the prop or at you, it took her a few reps to lock into reward placement of going forward. So you can replace the click with a reward marker, which will tell her she is correct (like the click does) and also tell her where to look for the reward (which the click does not). You can use “get it” as the marker to replace the click. And it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t know the marker yet – this is a great framework to teach it 🙂

>It looks like she did better when I wasn’t crowding her line – what do you think?>

I think you what you mean here is when she was pushing away a little and looking up at you? I don’t think you were crowding her line – I think she was moving away to get a looksee at the bigger picture of the cue. And being more laterally away opens up her field of vision to see the prop and your cues all together. That will go away when she sees this again – she will realize she can ‘watch’ you peripherally and look forward to her line to the prop.

When she is able to drive ahead to the prop when you start next to her and pretty close to her, you can start the rear cross game. And separately, you can add more distance away from the prop on the parallel path.

Countermotion/backwards sending is going well too! She did her best commitment and prop hit when you did a clear ready dance before the send. For example, at 1:04 you kind of backed up then sent her without a clear transition, so she went to the prop but it was not as snappy and crisp as it was a 1:12, where you did a clear ready dance and super clear send. That was lovely!

And she gets a gold star for engaging with you during the ready dance… but NOT biting you! This is one of the ways we teach puppies to get pumped up and play with us, without putting their little shark teeth on our flesh LOL!

You really had some clear countermotion on that last rep too – lovely! You can keep building that up, it looked great.

Great job here!!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

It seems like ALL the puppies are in Mastication Mode 🙂

And good for you for stopping the session when time was up and resisting temptation to move to the next step! I am sure he will do great when you revisit it.

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>Today we revisted the back up. >

This looks like the same link from Wednesday? Or maybe I need more coffee, which is always a possibility 🙂 Let me know if there is a different link.

The other games are going well – just small suggestions for you advance them even more:

Parallel path: He did an excellent job driving to the prop and clearly indicating it! SUPER!! Your connection was lovely. You might have noticed that he was looking at you more as the session went along – it was because of the reward placement (cookies coming for your hand).

So, one adjustment: throw the rewards rather than deliver the reward from your hand – to build distance, we want to get the reward away from you. Instead of ‘yes’, use your ‘get it’ marker and throw the treat. That will also give you time to change your position: moving further to the side, or getting ahead of him.

Countermotion – he has good commitment to the prop here, but he did have a good question as you mentioned:

>Towards the end he started offering me a wave so maybe that was a sign I just did too much and should have stopped.>

The cue was a bit unclear, so he was not really sure of where to look and when to look at/move towards the prop. What was happening was that after you rewarded him, you were backing up towards the prop and then sending while backing up, so it was unclear about what was happening (the cue was getting a bit buried in the motion of you walking backwards).

To clarify the cue: Give a clearer ready dance while you are stationary rather than backing up towards the prop. After the reward, move forward into your next starting position – then with you stationary, you can engage him with the ready dance for 2 or 3 seconds – then BOOM! Big cue to the prop. That tells him exactly when to start moving and exactly what you want. You can use the tug toy either as the primary reward, or after the cookie reward, to move back into position and he will also enjoy the tugging 🙂

You can see that each time you changed position relative to the prop, he was very snappy with his send to the prop! That was because you were stationary before the send so the cue was very very clear. Then he started asking questions after a couple of reps when you were backing up into the send there (like looking at the tape on the ground). So, clean crisp starts before each cue will help a lot (and the ready dance really helps make things clear :))

>He occasionally was fixating on food in my hand which I know he has to learn to ignore>

Yes – but you can make that easier: if the cookie is in the hand next to him, start closer to the prop like you did at 2:00 approx). Or as you add distance, have the cookie in the other hand so the dog-side hand is empty. That way when one variable gets harder (distance for example), you can make another variable easier (moving away from the cookie).

>We’ll work on rear cross another day. Maybe I should work more on the parallel path first or not?>

For the rear cross, add a bit more to parallel path first. We definitely want the reward out of your hands and tossed past the prop – if he is looking at your hands, rear crosses get really hard. And the other element to add before the rear cross is to start with him on the parallel path game, very close to him – and as you start to move, he drives ahead of you to the prop. When you are close to him and he leaves you in th dust to go to the prop? Onwards to the rear cross 🙂 Based on what he did here, my guess is he will start driving ahead really easily!

>Very interesting approach for these concepts!>

I am glad you are enjoying it! Since we started using these concepts as the foundation (started in 2020 during the early covid lockdown) we have found that the transition onto jumps and into coursework has been insanely easy for the pups! It has been really fun watching them learn 🙂

Nice work here!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! This went really well!!!

>Here, we did a bit off to the side, which seems like a reasonable transition to getting the behavior on cue without the platform. >

Absolutely! That was a really clever way to get him into backing up mode, then get it without the platform (but with the platform still in the picture as a context cue). Yay!

My only suggestion is to stay a little bent over for now – when your hands are just at or below your knees, his head position is more ‘neutral’ and he can back up more freely. When you stand fully upright, he lifts his chin to look up which inhibits the backing up a bit, so he will likely take fewer steps. I try to position my hands so the pup’s lower jaw is parallel to the floor as much as possible.

> I “broke” the behavior when I worked on single-leg lateral rear leg lifts, and it’s never quite been the same ;). In this video, he seems to dip his hips a bit, and reaches for the prop. >

Your reinforcement for the leg lifts must have been really powerful 🙂 You can shift that for backing up by isolating the back foot with the click: looking at the foot he would normal lift rather than step back with, you can click for the moment he puts it down after stepping back. It is a bit of surgical precision with the clicker 🙂 To mark it precisely, just stare at his back feet so you don’t miss it: he is small and quick!!!

>I’m pleased with his responsiveness and that he’s moving straight back here.>

Yes! I think he did really well!! Great job! You can keep using the platform to add even more distance and see how he does.

Nice work!
Tracy

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