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Add the hand cue to it, and try without the verbals! And replace the tug with a food bowl and see how it goes.
T
Hi1!
The 2 bowl warm up looked great and he played really well after all the food there too!
The way you started the 2nd wrap session was perfect – you sent him to get a cookie then put the bowls down, so when he returned, he could get right into the game. Yay!
Adding the upright was a definite change! To help him out, you can go to putting the cookies on the bowls rather than waiting for him to offer. AS soon as you did that, he got back into the game. It also sounds like one of the machines was running next to you… and that can actually be part of what made it hard for him: machine noises that his brain needed to process AND the upright! Puppy brains have trouble processing a lot of things at once 🙂 It sounds like it might have been running in the bowl only video, but he has already done that game so his brain didn’t need to work as hard 🙂For the sending – what he was seeing was on the ready game, you were moving your hand and leaning towards the prop in a way that did look similar to the send… so he sent. Good boy! For the ready game, you can bend your knees and have an excited posture, but don’t bop back and forth as much so he doesn’t think it is a send 🙂
It was hard to see where you were looking so try to look more at him and less at the prop if you were looking at the prop. Sometimes more connection can help!
You can also reward successive approximations: if he is close enough or touches it incidentally? Reward! No need to wait for a perfect touch.
>>this video includes the end of the toy play from the prop video, but then the big heavy ball on the tug smacked into the dryer and he had a big sad. >
Poor little guy!! What to do in that moment depends on the dog. They generally need comfort and need a moment to process the Big Scary and to bounce back. For my dogs, I literally hug them quietly for a few seconds or so (until their muscles relax) then I gently to one long stroke from the base of their hips to their neck, deliberately running their hair the wrong way – ni the hopes of getting them to do a full body shake 🙂 Then I scatter some treats for them to eat and sniff. Then we go on our way. It is a resilience reset: comfort, shake it off, olfaction from the treat scatter. Usually the big scary is forgotten pretty quickly. It seems like he recovered really well, and you were provided comfort for sure! He might like the pressure of a long hug (even though he doesn’t like the smack da baby game :))
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
OMG! This is so great! Even after being a little tired, she could still play! You were also SUPER fun sounding… my dogs were all asleep until they heard you and then hopped up and ran over to the computer to hear you play LOL!!
Keep building it up by making it super fun like you did here and I bet she will love toys too!
Great job and thank you for the video evidence of her playing!
Tracy
Hi!
Watching her drive forward to her toy is the cutest thing that I have ever seen!! She was perfect! So you can add more of your motion and try to really get running – she was really moving fast and that is great!
Great job with the blinds: you were late on the first one (she was so fast there!) but your timing on the other reps was much earlier 🙂
Your best connection was at :59 – 1:01 where you dipped your shoulders downwards and back to her so she could see the connection really easily.If your shoulders were too far forward or your dog-side hand was at your side (and not back to her nose) like at 1:05, she didn’t see the blind cross cue. Because she is to tiny, you will want to really exaggerate the connections by dipping your shoulders downwards with your arm pointing all the way back to her, so she can see the front of your chest more.
She is reading the deceleration really well! You can see that she figured out that it meant to collect – especially on that last rep, she really shifted her weight back to get in tight to you for the pivot. SUPER!!!
Everything is looking awesome here, so you can get started on the week 2 games! How are the prop sends going?
Great job!
TracyHi!
Super nice session here!
He did great going to the foot target on the first 2 reps (:2 and :09). Nice! He didn’t go and barked at you (big mad!) on rep 3 at :12. Then he was great on the next couple of reps, but had a big mad at :33 on the send. Then he ended on a couple of good reps (and you ended the session which was smart!)So why were some of the reps so gorgeous and he had a big mad on 2 of them? The difference was connection. On all of the strong reps, you looked directly at him before the send and looked at him during the send. On the 2 reps where he got mad 🙂 you looked forward and ahead of him. That is incredibly subtle but it turned your shoulders away from the line to the prop just enough that the info was not as clear.
Both of those moments were on left turns – it might be a coincidence, or it might mean left turns are harder. It is something to note.
So yes, give him bigger connection on each rep. As he learns the games more you won’t need as much connection.
But more importantly – this gives us a chance to teach him some arousal regulation when he is frustrated! Yay! He was able to go find the prop after he got frustrated, which is great! He did try to bite it or pick it up on the 2nd rep of that LOL!! But you can help him: if he turns and barks, you can reset the rep by calling him back, luring him to your set and turning him to fast the prop (let him eat the cookie lure) then send again (with more connection, or getting closer to the prop). The reset will not reinforce the bark – it will help him balance arousal by bringing him back to a place where he can regulate then try again.
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
Ah yes, I can see the tooth hugs he as delivering when you were reaching for his collar. Yo did a great job of breaking it down for him and then releasing to the cookie REALLY fast. And he did great when you added the toy too – I think by then he was seeing it as a game: give the collar to da momma to make da momma throw the toy. Super!!Luring him into the between-the-feet line up worked great and I don’t think you were receiving any tooth hugs there either. You can lure him into a side line up before the collar hold as well, which will make things easier for games like Toy Races or anything where you send from your side.
The forward focus went pretty perfectly! Yay! He was completely focused on the toy, drove to it – and did a great job of letting you hold his collar. Super! You can start to add your motion now (moving up the line as he is driving towards the toy). The side line ups will probably be easier for this.
Nice work!
TracyGood morning! He is so fast already!!
This went well!The mechanics of re-connected after the blind DEFINITELY will feel weird at first! But the super tight bind cross skills that come from it make the weirdness worthwhile LOL!
Two things that I think will make this feel easier:– keep moving the whole time, even after the blind (this might end up needing to go outside so you have more room :)) You were doing the blind and stopping to wait for him, which ended up with a bit of over-rotation back to him (which probably felt weird).
– you can keep the toy in closer to you. He doesn’t need to see it on the original side (he only needs to see connection) and not having to show it to him can help you do the blind quicker.
Great job!
TracyHi! It is great to see you here!!! It has been way too long since the seminars at Christy’s barn.
I think you will find that a lot of games fit well into flyball foundation (or can be easily adjusted for it) because my youngsters are learning flyball too – turns out, it is very addictive!!!
Hamish is adorable! We have a bunch of BWs in this class, including the demo dogs – so fun! And the whippet side of things brings a slightly different thought process to their learning, and that is great. They are pretty incredible.
His forward focus during the ready and throwing part of the game was GREAT! Then yes, your movement and the GO was a definitely “Wait, what?” moment. On the last rep, you dialed back your motion and he had a crazy snappy turn to his right (I am guessing that will be his box turn side based on what he did there, wow!).
That right turn was turning away from you, so to see things in balance you can give him more room on each side to turn towards you, especially on the left turns. He did turn left on the other reps but it was not nearly as snappy as the right turn at the end (even though your physical cue still cued a left turn).
So for now, keep your motion dialed back to let him drive more and more ahead as well. And I bet his latent learning is great and he will sleep on it, and come back to the next session not thinking about your movement at all 🙂
The two toy game went great! You were not doing it wrong at all. You can ramp this up for him to help get the ‘out’ going too – while he is tugging on one toy, you can get quiet, stop tugging… when he relaxes his grip and lets go, then the other toy can come alive for him – that will be great for toy switching (ball to tug, eventually) as well as teaching him to let go of the toy by his own choice 🙂
The back and forth between the bowls looked great too! It is lovely to see that such a tug-driven dog can also eat treats 🙂 Since this went well, start the next session where you left off here and then see if he will offer going to the next bowl before you put a treat in it. If he is happy to do that, you can then add the upright to the game and also (separately) try it with you sitting in a chair so we eventually get him doing it while you are standing.
He did well with the prop game too! He thought it was hard to move away from the treats, so you can start a little more forward and do more of the right turns like you did at the beginning. You can really see the difference between the right turns (very successful) and the left turns (SO HARD) – especially at :24 when you asked for a left turn back to you based on how you sent, and he did a right turn on the flat LOL! Good boy!
So for the left turns, you will want to start very close to the prop so it is very easy at first. The right turns are where you can add distance and the sideways sending pretty quickly – and the left turns will catch up soon!
Great job here! He is so fun!
Tracy
Hi!
This went well!
What was the random object, a tunnel bag? That is a good neutral object for sure and it is definitely novel in that context.
I think this session went really well – her brain got a chance to process the novel-neutral object (even if she didn’t appear to notice it) and you got to practice getting her to your right side. That was definitely harder LOL!!! You can open up your right shoulder to her even more, pointing to her nose with a fully extended arm, to help make it more obvious. The draw to your left side is strong!
You can add the novel- neutral concept to any of the other games. And check out the new “fold it in” game added today!
Great job here!
TracyHi!
>>She goes after food like she has NEVER been fed – and she could NOT believe there was only ONE cookie at a time. Outrageous.>
Ha! She did look stunned that you would only deliver one cookie. I mean, she clearly deserved 40 for each rep 🙂
>I’ll take the drive to handler game outside. throwing cookies in the grass doesn’t work so well for us right now.>
That is perfect! I also teach my dogs how to find treats in the grass by tossing an obvious treat nearby (like a piece of string cheese or Charlie Bear, both easy to see) then BIG rewards when the dog returns their attention to me after finding it. That speeds up the finding it and also helps them learn to NOT look for all the cookie cousins that might be hiding in the grass 🙂
Looking at the sends:
>In this send to object neither one of us was enjoying the “ready dance”. Even I can’t tell what I’m doing here>
For the ready dance – use lots of muscle tension and eye contact, but less swinging/stepping back and forth. I think she was confusing that with the send cue (they do look kind of alike). So for the handler engagement/ready game, you can have tense muscles, bent knees, quiet ready… then a big obvious send.
That also add a bit of arousal and pressure (in a good way) with the goal of the pups learning to self-regulate. She was doing that here: you had a little sniffing at the beginning but then she sorted it out and did great!! By the end you had dialed back the ready dance so there was less similarity to the send and also she was recognizing it as an engagement cue. You can add the backwards sending now!
Since you asked her in the video:
She went around you at 1:24 when you turned forward/away from her to reward – that closed your connection forward and opened up your left shoulder… blind cross cue! She sees everything 🙂 Compare to 1:35 where til kept looking back at her, so she knew which side to be on. Connection for the win!
The long toy was awesome here, look at her tugging!!! And yes, driving ahead is a much easier game if we humans are not worried about where the pup will take the toy LOL! Her forward focus was fabulous 🙂
So you can now throw a little further, and also add your movement. At some point, you will throw far enough that you have to let go of the entire toy, but that is fine: you can grab one end of it and encourage her to bring it back as you move the other way (while also disabling the party of one opportunity :))
Great job here!
TracyHi!
She did lovely job sorting out the wing wraps with you in the chair and an upright there! You helped her by getting the cookies into the bowl quickly, and she then got right into the groove. Yay!
Next session: no chair! You are standing 🙂 And you can break things up more frequently with tugging (every 5 or 6 cookies) so she remains in high arousal and doesn’t go on autopilot 🙂Nice session of drive to handler! You are the only person here who does not need to deliver the cookies lower LOL! She was definitely getting the idea of the decel and driving right into your side. And you were very clear on the pivots and she was lovely with those too – nice and tight to you!
Because she is going to have a large stride, you can decelerate sooner: no later than when she is halfway to you. As she started to run more, the decel will end up being late if you start it when she is within a stride of you.
You can definitely do these on your other now too! Great job!
Tracy
Hi! I have found that Staffy mixes all train like Staffys 🙂
Whippet brains: VERY smart! But also will check out if we don’t have our sh*t together LOL or tell them they were wrong when they were correct. They don’t need to do a zillion reps because of how quickly they learn. But also, latent learning is beyond incredible with them – they might not appear to have learned *anything* in the training session but no worries – they will sleep on it and come back having learned it AND also knowing the next 5 steps. Incredible!
Tracy
Hi! You’ve been busy!!! But great job getting the training in, Spotlight looks great!
Forward focus: He is doing great driving ahead to the toy and even better: bring int back! SUPER!!! His tugging looks great. You can look at him a little more before you release him, to help establish that, yes, the momma will be looking right at you during a forward focus cue and he should look ahead and not back at you.
Interestingly, he turned to his right on all the reps here, even on the reps where he started on your right (which should get a left turn). It could mean that he is a righty, or that you were very close to his line and even a little behind him on the reps starting on your right (reading like a rear cross, he could see you over his right shoulder in his peripheral vision so he turned that way) – or both!
So for the next session – run a parallel line to him and the toy (rather than driving in towards the toy) especially when he is starting on your right – then when you do the FC, peel away more dramatically in the direction of the turn you want (instead of straight back to where you started) to see if you can get him to turn in both directions.
His commitment to the toy is looking great – your FC was starting right as he arrived at the toy. Since that was fun and easy, you can now start the FC and move away *before* he arrives at the toy (maybe 2 feet before it) so he starts seeing countermotion here.
Drive to hand: love your happy dance when bringing him out with the food! Great job getting your hand nice and low to drive to you! We will ignore his fuzz investigation on the fist rep LOL!
Be careful of saying break and moving your hand at the same time – he was moving when the hand moved. You can stay break then after a couple of steps, move your hand into position. Or you can challenge the stay by slowly moving your hand into position, then saying the release.
He did great driving to you with motion! He is a speedy little dude, so decelerate sooner so he can set up the collection for the pivot and be super tight. Your decel was about a step or two before he got to you – you can change the timing to decel when he is no more than halfway to you.
Blind cross foundation – fun! I think he likes the big running!!! And it is great to have a holder to help out 🙂
The ‘halfway rule’ applies here too – do the blind before he gets to the halfway point between his release and you 🙂 And you don’t need to change the toy from hand to hand, that delays the blind a little – you can leave it in the original hand and then open up connection back to him when you do the blind to get the fast side change.
Prop work:
>our prop game which clearly we need to do more of at this level>SPOTLIGHT DEMANDS A BOX OF WINE! Ok, maybe a juice box of wine haha
Actually, I think we are seeing a side preference here and it is in line with what we saw on the toy race video too.
All of the sends at the beginning were to the right turn side and he did great! The left turn side was harder – at :42 he didn’t quite hit it so you didn’t reward – note how he then turned to his right to be able to hit it. He did something similar to that a couple of times – shape the left turn to be able to turn right. Then he slowed down a little and got the mechanics of the left turn – super!
For the backwards sending (and all the sending :)) – take a moment between getting the tug back and sending. It all happened so fast that I think he missed the cue on the first one 🙂 Those were right turns so he figured it out fast. The left turn backwards needed more processing (thus his delayed responses) but he turned left and got the big reward.
Since the dude seems to be telling us he is a righty, you can add the harder stuff going to his right (distance, backwards sends, etc). The left turn skills will lag behind for now – don’t be as far away, do the forward and the sideways but not the backwards yet. And, for the left turns, you don’t need to be as centered on the line to the prop – you can be off-center so finding you will be a more obvious left turn. His left turn skills will catch up to his right turn skills pretty quickly, so then you can handle everything the same way.
Great job here! See ya soon!!
Tracy
Hi! She is so much fun to watch! And you are doing a great job with her!
The wrap bowl game appeared to be Spaniel Heaven! She was so happy to run back and forth between the 2 bowls LOL! Her exuberance might require a small arts & crafts project of taping or gluing rubber to the bottom of the bowl, so she can’t slide them LOL!!
Since she did so well, there are 2 ways to progress this:
– Using just the bowls, you can start to raise your position to work up to standing. You can sit on something low, then in a chair, then stand up. This might all happen in one session because she loves the game so much, or she might have questions about the new position. She will let you know how quickly you can get get to standing, based on how quickly she continues to respond.
– While still sitting, you can introduce the upright to go around. Start the session by refreshing the game to make sure she remembers it, then slide the upright in right in front of you and see how she does. I am betting she will find this VERY easy, so you will be able to start moving the upright away from you very soon.The drive to handler game went great too – she loves to do ANYTHING with you and it really shines through! She was a little wide on first rep (probably because it is a new game and she had to figure it out). The second rep and the reps after that were great because you got her nice and close to your leg. She had no trouble with the pivots either – great job getting your hand really low!!
You can add in moving forward while she is getting the cookie, then showing deceleration before the pivot. You will probably need a long hallway or go this outside to give her room to run 🙂 And my guess is that she will be VERY fast so you will want to decel really early, like no later than when she is halfway to you (or even sooner).
Great job here!!!
Tracy
Hi!
>I used a placed lotus ball wth treats. I need to start fading the MM out of our weave training (we are on 4 2x2s and just added poles 5&6. I think I waited too long to start to fade it, but she is so motivated by the MM).>
It is an easy fade: you can move it a little further away and while it is out there, throw the lotus ball towards it (rather than trigger it). Then keep moving it further away, and throwing the lotus ball to where it used to be. Then you’ll end up with the MM pretty far away and she won’t need it as a target anymore, so you can remove it entirely.
On the first video:
She definitely loves her tug leash! You can shop for a whole bunch of them (I am a bad influence hahaha)>I think my mechanics were not the greatest in this session because I just sent her instead of running with her but letting her get ahead. She wasn’t sure what to do after jump 1. >
Two things that can help:
-more motion from you (you can run forward) and you can start right outside the wing, so you can run on a parallel line without getting caught behind the wing
– and use a ‘get it’ marker as soon as she looks forward to the first jump. That can get her looking for the toy immediately.You used the get it marker when you worked on one jump and she drove directly to the reward.
When you put yourself outside the wing at about 3:20and 4:20, she read the line really well! That set a much better line 🙂
>Hysterically, I think I need a sports bra for tugging! Bwahahaha!>
HA! I admit to only watching her but can totally relate about needing to strap the girls down when I am tugging LOL!!
The leash games are going well! She is really focused on the food in your hand, so you can start having the treats in a pocket so it is less and less in the picture (but still easily accessed as a reward).
She did have trouble letting you pick up the toy after the out for the cookie, but I think you did a great job adding in getting the leash before giving the cookie 🙂
>I really do need to make some progress on her “out”. There is a tiny bit of progress, but she needs to know that I have treats to be reliable.>Two ideas for you:
– if she will out the leash or toy when she sees the treat, you can start to delay the timing of seeing the treat: don’t have it in your hand when cueing the out. You can cue the out and when she even relaxes her grip on the tug, you can reach for the treat. Then when she can do that, you can wait longer: when she lets go of the toy entirely, you can then reach for the treat, or reward her by letting her tug more.– her is another option, using the toy only:
>>Remote reinforcement game question: I have been playing the game indoors and yesterday moved it into the yard where we practice. Is it muddying the picture if I play the “Let’s go” game in the yard, but then after we do 5-6 reps, I put treats in my pockets to then go do sequences?>
No problem at all to do this. Dogs are brilliant and can differentiate the skills and cues very easily. I am guessing she had a great time and had no questions? If she has questions or looks stressed, we can change things but I bet it was easy for her.
>I’m thinking that may be un-doing what we just did.>Not at all! It is just practicing a different skill. It is like practicing collection and extension in the same session: different skills with different cues.
>Should I separate the game from practice for now and then I am anticipating that we will be progressing the game to longer & longer sequences before returning for treats.>I don’t think you need to separate it (plus there are not that many hours in the day to separate it and train things LOL!). Let me know if you are seeing any stress or questions, but I am guessing she is doing really well with the different skills.
>How often do you warm up your dogs at a trial? I have been doing a warm-up before every run since sometimes we have hours between runs.>>
Definitely before every run: full physical and mental warm up. The only exception would be if there is less than 20 minutes between runs.
>Our usual routine is that we take a potty walk and I get her to trot a little to loosen up. We do some warm up exercises inside (sit/stand, down/stand, shake front paws/high fives, tall stetches, spins, side steps). Then we do action ganms while we wait our turn.>
Perfect! Do you do dynamic puppy stretches – cookie on the nose, then luring her nose to her shoulder, to her ribs, to her hip, for example. That is a stretch that my doggie PT people have added for my dogs. And you can add in engaged chill if there is a long wait, and pattern games if the environment is challenging.
Great job here!!
Tracy
