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OMG! Maybe she has some whippet in her? They can be vocally dramatic LOL!!! But that is perfectly fine, I like for dogs to be communicative 🙂
Tracy
Hi!
>> I’ve been reading and watching and do understand the value – just haven’t made myself use them yet! I trust you’ll keep reminding me 🙂>>
Yes 🙂 We add them early on in small doses, mainly to train the humans 🙂
>>She’s SO eager to “do stuff” and is more confident than any dog we’ve had in many years.>>
That is awesome! I have found the field bred cockers to be happy dogs that just love love love to do whatever we would like them to do. Super fun!!!!
>>She does get scared/startled occasionally (and when it happens everyone in the world can hear her!), but she recovers really quickly.>>
That is pretty normal – the resilience games will help that for sure.
>> And, she thinks the entire world and all the people in it are just here for her – a trait I admire in any dog 🙂>>
She is so cute and charming, that it is easy to admire her!
>> Most importantly to me…..we are successfully switching back and forth between toy and food!>>
Perfect! We will protect that for sure 🙂
>
OMG she is so cute and your yard is gorgeous! Feel free to post these happy-making videos any time!!!! Especially that joyous leap at the end 🙂
I am excited to see more of Jett!
Tracy
Skizzle is so adorable!!! He did a great job with the nose target! He had to process a little with Miss Ada supervising but he worked through it really well!
The next step to this would be to do it with you sitting in a chair, so we starting moving you off the ground but still keeping the target low enough that he can hit it.
And yes, add the get it marker (adding it this early is partially to train us humans LOL!!)
>>>Do you mean mat work where he gets on a mat to relax?
Yes – to relax, or as a place to wait – though that is already morphing into lying down on the mat, enough that this foot-touch can be different.>>If he thinks the prop and the mat might be too similar (he starts offering relaxing on the prop :)) then you can change the prop to something silly that is unrelated, like a shoe or hat or something. He is very clever and it won’t take long at all to transfer the value to something that is not mat-like 🙂
Great job!
TracyWelcome home! Baby Storm looks great!!
He did great here, sorting out the targeting! He was trying to figure out eactly what to do with the hat 🙂 To get more smacking of the hat target, 2 ideas for you:
– start each session by having everything ready (treats, your position, puppy, etc) then as the last thing… place the hat down. He will of course be drawn to it, which will give you a good jump start for the first reward.
– then first few rewards can be delivered right on the hat rather than tossed to the side. Then you can do a reset cookie with a get it marker, and click/place the cookie right on the hat. When you see him driving back to smack it very distinctly, then you can fade out placing the treat right on the hat and use a ‘get it’ marker to toss each reward.
Great job here!!! I am excited to see more of him here and in person!!
Tracy
Hello and welcome! I am excited to see you here! My first agility dogs were Dalmatians (Pierce and Samson) so the breed holds a special place in my heart!
Nils is gorgeous!!! He is a fantastic worker and I agree, he has huge potential for agility and the other sports you are planning.
He definitely loves his toy – you can tie a few toys together to get one longer toy (or buy a longer toy LOL!) because he wanted to tug but was being extra careful about your hands, so was backing off the tugging. That is very polite of him to care about your flesh LOL!! A longer toy will help him get into the game without any accidental hand grabbing.
The hand targeting is looking great – he will drive to it more directly if you look at the target and not at his cute face 🙂 When you looked at him, he tends to look back at you so shifting your gaze to the target should shift his focus to it as well.
The only other thing to add for now is a marker for the tossed treat – I say ‘get it’ which means “that is correct, the treat is being thrown”. It helps us build up the marker to use in other situations as well.
The foot targeting is also going super well! You probably don’t need the mouth click and the yes – you can use just the get it because that covers both bases.
Great job on these! I am excited to see him build on them!
Tracy
Hi!
Grace is adorable! She is a great little tugger too!! You can tie a bunch of toys together to get one long huge toy, so you can still tug while you are standing.
>>Is there any reason you are not using a clicker or marker word with Ramen?
I was using a ‘get it’ marker to indicate that he was correct and also that the treat would be tossed. No need for a clicker because the marker covers all of that and more. Plus it is one less thing to have in my hand 🙂 Plus, dogs tend to look at us after a click and I want them to keep looking at the target here.
You can use the marker in conjunction with the clicker here – click like you did when she got her cute little feet touching the prop, then say “get it” and toss the cookie. Or, you can ditch the clicker entirely and just do the marker – because she is so little, we definitely don’t want her looking at you 🙂
You were using a yes for the hand target and that went well too! You can add a ‘get it’ hjere too for when you toss the treat. For this game, you can also move to sitting in a chair so we start to get you off the ground while keeping your hand accessible to her nose 🙂
Great job here!
TracyHi!
She is so fun!!!! She is a great size too! I love her tail 🙂
Her foot hits to the target hat were great – even though she is a small Berner, it is possible that the hat will end up being too small for her lorg feets 🙂 So you might consider attaching it to something bigger like a mat or another hat 🙂 so it is easy to touch when we add more speed.
Your clicks were really strong! The only suggestion here is to add a marker for the treat, so she knows where to look for it (like a “get it” marker because you were tossing it).
She was hitting the nose target really well and you were already getting the reward delivery in strike a pose position 🙂 You can toss a treat away to reset her so she leaves to get the treat and comes driving bacfk to the target. She is very clever and she saw no reason to move away from the target LOL so the reset cookie will help her drive in from different angles. And ditching the clicker is perfectly fine – we can use verbal markers too.
Great job here! I am looking forward to seeing her play all these games!
Tracy
Hello and welcome!!! Judge looks like such a cool dog (and great name too :))
The foot target pre-game is lokoing really good. I love how he was getting faster and faster with each rep!! The only thing I would add here is your ‘treat is tossed ahead’ marker (I say get it for that) so he keeps looking forward and not at you.
We might also consider making that target bigger at some point as we add more motion, because he has big feet already and has more growing to do 🙂 If it is too small, he might have trouble hitting it easily.
Hand target – he was touching it really well, then looking at you more and more, for 2 reasons:
– the hand with the target was right in front of you
– the cookies were in the clicker hand so you were delayed in delivering them. He was sitting in front and looking at you when he got the treat, so that built in more looking at you and less direct targeting.To help him look at the target more, you can hold it out further from you (arm extended away, elbow locked) and you look at it to help guide his gaze to it. And then when he hits it, you can either quickly bring the cookie over to the target and deliver it, or you can toss the treat away to reset for the next rep. That will be a lot easier if you don’t also have the clicker, so feel free to ditch the clicker and just use your verbal markers.
Great job here! I am excited to see more!!!!
Tracy
Good morning! Both of these videos look great!!
On the foot targeting – he was really hitting it beautifully. The only thing to add is a marker that tells him that the treat will be tossed away, so he looks forward for it and not at you. I use “get it” for that. And you can even replace the clicker with the get it marker (say get it when he hits the target and toss the treat) which can be even easier for us humans, and keeps him looking forward.
He was also great with the hand target! He backed up to look at you a few times – he might have been trying to make eye contact, or he might have been offering backing up if you’ve taught him that 😀 Either way, if you change where you are looking from his cute face to the target, that will help him understand that it is the target you want. And you can use the get it marker here too!
Great job here!
TracyThe puppy sounds fantastic!!!!! And I love her name ❤️ I’m looking forward to seeing what she is famous for 😀
Tracy
He was such a good boy in these!!!! Yay!!! The Grounders runs were definitely easier for him- the value for the hoops, barrels, tunnels are high so he found the lines really well. I’m impressed with how he found the long lines to the end! Wow!!
He’s young still, so the value for jumps is not quite ready for trials yet, which is why he had more trouble in Jumpers. No worries, we can bring up the value for the jumps as he gets more experienced, and he can keep doing Grounders (and maybe Tunnelers 😀 ) for now.
We can also work on a start line stay more – right now it looks like he takes off as soon as the leash is off. He’s already speedy and going to get even faster, so we can definitely get him to stay so you can have a head start. For now it can be as simple as he stays next to you when the leash comes off (check out the new Leash Off Engagement On game from yesterday) so you are not behind him at the start, you can start with him.
Great job!
TracyGood morning! Congrats on a wonderful debut! The videos are marked as private – can you make them unlisted so Youtube will let me see them?
>>It was a double (or quadruple) challenge as I was the trial secretary and decorations chair. I ran my PWD, my trainers dog on Friday, debuted Wayne , and I don’t think I told you about my new puppy ( I may have officially lost my mind!)>>
OMG! That is busy! And yes, I want to hear about your new puppy and no, you have not lost your mind LOL!!!!
>> Since he is only 15 months we haven’t done much jump work and I don’t (yet) have jumps at home.>>
That would explain why jumpers was harder 🙂 Age plus lack of experience. No worries! You can stick to things like grounders or tunnelers which are easier for youngsters and also insanely fun fun fun!!! That will make jumper much easier when he is more ready for it.
Tracy
Good morning!
>>So how long does this “teenage/my brain parts don’t talk/things are super hard for me” stage last again?>>
For smaller dogs/herding breeds/females, maybe til they are 2 or so? There is no black and white line of course so you will see more and more maturity as she approaches 2. I feel like we need a support group.
>– Tug & agility is super hard – tug-1 rep of something easy – tug – stop (and decompress)>
Yes – it is hard, it might not be all that reinforcing or motivating all the time for her, and also it is not all that important 🙂 What is important is using a high value motivator and being really engaging with it. It doesn’t matter if it is a toy or not – many of the highest level dogs are doing it for food 🙂
>– Food & agility is hard but not as hard as tug rewards – volume dial (with barking & movement to amp her up) – up to 3 reps – stop (and decompress) – >>
I don’t think food and agility is hard – I think arousal regulation is hard, and food is always motivating for her (I can relate, it is always motivating for me too 🤣😂). So a less-is-more approach is great – 30 seconds, then be done, and mix in decompression.
>If I lose her behind me, try to keep going since it was no doubt caused by me disconneting. Lotus tug (with food) is between the two so maybe one or 2 reps with that?>
And you can also mix in a ton of simple take-what-is-in-front-of-you-lines (revisiting the lazy game :)) so that the balance of value can shift out to getting on lines and less on handler focus. That plus throwing rewards in a variable way on the lines will really help her stay on the line even if connection gets softer. Plus, experience will help too!
>– The more that we can do with getting her arousal up, doing a thing (or two/three) and then decompressing down again without any leaping lizard episodes, the better and eventually this will help build her resilience.
Yes, and arousal regulation so that resilience is not really needed. But you can do this less in agility and more in shaping games, tricks, etc. Get her physiology rehearsing it before adding things that can be frustrating (handler error for example). Agility is inherently unpredictable for dogs, so rehearsing the physiology resilience “flex” while doing unpredictable agility might be “lumping” when I bet she does better if we split out that rehearsal from agility sequences.
>> (and when her brains do finally start talking to each other again, that framework will be in place to do more stuff eventually)>>
100% yes 🙂
>– Lots more neutral pattern games/ general decompression (bully stick chewing, shredding cardboad, sniffy walks where nothing exciting happens (like dogs lunging at her or bikes flying by out of nowhere), napping, playing with Kaladin (usually), and snuffle mats/treat scatters all work for her)>Yes – adolescence is definitely a less-is-more time of life for dogs. And that is hard, because that is when we are supposed to be ramping up all of their training to debut them at 18 months, right?!?!?! LOL!!! Nope. I have had a MUCH easier time with the last 4 dogs by just waiting to ramp it up and not debuting them til they were older than 2. It was soooooo much easier than when I was trying to debut closer to 18 months. Those 6-8 months make a huge difference in their development.
>– She needs at least day off between hard things>Yes – a weekly/monthly calendar is a real godsend at this stage (see below)
>1) Does it make sense to do very many in-person classes at this point? Or do I keep adding them in (maybe every other week?) but plan on using treat rewards for a while until I can get more consistent good results with a toy at home?>
I think getting her into classes and letting her have a super grand fun time is GREAT! Yes, you can do a bit of tugging if she wants to but you can also use super high value food and food carrier toys and she will do great!
About toy play: if we take the pressure off toy play, you will see it blossom. She doesn’t need to play with toys to be one of the fastest dogs in the ring! She needs understanding and love of the game, which can be accomplished with food (many high level things have been won by foodie dogs in agility, and I found out yesterday that one of the fastest flyball times ever run by a 4 dog team was done with 3 of those dogs running for food! So you if you keep the toy as a “hey let’s party!” And build value and understanding with food, then the 2 motivators will meld together in a way that works super well for you both.
>2) Where do things like her RDW foundations (going nowhere very fast and soon to be slower since I have a week before I leave for the Open and then we’ll probably have snow when I get back) or short teeter sessions fit in? Is that more like a harder agility sequence so should alternate with those? 3) Does it make sense to substitute in a jump grid session (dragging the lotus tug) instead of a short sequence session?>
A calendar will help! Yes, you can do a jump grid session mixed in once a week, or run her through a grid 5 times, take a break, do a 2 minute sequence session, be done. Then a couple of days off from jumping and focus on a RDW session. Or do a one-hit-wonder teeter moment for her entire meal. For a while, I was doing a morning single teeter rep for an entire breakfast every day or so with Elektra (who was afraid of the teeter) and that might have bene her entire training for the day, depending on the insanity of life 🙂 Maturity is our friend, so we don’t need to push too hard right now.
>4) Thoughts on whether I should try 1 rep with a toy and then do a treat scatter and switch to another rep with food? (after getting success with 1 rep with toy & quit)>
I think that puts too much pressure on the toy. You can toss it around as a goofy game before a session then put it away and do a food session. Keep the toy compartmentalized as the party and not the work 🙂 and the food can remain as the work for now, because it is incredibly motivating for her.
>5) Does it make any sense to consider an NFC run before I have a more solid toy (not lotus tug) reward behavior in place? >>She will let us know and absolutely yes, you can do NFC without toys. There are many dogs who don’t find toys interesting at all, so we focus more on the remote reinforcement games and less on toy play. Does Lift like to play with a ball or frisbee? It would be fun to play with those separately (dead ball retrieves, or frisbee rollers) because that might be fun and you can use those in the ring.
>Sure I could probably have her ready to do the food reward box sooner, but not sure I want to do that and then try to introduce the toy in the ring after that. >
I think that would be fine – running for food, then running for a toy later on, totally can work! It would rely on her understanding of remote reinforcement (she is doing well with that!) and how motivating the toy is (or not).
>6) Can I use pattern games to help get her back if she’s lost her puppy marbles? >>Absolutely! You can use them in training (ideally before she loses her marbles LOL!) and you can use them in life also ideally if you see something that is really hard for her, or if something surprising happens and you need to help her out.
>I kept moving her further away and when she finally glanced sort of at me, I tossed a treat and moved into a pattern game.>
You don’t need to wait for her to look at you to start the pattern game – sometimes she will be unable to do this because the challenge is too difficult. It is perfectly great for you to recognize the moment and start the game (you can put a meatball on her nose to be like “pattern game time!”).
>> Her latency sucked at first even with moving further away, but then she got into it and eventually I was able to walk her past the playing dogs at a distance and got some good responses to trick cues)>
Great! The high latency at first is normal and then responses get faster as the arousal gets regulated. You don’t even need to ask for tricks (as those can increase arousal again), you can do the patterns then just decompress and end the session.
>She was such a trooper around my young nephews too. Made the 6yr old’s day when she agreed to sit on his lap next to me (with cheese as a reward).>That is so great!!!
>The flight home was hard for her. She had puppy Xanax before both flights and was very calm/napping the whole time on the way out. Started out that way on the way back, but had a bit of a puppy panic attack when the engines revved for takeoff (it was especially noisy and vibrated alot). >
Poor girlie! I can relate to this too – flying is scary even with Xanax on board! But I am glad she was able to settle down and have a good flight after that. The neuroscience vet people say the it can take 72 hours or longer (up to 3 weeks EEK!) for the body to return to baseline after a trip like that, so having a chill few days will definitely help 🙂
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
The lazy games are going well! One thing to add when you revisit these are the errors that you commonly make. I commonly disconnect and fling my arms around, so I show all of that while playing the lazy game 🙂 Be a sucky handler LOL!! You were good here in terms of not helping too much, but you can help less and even deliberately flinging arms or disconnecting. Just stay close enough to the jumps so that he has an easy choice to take them.
And since he is young, you can revisit this regularly to maintain the balance of line focus and handler focus (because that shifts a lot at this stage).
He did well with the leash game – you made the loop nice and big so it was super easy to get it on him – and he very quickly started shoving his own head through. I love it! You can keep luring it to start in different environment (and in daily life) so you will see him doing it easily everywhere.
When you made it a lot smaller, he was not as sure, so going back to the big loop was perfect. That loop can stay super big for as long as needed (or forever :))
>>I think this might be our best thing to teach for end of run since I don’t want him to come down from that competition high instantly just because he doesn’t enjoy being leashed. Or worse, have him feel like it’s a punishment!>>
I agree! Making the end of the run as fun as possible is really key for youngsters, so the entire ring experience is really positive for them.
Great job here!Tracy
Good morning!
Poor Taq, I hope the hives are gone!!!
>>I was pretty disappointed that she did not want to run here.
I read this before watching the video, so I was prepared to see her not running or being super duper slow, or worried, or maybe hormonal, or……. And we were going to make a plan to work through, not worry about it, etc.
Nope! It was actually really good and you made good decisions. What you saw was just her brain processing. She wanted to run, she stuck with the games nicely, but the environment offered some big challenges that her brain needed to process. It probably did not feel great in the moment but as an independent eye watching it, I can tell you that she did great 🙂 Nothing disappointing here, and nothing to worry about.
>I tried to pivot to easier things but still felt like she was dragging.>
The easier stuff was brilliant dog training. She wasn’t dragging – what you were seeing were just responses with slightly higher latency because of the environment, plus because of the environment (more on that below) she needed BIG obvious handling cues – if you were too subtle, she couldn’t quite filter it through the other things her brain was filtering.
Video 1 – this environment is actually a lot harder than it might look: other dog smells, much more enclosed than she is used to in the agility context, trees, plants, etc. Plus, it didn’t have the excitement of an agility trial to help raise her arousla (and higher arousal states help filter out distractions).
She did fine sorting it out, and I think what we are mainly seeing a reward hierarchy: ball – food – tug toy, in that order in this moment (although higher value food might override the tug toy.
The handling went pretty well – her brain is processing a lot of different things so you can be really big with the cue and hold them longer, because commitment is not as strong when the brain is occupied sorting out other distractions too.
Right as I was typing that you can use pattern games to help her acclimate to the new environment – the 2nd video was pattern games and she looked great! You can take her on a pattern game tour of a new environment to help the brain process more of it too.
Video 3 was some play mixed in with the sequence and that went great!
The handling blooper moments were mainly when you were being subtle with the cues or move away sooner. Try to hold your positions longer (even if you are late in the handling) to really support commitment in new places.
Video 4 started with a bit of turn and burn on a jump for a toy: super fun!!
Then there were some banging noises in the background and she did great – I am sure her brain had to process that but she stuck with the game really well. She needed bigger more obvious connection here to break through the banging noise distraction – she didn’t seem worried, it is more like her brain was trying to multitask and brains are not good at multitasking 🙂
In the moment you might not have noticed the banging (adult human brains are probably experienced with not having to devote energy to processing that) but if you listen to the video, you can hear it nice and loud! And sawing noises or something like that.
And teenage Farmdog brains are NOT used to that so I am sure her brain was devoting bandwidth to processing it along with the other new things in the environment. So that meant the sequence work was not quite as brilliant as it is at home – but she still did really well!The last video was wings and the tunnel and that was great! You can hear a loud BANG as she wrapped the first wing, then sawing then sawing AND banging LOL That requires a lot of brain bandwidth so having the easier agility skills gave her brain room to deal with both very successfully 🙂
So overall – I think the challenge you had hear was more about the new environment and then as she settled into that – the banging/sawing were dividing her attention a bit. That is probably why she felt a little sticky, a little draggy – divided attentional state as her brain processed the experience of the noises. But she worked through it brilliantly and I am sure latent learning is cementing the experience as a positive one.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
