Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Good morning! He is so fun to watch!!!!
His prop game is going well – the Left turns looked great!
When he hits the prop, it moves a bit, so it ends up further away – so when you send him on the right turns, move closer to it. Turning to his right was harder here – he might be more of a lefty than a righty today 🙂 That is pretty normal, so for the next session start nice and close for the reps where he turns right so he can sort out his mechanics. Before doing that, let him ‘sleep’ on this game for a couple of days – latent learning will work its magic and you will see learning without training happen 🙂
The blind crosses look strong – you were connecting down low, which meant he could really see the connection change. To help make the toy mechanics easier, you don’t need to show him the toy on the original side he starts on – they toy can be scrunched up in your hand making it easier to run. Then you can do the blind and show the toy.
He is a fast little dude and getting faster every day… so give yourself more of a head start. Throw the start cookie t least 15 feet away so you have time to do the blind before he catches up to you. When he got it at the last minute or didn’t make the side change, you were a little late so he was correct to change sides – or not change sides.
Finding a treat in the grass might be hard, so you can put a towel down or a mat then toss the cookie on it – that way he has the clear visual of how to find it, and you can have an easy head start 🙂 And with the head start, you can begin the blind before he gets halfway to you so he can make the side change easily.
He did a great job hopping right on the thing for the goat tricks! You can take a heartbeat to get the cookies ready before putting the object down, so that first cookie can happen immediately after your click.
Because he seems so keen to offer behavior – after the first cookie, let him make the next move before you deliver another cookie. You can let him offer more feet on the object, or you can release him with a ‘get it’ and toss a cookie off to the side to see if he will offer driving back to it (I am sure he will :)) Rewarding a lot for not moving while he is on the object will get him standing still and not offering as much, so you can let him offer behavior and see what he does 🙂
Feel free to make a pile of stuff for him to climb around on – lots of opportunities to offer behavior when there is a whole pile 🙂
He was ADORABLE partying in the tunnel at the end!!!!
Great job here!
TracyShe is starting to get further ahead of you here! Yay! You were letting her go without moving as much so she was able to get a step or two head start. You can wait even a little longer so she gets 3 or 4 steps ahead.
Question: how does she feel about food? You can use this game to get her happy to go back and forth between food and toys, as well as get her to release the toy easily, by training for a small soft treat when you want the toy back. So it would be a quick process: throw the toy, let her drive to it, play play play, trade for a cookie so she drops the toy, then throw the toy again. That way you won’t have to pull her collar to get the toy back and she will be happy to release it and start the next rep.
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning and welcome! She is adorable! BorderWhippets are really fun 🙂 Is she your first whippety dog? If so… just a heads up that they train like whippets more than they train like BCs 🙂 But that part of what makes them so fun and brilliant!
She did well with the forward focus game! Try to release her sooner – if you hold her too long, even a couple of seconds, she might lose her train of thought. That is what happened on the 2nd rep (she was looking at your feet for a moment). Now, if you do get to the toy first, you can have a little dance party with it and tease her a little and keep it fun, rather than use an uh oh marker or stopping the game (she is half whippet, you will want to scrub the uh oh marker from your vocabulary LOL!)
Since she is so young and still small, you can dial back your motion for now so she can leave you in the dust more: let her go to the toy without you moving, and then with you only walking. Don’t add any running til she gets miles ahead of you LOL!
Great job 🙂
Tracy
Good morning and welcome!! How is he 10 months already!?! Time is flying!
The driving ahead foundation game looks great: he is focusing forward, you are connected to him, and the best part: he grabs the toy and drives right back to you! Happy dance!!!
Adding motion went brilliantly: his behavior was exactly the same in terms of focusing forward, grabbing the toy, and returning it to you immediately. You were great about connecting too. Many young dogs will bow out when we add running and he was still very straight.
If you want to add a bit of spicy stuff to this: start the like you did here with the motion – and when he is about 2/3rds of the way to the toy, do a front cross and run the other way (back towards where you came). That challenges him to continue to commit to getting his toy even with the countermotion of you running the other way. This really helps with jump commitment! If he struggles with that, you can slow down and do it at a walk at first.
>My running is sad. I’ll work on that. My mind tells my body it is running but video evidence says otherwise>
Ha! Your running is not sad! You did great 😁 Your job is to just keep moving in the right direction. His job is to go fast 🙂
Looking at the drive to handler video – wow, he really collects to your side when he is driving to your right (with the cookie reps). You didn’t have to really decel (you had a consistent fast walk) and he still got right into collection, nice and tight to you.
The toy adds arousal of course, which makes the mechanics of decel harder. You added running when the toy was in play – and he definitely needed to see the decel sooner, so he could prepare the collection. When you decelerated late and pivoted fast, that caused him to go a little wider and not see the side to remain on. So, keep adding the toy to get the arousal -and when he is almost halfway to you, show him a big deceleration so he collects to your side. Then pivot a little more slowly, so he can read the connection and shoulder turn there.
Great job here!!!
Tracy
Good morning!
>>I started using cheerios as suggested, but I don’t think she cares, any treat seems to be motivation for her. She would sell her soul for a treat! She also LOVES the duck jerky from Costco. I’m now using a combination of the two.>>
Sounds good! Have you seen the freeze dried salmon treats from Costco? My dogs are bananas for this!
>>I tell Sadie to “get-it” and then just wait with no interaction except looking at the target. The first couple of times were hilarious. She circled, whimpered, climbed on me, and circled around for at least 1 minute or more. then she sat down with a sad little whine and moved forward and actually touched the target. YAY! good job. two more rounds of this and then it started taking less time and not as vocal on her part. we are calling it a success and we’ll see what tomorrow brings. We haven’t started the games that build off of this one yet.>>
This sounds good! Part of what you are experiencing, I believe, is simply teaching her how to offer behavior when shaping (rather than looking at the food or waiting for help). It sounds like she is getting the idea! Super!!
>>interestingly, she caught onto the nose touch game almost immediately (a large, flat, bright pink lego), >>
Yay! I have found that dogs are natural better at some games than at others, so this sounds like she has an easy time with this one. The lego is a very clever target to use!
>>so I think I will start with that one tomorrow and see if it helps her to connect the dots on the first one. >>
Let me know how it goes – It might get her into offering mode, or it might get her too focused on you hands. She will let us know 🙂
>>She also caught on to the drive forward/focus game almost instantly, but we have basically been playing that game for fun for a while.>>
Fabulous!!!! Keep adding distance so she can run run run 🙂
>>The other games are doing good as well. How long should a training/game session be? There are several to work on but I’m not sure how to break them up or how>
Generally, a session can be less than 2 minutes: short and sweet. And then you can switch to another game. Depending on your daily schedule, you can do a session or two a day so you might end up playing 2 or 3 different games, in very short blasts. And sometimes life is very busy and we only get one training moment in, or don’t get anything done – that is fine too!
Thanks for the update! Keep me posted!
Tracy
>>She likes to smash herself in between the wall and me.>
OMG she is hilarious! Border Collies do create their own interesting versions of this game LOL!!! Too funny!
She is super chill and hangs out by the ring really well. That is a rare treasure LOL especially because she is so driven to work. It would be lovely if she remains like this – but definitely practice the other games where she is doing the slowed down patterns, in case one day she decides that agility is SO EXCITING and needs help chilling by the ring. If that happens, you will already have the game ready to go.
Great job on all of these! She has SO MANY important skills in place and that is why I think doing some NFC with her will be great. The connection and the timing is the hardest part, so you will likely need to overhandle the connection, beyond almost overcorrected and I bet that smooths out the lines a lot.
Tracy
Leash off, engagement on looked great! Her immediate response was to look at you – that is fabulous. You can now start to reward with a leash tug moment or a toy tug moment, as that is more likely to be what you do at a trial or in training scenarios with sequencing.
She was pretty funny – “wait, why are you putting the leash back on?” LOL!! But she did great and was even more excited about it when you brought her into the ring the 2nd time. By the 3rd time, she was not jut looking at you, she as turning to face you. That is great!
This is a game where you can play it as part of anything that involves the leash: leash comes off, party begins 🙂
Great job!!
Tracy
She did an awesome job of working without focusing on the toy and leash on the ground! YAY!!! It is possible that her brain was processing it so she had a few questions, but I mainly think her questions were handling questions here and had nothing to do with the leash/toy.
If you are training with friends or other people around, ask them to pick up the leash and toy, and walk away like a leash runner. That can be mind blowing for young dogs so I want to make sure she sees it happening 🙂
She had two handling questions here:
On the jump after the tunnel, she ran past the jump on the first rep. That was because you were far ahead, running fast, and your arm was high and parallel to you: which blocks connection. So from the blindness of the tunnel, she had no side info when she exited so she just came to you.Compare to the 2nd run where you were not as far ahead and had much better connection, so she got the jump. Super! My only suggestion is to drop your arm further back, pointing to her nose, so she really sees your connection and shoulders.
I grabbed screenshots to show you the difference in the cues (and you can see her head at the tunnel exit on the first one, looking at you for more info);
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r2szUIQU1PYC4Rwq44bbAwkWOdl0QOPz7yq29bNDALc/edit?usp=sharingThe 3rd rep looked like the first rep, but she took the jump – because she had learned the sequence 🙂 So go for maximum clarity of connection on that first rep of each sequence, so she can give you honest feedback without saving you 🙂
Her other question was at 1:46, where she took the backside of 1 instead of the front. I think you had her lined up facing the backside and stepped to it when you let her go, plus her position a little too close to the frontside so that would have been a hard takeoff spot for such a fast dog. No need to stop for that – when that happens, assumed you pushed the line there and keep going (double check the video to confirm :))
Great job here!
TracyHi! Moving slowly when a speeding beast is coming at us is HARD for sure! You might have to change your self-talk in the moment. Something like: FAST! Sloooooowwwwwwww rotate. Or run carrying an open water bottle – being splashed (on top of my head) cured me of moving too fast and got me to slow down :)) Give yourself permission to be a little late, and a little behind, because the decel and connection major for her 🙂
T
Good morning!
>>this was probably a result of 1 rep too many. He does let me know when he’s getting bored, so I keep mixing it up.>>
That might be the case for sure – arousal level drops when there are too many reps of the same thing, causing errors. So you can do something different on each rep to keep him pumped up.
Very clever set up with the cavalettis to maximize your space!!! He did great and the MM at the end was very helpful. Sine he did pretty perfectly here, a few ideas to mix it up and add challenge in this setup:
– if there is room, add a wing wrap with your starting right next to him before the Go line so you are even further behind him (you can take out a cavaletti to give the wing a bit of room, if needded).
– you can be moving up the line walking so he gets used to you driving ahead with motion. You can do this fro behind him like yo were here, and you can also use that wing wrap to get more of a head start and see if he will drive past you
– you can add distance by using fewer cavalettis to build up as much distance as possible.
– you can begin fading the MM in two ways: leaving it where it is as a visual aid, but throwing a toy (lotus ball) as the reward while he is still looking forward. Or you can start to move it further and further back (hide it in the landscaping LOL!) so it is a lot less visible and click it when he is driving ahead (or throw the lotus ball).
Great job here!!
Tracy
Got it! If my memory is correct: he is the former Einstein, and a son of Camper and Munchkin.
My Elektra (the small black and white demo dog in the videos here) is also a Camper pup, so Max and Elektra are half siblings. And my Hot Sauce (the black terrier mix who shows up in some of the videos) is also from Julie Tune. She is not related to Camper but might be related to Munchkin!
Have fun!
TracyGood morning!
>>I love that he is starting off working for both food and toys and able to switch between the two – both ways. I try to continue to use and offer both with some changes during training sessions. So far, so good!>
I agree – it is fabulous to see him working for food and toys in the same session!!!! You might see some shifting balance for that as he grows up, but we can increase the value of the food or toy if one or the other becomes more exciting.
On the prop game: remember to add your ready dance to help get him ready for each rep – that helps to get the arousal level high so he is ready for the cue and snappy responses.
On the first couple of sends, you were pretty close to the prop and sending him with the sideways send to a right turn. Lovely! Very strong prop hits! Stay close to the prop and now add the backwards sending to the right turn.
When you changed sides, you were further away (might have been too far) and when he did touch the prop… he turned to his right even though your position would indicate a left turn. Aha! We might be seeing that he is a righty! That is good to know.
So on the harder side (left turn side), start really close and give a big ready dance moment – then send and see if he can turn to his left. If he turns to his right – reward him anyway, because he doesn’t know we want a left turn and he might not even really know how to set up the left turn yet 🙂 So rather than withhold reward, we can change your position – send him to the left turn and then peel away in the direction of the left turn, on of 90 degree angle so you are almost moving on an L shaped line. That can help him sort it out.
Let me know how he does with the left turns! Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>>I forgot how much fun it is to train a dog who is actually nuts about food. AND, I’ve never had one who so easily took to switching back and forth from food to toys. >
I agree – she is so fun! And what a gem to be able to go back and forth between food and toys so easily, that is an unusual skill and SO LOVELY!!!
She did great with offering behavior on the thing here! One suggestion for the mechanics: have the cookies ready before the object goes to the ground – you can tuck the toy into an armpit, grab treats from the pocket, then plop the object down. That way can reward the very first interaction.
Feel free to create a pile of things for her to get on and offer behavior on. That will mean you can’t carry them, so you can set it up then bring her into the area with the toy, then switch to food for the quick rewards.
>Our tug and toy skills still need a lot of work – just getting back to it now that all the baby teeth are gone.>
I think you are doing great with the toy stuff! You are both happy and relaxed while playing.
Since she goes back and forth from food to toys so easily, you can reward the “out” of the toy with a tossed treat – partially to reward the out, and partially to give her something to do other than jump up for the toy when you are moving it away.
You can also tie a couple of toys together to make one long toy – that will allow her to tug on it more easily because you can keep the end of the toy on the ground more. And that way you don’t have to bend over as much 🙂
Great job there!!
Tracy
Good morning!
Seeing you outside standing shows how small she is! I love it! I want to meet her in Florida!!!!
>>I did notice with her what you had mentioned about the pups not wanting their collar grabbed and tried to just orient to her like you said. >>
Perfect! And adding all of the goofy line up games, gentle collar touches, and quick releases to a toy or treat will really help too.
>I just started teaching her to target her neck/collar/harness to my hand on cue for this (more for emergency recapture when hiking off leash, but would work for this as well), but it’s not quite ready for this scenario yet. >>
This is great! I think the targeting to your hand and the line up games will come together pretty quickly so that you will see her offering her collar and harness a lot more. I also teach my dogs to line up for other people – and can use that in emergency situations too. I can call them to line up for me (fun fun!) and send them to line up for others (more fun! And less running for me LOL!)
On the video – her driving to the toy is really strong. Yay! She turned to her right on all of these reps, even when you started with her on your right side which should indicate a left turn to you. So when she starts on your right, throw the toy more directly in front of her so when you let go, you are a little further away from her laterally. And you can stay on that parallel line to her (rather than running towards the toy) – that way as she is arriving to the toy, you can peel away to your left more dramatically to really encourage the left turn. If you are too close to her when driving to the toy, the pressure on the line might be supporting the right turn and it is also possible that she can see you behind her, almost like a rear cross cue. So we can exaggerate the movement to encourage her to turn left.
If she turns to her right, keep rewarding her (no need to frustrate her or use a neg punishment on a behavior she probably doesn’t even know she is doing) and we can change the game a little more to get the left turn.
For the collar grabby stuff, you make really nice adjustments here. Great job reading the situation immediately.
You started with moving her into you by the collar on the first rep. On the second rep you got a bit of the backing away. It could be the higher arousal level (dogs tend to want to be touched less as the arousal level increases) or she she is backing away to look at your more (expanding her field of vision, not surprising for a sighthound mix). At 1:03 you lined yourself up more as opposed to moving her around and she seemed happy with that! And a cookie line up works really well at 1:29! Super!!!
>>Got a little more keep away with the toy than I’d like, she’s usually not bad about it, but this was a brand new toy she’d never had before, so of COURSE it was super high value!>
Yes! High value, and also I think she was doing a big of environmental exploration while she was romping with the toy (she was looking around). It is also possible she was taking a decompression moment, which is totally fine because there is a bit of pressure in this game.
A couple of ideas:
Have a big huge long party when she does bring it back – you had a short party 😁 and got calm pretty quickly by getting low and not tugging as much then getting the toy back. So you can get low to help her come back, then get back up and play and let her chase your and tug and get a bit wild again 🙂 And if she doesn’t take the toy on a romp like at 1:40, yo can make an even bigger party out of it! And if she does go on a quick romp, you can reward with a 2nd toy for when she gets back to you – a big surprise party like that will make an impact for sure! I like to pull out the 2nd toy just as the pup is arriving at me, rather than pulling it out during the romp.
You can also help guide the decompression by sending her to it: I use a ‘go for a run’ cue with the toy to let the dogs have a release from the session to decompress. Sometimes they don’t need to decompress and won’t go for the run, and that is great info!
>I tried to do some decel coming into the handler work, but got mixed up which hand you wanted us to reward with (from the blind cross exercise) and it was super sloppy.>
Ah yes, the mechanics of the blind cross stuff are probably weird feeling at first, but are great for opening up the connection. For the decel, it is mainly dog-side hand 🙂
>> Also tried some work with the prop game but she’s never played that outside and it blew her mind. >>
I bet you that it was just a typical sighthoundy session and that if she sleeps on it for a day or two, she will come back knowing the behavior. Let me know if you have a chance to try it again!
>Will see if we get a chance to do anything at the Open or if we will just have to catch up after we get back. Sigh. So much to do with a puppy!>
That is the TRUTH!!! You might be able to squeeze in a thing or two, but if not, no worries, plenty of time when you get bcack.
Great job here! Safe travels!
Tracy
Good morning!
>I really appreciate the insight about “appearing” ready to train but really not in the right brain space for it- soooo important for me to remember.>
Yes – being present in the moment with us does not mean the baby dog brain will be receptive to learning or working in that moment 🙂
He did great with the 2 bowls. Note how he moves better towards your left side and his questions were more about moving towards your right side. This could be indicating his side preference, or that you’ve got a lot of value on your left side and not as much on your right side. Or both 🙂 So we will keep balancing that to see what his actual side preference is (and use that in training while also balancing things so he can work equally well in both directions).
>>He stares at my hands, a LOT.>
Yes, maybe because cookies are LIFE! LOL!!! So you can add the next step of this game: in the next session, do a quick refresher of plopping the treats in the bowl to re-establish the rhythm and pattern. Then slow things down and let him start offering going back to the next bowl. That will require taking his eyes off of your hands, which will be very helpful!
>>Checkers reminded me that he’s a vermin hunting dog and he REALLY LIKES FUR LOL. Anyways he was really able to go to that toy much easier. You’ll see I also got right down on the ground with him to make it super exciting LOL.>
That was GREAT!!!!!!! He is a murderer at heart, like my whippets and lurchers LOL!! I can hook you up with the long furry whippet toys – I think he will love those as much as he loves food 🙂
On the prop game:
>I really should’ve stopped sooner- I feel like his best reps were in the first half.>
This was a very informative session and that is why we do these games with the random prop at first – to sort out the needs of the dog in training and get our mechanics going 🙂
Great job getting engagement with the ready game at the beginning!!! He really engaged!
The first few sends after that were really strong. Yes, he was looking at your hand a bit but that is part of this game – he also had plenty of reps where he looked directly at the prop and smacked it 🙂
To get more of that – start a little closer to the prop. Maybe 3 feet away for now, maximum. You started a little far away so he went to the prop but didn’t always touch it.
About halfway through, you changed from the ready dance game to a smack-da-baby game…
I am not sure that he loves the hand play or being tapped while working – he backed off a whole lot between :47 :58 when you did that and then was tentative when you tried the sending again. Then he did well when you reset the prop but didn’t touch him.
That is FABULOUS info – he likes the hands-free ready dance. But does not like to be touched or patted in that moment. And that is fine – you can stick with the ready dance and not touch him 🙂
To play and praise, you can use the toy after every couple of treats to replace the smack da baby moment. That is very engaging for him!
>>In hindsight I wonder if I should’ve used a reset cookie on the reps I didn’t reward to try to limit frustration/confusion?>>
I think it is OK to not reward every single thing because the non-reward moments can be just as information-filled as the reward moments. But there is a line to balance, because too many failures/non-rewards can have fallout in terms of frustration/stress.
Try to live by the 2 failure rule: if you do not reward a behavior, that is a caution light that maybe it is too hard. But you don’t need to change anything yet (unless the dog looks stressed, which was not the case here). If you don’t reward twice? Then time to change something and make it easier to get success (or end the session so there are no more failures). And this is not twice in a row – it is twice, total for the session. That will help create a high ate of reinforcement while also making sure we continue to make progress towards the goal behavior.
>>he’s SO DANG HAPPY ALL THE TIME, I love watching his videos back, it makes me happy. I love this puppy>>
I agree! He is amazing and fun and brilliant!!! You’re doing a great job!
Tracy
