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Hello!
She did find this challenging! She figured out that hitting it with a front foot got the cookies to come out of the MM but she looked startled by the movement or sound (or both) each time. She was motivated to keep trying 🙂 so for the next session we can split the behavior more. To do that, stuff a bunch of towels under the wobble board. That way it only moves a tiny bit and only makes a little bit of noise. When she has a couple of sessions where she smacks it happily and offers more than one foot, then we can start fading the towels out from under it.
Nice work here!
Tracy
Good morning!
He did great with the lazy game – he seemed a little shocked about how easy it was 🙂 But he was finding the jumps really well without a lot of help from you in terms of having to be perfect in handling or connection. This is basically an anti-perfect game: please find the jumps even if we humans are not perfect 🙂
I am also really happy with his enagement because it is kind of a ‘boring’ game in terms of rewarding, but he never got lost to the birds or leaves or smells in the environment.
>After I did this I put a toy and in my hand and he took all 3 jumps easily…more motivating for him I think.>
Yes, I can totally see how the toy would be more exciting 🙂
Since this went so well, you can keep increasing the distances and also add in steps 2 and 3.>Are you counting the lazy game as “jumping” work? Just so I know for repetitions.>
Yes – even with the low bars, he is still jumping.
Looking at the plank games:
I think this might be the first time outdoors with the plank? He offered a ton of lovely behavior on the first video – lots of getting on, trotting back and forth, no questions at all. And his footwork and balanced stayed lovely even after the tugging which increases arousal. He got faster on some of the reps there.
Turning around on the plank also went really well. You can add in position changes like stand to down to stand, or sit to stand without moving his front feet 🙂
Since this went really well, the next step is to elevate the plank. So you have cinderblocks or anything that are stable enough to support the plank 6 inches or so off the ground?
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
This first lazy session went GREAT!! She was working hard to solve the ‘puzzle’ and she did a terrific job!
Yes – if she is not sure or misses a jump, keep moving around the line and reward her for taking the jump. You nailed that at the beginning of the first video. It gave direct and specific feedback on what gets the cookie versus what does not get the cookie, in a way that seemed to make perfect sense to her. She figured it out brilliantly here! You can use verbal markers for the cookies tosses like a ‘get it’ (you might have been using quiet ones) or you can keep being lazy hahaSession 2 – also went great – she was driving even more than session 1. She was having to find the middle jump by driving ahead and had a couple of questions about it, but worked through the questions. Jazz really likes this “figure it out, kiddo” approach LOL!
The Jack and Jazz tandem combo was HILARIOUS and also useful! Jack was like “what the heck is happening here” but you gave him cookies anyway which was perfect. As you noted, Jazz seemed to be feeling competitive and took her skills to a higher level: fast and finding the jumps! YAY!! She missed the middle jump on the first round – right turn, or she was figuring out why Jack was there? Hard to know til the next time you try it. The other reps looked great 🙂
If you wanted to use this tandem poodle concept without a tunnel, you can add a 4th jump instead of the tunnel or even a cone or wing. It looks like she was very successful! This competition for reward and a little bit of jealousy does change performance – there are some interesting studies!
Have you seen this clip from one of the studies? I feel like Jazz is the monkey who is getting the cucumbers LOL! Look at how fast that monkey delivered the rock on the 2nd rep at :18!
>Things I noticed: 1) work on “handling” this from more of a stand still, rewarding more often between the individual jumps, rather than “sending” her and rewarding at the end.>
Yes, rewards spread out everywhere on the line will be very useful! Jazz always likes these puzzles so we can keep the rewards as surprising as possible without being too predictable. We humans are very predictable, according to dogs LOL!!
>2) Definitely is still hesitating with the right turns. We have an appointment with a soft tissue specialist here in Sacto on Thursday.>
Thursday as in today, or next week? Fingers cross for easy answers!
> I also plan to follow up with Dr. Canapp after that.
If needed, I can help get you in – I’ve been working on the podcast project with him as you know, so I can ask him directly. Hopefully you won’t need it at all!
>I’m not sure if I’ve posted these as you outlined in the course intro info so if changes need to be made, let me know. >
No changes! This is great – short, fast, fun sessions with limited jumping even though they are only jump bumps. We have reached the training stage where we get hyper-careful about repetitive movements like jumping and I thought the sessions looked great.
> I really appreciated the Brain Camp session this morning. (pain and behavior) Very relevant for us – thank you!!! that’s all for now – thank you!>
It was fun to ‘see’ you there! I am going to get them to do a podcast on the biome stuff they were talking about. That is a huge topic that I know almost nothing about.
Great job here!
Tracy
Perfect!! I am glad he has no restrictions and just needs conditioning support. Yay! I will add you to Supersized so you can jump in there as needed 🙂 You’ll see both classes show up for you in a few minutes.
Have fun!
Tracy
Hi!
He did well offering behavior on the pile! Great job breaking up the session to get the arousal high again with tugging. It took him a moment to turn his attention back to the pile after that (plus the wind & noise in the environment takes up some mental bandwidth too). It looks like he was able to stand near the pile in in the middle but not offer a ton of behavior. You can move around the pile a bit so he offers more behavior on the other (taller) objects, because it looks like he was sticking to the ones close to you. So having you walk around can indicate to him that the other objects are also available for walking around on 🙂
On the running contact video:
I think he might need a longer mat because he was only getting 3 feet at most on it here. So unfolding it to make it longer can help, and be sure that you are staring at the mat and counting all 4 feet before rewarding. Some of the rewards here were for the first back foot while most of the rewards were for front feet.Backing up:
>no more sits still not very straight or offering yet>For for no more sits! And starting him on the mat then luring him forward helps. Don’t worry about straight, we can focus on getting him offering. To do that, lure his front feet off the mat with the cookie hand but then don’t move the hand at all. Let him make the first movement to get you to reward. You were moving your hand backwards on these so he only moved when your hand was moving. You can also use a bigger mat so he can get all 4 of his feet on it without having to scrunch up. That way you can get his front feet off then let him step only the front feet back onto the mat. That will help him realize it is about stepping back and not waiting for your hand.
Nice work here!!!
Tracy
Good morning!
>I guess I get confused with when I need to look at him vs looking where he needs to go often.>
In agility, there is a lot of discussion about this 🙂 And what works for every single dog is looking at them in almost every situation. I know people say that is not the case but then when we watch videos of them… they are looking at their dogs 🙂 So always look at him.
There are a couple of excepts, and the main exception at this point is countermotion. If he needs to pass you and do something behind you (like backwards sends) then you can let him see you shift your eye contact from his face to where you want him to go. All of this works brilliantly because it turns our shoulders to the line we want.
>. I am assuming I should not use the same amount of time each rep so change it up. Since we have not done many from a stay I had not thought about it.>
Yes, mix it up as much as you can – we humans are creatures of habit and the pups are brilliant about figuring out our patterns and rhythms.
>my release word is go. I guess I never thought about it being an issue. To me go means move.>
Aha! Then that makes complete sense why you used it 🙂 So if Go is the release then we are going to want to add a directional for accelerating ahead on the straight line, like at the end of the course for example. You can use something like “Run” as the directional for that!
He was a super good boy with the rotated sends on the new cone for the first part of the session. Then yes, I see what you mean about something catching his nose on the ground. The begining of springtime is a challenging time with baby dogs who have never experienced it before.
You added more toy play which really helped and I noticed that any time the toy was involved, he was all in! When you wanted to reward with cookies, the distractions would increase. You were not doing anything wrong, it is just a matter of information from Dublin.There were a couple of reps where you moved away a little early or said yay a little too soon so he didn’t finish the wrap, but it was still good to reward because he was engaged and trying hard! With the environmental distractions, he just needed a little bit of extra time to process and execute the cue response.
So for the next session – keep bringing the great toy, maybe bring 2 great toys so you can switch it up. And, better food – or maybe just different food rewards. I think of it as fighting fire with fire 🙂 The treats that are valuable indoors might not be valuable in the battle for engagement with bunny poo as the opponent, so better/different treats can help! And since we don’t want to upset his GI, we can also stick to really high value toys for now. And then it will be easier to bring regular treats back into the game when he has more experience working outdoors.
>s I questioned when watching the video if I was sending for the wraps on the correct side.>
I thought you were good! It was overall a good session, with the hardest part being that the smells in the environment were catching his attention a bit. Great job working through it!
Tracy
Good morning!
This was an excellent pile of stuff!! Lots of good opportunities for him to offer behavior. And he was definitely pumped up from the toy play!I see what you mean about him sticking to just the wobble board and his flat board. It might have been partially due to where the cookies were being tossed, and partially the added arousal. Two ideas for you:
– flip the order of festivities in terms of cookies 😀 In this session, the cookies were moving to help get him moving but might have had the opposite effect – he ended up waiting cor the next cookie. So for the next session, let him offer getting on something, then toss the cookie in. That way his movement will get the cookie moving.
– if the higher arousal was making it too hard for him to process the proprioception on the shopile, you can do a session or two without the arousal, just rewarding him for offering moving around on this crazy looking pile 😀 then when he has more experience, we can add back the higher arousal with tugging.
And of course it is possible that latent learning will kick in after a night of sleep, and he wakes up today totally knowing the game 🙂
Nice work here! Let me know how he does in the next sessions!
Tracy
Good morning!
The lazy game and the tunnel game are looking good! He is already looking ahead more and not at you as much. I think what will seal the deal for looking ahead is using a ‘get it’ marker to indicate that you have thrown the treat. He is a bit torn between looking at the line and looking at you to see if you have thrown the treat, so adding that marker will help him know where to look at all times. And you can also work the connection on the Wingin’ It games.> He already knows 2o2o, so that is the easy answer if we can train him to stop in a trial setting. But I am thinking Bandit will probably thrive on running contacts down the road. So training Copper on running now will be a great tutorial for when we start working with Bandit since I don’t know the process for training running contacts. I would keep the 2o2o for the teeter only for Copper if we move to running.>
This sounds good! And working the 2o2o for the teeter will also provide a good fall-back for the dog walk if you decide you want Copper to stop on the DW too. It is perfectly fine to change your mind at any point LOL!
I am looking forward to tomorrow!
Tracy
Welcome back! I love how Torch could make the rocker board move AND play family feud all at the same time!
(Watermelon is the answer to the first question on the board, obvs).
Torch did a great job with the rocker board here! She seemed a little shocked at how easy it was LOL!! You can add in tugging so she smacks it around even when she is more excited. And if there is a noisier floor, you can see how she does with slamming it on the noisier surface.
Great job here!!!
Tracy
Hello and welcome back! I am glad to hear you got to a puppy seminar and also had him in a lesson with Jess! Very cool! Sounds like he is doing brilliantly 🙂 It is hard to find young dog seminars that are not all threadle -backside-threadle-backside-threadle-backside 🤣😂so I will keep you posted when I hear about good ones in your area!
>Anyway, he saw the chiro today and looked really good. I see more settling at home.>
Yay! How is his GI system feeling lately?
> Still stimulated by the windy days but seems to have a bit more control as you can see in the videos above.>
Yes, teenagers are definitely distracted by movement in the environment and looking at the jumping videos… I think he was getting bored by the end of each session and looking around more. It was the same thing over and over, even thought the distance/height was a little different. So to keep him from looking around or getting bored with the repetition, you can break any jump grid session in half. Do a rep or two, then go do something else, then come back for another grid rep or two. They don’t need to be done in a row. Also, there is a LOT of jumping in this class so you don’t need to do grid work every week.
He workde out the new height on the videos here really well and the stay looked good too. Super! Rather than add more height at this point, focus on adding more distance to jump 3. You can start with it 8 feet away for example, then go to 12 then 15. And then when you revisit it a week or two later, start at 12, and so on. That will build him up to 25 feet eventually and then it becomes relatively easy to work up to full height too.
On the rear cross video – he is definitely understanding the rear crosses!!!! For this exercise, hanging out at the wing longer til he has basically finished the wrap (like you did at :52 and 1:15 and the last rep) helped set up better RC info. You were trying to send him past you though, which meant you took a step or two to the straight line then started the RC info. That was causing him to look at you before doing the RC. So as he is exiting the wing wrap, you can accelerate directly to the center of the bar and let him drive past you 🙂 We have more RCs coming in this class will will probably feel smoother and less like you have to wait for him to pass you.
Great job! Have fun!
Tracy
Good morning! I think this is going well! One thing I see here is that she is tracking the location of the treat as part of the indication of where to go. That is why she was waiting and looking for treats a bit. No worries! We can help her know that it is about the prop (or ignoring the prop) with a small tweak:
You can take the treat out of the cue arm on both the get out and the go-straight reps. That way it is not in front of her and she can’t really lock onto it.
For the get out reps, the treat can be in the dog side arm because it is the outside arm cueing the behavior. Then when she gets to the prop, the dog side arm can toss the treat.
For the go straight reps, the dog side arm can be empty and you can be walking forward and looking at her – then when she comes to you, the opposite arm can toss a cookie ahead.
Nice work here! Have fun with the family!!
Tracy
Hi!
Working spots are unlimited! And it will be a small fun group because Fast Track was small – the Supersized class is a lot bigger. If you feel like you want more MaxPup 1 time without pressure to get things done, we can hop you into the Supersized class which gives you another 10 weeks to play games 🙂 Then there will be a Maxpup 2 class after that as well. Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
>Sorry to dump, I guess I just need some encouragement as this point.>
Dumping and venting is always welcome!!!
About the verbals:
> Therefore I minimize my verbals to over, easy (for collection), GO (to move ahead), tunnel, walk it, teeter, turn (for rears), dig dig for wraps. I try to use my body language more so that I don’t screw them up with the wrong word. >
I think these are perfect!! And if you find that as his career progresses you need more… simple! We add another one. That way you won’t feel like you need to train 20 verbals all at once. You might consider a ‘jump’ verbal which is as simple as it sounds: take the jump 🙂 It has become important because there are so many jump-tunnel discriminations nowadays.
>Also this new puppy is not very high drive so I think that I’ll be able to help him more by being closer.>
I think he is a normal boy dog: he is in his Thinking Era so you aren’t seeing any insane levels of motion towards the obstacles. He is regulating his arousal really well and he is processing the info as he learns. But once he understands something, the speed comes naturally.
This is what happens with most of my boy dogs and I LOVE it so much – they start off their early training as thoughtful and not that fast… I always get worried that they might be slow or have low drive. But then as they grow up, the learning locks in and they add the speed without losing their ability to think on course. So the end result is a fast dog who also listens and doesn’t get over-aroused. It is LOVELY and makes agility so much easier for us both. I think Mojo is just like that! Fun times ahead!!
>That being said, I do need help with him reading me more without verbals. Do you have any suggestions for me with this issue?>
With or without verbals, connection is absolutely key to handling: looking at his eyes pretty directly and not pointing at obstacles or looking ahead of him. So try to emphasize your connection and play the handling games that are fast and fun like the tunnel rocking horses 🙂 You can challenge yourself to run silently (ok, a tunnel verbal is fine 🙂 ) and emphasize your connection and position. And if he gives feedback by looking at you too much or missing an obstacle, it means he needs more connection as you move to the obstacle.
In general, if we are properly connected by looking at the pup as we move, they read the line really well and commit nicely! If we are *not* looking at them or connected enough, the dogs tend to look at us for more info.
>I’ve had a lot going on recently and have to admit that I’m pretty burned out. All of my dogs have been retired early due to injuries and my last young dog who is now go on four had to be rehomed last summer due to serious aggression and fighting with my other dogs, which was completely heartbreaking! >
Oh no, I can totally see why you are burned out and tired! That really sucks 🙁 Totally understandable to feel that way.
>Also my puppy, Mojo, has been diagnosed with moderate laxity in his joint capsules, so we don’t know if or when he will develop hip dysplasia. >
UGH! That is news you certainly didn’t want or need. He is coming up on a year old, yes? I am hoping if there is laxity now but no dysplasia, then the PT work will help avoid any dysplasia. We would likely already see dysplasia at this stage if it was going to be severe or career-limiting so I am glad you are doing the exercises!
And I am guessing the PT people said you can continue training for agility as long as we keep it to age-appropriate stuff which we are doing anyway. I am sending vibes for great outcomes here and you are totally on the right track.
>I’m working with a top canine physical therapist and have to do his exercises 2-3 times per week in addition to his training.>
That can feel overwhelming! There might be PT stuff that matches what we are doing so you can feel like you are doing all the training without actually needing separate sessions 🙂 Let me know and we can sort it out so you can do plenty without feeling overwhelmed or burned out by it all.
Keep me posted!
Tracy
Good morning!
>Resilience games at the trial went better than I expected. >
Yay! Thank you for the update, I was thinking of you this weekend!!
>We started with the very basic start of the game out in the parking area (smells, but not many dogs or people), then progressed through multiple mini-sessions through the weekend until we were just outside the barn where people and dogs were regularly walking in sight. For the most part she would observe, then check right back in to continue the game. >
Excellent job! You really set her up for success!!!
>She only had two moments in which I couldn’t get her attention while she reacted and both times were in response to a reactive dog barking and scaring her (we were VERY far away, so I’m not sure what I could have done to prevent it). >
I can see why she would have had big emotions about that! That is not unusual for a teenage dog 🙂 2 ideas for you:
– from the training perspective, you can introduce her to the challenging trigger of reactive dog barking by finding some barking videos on YouTube (there are a million of them if you search for ‘barking dogs’). It the volume goes from 1 to 10, put the video volume on 2 then play pattern games on the other side of the room. If that is too hard, try it in a different room! As she gets better and better, you can turn up the volume and also use different videos.
– in the moment, the best thing to do is get her outta there if there is a big explosive trigger. You can simply turn and go the other way or leave the building, taking her with you. Then when you are much further away, throw a bunch of treats on the ground for her to sniff around for – that can help reset her and calm her down after a big upsetting moment.
>I will still absolutely consider this weekend a win for her.>
Totally yes! Happy dance!
The shpile game was very easy for her! She seemed to have no trouble at all transitioning back to offering behavior on the objects even when she was more excited from the tugging. That means you can make it harder! You can add more challenge by stacking the various stuff up on top of each other more so there is more movement. That will really challenge her balance and gets her having to think about where to put her feet even more.
The get out game was also really good! She had no questions about moving to the prop, good girl!! She was hitting it a bit better on the first side (when she was on your left) but that might have been more about you adding movement. You can make the cue bigger and more obvious by giving very direct eye contact as you show her the hand cue too – that gets your shoulders showing the line really well.
You can add in balance reps where you have her move with you without giving her the ‘out’ cue – can she ignore the prop until it is cued?
I think the hardest part on both sessions was getting her to play with the toy after a bunch of treats, so you can make the toy wilder: drag it, squiggle it around, get it really active so she can’t resist it 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
