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Good morning!
>>We did a lot today but in small doses, much better for all of us 🙂 >>
Yes! Short and sweet sessions are the way to go, with lots of sleep in between 🙂 And of course, days where you do very little are fine too 🙂
>He had another resilience walk – he saw and heard a passenger train from far away, that one was a bit scary, he needed to stand up on my legs and watch but he recovered really well. I suspected he might have been nervous of a train because he’s shown some worry (not scared just not fully confident) when he’s near cars moving when we’ve done parking lot outings, so I was prepared to support as much as needed. >
Yes, definitely support him and use distance as your friend if there is any possibility of concern. If moving cars might be concerning, get further away so he can watch from a greater distance where he feels more safe. We will be adding tools to the toolbox soon to help him process things that might be concerning. And make most of his experiences of the non-concerning kind of things 🙂
>>Bikes, NO PROBLEM, other people not petting him… missed opportunity to make new best friends, but he’s doing realy well focusing back on me for cookies. No video, I can barely manage puppy and leash and myself LOL, sorry!>
Yes, a third arm is required for getting video LOL!!!
>Really trying to back off the smack da baby stuff, you’ll probably see glimpses of it throughout, my older Aussie loooooves handsy stuff and gets really engaged and excited, so it’s pretty engrained in me and I have to very consciously stop doing it. You’ll see in here how much he loves ready ready dance!!!>
Yes, each new dog trains *us* on how to play with them LOL!!!
The decel game is looking good, I admire your knees and balance to be able to get the reward as low as he needed you to get it. Very nice!! He collected to your side really well, and the pivot looked great too.
The bowl game is going well too – look at how well he was going back and forth without needing you to show him th cookie drops! Super!! For the next session in a day or two, have an upright ready so he has something to go around. Start the session with a couple of reps with just the bowls to refresh the game, starting just as you did here. Then if he says he totally remembers it? Cool! Add in the upright to go around. If he doesn’t remember it and needs a longer session to refresh the game? This can happen with puppies 🙂 No worries, we add the upright at another time.
He definitely loves the ready dance! And he was able to leave handler focus (and the cookies) and drive to the prop really well! Super! It looks like the right turn was easier than the left turn here? That tracks with the bowl game, where moving to his right (towards you left) looked easier than moving to his left (towards your right). We will keep track to see if he is truly a lefty 🙂
Staying close to the prop, you can add in the sideways sends so we start building up the countermotion.
He did well driving ahead for the cookie!! And he reminded you to not smack him by standing still away from you LOL!!
>>he was struggling with wanting the toy today. >
It is possible that going right back to the toy after all the treats in that area was hard – there must have been a significant pool of scent from the food, and the toy was small/near your hands, which is less enticing. You can tie that toy to a longer toy, so you can be standing and dragging it around on the floor for him to chase: that is very enticing!
> I think my smart little puppy needs me to be really careful with my markers, because “get it” means GET FOOD, not get the dang toy! So when I used “toy” he went to THE TOY. Maybe coincidence but I’m still happy, he doesn’t really know/hasn’t really been trained for toy markers, but he’s started to pick it up because I add words a lot in everyday life.>>
It is entirely possible that he has learned ‘get it’ on the food context and was expecting food! So you can use the different marker for a toy and that can clarify things for him.
>> Also really pleased with the collar and chest hold- he’s also making progress on having his martingale slipped on over his head without trying to eat my hands (FOOD????) so all good things there.>
Yes! He was happy to move back to your hand for the next collar hold, and that is big progress!!!
The blind crosses are going well too. Your timing on the first part of the session was good (the blinds were coming as he was about halfway to you). When you changed the reward mechanics to the clearer connection, you were a little later – but the mechanics were so clear that when you were able to connect with him before he got to it, he immediately read the side change. Yay! So now combine that great connection (like on the last rep) with the earlier timing from the first couple of reps, and it will be perfect.
This is a good game to do with toys as well, to be able to use both in the session (and so it is not all about food). You can start with the cookie toss, then reward with a long crazy toy.
Great job here!!
TracyGood morning!
He did really well with these!
>>He thought it was dumb with the toy. Food was way more fun. Forgot to look at him sometimes!>>
He was definitely into it with the food! So we can build this behavior with food – he had a little trouble finding it in the grass when you were adding longer distances, so you can use a lotus ball or treat hugger to be able to use the value of the food in a toy-like and highly visible carrier. And you can tug before you start playing, and also after the session – that will be good for going back and forth between food and toys.
You can make the decel more obvious to him – 2nd rep was already sooner and more obvious so he was prepared for the pivot
The shoe box prop is a brilliant idea!!!! It worked great! He was hitting it really well and you had some good distance there too! Remember that this is not a loop, and to take a moment before each rep to do the ready dance: that will add excitement and help him be prepared for the send. Plus, it keeps things a bit spicy rather than too repetitive. So it will be a couple of seconds of ‘ready ready ready’ before each send – that can get an even more explosive response because he will be excited and ready for the cue.
The arm/leg/eyes on the cue looked great! I think you were saying ‘go’ but this is a turn, so we don’t want to use a straight line cue. You can have a temporary cue like “hit” or something, or send silently and see if he can do it (I bet he will have no trouble at all).
Great job here!!
Tracy
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
