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Good morning!
OMG! Your poor head! I hope it doesn’t hurt too much!
Looking at the ring rentals:
The tunnel work looked good! Then you can break up the session and play between games rather than go from game to game with no break. The leg cookie toss at 2 minutes was probably a combo of something interesting to smell (especially is her big brother thought it was an interesting spot too!) and 2 minutes straight of work. Cookies tosses are going to tend to get noses to the ground, so you will want to do sort blasts with big play in between 🙂>>things can change a lot day to day.
First I was worried she didn’t like food and now I’m concerned her interest in toys is fading >>Yes, things can be different every day. She did well going back and forth between toys and food on the 2nd video. DOn’t worry about it too much, just keep balancing back and forth for now – if food is higher value at the moment, you can use lower value food and a higher value toy. And if that changes, you can switch the value again.
The rocking horses are going well here! She got the wraps in both directions and she was super fast on the last one too! Yay! You can spread the barrels out even more so there is more running – she will really like that a lot 🙂 Your connection was very clear and your step to the barrel was also clear in each direction.
I think she didn’t understand that the step and verbal cue was a release from a stay that she put herself in as you were getting a cookie out to line her up, so it was smart to get her out of the sit with a cookie toss.
At your next ring rental, you can use a wing for wrapping – just one wing. And if she recognizes it as a thing to wrap, you can move your rocking horses to 2 wings – she looks ready for that!
Great job here!
Tracy>>. Lu just turned 14 months this month. She’s my first puppy I’ve gotten during the winter so my timing for training is all messed up. When do you start raising jumps?>>
Great question! The answer is not really age-based once the dog gets into the 14 and 15 month range… at that age, she is still fully an adolescent so processing skills are NOT in place. So we progress slowly and allow for more physical and mental maturity to come into play (this also means I am 100000% *against* dogs beginning their trial careers at 15 months or 18 months because there is simply no way all the pieces are in place enough to be in the trial ring).
if you have good footing, and she is well-muscled, and has good jump commitment and you have good focus forward to a toy as a reward, then you can start raising the height a bit to get closer to elbow-height in jump grids first. The set point and the striding grids are the first to see the higher jumps, and I make sure there is motion added onto those before I bring higher heights into handling.
When she is happy on the grids, the heights can come up in handling bit by bit – this will vary based on how familiar she is with the skill and how well she can do it. If it is a familiar skill in a familiar location? The bar can come up. Unfamiliar skill in familiar location? Low bar. Familiar skill in unfamiliar location? Low bar. Unfamiliar skill in unfamiliar location? Definitely low bar!
All of my dogs begin their trial careers at a lower height, because of this unfamiliar skill thing (trial location, running courses, so many internal and external distractions) in an unfamiliar location (trial environments are different even if the pup has trained there before).
For full height jumping: Before going to the full height, I bring my young dog to a sports vet to get a full sports assessment. Is the dog developed enough? Well-balanced with muscling? Any sides of weakness is muscling or movement? Any limits to range of motion? The sports vet then either clears the dog to begin moving jumps to full height (or not!) and also helps me develop a fitness program for the dog with specific exercises.
This never happens before 18 months old, because based on what we know about the physical and mental developed of dogs, they are not going to be ready before 18 months old for that level of processing and mechanics (and it doesn’t matter to me what people show on Facebook or teach in online fitness classes LOL!!)
So my Whippet puppy is 17 months old – he is about 21 inches tall and is seeing 16” jumps in some sequences at home. In about about a month, I’ll schedule his sports vet consult to see if he is ready for next steps.
Tracy
Hi! This is going well and I think it went best when you added the 3rd jump after the FC or spin. When she started on your left and went to the right on the FCs, your exit line connection was great! Nice job opening the connection back to her and showing her the toy across your body.
When you went to the other side, you were tending to switch the toy from hand to hand and drop the toy down at your side with the dog-side arm – so she came to the toy but it was not because of exit line connection 🙂Compare that to the connection on the other side at :54 – perfect! You definitely have a side preference LOL!!
And look at 1:02 on the other side – the exit line connection is not as well-rehearsed when you added the next jump, so you were looking forward more and she was wider on the line there. So keep exaggerating the exit line connection and showing her to the toy across your body.
Looking at the spins:
Adding the 3rd jump here really helped – especially on the last one where you had your connection really opened up back to her. Yay! So with the spins, I think the most important thing to get great exit line connection is to work on not switching the toy from hand to hand – leave it in the hand it starts in so you can show it to her to create the exit line connection.
Nice work!
TracyHi!
There is definitely big improvement here!!!!! Yay! Especially in a new environment – she did really well! And it was great that you could really run here.She is young and so she is processing *all* the things in the environment 🙂 When she was on your right, when you were very connected and not switching the reward to the throw hand until she was locked onto the 2nd jump – she was terrific! For example, the first rep and the rep at :35 were when you had big connection and didn’t really move the reward around, so she was great.
Compare that to :10 and :16, where you were looking forward (maybe seeing her peripherally but not clearly connected so she could see your eyes and front of your shoulders) and getting ready to throw the toy by switching it from hand to hand while she was at jump 1. She sees all of that happening and gets distracted so goes around the jump to see more info.
So having the toy not move til after she commits and making the big connection is very helpful for her for now! It is ok to be a little late on the toy throw for now, to be sure you are supporting commitment.
When you switched sides – her first rep (:47) had a question. There is so much visual “clutter” in the environment (other obstacles, new location, stuff on the walls, etc etc) that she had trouble processing the line at high speed. For each first rep on the other side, you can dial back your motion for the first rep – still handle with big connection, but do it at a slow jog and see if that helps her process the environment.
Turning sooner helped her and having someone else throw the reward was great because it really marked the moment she committed to the 2nd jump on the line.Great job here!
TracyMy mantra is “Practice Make Pathways” meaning: the more we practice the skills we want, the more we will create the neural pathways in our brains that will make is all so much easier 🙂 This goes for the dogs and for us humans too 🙂
Have fun!
TracyGood morning! Yes, the weather is doing its typical winter thing and I am not happy about it LOL!!
>>I was happy to see how much better this went with Syn compared to when we first worked countermotion in MaxPup2?? or 3?? I went back to look at some of those videos and her commitment is much better!>
Yes! Her commitment is looking terrific! Yay! She is ready for more of the shifting connection stuff!!
>>I’m not sure why my brain makes this so hard.>>
On the first part of the video, I think the timing of the rotation and shifting connection was hard for the aforementioned brain 🙂 You were waiting for her to take off for the jump so she was landing hard on a lot of them (turn info was coming after takeoff) or not quite comfy with the handling. Ideally, you would be decelerating as she exits the wing wrap before the jump, then rotating as she is passing you – then shifting connection to the landing spot to support the commitment as she is driving past you.
To help get this in your bones without doing too many reps with her, you can turn the camera on and walk the sequences (and run the sequences) with your invisible dog 🙂 On the video, you should be connected to your invisible dog and the video will tell you if you are shifting connection properly. Then you can try it with her – and compare it to the video. That will tell you where it was perfect, or where you can use more connection or earlier timing.
The Circle wrap sequences in the 2nd half looked really strong! You had really clear shifting connection as you moved past the wing and her commitment was really good. By the last rep, you were super comfortable with it so at 2:51 yo were moving ahead nice and early, but maintaining the shifted connection behind you – so she committed perfectly and you were way ahead. Super!!
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
The leash off engagement is looking good! Your connection looked good at the beginning here – one thing I notice is that she doesn’t want to send past you if you are decelerating or rotating. You need to be very close to the wing to get her to commit. When you are running forward (like when you did the bigger sequences at the end) she did drive forward to the jump. And her commitment on the circle wraps on the wing was really strong (LOTS of value for the wing!!).So when she is stalling out in front of the jump – yes, the treat is a bit of a distraction but also I think it is a jump-value question. She is pretty locked onto the reinforcement and if she thinks the reinforcement is going the other way, she wants to follow it.
So, we can make one adjustment that will add a lot more value to the jumps as you add in more and more countermotion: we can change the reinforcement strategy. In all of your wraps, throw the reward to the landing side of the jump every time. The reward was coming back near you after the wrap, which was putting more value on being near you. Since we need more value for taking the jump, lower the bar to make it super easy and you can use food or the toy – all rewards are tossed to the landing side.
At first, you can wait til she is taking off before you throw the reward. Then you can throw it when she is looking at it and moving past you to it, so you can get earlier and earlier with your throws – that will mean she is committing sooner and sooner so the handling gets easier. Basically, we would like to convince her that the way to get you throw the reward is to take the jump away from you 🙂 That will make it much easier to get commitment on the shifting connections.
She is definitely making progress with ignoring distractions! In the past, I think she would have taken off for the distraction. If you whip out the magic word, make sure you give a zillion cookies for the head turn hen she responds.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Yes, Mother Nature is in a BIG MOOD lately and the weather is gross. Sigh.The reps where he is on your left looked really good! He is still learning to be comfy working out ahead of you (rep 1, he had a little “are you SURE?” question and checked in) but still executed the line nicely. On Rep 2 you were ahead and he was very comfy – great connection and decel into the wrap, so the turn was great and you had great exit line connection!
On the right side reps: this side is less comfy for you both 🙂 You will probably have to be mega-connected, really exaggerate it, as you both get more comfy on that side.
You can connect more on the send, then stay super connected as you move up the line – on the first run here, you were looking too far forward as you were running (arm out to the side) so the connection was peripheral. You could probably see him, but he couldn’t see your shoulder position that well so he drifted out wide to see it. That is easier for him than trying to process finding connection AND going over the jumps.On the 2nd rep – note your BIG connection as he exited the wing at :22 (arm all the way back to his nose and BIG eye contact) so that plus the verbal jump cues said right to him helped him find the line – yay!
The exit line connection can be more exaggerated and directed back to him more (less peripheral, more direct). At :25, you had the toy across your body but not really pointed back to him, so your left arm was blocking the view of the connection. He was behind you and couldn’t see the new line, so he was a little wide. Compare it to the exit line connection at :11 – you looked more directly back to him so that opened up your shoulders and he could see the line immediately (and drove right to it).
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
I deliberately did not use that many verbals in the week 2 demos so we could really emphasize the connection. I use the word “jump” to mean: ‘take the jump with a slight turn towards me’. It is the middle ground between a full extension GO and the collections of the left/right which should create a relatively sharp 90 degree turn (which requires a lot of collection). You can help her understand it by setting up the clear connection and saying it as you send (don’t say GO on the sends because it is not a Go extension).T
Good morning!
Connection looked really good on the FC! The regular connection and exit line connection both looked strong. I am pretty sure you could easily see her the whole time. The only suggest here is not a connection suggestion, but a suggestion to use your connection to change the timing:
She was landing pretty long on the wrap jump because the turn info was coming to her after she had to make a takeoff decision. The check check and decel came after she landed from 1 and when she had taken the first stride to 2… on this distance, it looks like she had to make the decision on how to approach 2 when her feet were landing from 1.
So, since your connection was lovely, you can be seeing her takeoff for jump 1 – and as she is taking off, start to decelerate as you move forward (maintaining connection of course :)) so as she is landing, she already sees (and hears) the turn cues starting… so then in her next stride, she can adjust for the wrap. Keep moving forward in the decelerated mode and don’t rotate for the FC (or a spin) until you see her shift into collection near the jump. If she *doesn’t* take the jump, it means either you slammed on the brakes and looked forward, or you didn’t decel enough and rotated too soon. Using connection to see the timing will get amazing collection on the wrap jump!
Speaking of deceleration and timing – you had a very clear decel on this second video so she collected a lot more! YAY!!! You can move up the timing by one stride – start the decel as she is over the bar of jump 1 (rather than when she has landed) – that will set up the turn sooner for you both.
Super nice exit line connection here!!
>>I did find that when I left earlier she read it as a rear cross.>>
Whe the dogs read the spin as a rear cross, it is usually because we handlers have moved in towards the center of the bar to do the rotation (which is indeed a rear cross cue). This often happens when we don’t decelerate as well. On this video here, you were running forward to the wrap wing and there was no pressure in towards the center of the bar – so she never considered RC and the turn looked super 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
On the first video, he was having a little trouble finding the jump partially because of how it was set up – on the first side, the set up was putting his line around to the backside/past the jump (location of wing) and also when you were moving past the pole, it was causing your line to block is his line a bit so he was pushing out. Your line was pushing in towards the bar (so you could clear the pole).This was also happening a bit when you moved things over, and back chaining helped! Good adjustment there! He was able to get the jump when you were sending ahead but when you were moving forward, it seems that he felt the pressure of your motion heading to the bar and he went to the backside.
The same thing was happening a bit on the other side – you were inside the line of the wing and on the line to the bar – but also I think the placement of the MM was contributing.
Even when you were pulling away he was still going around it (like at 2:27) so I think his hunt for the reinforcement was more powerful than finding the jump (more on that below). When you moved the jump so the MM was clearly on the landing side, and you sent more than moved forward, he found the jump easily.On the 2nd video:
>>Was I pulling him from the jump by moving too soon>>
Yes, a little bit:
The first sends had a little too much pointing ahead of him so he as in handler focus more than jump focus 🙂
Compare to :30 when you were most connected (you looked at him the most directly) and your hand/arm traveled with him. This was also lovely at 1:42 and 2:27!On some of the other reps, he was very close to the jump (a few inches away!) and you needed one more step to support commitment…
But when he is that close to a jump, we really want him to just take the jump 🙂 even if your leg is not perfect or you move an arm back… so I think his question here is more about jump value and less about handling. Any time a dog requires us to be perfect with our handling, we can pump up the value of the jump (because being perfect is pretty impossible!)
I think that was happening on the first video too – he was running to the MM more than he was running to the jump. He is locked onto the reward more than he is locked onto the jump. On this second video, the reward was coming back near you, so he was following the reward, perhaps thinking he needed to stick close to you to get it.
So, we can make one adjustment that will add a lot more value: we can change the reinforcement strategy. Let’s do a bunch of sessions where you help him get over the jump and when he is locked onto it – throw the reward to the landing side of the jump. Don’t use the MM (I don’t think it has helped him build value for the jump but he sure does love the MM!) – you can use food or the toy (he really liked that at the end) and all rewards are tossed to the landing side.
At first, you can wait til he is taking off before you throw the toy. Then you can throw it when he is looking at it and moving to it, so you can get earlier and earlier with your throws – that will mean he is committing sooner and sooner so the handling gets easier. Basically, we would like to convince him that the way to get you throw the reward is to take the jump 🙂
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
I agree, a ton of great stuff in this run!!
>>I don’t have control over distances in class. However, one class has a yard that’s smaller temporarily due to grass seeding. That forces more AKC like courses.>>
Perfect! If AKC is what is on the calendar, the more you can work those distances and challenges, the better. Maybe in the other class you can ask the instructor to incorporate those challenges?
>> Going slightly wider was a better line to the two jumps.
The brake arm is the middle ground cue that can set it really well.
>> I did tug with her in the next class before going in and that’s when she broke her start. It’s not necessarily related, but I did note it.>>
Definitely something to note and see if a pattern emerges.
>> I think she’s sitting faster. I’ve noticed the back and forth movement seems like her way to release energy.>>
She is definitely sitting faster! And yes, a lot of dogs have a way to release energy on the way into the ring and at the start line, and moving is one of them.
Keep me posted!
TracyHi! These went pretty well!
>> he couldn’t figure out if he was supposed to be doing hand touches.
On the reps where outside hand was high and moving, he jumping up perhaps thinking it was a hand target cue. But on the reps where it was lower and not moving? He turned directly to the tunnel (:18 and :59 for example). Super! So, low and not flicking away is the way to go – and that is great, because if he thinks he has to wait til you flick him away, it is much harder to get a smooth turn there than if he turns himself away on the verbal & arm cue.
He had trouble turning away to his right and was much better on his left. So you might want to break it down a little and do some cirlces on the flat with a cookie lure – put him on your right side and have him turn away from you to his right. That will smooth out the tunnel threadles. His questions there were more of the “I am a lefty not a righty” question than a “you are doing it wrong. mom!” question 🙂
>>On the demo video it looked like you just kept holding your arm up the whole time with no flick. Any suggestions on this?
Correct! I am too slow for my dogs to need to rely on my presence and timing to flick them away. So, the verbal and arm cue tells them to turn themselves away without waiting for further info from me: I give the cue, and the dog can just go directly to the threadle end of the tunnel without waiting for anything else. And even if I was super fast, I would still want that independence because it means I can go to my next spot on course sooner.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>> my phone for some reason decided to go into slow motion mode for the middle and longest part of the video and I promise you, I did not spend longer than two minutes in this training session. If this is unacceptable, I will redo the video, let me know.>>OMG that is hilarious! Darned smart phones have a mind of their own LOL!! The slow motion made things very dramatic 🙂
No worries, I was able to change the speed on youtube – even in slow motion, she was driving ahead brilliantly! Excellent job connecting with her before you started running – that is great practice for when you connect to her on course.
She was totally surprised when you cheated to win LOL!! She almost beat you on the 2nd rep of cheating but she didn’t know which side of you to be on so ended up between you feet – more connection was needed so she know where to be. She ended strong though and is loving the driving ahead! As you drive ahead, try not to praise her – that drew her eyes up to you because she wasn’t sure if you were going to hand her a reward or not. You can praise after she gets the toy 🙂
Great job here!
TracyHi!
Super nice job here! She is definitely sorting out the hind end awareness of backing up!!
The hardest part was not placing the start cookie too far away – when it was too far back, she turned around, Bu when it was no further back then in line with you shoe, she backed up really well! This also was the case when you stepped further back: as long as the start cookie was near the back of your shoe, she was able to back up to the disc and not turn around. SUPER! So as you add more distance, just remember where to place the start cookie and I bet she continues to back up to the disc.Great job!
Tracy
