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Good morning!
I agree, the threadles are going well, totally smoother!! The best ones were early in the reps when you were closer to the threadle jump and not pulling her off the line as much – using more upper body and verbal to bring her in then out.
When you added more speed like at 1:11, there was a little too much foot rotation and pulling her away from the line, so you ended up pushing back which is why she went to the backside there.
>>I seem to always be late with my blind. Is that why she is always bumping the first wing of the last jump?>
She has so much speed that I think you need to layer the middle jump to be able to get up to the blind sooner on this sequence. Otherwise it is too hard to outrun her to get the blind on time (like at :21 and 1:36) The rep at :48 was better timing but you had to have serious hustle to get there! And if the blind was a little late plus you were a little disconnected after it, then yes she would bump the wing.
When you had a head start like at 1:55, the blind was much easier and that is about where you would be if you were layering. So you can work on the layering skill to make the handling easier. It is perfectly fine to put a placed reward or target out on the line to help her out there!
She did see you starting the blind which is why she found the correct side each time – teamwork!! That right there is one of the reasons we reward anyway even when things have gone wrong… so the pups keep trying hard to get it right and are not afraid to take a risk like changing sides even when the info is not perfectly on time. She knows that you are not going to get mad, so she is going to make the big effort to solve the puzzle 🙂
Second sequence:
Nice job with your position on the send to 4! You adjusted things really nicely after the first rep, starting the turn cues sooner and being a bit further away too.>>The blind is late here because I’m pulling her over the second jump of the serp. What do I need to do better with my body to keep her going over that jump instead of past it?>>
Your feet can keep going parallel to the bar (don’t rotate towards her) and you can rotate your upper body a lot more. Ideally, you would turn at the waist so your upper body is facing the bar (parallel to it) with the serp arm waaaay back and the center of your chest pointing to the center of the bar. And, looking at the landing spot instead of at her can help a lot too! At 2:29 and 2:52, you shoulders were closed and perpendicular to the bar.
At 3:33, you opened up more (left hand pointing to the bar) and you can see how it helps her immediately. Opening up even more will help you be able to stay in motion while moving through the serp.Try not to rotate your feet at all on serps – 3:55 had foot rotation so she came in for the jump, but it makes it really hard to keep moving past the serp for you 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Prop countermotion is going well! You were not asking for a lot of countermotion so she was able to move past you to the prop. The countermotion for now can be simple leaning, so she maintains touch the prop (even if it is just one foot).She really wants to start without you because the prop has BIG VALUE and did a big leap up when she was asked not to start without you (I swear I heard her say something about “Darned human rules” lol), so you can reward her for sticking with you in the ready dance moment then reward again after the send (I think she will be happy to get the extra cookies :))
The toy play and retrieving-ish went well at the end!
During the barrel session – she was a little frustrated if she sees food indicators and doesn’t get food – leapt up when you put the food bowl down on the counter, then leapt up again (with dirty words) when you asked for toy play.
So when entering a session, you can set up the environment with the food and barrel already in there before you bring her into the room, so that the toy is the obvious thing as she comes in and you can toss it around a bit. That way she doesn’t see food or a bowl, then get asked for toy play (“MOM I WANT FOOD I AM STARVING” lol) and should make for an easier transition (transitions are hard for puppies and teenagers!)
>>She decided she really wanted to only go around the barrel to her left. >>
Totally see what you mean! She was a complete lefty here, for whatever reason.
>>When I knelt down to make it more like the wing wrap foundations she did go to the right, but I just worked her to her left after that.>>
That was smart! She seemed to recognize that right away and was able to turn to her right. With that in mind, when doing the barrel wraps to the right with you standing up, you can help her by putting a bowl out where it would be on the right turn shaping game. It would be a visual target for her in this case, and the cookie would still come where you had it (in the other bowl). It might help jump start the right turns and then we can fade it out.
>> She was able to go around the barrel to the left even with cheese in the food bowl behind her.>>
Yes! The left turns looked awesome and she was great about being able to ignore the cheese in the bowl!!!!
You can try doing this game to her left entirely with the toy as well, no food present: toss the toy around so she is excited and interested in it, then place it behind you and try the left-wrap, following by racing to the toy. I am interested to see if she will like that!
>>I can’t remember for sure where the cheese container was in the first leg bump section but I think it was on the ground since it doesn’t fit well in my pants pocket when I”m sitting down. >>
It might have been in the exact same position as it was here, but there might have been so much more ‘stuff’ in the environment that she didn’t really ‘see’ it, as compared to the comfy home environment where it was super obvious.
Also, adolescence. ‘Nuff said. LOL!!! She is about 24 weeks old, so some of this might just be adolescent brain changes. There are seriously huge things happening under the hood as she is entering adolescence, hitting puberty, etc.
>>’ve done a lot of work with her when the food container or dish is on the ground next to me but who knows what is going through her little noggin.>>
See above about adolescence LOL!! Things that are great on a Tuesday might be totally poopy on a Wednesday. Totally normal (and totally hard for us humans to wrap our brains around LOL!!)
So you can make the leg bump behavior easier by removing the cheese bucket for now, and you can refresh the cheese bucket skill by having her do something really easy while the cheese bucket is on the ground (a hand touch or even just hitting the prop). And then she will wake up one morning and it will all be perfect (and in true adolescent style, it will all be gone again the following morning LOL!! We need a support group!!!!)Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
I think those will work! The poles look small and thin. And you can tape them onto the ground too, so they are even lower and won’t roll. Or punch a 1″ hole into the cones to make them lower. I could not find the link to the exact set that I bought, but here is a close up of one of them being used in a strengthening exercise:
You can see how skinny the pole is (Hot Sauce is the same size as Kaladin, minus the floof LOL), perfect for Lift.
T
Good morning!
>>I also had gotten sucked into doing longer sessions with Obi which fried his baby brain! Greedy human…>>
TOTALLY relatable! He is such a cool puppy! He is SO FUN and it all goes well… until we accidentally go for too long, then their brains leak out of their ears. Oopsie! I have certainly done that too. A 2 minute timer will keep you on track and help you resist temptation to go too long.
The other hard part for us humans is to trust the latent learning process and train something, then NOT train it for a day or two (even if the session was not great). The science tells us that he is learning it when we don’t train, his brain is re-wiring it, and sleep helps consolidate it and cement it in. But all of that is invisible to us humans so we want to train train train LOL!! I love that he gets to walks in the woods as a great balance to the ‘formal’ training.
He did a great job balancing on the log, what a good boy! Think of all. The textures on the log, all of the environmental distractions, the curve of the log, it might be a little slippery… so many amazing things happening here for his brain and body.
It also reminds me of the log scene in the movie Dirty Dancing:
Hopefully you have seen the movie so you don’t think I am completely nuts LOL!!!!
Great job here :)
TracyHi!
>>Speaking of food rewards – full disclosure, I only has kibble and paper bowls the day I decided to start wing wrap foundations. It went ok, but was taking forever for him to eat the reward so we took a break and started again with cheese!>>
Ha! Yes, chewing does slow things down a lot. The cheese here worked really well and he got into the flow really nicely!!! By the end, he was offering the bowl-to-bowl pattern really well.
>>When he’d stare at me, I’d try to just look at the bowl, is that ok?>>
Yes, that was great patience on your part. Those moments looked like he was sorting out the impulse control element:
Oakes: “Why would I go to the bowl when the cookies are right there in your hands??”
You: “because no cookies come out if you just stand there and stare at my hands”
Oakes: “Got it, to the bowls I go”
If he really struggled, we could help more, but he really was not struggling. He was just asking a valid question and he answered it without much help LOL!
Since this went so well, you can add in an upright for him to go around when you do the next session. Wam up with a couple of reps of back and forth between just the bowls to make sure he remembers it, then slide in the upright for wrapping around it 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>>Tugging in between the food rewards is brilliant and working so well!! I noticed the same thing and have spent several sessions just figuring out the food rewards and what “level” gets him where I need him. never even occurred to me to add the toy in to keep that enthusiasm.>>
Awesome! Figuring out what is needed to get him to the right arousal level, plus how to help him get himself there, is a process that will take us though adolescence and into adulthood. So if he is doing this well at 7 months old? Hooray!!!!!
The deceleration game is looking really strong! He was support about driving right to you, and was amazing about going from food to tugging to food.
He is already very speedy, so you will want to decelerate sooner: when he has taken 1 stride towards you, start the decel so he can organize his collection, then you can start the pivot as he is arriving near you (like you did here). You were starting the decel when he was maybe one stride from you, so you might have noticed that his butt was swinging out wide because he didn’t have time to process the mechanics of collecting. Decelerating sooner will get him to be able to turn super tight with you 🙂
Great job here!!
TracyGood morning!
>>That helps me break the mental logjam of “still working” on so much early stuff.>>
Cool! It is all meant to be moved through pretty quickly, and not repeated until it is perfect before moving on 🙂
>>I didn’t include the entire second direction due to a several minutes long interlude of “surely if I paw this machine enough it will give up the goods without me running through the tunnel”.>>
Well, I admire his optimism LOL! You can loop him back around to the start with a cookie in your hand so he has a good reason to leave the beloved TNT – so if he is on your left as you cue the tunnel, you can have him come to your left side for a cookie then send him into the tunnel again: cookie-fest! He will enjoy it 🙂
I think a shorter tunnel will be helpful for now – it was taking him a moment to go through it, and also he did manage the athletic feat of turning around to come out the entry LOL! So when you get your tunnel bags out, you can squish it to maybe 6 feet long so it is an easier pass through it.
Then, you can add in various angles around the clock to send him to the entry, as well as the threadle side (when he is between you and the tunnel) from other angles as well.
Great job here!!
TracyGood morning!
>>I stopped using my hand on the barrel sends since she was leaping at it. She does that once in this set.>>
Aha! Let’s use the hand, then, to sort out sending without leaping. It is a great opportunity to layer in impulse control!
She seems to LOVE the action of the barrel game and really zips around it fast and tight. So we can use it as a framework to let her see hands as part of the cue and not leap up with cookie expectations 🙂 So use a low, slow hand as part of the cue and hold position until she leaves your hand to go around the barrel. If she still wants to leap (cookie expectations are hard!) then you can put a bowl out on the other side of the barrel to give her a focal point that is different than her focus on the hand cue.
Parallel path is going well!!! For the next session, try to have the cookies in your hand not in your pocket – the hand in pocket draws her attention upwards to you 🙂 And you can keep moving back and forth so she can move through the uprights in extension. If you are stationary near the wing, she should collect (and have a different reward placement).
She did really well here, so you don’t need the click any more, you can mark with get it and throw. The clicks tend to get the pups looking at us, so you can mark with ‘get it’ when she is locked onto the jump and moving towards it, and throw right away so she continues to look straight.
She is also ready for something that resembles a bar to go over. Because she is o small, you can get a pool noodle and slice it in half lengthwise, so it is maybe an inch tall and won’t roll around.
>>There is no cookie against a wall that can force raw to turn the right way! We are making progress! >>
The rear crosses to her right are going really well! YAY!!! The rear crosses to her left are a little harder and definitely require you to be very clearly on her left side before she makes a decision. So for the right turn rear crosses… keep going with what you were doing here 🙂
For the left turn rear crosses, 2 ideas to give you more time to get to the new side so she sees the left turn:
– toss more than one treat so she has to scoop or 2 or 3 (which will give you more time).
– start a little further from the wall, more in the center of the room – and when you throw the cookies to the wall, she will have further to travel to get them and you will have less distance to cover to show the left turn.Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning! Nice work on the games here!
The rear cross session was picture-perfect! Yay! By the 3rd rep, she totally had it figured out and seemed to have zero questions for the rest of it. Your attention to the cookie placement made a huge difference to helping her be super successful.
It is a good indoor game for when winter hits hard, so you can use the prop if you want: put the prop in the same spot next to the wall as the cookie was, and try sending her to it (like you did with the cookie) and do the rear cross. If the session is going as well as this cookie session did, you can start moving the prop away from the wall (and keep doing the rear cross nice and early like you did, so start yourself and Roux further from the prop when you do that to give yourself enough room and time to make the RC visible).
The parallel path game looks terrific! You started clicking earlier (as she was locking onto the jump, rather than when she arrived at it) and that was great! At this point, you can take the clicker out entirely (the click tends to get the pups looking at us) and replace it with your ‘get it’ marker for a thrown reward. Keep marking the intent to go to the jump so she looks forward the whole time. You can also throw a toy instead of treats. And you can start to move yourself away so you are adding more and more lateral distance. And if you are feeling spicy, you can add more motion: you can jog and then build up to running 🙂
>>I am working on her concentrating on me when we aren’t home and I can see her maturing in this. Although as you can see in the video when a strange man walks in and a friend she gets distracted for a minute but then comes right back to me.>>
She did really well with that!! It sounds like they were pretty close! Yay! You can use the pattern game from the resilience track to help her ignore distractions like fun people – you can see it here in week 3:
And then we build on it in week 5:
Sideways and backwards sending looked great – nice job to you with very clear mechanics on the send, including looking back at the barrel. That really helped her!
You added distance at 4:13 so she had to think it through (nice job being patient so she could sort it out) but that was kind of a breakthrough moment for her – she got faster and faster going to the barrel after that. She was already fast driving back to you, but seeing her have the lightbulb moment and add speed going TO the barrel was really great!
I was very excited to see her be able to choose to go to the barrel even when your send hand had the toy dangling from it. Hooray for layering in impulse control!!!!
The other thing you can add is a bit of ready dance before the send… that added bit of excitement can also get more speed going to the barrel to match the speed she has coming back to you.
Great job here!!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
One thing I notice here is that he is doing really well with the ‘ready’ word – he used to get really stimulated by it but now it is just a fun part of the game 🙂
You called his name the first few times and I think that was more of a recall to him so he looked at you – at the end, you were just saying “bring it” and that worked better to get a couple of steps towards you. I would keep going with that – throw the toy, use bring it, be encouraging like you were. And if you have a smaller space (like a smaller room or hallway) where you can sit on the floor and not throw it as far, then encourage him to take the 1 or 2 steps back to you – that can end up being right to your hands! Even if you don’t have a smaller space, try sitting on the floor and tossing it maybe 3 feet. If he turns and takes just one step towards you, that will still be a retrieve to your hands 🙂
Looking good here! Keep me posted!
TracyOMG! Her head down trick is so adorable!!! Love it!!!! Now to get her to hold it there so you can take photos of the cuteness LOL!!!!
OK, next trick to do while she recovers: teach her to hold something in her mouth (setting up for future photos where she holds her ribbons :))
There are a lot of ways to do this, but mainly it is shaping her pick something up and gradually delay the out cue so it builds up to a hold. Start with something easy and eventually you can build up to crazy thing – a friend of mine taught her dog to hold a hot dog and an egg.
Have fun!
Tracy
Hi!
Great news about the stay ‘catch’ game, especially in a new place! So fun!!!Parallel path looked great – nice timing of the ‘get it’ marker so she was looking ahead really well! She was looking ahead perfectly on your left side and almost perfectly o your right (a few more glances towards you). You can throw a toy for this game too! Because of her age, this game does not need to go into the regular training rotation yet – she picked it up really quickly and there is not a whole lot of stuff to do with actual jumping at this point 🙂
The lap turn looked good! One small tweak to the mechanics is to step directly back and draw your arm straight back as you turn her – you were moving your hand a bit to the side so she was a little wider and not as snappy on the turn. Hitting the prop after the turn looked really strong!
>>she had no issues even without the treat in my hand.>>
She did look at the empty hand a bit like “what the heck, no cookie??” It was funny and cute!
>>She’s in full on teething mode and really not gripping or pulling well on her toys. She seems to still in interested in chasing them while I drag them and biting them. Is it ok to keep using them?>>
Yes – keep throwing and dragging the toys, and use the softest fuzziest ones you can fine. She will get back to biting and tugging hard soon 🙂
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
Thanks for the video!!! One thing worth pointing out: LOOK HOW WELL SHE RAN OFF THE START LINE RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE RING ENTRY AND ALL THE PEOPLE!!! That is a huge win. A few weeks ago, she couldn’t do that nearly as well.
>>She went straight to check out a new person that was hanging over the fence to the field. It took her 10 seconds or so to return to me. I think my substitute dog is loosing its power.>>
I think two things might have happened to cause that. Yes, the stop at the end of the contact was part of it (see below) but also she might have had to use of so much brain juice to ignore the people at the start, that she couldn’t do it twice especially since she was moving towards the new person and not away! And the two things together (new person + stopped contact) made for a zoomie. Some ideas for you:
>> I try to make a point of getting a good connection at her stopped contact as that’s a place where I have lost her. That said, I reconnect and then fail miserably at staying connected. >>
I am not sure this was a matter of not maintaining eye contact. It might have been too much stopping changed her arousal state (she was definitely on the edge here but doing well). She was engaged at the bottom of the contact – so if you reward in position, I think you should also re-start her differently.
Many, many dogs struggle with being rewarded in the stop and then waiting for the handler to lead out again. So you can release her to you then reward, or throw a reward to her as the release – both of those involve movement and a Viszla needs movement as part of arousal regulation (I have never met a V that didn’t need to move as part of arousal regulation). So the reward process on the DW can look different – or you can release and reward with movement. yes, stay connected and she might need a ‘brake’ arm (opposite arm) as part of the turn cue to the weaves, but the release to keep going will be helpful. And you can use a target to help her stop so you don’t lose criteria there.
With the new person in class, since that triggers some zoomie action, you can also add in doing short blast runs near the new person: turning towards the person then turning away and rewarding. It can even be flatwork, on leash, just shadow handling front crosses on the flat! And if she can’t do that, you can do some pattern games around the new person before you go into the ring 🙂 New people are a great opportunity to use them to practice the arousal and engagement games.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning Annalise and Team Prytania!
Super job working through the challenging backside and rear cross on the sequence!
For the backside, you can run to where the wing and bar meet – but maintain big connection as you move forward until she is past you and heading to the backside. On the first rep, you curled away too early, so she followed the line of your shoulders to the front. I call that a ‘banana line’ because you ran a curved line in the shape of a banana LOL! Try to run a straight line to the backside til she is committing to going around the wing.
On the 2nd time through there, you kept moving forward longer and that totally helped! You got closer to the entry wing to support her, so you can work on being a little further away but maintaining the connection like you did on the 2nd rep.
She let you fix it there and stayed happy (the other option is to keep going and fix it in the next turn) and then had trouble with reading the rear cross.
The rear cross is HARD here because of the weird angles and the straight line jump right in front of her. You were a tiny bit late getting close to the RC line at :16 and :31 for a baby dog (when she is more experienced, she will read the pressure as you moved towards the line for the RC)
It was great to have you mom throw the toy, and you also got onto the RC line earlier and earlier (it feels weird to get on the RC line that earlier, right??!!)
>>She did have a loss of focus when there was a mistake(backside positioning proved difficult for handler) and it was a more difficult skill for her (rear). >>
Yes, at about :55 on the start line, she was a bit deflated. She is definitely getting more resilient to bloopers on course, so keep rewarding and continuing like you have been doing.
One other idea:
When there is a really hard sequence and there have been a couple of bloopers, you can mix things up differently to keep her pumped up: instead of do the hard sequence again right then, you can do a really easy one that starts on a different jump. And, you can take out the stay and just start by sending her into the tunnel to get her pumped up again.The other thing you can do is get her pumped up with the cartoon mashup lead outs – check out the And Beyond – Releases games in packages 3 and 4. It is goofy and fun and she might LOVE it when she needs a boost 🙂
She came back to focus after she got into the tunnel the 2nd time in that sequence (great job staying in the moment and getting her happy!!) and you got on the RC line SUPER early at 1:19 so she got it. YAY!!!!! It seems so weird to get on the RC line that early and from ahead of her, but it was correct here on the hard angles.
When you revisited this sequence at the end:
I think on the opening at 2:01 you were running straight and didn’t really turn your shoulders, so she thought you wanted the jump. Good job to just continue! She let you fix the backside but you can isolate that tunnel-backside skill to work on the straight line she needs to see to commit.
You got on the RC line really nicely at 2:17! Because it might feel weird to do a RC from a little ahead of her, you turned your shoulder to the left turn side of the wing (watch it in slow motion and you will see your right arm pointing to the jump). That is a really small movement but it cues a left turn for her, so you can see her start to turn left but then she realizes it is a right turn (verbal and motion helped a lot there) so she switches to the right turn.
So you don’t need to turn your shoulders to the jump as much – trust her commitment and she will drive past you 🙂
The 2nd sequence here looked great! The timing of your first wrap cues at 1:31 was good – you can decel sooner and keep running straight – you were moving towards her so for a moment, she looked to her right as if considering a rear cross!
Compare to your next rep – GREAT timing at 1:52, starting the decel and verbal as she was in the air over the jump before the wrap, and nice decel. The turn was amazing and she had no questions!!
And great drive on the line back to the. Tunnel. YAY!! And don’t get too mad at your mom if the throw goes wild LOL!!!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
This was an interest session!
>>We had done a session of this at EOTT using some cheese and then a toy for a few reps and it went quite well. >>
Do you remember if you had the cheese container on the ground next to your leg at EOTT? The 3-heads look appeared to be because she couldn’t possibly get near the cheese container and needed to be a little herdy – couldn’t quite process working with coordinated movement next to it. So the session was more about the processing of doing a thing while her brain was dealing with the cheese-on-the-ground distraction. So she was watching it, herding it a little, and couldn’t quite process the cue to do a coordinated jump over your legs. The puppy brain will prioritize certain things and literally make them appear bigger. So it is possible that her brain was making the cheese container look HUGE and your legs look tiny by comparison, so all she could “see” was the cheese. That delays the processing and the mechanics of other behavior.
This is exactly why we play these goofy puppy games – for the processing, not just the skills 🙂 Processing this on your leg bumps will make it a lot easier when she processes it on real jumps 🙂
Then when you tried to get tugging, she gave you the look of “I can’t right now” so you changed gears (smart!) so you didn’t get frustration behavior. Excellent job supporting the pup as she was trying to work through it!
You were able to get her to walk through and use your legs like cavalettis which was a HUGE win considering how hard the cheese container on the ground was for her here.
You put the cheese away at about 3:00 and she could tug but needed a coffee break with it first (took it way to chew for a moment) – then you got toy interaction really nicely!
It would be interesting to see how she does with leg bumps with the cheese starting up high on the counter first to get the behavior rolling… then move the cheese to the ground after a few successful reps to see if she can still process her mechanics even with the big cheese distraction.
>>2 questions – I don’t have a ladder. What’s a good substitute? poles stuck through low holes on cones?>>
Yes – I did a cheap and quick set of cavalettis from amazon. Skinny poles and cones with holes, and I use them for conditioning stuff too. I can find the link if you like. A real jump bar might be too thick for her at this point – the set I got from Amazon has poles that are really thin.
>>Is Lift’s parallel prop work strong enough that I should try the jump?>>I think so! You can warm her up with just the prop and see how she does with it. Then you can transfer it with an intermediate step of the prop between 2 jump uprights. And if she is happy with that, you can put a pool noodle or tiny bump in to replace the prop.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
