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Good morning!
>>Would a Cato board be about the right height for Venture to back up to?>>
Possibly – how tall is he? It might be too much of a step up with a back foot at this stage, so maybe something that is an inch tall or a little less is better for that for now. The board in the video here looked like a good height!
>>So I pulled out a tug with lotus ball on the end and started showing him how to get the cookie out of it. Didn’t see much in the video but we are working to understand/love that toy away from training right now. >>
I love the lotus ball toys! They are a great balance of interactive fun like a tug, but food delivery for the dogs that love love love food 🙂 The treat huggers are great too.
>>Wondering if I should try the entire blind cross exercise with food to make it easier for him.>>
I don’t think you need to do this as a food-only game – I think the BC exercise is actually a great game to add the lotus ball toy into. There is running and it is relatively easy. The only blooper was on the rep that started at 1:38 where you were late doing the blind (he was almost at your side) so he didn’t see the side change. The others all looked good!
You can throw the toy on the exit of the blind here: when he gets to the new side, you can throw the toy ahead and let him drive to it to get the cookie out of it without you 🙂 The focus forward/driving ahead games are also useful for that, and so is the collection sandwich.
>>The Cato board at the beginning is just to make it easy for him to find the small cookie so he doesn’t need a big treat that takes 30 seconds to chew.>>
That worked brilliantly!! Yay!
Great job here – let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
He definitely has good prop value here!
>>His first attempt was good, but then he started looking at the hand (where the treats might be). >>
Yes- when he was offering at the beginning and when you were a little further away, he was NOT looking at your hand. On the sends, you were closer to the prop and so he was able to hit the prop AND look at your hand (very smart LOL!) It seems like you were a little too close, so you can try being a step or two further away – just far enough away that he has to go past your hand to get to it and can’t target the hand and the prop at the same time 🙂
At 1:48, you were a shade further from the prop, your hand was closed & pointing at it, and you seemed to be looking at it… so he went to it really well! That is a good starting point for the next session, adding a little ore distance so he passes your hand to get to the prop.
You can keep rewarding back towards you unless he really struggles, then you can switch back to rewarding on the prop to help solidify the understanding to go past your hand to get to it.
Great job here! Let me know how he does!
TracyGood morning! Hope you had a relaxing and tasty Thanksgiving!
>>Apple pie and cranberry sauce are done over here and we’re doing the Blue Apron Thanksgiving box so it makes for much simpler prep for the feast.>>
OMG that sounds yummy and Blue Apron has good stuff. I am hungry again now so I think I will go dig out some leftovers LOL!
>>She had a mellow few days at home with Dean and Demi after her farm stay but she was probably a bit worried about Kaladin and I not being there.>
Quite possibly, then the excitement of you coming home… the neuroscientist vets tell us that it could be 3 weeks (eek!) until puppies are back to baseline. I don’t think it will take her that long, but it could definitely be why she had a Tasmanian devil moment.
>>What’s the best thing to do if I get the over arousal/over tired jumping up at me behavior in the future? Switch to some pattern cookie toss games and call it quits? Give her a snuggle and call it quits? (she usually calms down if I hold her quietly as opposed to holding her and revving her up)>>
Ideally, we never see it again 🙂 So to make that happen, you can help her come back to center by adding in pattern games/snuffle mat/grass scatters after every couple of reps. It will interrupt the flow of the shaping, but that is not that important because it will wire her physiology to come back to baseline after high arousal. So it could be something like:
– behavior
– tug
-behavior
-tug
-Snuffle mat
Then another round of it. Then call it quits. That will generally take under 2 minutes and that is perfect!There are actually a bunch of pups in this class we are taking a similar approach with if you want to follow along: Elizabeth and Yuzu, and Shasta and Westley are the two that spring to mind.
Now, if the plan is not good and we get the behavior, then yes, you can just switch to a snuffle mat to decompress. In that moment, it will likely help more than a pattern game because pattern games are still pretty active. No need to keep training after that, because the change in physiology told us we went too far or too long (oops!) so once she is back to baseline-ish, we can take a break and plan for the next session.
>>For backing up onto a mat, do you mean like a yoga mat or something almost flat to the ground?>>
Almost flat but something that is salient enough to step up onto – maybe a folded over yoga mat, or a low-edged crate mat? Maybe something half an inch high (she is really little :))
The goat tricks video looks good! She is very happy to climb on one disc, 2 discs, all 4 feet, etc. And she was very balanced standing on the discs: SUPER! The bosu disc is really hard and she was GREAT! Brave and balanced, very impressive!
VERY interesting moment in the middle here when you switched back to the toy and she jumped up on you and made interesting noises – the food-to-toy might be frustrating/arousing (she might not even know, so many things happening inside a puppy’s brain and body!) so you can make a different style of transition and see if that helps: after the focused cookie work, you can just throw the toy and let her chase it and run around with it for a moment, before you try to engage with it as well. That victory lap moment can both get her engaged with the toy AND release some of the energy that the arousal brings. She might even be able to bring it back to you without you asking for it, as a way os saying “I am ready now, hoooman.”
This is all part of learning about her, and the best ways to support and train her. She might need a decompression moment as you transition from stage to stage of a training session to help balance her internal state. This is pretty normal and all good! It different than what Kaladin needed, if I remember correctly, but both approaches are great. I see the same thing with my 2 youngest dogs: one is more like Kal and never loses himself to arousal so I can be wild. One is more like Lift, and so I help decompress him a lot during any high action training. Both are training beautifully though, constantly reminding me that there are all sorts of different ways to get the behavior we want 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Great job bringing the collection sandwich outdoors!
The blinds looked really strong. Remember to decelerate and turns very slowly on the pivot, so he can stay tight to your leg (you were turning early fast so his butt was swinging out wide). Driving ahead to the toy looked terrific – your mechanics were really strong and you didn’t even need 3 arms LOL!Then yes, something totally caught his attention, I see what you mean!
It was pretty significant (whatever it was – what he can see/hear/smell is totally different that was we can)) so in those moments, it is perfectly fine to stop the training session and let him investigate or world watch for as long as needed until he has sorted it out. What you were seeing was the divided attentional state, where his brain was trying to process and prioritize the input from you and also the input from the environment… and the environment needed more processing because whatever it was that caught his attention was pretty challenging. My guess is that he could hear something (based on his body language) but either way, it is fine to stop for a moment so his brain can process.
He was able to play the pattern game but with a relatively high latency (took him longer to look at you) and could not fully tug. That is great feedback from him that he needed a moment, which is perfectly fine 🙂 His response was normal and he was not freaking out about anything, so in those moments you can let him look and investigate. When the pup is ready to re-engage, will often see the pup take a deep breath, or do a full body shake, or come back and pounce on us as if saying “what are you waiting for??” LOL!!
Taking a few minutes break was great and whatever the distraction was seemed to be mostly gone. The basket wrapping looked great! Nice job with the transition from tugging him back to the start spot, then getting the out while he was in the line up position, then starting the next rep. to the line He was able to finish wrapping as you were leaving earlier and earlier in both directions. SO COOL! He is fast and a tight turner.
So the next step is to start thinking about what you would like you wrap verbals to be! If you have a bother dog doing agility, you can use the same verbals. Or, you can use completely new ones 🙂 I recommend short words you can easily say over and over, like check check check or dig dig dig. When you have chosen your words, you can use them in this game rather than saying “go”.
The other recommendation is that you have one word for wrapping to his left, and a different word for wrapping to his right. Agility has evolved to the point where this has become necessary. And since we are starting it early on in training, it is pretty easy to do for both the pup and the humans 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyShe is sooooo good at the backing up! It is unusual for a pup this young to be able to do it this well and add the verbal cue. Big happy dance!!! My only suggestion is to keep your hands a tiny bit lower – ideally, you would hold your cookie hands just above her nose level (when she is standing naturally) so she doesn’t have to look up – the more she looks up, the harder it is to back up. The natural head position should be perfect to get more and more backing up.
You can play with this every couple of days – the goals would be to add more distance backing up to the destination (doesn’t always have to be a wobble board, it can really be anything :)). And, taking it to different places to challenge her to think about her body even when the environment is a little more distracting.
Great job on these! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>Holidays don’t stop puppy training>>
TRUTH! My two puppies and the puppy that I am hosting over the weekend all agree LOL!
The wrapping to the toy is going well – she is definitely liking to wrap the barrel and was not too bitey with the tug toy 🙂
She was not very patient about letting you get ready to start her and she would go without you or look at something else. No worries! You can use a cookie to line her up at your side by having her follow the cookie into your position (heel position, basically, but on both your right and left side so she turns both directions). You did have cookies coming out towards the end, so you can just have her follow the cookie in your hand to line up (she might not have loved it when yo moved her into position).
Also, the cookies will help balance the tug arousal – tug is really stimulating and cookies and help her stay more centered in her arousal and not overaroused (aka less crazy LOL!!) She was not tugging that hard here, but that was probably due to the smaller space and already having had some good exercise. And that is great because as you mentioned, she was able to train for a tug toy and maintain her focus. Love it!
So for this game, keep trying to do your front cross earlier by moving the line around the barrel closer and closer to where she starts going around it.
The other thing to start thinking about is what verbal you would like to use to mean “wrap”. Agility has a LOT of words right now (so many words!!!) so start off with something simple that will mean “wrap towards me”. Popular words are things like “check check check” or “dig dig dig”, anything that is short and you can say fast 🙂 When you have chosen a word, you can say it as you send her around the barrel, to start adding the wrap cue to the behavior.
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>>I need to get better grass treats. Ordered and should arrive on T day.>>
Yay! I use bits of cold white string cheese, which is easy to see and easy to slurp up and not hack up 🙂
For both of these games, you can use a toy as well. The toy as the reward for the parallel path will be very exciting (you can use a ‘get it’ marker and toss it forward, ahead of her, after she hits the prop). The only downside to using the toy for the parallel path game is that you will do fewer reps in the session (because using toys tends to take longer to play and get the toy back before the next rep) but that might actually be an upside: fewer reps that are very exciting is a good thing 🙂
Very nice parallel path session outside! I think the hardest part was finding the cookies in the grass 🙂
This game will also help you stay connected and she gave good feedback about that (including a moment where I swear she put her hands on her hips and gave you a look LOL!!!). Connection is a relatively direct eye contact (you look at her, she looks at her ‘work’ as you move forward). And if you are connected, your shoulders will present the line. If you are not connected (looking forward, or only watching her peripherally) then she is likely to look at you. I call that look at you “information seeking” because connection provides so much of the info at this stage.
Looking at where she had a couple of misses: at 1:05 and the next rep, you were walking forward and looking forward so she looked at you, not sure what you wanted.
If something goes wrong, you can break off and have a tug break to keep arousal pretty high. If she is looking at you too much, it is probably due to lack of connection (or too much distance from the prop).
Compare to 1:24, 1:31, and all the reps til the end – you were connected and she got them all 🙂
So keep working the connection as you move up the line to help support the line.
For the prop sends with the FCs: she is sending really well and your click timing is really strong!! The grass smells were interesting when there was not a lot of arousal, but note how well the added arousal helped her out when you added the ready dance! 🙂 It is a silly game with so much science behind it LOL! The ready dance helps get her pumped up enough that she can ignore the distractions in the environment. Being close to it helped too (outdoors is harder!) and you can totally use a tug toy here for the reward rather than treats.
Great job here!! Keep playing outside and using toys and ready dancing, and you will see her being able to add more and more distance.
Have fun!
TracyGood morning!
>>For the sequence work we are still struggling to get the back side>>
Because the front side of the jump and the bar is VERY valuable, two things that can help:
Take the bar out and have her go to the backside of the wing.
When you put the bar back in, angle the jump so the backside is easier to see/more visible on her line, and the front side bar is harder to see.
>>and if she gets a head of steam up going through the tunnel it continues to be hard even with thrown cheese to get her to see that darn driving line again. I am going to try this again indoors hopefully on Friday.>>
Three ideas for you here as you build this “find the jump after a tunnel skill”:
– you can use the tunnel for the arousal but having her run through it once or twice… then put her in a stay at the tunnel exit and then walk up the line of jumps, rewarding each one. That way we still have the tunnel-induced arousal but more success on the jumps. And you can build up to jogging up the line, or doing it from a restrained recall as if she is exiting the tunnel (maybe Brad can hold her).
– you can do tunnel to just one jump after it, placed on the line as much as you can so she can see it. That way she only has to think about the one jump and you can add in more motion.
– One thing I do to help with jump commitment in higher arousal is use a ‘double wide’ jump – two 4 or 5 jump bumps next to each other, with a wing on each side, so the ‘bar’ is basically 8 to 10 feet wide 🙂 That is a much bigger visual and can help the dogs find it when she comes blasting out of the tunnel.
The leash off-engagement on game looks great! She seemed to be putting herself into a stay when you were doing it, which is fine (not required, but fine to do :)) You can up the ante here with toy play before it then taking the leash off, for more toy play. And you can add in taking the leash off, tossing it to the side… then rewarding her.
She also did really well with the crazy release game 🙂 I am pretty sure you won’t need to lead out like that in a trial , but it certainly is great for raising arousal in training which we do need to do! Yay! You can use this in simple sequences (and cookie throwing sequences) so that she has success working sequences in a higher arousal state.
Great job here! Have a good Thanksgiving!
Tracy
Yay! I am glad you are feeling good and ready to get back in action!!!
Have a good Thanksgiving!
TracyPerfect! Filming will give us a great picture of the entire environment. Maybe a friend can follow you, reality-TV-style?
Have a good Thanksgiving!!
Tracy
Good morning! Thanks for resetting it!
One thing that will really help is if you lead out more laterally away from 1 and 2, so you can be done with the blind on the tunnel exit sooner (:38, 1:51) and do the next blind to turn him off the line sooner (:40 and 1:56 ).
At 2:29 an 3:21 you had the blind sooner on the tunnel exit (yay!!) which made the blind sooner 4-5 (2:31 and 3:23) but still a little late so he was turning after landing. It is really hard to get that BC, so another option here is to lead out laterally but not ahead of him, so he drives ahead of you to the #2 tunnel – then you can get way ahead and serp the landing side of 4 to show the turn to 5. That requires less timing! And that can also give you plenty of time to do a blind cross after the backside and run the ending line with him on your left. And with enough of a tunnel send, you can do it walking and save your knee!
By running the straight line on your right, you will need to really drive directly to the tunnel entry you want because he has to turn slightly away from you to get the tunnel. He did find it at the end but it was harder to see on the first few reps.
Great job here! Have a happy Thanksgiving!!
Tracy
Good morning!
Yes, I hope your mom feels well enough that there are no more hospital stays!!
And I am glad that she likes tugging! Super!
>>You can see some of her love of tug (I had to use treats to get her to let go—she has a strong bite on her).>>
Perfect – trading is a great way to get the toy back without frustration or conflict. When you were pulling it to get it back, she thought it was more tugging 🙂 So to get it back easily, she can tug tug tug, then you can use an ‘out’ cue and whip out a cookie to trade. That way you can have really efficient training.
Looking at turn and burn – lovely session!! It took a moment for her to realize it was not a line up game 🙂 Then she totally had it and was wrapping brilliantly!
Because she was wrapping really well and tugging really well too, only one suggestion to help make it smoother (and to help us get ready for upcoming games :)):
To help her turn each direction equally and so she knows which way to go around the basket, you can line her up at your side (with a cookie) and then send her around on the side you want her to go around.
When the line up was not as clear and she was in front of you, she was guessing about which direction a bit and then grabbing for the toy. So you can use a cookie to line her up on your left side, for example, then send her around with your left arm and leg (she will turn to her right when you do that). You can stay really close to the laundry basket for now, so she doesn’t squeeze in front of you 🙂
>>tried it from two different angles (far and near) so you will have to let me know which one is better for you to analyze.>>
Both angles were really easy to see, thanks!! So the angle will really depend on whatever is easier for you for setting up the camera – I had a good view of the game 🙂
Great job here!! Let me know what you think! Have a good Thanksgiving!
TracyGood morning!
>>Do you use “get it” for both a thrown reward and a “go get the dead toy” marker?>>
I do! Admittedly, I am not one of the people who has a TON of reward placement markers. I have maybe 5 or 6 total? They include get it, bite (toy from hand), yesssssssssss (cookie from hand), catch (reward thrown back to dog, can be food or toy) and a shhhhhhhhh noise where the dog can chase a dragging toy, let’s go for remote reinforcement, and maybe one or two more that I will need more coffee to remember LOL!)
And the feedback from my dogs and student dogs is that it is fine 🙂 because the dogs are not frustrated and learn the skills quickly.
By having fewer markers – yes, I am relying a bit on the dog’s understanding of context and how humans work, plus I need to have a high rate of success in my training sessions, split the behaviors into small pieces, and good mechanics, but I aim for that anyway. And, by splitting the behavior in the early stages, the cue and context very quickly come to predict the reward placement (such as the GO games will never predict reinforcement from my hand LOL!).
Also, by having fewer markers, I am far more likely to use the *correct* marker. That keeps the markers meaningful, rather than using the incorrect markers and having the dogs just learn to ignore them LOL! And if I don’t have to expend brain energy on remembering al the markers, I am far better with my mechanics and other verbals 🙂
So use as many or as few as are comfortable for now – and if she has questions, we can always add something to help her out.
>>Kaladin does understand yes (contextually) as meaning look to my hand for a treat.>>
Yes – and he probably understands it really well, in context! In a shaping session? “Yes” is powerful as a marker. During regular conversation or when he hits a good RDW? I am betting he understands that “yes” does NOT mean come get a cookie from our hands. Dogs are brilliant!
Looking at the videos:
Toy races:
>>She beat me to it when I’m heading away from the camera but didn’t grab the toy so I stole it.>>A little healthy competition can create some good drive to the toy LOL!! I think the rep where you won was because the toy landing someplace weird so she didn’t want to run into it, but then she got over it for the next rep 🙂
And it will also help her not leap in the air as much, because if she leaps in the air then you are likely to get to the toy first. I mean, the leaping is FREAKING ADORABLE but for the future running dog walks, we want less leaping. And when you start the mat work for the RDW, remind me to send you how I de-leaped Hot Sauce in the early stages.
Looking at the plankrobatics video:
The plank part for cookies was lovely, of course. Easy peasy!>>but ran into the issue of her not wanting the toy and trying to jump up at me instead. She did this a bit when I first brought her home but she would stop if I acknowledged her by giving her a little hug and then it faded away and I hadn’t seen it in a while even if I was switching back and forth between toys and treats.>>
My guess is your are seeing a very tired puppy, mentally 🙂 I don’t think anything in this session was frustrating to her, or too hard. But if we look back across the last 10 days or so… lots of changes that stressed her body (HPA axis firing, extra cortisol, etc). Not bad stress, but the body doesn’t necessarily know the difference. Stress is stress! I am sure you can relate and you also probably still feel tired, even with the good stress of big success 🙂 The difference is your brain is highly developed so you can use coping skills to help out, and her brain is entering the wild ride of adolescence LOL!!So that is all very ‘expensive’ for the brain and when the brain is depleted, we get overarousal behavior especially after the toy race session which gets her into higher arousal with the running and tugging. Add in that she is a baby and doesn’t have the executive function in the brain yet to help her through the brain-tired-times. No worries!!
It takes about 72 hours for the body chemistry to reset for most pups, so in that time you can totally help her with lots of sleep, lots of sniffy walks, cookie pattern games, snuffle mats, chewies, and training that doesn’t ask her arousal to come up (because the depletion might push her into overarousal). So simple cookie training games will be great, you can take the toy out of it for a couple of days. And also running around the yard and playing is great too and might be a good decompression for her.
Looking at the backing up:
I agree, this is an easy method for most dogs (and easy for us humans too :)) She did really well with the backing up! She still looked a little depleted at first when the toy came out but she did get back onto it. It was smart to just end the session there after getting lovely behavior with the backing up and the toy play.For the backing up, you can add the mat as a target/destination, and start having her back up to it (starting all 4 feet on then luring her front feet off, then letting her step back onto it). Then you can lure all 4 feet off, and let her step back onto it, and so on. That will lead nicely into getting her to back onto things that move in coming weeks.
Great job here! Let me know what you think! Happy Thanksgiving!
Tracy
Good morning!
This is going well! It is a hard skill and he is getting it – yay!
Your mechanics are very clear and that really helps him. One tweak for the next session: wait a tiny bit longer before your reward hand moves forward to reward him, so he offers a few more steps backwards before the cookie moves towards him. That will start creating more and more independence.>>>>I’m not seeing weight shift so I video’d from the side.>>
He isn’t really weight shifting because he is really balanced – which is GREAT! Ideally, it looks just like walking backwards (like he is doing here) so you won’t see any super obvious weight shift. We will be able to start getting his head a little higher soon, which would be the most ideal for future conditioning (head in a neutral position, chin more parallel to the floor). But for now, keep the reward placement you had here and as he gets more and more independent, he will change his head position naturally.
Because he s so small, feel free to use a chair or something to sit in, so your back doesn’t get angry with all the bending over to have good reward placement 🙂
You can use a higher mat for him to step up onto as his destination as well, I think he is ready for that!
He did get a little sideways at :55 and towards the end – that can sometimes be fatigue after a few reps, so you can do one or two reps then let him move around for a few seconds (chasing cookies or chasing a toy) then try a few more reps.
Great job here!! Let me know what you think. Have a good Thanksgiving!
Tracy
