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Good morning!
Sounds like a super fun weekend of life skills and learning about the agility environment! Pooping on leash is a vastly underrated but hugely important sport dog life skill!!!!
Find my face is going well – what treats can you use that require less chewing? That was holding her back a bit in terms of speed of response.
>>On one find my face she sat watching me- not sure if I handled that well.>>
Bearing in mind that this is an arousal regulation and engagement game (and not a movement game)… all of that is rewardable. She was being very patient (“mom is disconnected, I can see her and will wait til mom re-engages) and offered a stationary behavior rather than jump up on you, get nippy, bark, or wander away sniffing. There was really not a lot of room to move AND this particular room has a history of stay training…. So she offered a nice patient stay. She could see your face… so it is all totally rewardable as soon as she makes and effort to re-engage.The stays are looking good! She is quick to predict that after you stop moving, a reward or release will come next – so mix in rewards/releases *while* you are moving. That way she does not get into the pattern of seeing you move-stop-release (dogs can predict the rhythm of our timing amazingly well, much to our dismay LOL!!)
So some reps can be exactly what you did here: move away, stop, wait a beat, say ‘catch’ then toss.
And mix in these reps too:
– move away, stop, praise quietly, wait a beat, say ‘catch’ then toss.
– Move away while watching her and if she is not moving, say ‘catch’ and throw the reward while you are in motion the whole time.Being able to release while in motion is a very useful skill! And it does not pair motion into the release, because you are doing it the whole time. What causes motion to become the release is if you stop then move & release all at the same time, then the sudden movement becomes the release (which we don’t want of course :))
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
>>I have been taking her to training barns and using whatever they have. I used cones at one place and the laundry barrels at another. She is not wrapping the barrels consistently, but jets out straight. >>
She might need a refresher on wrapping as the first session each time you use something different – cones are pretty different from barrels which are pretty different from wings, so se might the first few rewards to be just going around each new object (you can even bring out the bowls on each side to jump start it).
>>I think part of it is if my arm goes a little forward, she is looking for thrown food. This has only been a problem since I started the thrown food catch release on sit stays. >>
Maybe? But the catch toss is so different in mechanics and context because she is in a sit and you are ahead of her and throw it back to her) that it is less likely. It could be confusion if your hand has a cookie in it and is moving forward, to it could be that you are blocking the line so she is running fast but doesn’t see what she is running towards 🙂
>>I think it’s also a generalization issue because she doesn’t do it with the known items in the small space of my basement.>>
This is the more likely scenario: new object in a new environment can produce different behaviors.
>>I have concentrated on keeping my arm completely back, but that doesn’t always solve the problem. Any thoughts? I have video, but wanted to ask you asap, before I had time to upload.>>
Could be any of the above, all of the above, none of the above LOL!! Show me a video, because the visual will give us instant answers.
>>Also, I haven’t been posting video because we have been spending a lot of time on focus work in the two training barns. Leash on and off. Coming out of the crate. Control unleashed patterns games. It is going well, but wasn’t worth uploading because of what it was.>>
It is a great thing to work on!! If she needs help processing the environment, then these games will help a whole lot.
>> I have been training the dog in front of me, as we must. I realized my grand plans of working xyz fun game on any given day needed to take a backseat to what she actually needs right now. The games will be there. >>
100000% agree! The engagement and resilience games are just as important as the agility running around things games 🙂 And if you have engagement, then those games are much easier in new environments. Yay for supporting her learning by helping her process the environment!
Tracy
Good morning!
>> She did fairly well being a good canine citizen (better when helping me score from my lap or the crate near me than she did in her crate in the other room)
She probably needed more social support in the other room. Was Kaladin right next to her? Or another friend? Being crated in that environment is definitely hard.
>>Happy to report that she was able to take cheese from Dean and turn away from Kaladin and I running.>>
That is awesome! Yay for Dean and the power of cheese!!!!
Power bowls went well with trumpet warm up in the background 🙂 Then a bit of volume dial for cookies also looked good.
Her facial expression was kind of hilarious when you asked her if she saw the cookies you put down on the chair. She was like “Obvs. I totally see them duh” hahahahah!!!
She did really well here – I think she was a little bit like “ok, this is odd and maybe too easy” but she moved away from you each and every time with no attempts to go back and snag the cookies. YAY!
>>Should I be pausing more after the HH cue and before I run to the treat?>>
Maybe one beat: Happy Hour then a beat then run back to it. That can really let the verbal cue get heard before the motion takes over. She is off to a great start here!
>> so I asked her if she wanted to play with her fox (aka – Fatally Flattend Fox”, a friend of “Roadkill Raccoon”). She did so I turned the video back on.>>
I love the names LOL! And she was very happy to play – I think that tells us something about the challenge of the happy hour game… not that mentally challenging for her. YAY! It might be more mentally challenging tomorrow even if you do the exact same thing (adolescence….) or as you make it harder, but for now it was pretty easy for her.
Looking the perch video:
One volume dial trick you can add is a spin on cue (do I remember correctly that Kaladin can do this?) It is a fun way to add arousal when using food.She did really well with the first rep and pivoted back to just about center! Rather than reward in position then wait for more (which caused her to stop), you can reward and toss the treat off to the other side sooner. Something to experiment with is NOT rewarding her for stopping after a few steps – see how she does if you reward by tossing the treat off to the other side (when she has basically arrived back near the center). That way it is all about moving and no stops get cookies 🙂
She pivots better from your left to your right so you can reward a different number of steps on each side: pivoting from your right to your left is mainly 2 or 3 steps and pivoting from your left to your right is more like 4 or 5 little steps. All good!
Great job here!
TracyHi!
>>WE really did this, but operator error, turned off video, then played and recorded 35 minutes of my pocket. Oh no LOL!!!! I hate when that happens! >>I was shocked at how well she did it.I am not surprised at all! She is a brilliant girlie and it is an easy concept transfer for her 🙂 try adding your left and right verbals in the next session and see how she does!
Keep me posted :)
TracyGood morning!
Your rocking horses are looking really good here! Her commitment is looking strong especially without needing much motion from you. Nice connection on the exit of the FCs before sending to the next cone! She had a tiny struggle going past your hand (especially when the toy was in it) and she would hop up a little… but then she carried on past it so we will let her sort it out because she is doing great 🙂
She is ready for you to add two things:
– your verbal wrap cues. Rather than praising or being quiet, you can send her to the cone with your wrap cue to get her really learning those.
– you can transfer this to wings (if you haven’t already shown this to her) – start with a bit of wrapping and turn and burn on one wing and if she recognizes it as a ‘thing to wrap’ then you can do rocking horses with 2 wings instead of cones.
Great job!!
TracyGood 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
