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We can play it by ear, or switch her to Thursday to give her an extra day (if you can do Thursday). Do you know what is causing the soreness?
Oh no! Hopefully it is something small and easy. Poor girl!! Which leg is it? Check her pads and toes – these fast little whippety creatures often bang up their pads and toes.
T
Hi!
She definitely got the hang go the wrap after the first couple of reps – then after that she was really solid. Nice job making your verbals sound really different and helping a little with body language then fading it back out.
I was happy to see her nail the first rep of the advanced level too! YAY! That is pretty hard but she did not end up back in the tunnel 🙂 Her turns were a tiny bit wider and there was steam coming out of her ears but she never ended up in the tunnel when you cued a wrap. Her only error was a wrap when you cued a tunnel, just an oopsie, no biggie and she was great on the rest of them. She also had a little trouble finding the other side of the tunnel after the wrap, but that was just because she is used to getting a reward after the wrap and might have been surprised about the tunnel cue.
But overall, these were both great sessions: she was amped up, barking, fast…. But still really wonderful about processing the verbals. YAY!!!
>>She has a sore leg so I may have to take it easy for a bit.>>
Poor girl! She might need a couple of days of rest/leash walks to resolve any soreness.
Great job here!
TracyI am looking forward to seeing you and Hola! in person too!!! She is definitely a spicy character 🙂
TracyHi!
The race tracks looked great here! You were super connected and moving really fast so she found the race track lines really well! Great commitment 🙂
She slowed down for the tight turns – I am not sure if it was too much decel, or she was tired from the race tracks or waiting for the ball throw? So on the next session, do the tight turns first when she is fresh, and we will see if she has questions on the tight turns or if she was just tired here.Great job!
TracyHi!
The layering is going really well! The jump was a little too close to the tunnel at first then she found it easily when you moved it away a bit.
Finding in the tunnel was not problem, so putting the sequence together went really well!When you change sides, be sure to start the process over the from the very beginning, as if it was totally new (because on the new side, it is totally new haha)
In the next session, you can keep moving the start wing further around so she has to go around the tunnel even more to find the jump 🙂 

Nice work!
TracyHi!
This session went really well, I think she is really beginning to understand the rear cross line concept! Plus, you were very clear with your line of motion and that really helped too! My only suggestion is to mix in more GO reps so she keeps the speed up. She was slowing down to anticipate the RC, so mixing in the GO reps between the RCs will help keep her powering up the line 🙂
Great job!
TracyHi!
>>I have also noticed in toy play at Suzie’s that right from the start she struggled giving up her toy. That usually happens after we have been working a while and she is more aroused, but there have been several times recently that she started out that way. She has also at times gone into the tunnel – not just running through but going in as though she might be avoiding something.>>
There is a lot of arousal when you train in groups, so you can totally build in a ton of the pattern games and decompression stuff there to get her to breathe more. The behavior you mention there might be related to the higher arousal/stimulation levels associated with being there.
>>She usually lays on the couch next to me on a fleece blanket. She has been more restless and digging at it as though she was trying to make a nest. Last night she crawled behind me on the couch as though she wanted to hide. Her meal eating has really become hit or miss. Sometimes she eats and other times she won’t even look at it (that started when Bisbee got really sick and got worse when she died)>>
Possibly hormones-related or a false pregnancy?
Also, possible adolescent restlessness, I’m living through that right now LOL!
>>First, we had a friend (dog trainer that has kept her before) keep her for 5 days in mid March. She has stayed there before and loves this woman and some of her dogs and they get to play a lot. She was very happy to see us and the behavior started about a week later.
Might be unrelated, or right have added a little bit of additional stress, hard to know. But the little stressors add up and she probably needs to complete the stress cycle, decompress, and reset her HPA axis! Sniffy walks, running around, and no training for a bit will help.
>>Just as he got back to the car and was putting her in, a man that was nearby shot a gun that had some of that huge ammo so it made a huge boom. It scared her and the next couple times he walked in that area he would have to leash her up several hundred feet early to get her to the car. >>
Yikes, that could have certainly made an impression! That, plus the other things, might have all stacked up to produce what you are seeing now. Based on the events between the day she came into season and today, I bet there is a stress stacking thing happening.
On the WIYH video – a little more connection needed on the go on the first rep – you made the adjustment on the 2nd rep and she nailed it.
When you throw the toy and she runs around a little… let her have a longer victory lap. Let her scoot around for at least 10 seconds and then see if she comes back on her own. She is probably decompressing and calling her back takes that away… but she needs it.
A detail to help the RC lines: Your first step after the wing should be forward to the center of the bar – you stepped back or away from the wing then forward and that delayed the RC info
>>Is this supposed to be a backside slice?
It is supposed to be a backside circle wrap because of the handler position, but it can also be a slice – either way, as you move forward past the jump, be sure to look at the landing spot and not at her, to help her take the jump.
RC after the tunnel – these are hard because she can’t see you while she is in the tunnel. You were a little late on most except the last one you were early. You can set yourself up to be a step ahead of the tunnel exit before she exits, to start to cue sooner. I think the most helpful thing to do with the RC is to place the toy on the landing line you will be cuing. That way the handling is not the only source of info for the RC – the placed toy will be a good visual aid as well.
>>She did do a bit of the going into the tunnel maybe to escape pressure.
It is possible she was decompressing a bit by going into the tunnel. So you can let her have longer victory laps with her toy to help decompress. And also, you can use the placed reward to help the RCs – even though she got a lot of cookies and toys, I think the actual behavior is unclear to her and that is a lot of pressure. So, the handling plus the toy target can be very clarifying and that relieves a lot of pressure 🙂
Nice job here! Let me know what you think and what the vet says!
TracyHi!
Backside wraps – She did really well here with all the countermotion! You can take the clicker out of the equation b(ecause it causes too much focus on you) and add in dropping the reward on the landing side of where the bar would be (the opposite side of the wing in this case).
>>Let me know if I need to change anything, and is there a hand signal I should be using? Not sure I was positioned correctly when heading to the wing.
No additional hand signal needed! You can look at the landing spot as you move forward to help support commitment as you add the jump bar. And yes, you were positioned correctly – she could see the entire wing. Yay!
Angled ladder grid – only one rep here and it is a little hard to see everything from the front. But the rep looked good – head down, lots of power! So you can keep showing her the angled grid and use a moving target.
Layering video – she was so spicy at the beginning LOL! She got this concept really quickly – after the first rep of going past the tunnel… no questions! Super!
And then you were able to build in the tunnel and the full sequence – no problems! She actually had a gorgeous turn from the jump to the tunnel. Yay!If you wanted to add challenge, keep moving the start wing further around the tunnel and also you can move the jump a little further from the tunnel.
>>I forgot to keep driving forward past the jump on the Go!
Yes, you’re decelerating on the Go reps 🙂 Give yourself something to drive to, like a wing past the jump so you have a destination.
The left and right are a little late – she is getting them but she is turning on landing rather than before the jump. So on the rear crosses, it will be helpful if you are past the tunnel exit a little before she exits, so you can set the line sooner (you can send to the wing from further away to get this). And for the post turn, you can see her exit the tunnel and start to gently turn (nothing abrupt needed LOL!)
>>My timing really sucked on the verbal lefts & rights>>

Your timing was maybe a stride late, which does not qualify as really sucking LOL!! Really sucking would see her turning the wrong way on the rear crosses. Or biting you LOL!!!>>We need lots of work on the layering and rear crosses.
Wait – I think the layering sessions was just about perfect! And the rear crosses were successful and now can be sooner. Things are going really well – nice work!!
TracyHi!
>>Help!>>
Any time someone puts this in their thread, I prepare for a video filled with errors LOL! But this session was good – ye, she had a couple of questions but overall she was really successful on a really hard skill. She turned correctly on all the RCs here!
>>Probably not the best way to start the go & rx game since I got her focused on the toy. The game to get the toy back went good off camera. She ran to her favorite corner, traded me low value tx, then grabbed back on to tug. >>
I don’t think she was too focused on the toy, her questions were related to other things. One suggestion about the toy, though: try to throw underhand instead of overhand like you did here. But throwing overhand, you were having to decelerate to do it and that made the info less clear. So by throwing underhand, you can keep moving which will smooth out the rear crosses. Your line was good in the rear crosses!
She had a couple of questions on the first Go reps: be sure to maintain connection. At :10 she was a little wide looking for connection, and at :16 she went even wider to try to see connection and ended up passing by the jump. You gave her a little more room at :21 so she got it but more connection will really help too!
>>I tried for too many reps.
Were there more reps than the ones on here? If this was the full session, I think you were good! Nice work!
TracyPS – for the line up between your feet, I suggest luring it with a treat he will follow. Because he is small, you can start in a chair and lure him to come behind your leg and between your feet, then feed and release forward. Then you can move to standing. I will look to see if I have a video of it somewhere!
Tracy
Hi! I am glad you are enjoying Savannah! It sounds like a great city! And I am happy to hear he was a good city dog 🙂
The Diamond game looks fabulous.
First rep looked great! He didn’t take the wing after the blind because you said “yay!” And for a moment it looked like you were going to give him the toy. Compare to the 2nd run, where you didn’t say “yay” after the blind and he kept going 🙂 Clearly “yay!” Means the toy is coming, so be sure to NOT say yay until you are ready to deliver the toy 🙂You did a great job with the verbals! My only suggestion for the blinds is to start them sooner: no later than when he is halfway between the tunnel exit and the wing (he can probably still commit if you start it one stride after he exits the tunnel). You were tending to start them late, when he arrived at the wing (like at 2:33), so he was a little wide because the info was delayed.
>>I find it awkward to present the toy from across my body. I’ll keep practicing
Keep practicing to really emphasize the connection. He is looking great!
The racetracks look great! You can probably start saying “go tunnel” as soon as he gets around the middle wing (closest to he camera) so he can drive way ahead directly to the tunnel.
Great job here! See you on Wednesday!
TracyHi!
Hopefully any snow in the forecast goes away FAST! Ugh!!The layering session went really well! She picked up the concepts really well and it was great that you could put them all together so easily. A couple of ideas:
You can decel and turn sooner when you are going from the layered jump to the tunnel to help get a better turn from the jump to the tunnel. The decel can be happening before liftoff for the jump so you can start the FC – but since she has a lot to coordinate, do it with a jump bump and not a bar. She hit the bar twice on that, so take the bar out til she has more experience on the layering.You can also cue the start wing and throw a reward for it to help maintain the commitment. 🙂 if you tried to leave early, she was coming with you so more reward will help support commitment. She was pulling off the wing commitment on the RC video too, so definitely a good spot to refresh the value.
If you wanted to play with this more, you can add a little distance by moving the jump a little further from the tunnel by maybe a foot or so.
Rear crosses are hard because they are just really hard LOL! And coming from a tunnel, where the dog is blind, is even harder. I think part of the struggle was that she had to make a slight turn to get to the jump, so if you were saying go go go or you were too early on the RC diagonal, she went entirely past the jump.
On those reps, she was correct. Go means “go straight” so she did, and when you were early on the RC line at the beginning, she was following your line of motion. She’s very literal at this early stage LOL!
So having to get her to see the jump before you could start the RC was making you late for the RC, so she had a lot of turns to her left when you wanted right.
Three things to do to make it easier:
-move the jump over so it is completely straight from the tunnel exit and that way you don’t have to turn to it to get her to see it.
– change the start wing position so it is not as far away (it can be in the smiley face position, so it is easier for you to be a little ahead at the tunnel exit to set the RC line, and so she isn’t moving quite as fast.
Those 2 ideas should make it much easier, but if she still has questions, here is idea 3:
– place the toy before each rep on the desired exit line, to give her a visual aid for the turns. That should help especially on the harder turn side.Great job here! Fingers crossed for zero snow accumulation!!
TracyGood morning!
>She might be just going through some adolescent phase, but I think she has been showing some stress. >>
This is interesting – what stress signs are you seeing? And when do yo see them? Good for you for noticing changes and trying to help her out before anything bigger happens. Is it mainly car-related, or are you seeing it in life and/or training sessions?
I don’t see anything in the training videos that would produce stress (high success rate, lots of play short sessions, lots of running) so definitely try to catch the stress moments on video so we can see what might be causing it. Or it might be some adolescent thing (how long ago was she in season?) or she might be having a pain response to something?
>>I have a vet appointment with her next week to rule out any issues.
Smart! A physical exam and maybe a little bloodwork? I know your area is not known for ticks, but a tick disease can show early symptoms as a stressed dog who is more anxious, or more noise sensitive, or less interested in play or work.
Also – are your other dogs around when you are seeing this? Is she on her own (this is just informational, it could be meaningful or not meaningful!). Sometimes it is helpful for another dog to be around, or it can create anxiety if the other dog is displaying and anxiety. Young dogs do a lot of social learning!
So for example: with my new baby puppy, he goes new places with big brother Ramen who is always the happiest, calmest dude. The buddy system really works in this case! He does NOT ever go new places with Crusher who is a bitch on wheels and anxious and barky – I don’t want him to think that maybe he, too, should be stressed or anxious or barky.
>>I don’t know if I get too serious and not keep it light enough so if you see something let me know.
All of the videos are edited to only show the training reps, so to look for something in training we will need to look at the complete session. So, set a timer for 4 minutes, turn the camera on, let it roll the whole time, and turn it off at the end of the 4 minutes and post it. No editing needed! The training reps are looking really great so if something is causing stress in training, then it is happening between reps or on sessions that are not videotaped.
>>She started showing reluctance getting in the car about 3 weeks ago and I think it was worry about going to do agility (the most we have been doing it in the last month is twice a week). This week we did lot of trips that ended with fun, low key non-agility things and she has been much happier about getting in the car.>>
That is really interesting! On your low key trips, have you been doing short car rides or long car rides? I am pretty sure the trips to Suzie & Keith’s place are long car rides, yes? It might be that something is a little ouchy in agility (physically or mentally), but it could also be that she doesn’t like the longer car rides. Maybe a bit of motion sickness?
I will tell you that 2 of my girl BC-ish dogs hate getting in the car or RV (Elektra used to hide, Hot Sauce used to slink around like she was about to be murdered) and it has nothing to do with where we are going 🙂 They are happy to do their sports but they don’t love the vehicles. That might be the case with Caper too, so if the vet doesn’t find anything ouchy or off, we can add some fun car games.
Looking at the video:
Well, she certainly figured out the layering easily! Yay! You did a really excellent job of structuring the session by breaking down each skill and building it all up, then putting it all together. As Brad said at the end: “Wow!” So nice!!! I mean, many experienced adult dogs can’t do what she did here 🙂
Did you hurt your thumb at :22? Or you ok? We don’t want to break you!!!
You were able to progress this game very quickly to having the tunnel entries visible and adding the layering. So you can totally reward the “close enough” efforts like at :50, where she started halfway up the tunnel and you sent her past the tunnel exit to find the wing – she didn’t quite find the wing perfectly but wowza, she was able to figure out that it was “go past the tunnel to find a thing” – you can totally reward that as part of shaping this skill. You gave a reset cookie which is great, but it is still great to have thrown the toy out past the wing to affirm that yes, she was good to go look for a “thing” on the other side of the tunnel 🙂
She did a great job finding the tunnel after the layering too – super nice! When she is more experienced, you will be able to do the FC and cue the tunnel sooner but this was really a great session!
>>this was our first try with any of it, so I am very pleased with how she did. She also did not react to the cat being out there and to one of our neighbors many rabbits who have decided living at our place is good.
I am super pleased to, she looked great and figured out the whole puzzle in just one session. Yay! And ignoring cats and bunnies? Well that is pretty awesome too!
So the big question is: did you see any of the stress you were mentioning during this training session. I didn’t see any stress behavior from her, and you were light and happy, and the rate of success was very high, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of pressure. Let me know and we will keep sorting it out – the trick to figuring it out is to track some data and see what correlates.
Great job here and keep me posted!
TracyGood morning!
>>Am having difficulty with changtse’s wanting to play with me except for the open channel WPs!>
Do you mean she seems slower and less enthusiastic? It might be related to the sudden change in weather – it looks like it got warm there! She probably needs a bit of time to acclimate to the new temperatures after the winter, so make sure the sessions are really short and super fun! The ball *definitel* helps accomplish this.
>>on the race track sequence, Changtse is heading for me instead of the wing. Should my path be more explicit to the wing, eg, step to the wing when she exits the tunnel and then move in new direction when she commits?>>
I think she is seeing a little too much deceleration on the race tracks, meaning you are getting far ahead and then waiting for her, so she is slowing down to come to you. That is correct, she should prepare to slow down and turn when you decel. So to get more speed and power on the race track, you can run closer to the tunnel then accelerate away just before she exits, so you are showing acceleration the whole time. That can get her driving around the wings with more speed.
If you slow down to step to the wing, she will (correctly) read it as a turn cue on the wing which we don’t want on the race tracks. You were showing good decel on the wing when you wanted the turn (line on the blind at :47 – nice connection too!!) so she did well with those! You sometimes did a spin (FC-BC) instead of a blind so be sure to keep reminding yourself to turn away from her on the bind and not towards her.
Great job here! She was getting faster during this session, so I am confident she will continue to get faster as she gets used to the warmer temperatures.
Tracy
