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Aha! Good catch here! I am glad she is really considering her markers – yay! So yes, being consistent will prevent confusion.
T
Hi!
Parallel path – this is going well! The only adjustment I’d suggest is to throw the treat further so she really chases it, rather than drop it. That will get her really driving ahead of you to the prop. A thrown toy might also work well to get her blasting ahead – I guess whether to use it or not depends on how long it will take her to bring the toy back LOL! But then yes – once she is driving ahead of you to the prop, you can do the rear cross. And when you start the rear crosses, be sure to keep rewarding even if she turns the ‘wrong’ way – we handlers are often late on the rear crosses as we begin them, so the pups are actually correct because they didn’t see the info in time to make the adjustment.
Countermotion – this went well too! Her better reps were when you started a little closer to the prop towards the end of the video. That is perfectly fine, because it makes the countermotion even more obvious as you move away right near her.
She did great with the plank here! You can add challenge to her mechanics two ways:
– play tug with her before the shaping part of the game. Adding arousal makes it a little harder, but also super useful because we want the pups to be able to have great body awareness even when they are stimulated!– she was happy to go to the end of the board and turn around, so you can add a little challenge by having her jump on in the middle of the board, then turn around right in that spot, doing a full 360 in both directions. You will probably need to help her out by letting her follow a low & slow cookie hand 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
> We’re getting in some practice, not always video.>
It is hard to always catch video, but it is fun to have it! Lots of lovely stuff on the video here!
Barrel wraps:
The back and forth at the beginning of the video looks awesome. You have just enough distance away that she was not always sure that she should offer it without a cue… which means she is ready for the turn and burn game!You did that later in the video and it went well! Be sure to have a line on the ground to give you the visual of when you should move – otherwise the timing of you doing the FC and running away doesn’t really progress the game, because you aren’t tracking if you are leaving earlier or not (spoiler alert, you were not leaving earlier to add challenge, you were actually leaving later LOL!) You can move that line on the ground to start off easy and then get progressively harder, adding more countermotion by doign the FC sooner and sooner. She seems to have lovely commitment so she is ready for more challenge in the game 🙂
On the rep where she didn’t finish the wrap, it was because her attention was split between the game and the noises outside – she got distracted then saw you in the new spot and you said yes, so she came to you. She was great on the other reps!
Forward focus: The forward focus went really well and I give yo ua big click/treat for moving that bowl around the cone pretty quickly! That keeps it from getting boring or repetitive.
Most of it was really easy for her. On the reps where she grabbed the treat without wrapping the cone, she never really looked away from the bowl or towards the cone. She was better with it after a couple of reps where you helped with an arm block –
She has a cute little head toss when she thinks she has locked onto the correct line… just be sure she is also looking at it because if you let go after the head toss, she will go wherever she is looking LOL!Backing up:
In the background, there was some beeping (construction vehicles?) so that was a little distracting to her in this session and she was looking away. In the next session, you can try having your back near a wall so it is easier for her to back up away from you. And also, keep your hands really low, as a focal point: if you stand up, she stops moving backwards and looks up – the higher head position inhibits moving backwards. But if you keep your hands lower, maybe juts above your knees, she will be able to focus on that, keep her head low and move backwards.Great job here!
TracyHi!
Yes, Ramen who appears in some of the videos is a whippet. My other whippet (Larry) came to me as an adult, so he is not in any of the videos. But you will see a number of lurchers in the videos too! I am just obsessed with sighthounds of all types 🙂
For the profile photo: Our agility-u.com website pulls profile images from a popular profile image service called Gravatar. In order to change your profile image displayed on our site, you can create an account at Gravatar.com using the same email address that you use on agility-u.com. Then follow these instructions to upload your profile photo over on Gravatar: https://en.gravatar.com/support/activating-your-account/
Let me know if you have any trouble posting the photo, and keep me posted on Carmen!
Tracy
Hi!
Oh no, poor buddy!!!! I am glad he is feeling better, that must have been scary!!
Using the toys here certainly helps prevent more GI upset and I think he enjoyed it too! He did well letting go of the toys and NOT trying to re-grip the toy or your flesh 🙂 He was better letting go of the toy from your left hand (really quite good!) and not as good at letting go from your right hand to go back to your left. That might just be a bit of learning history, maybe he gets more tugging from your left hand, so needs more practice with the out of the toy from your right hand. It sounds like you did cue the out on your left side a bit but not on the right, so maybe the cue will help.
He did really well going back and forth, especially from your left to your right (possibly linked to being better at letting go of the toy on that side). The next step would be to have you standing – then onto the turn and burn game. Because he is speedy, try the turn and burn in the grass so he can really dig in without slipping.
Nice work here!!
Tracy
Hi! This is going well! She has a lot of value for her prop and you were able to get good distance away from her line!
She is a little stronger on your right (looks at you less, moves faster) so that probably means she is getting value on your left side for being close to you. This could be stuff like obedience foundations or even just your side preference, so be sure to balance the left side with working away from you 🙂
One suggestion to help with that:
Swap out the ‘yes’ marker (which causes her to look up at you) with a ‘get it’ marker which indicates she was correct and to look ahead for the reward. When she hits the prop and before she looks back at you, say your ‘get it’ marker then throw the reward. That will get her looking ahead and driving ahead even more!>with an attempt to get the tug toy back by making it dead. Well THAT was a fail. Journey is a persistent little bitch. The give without treat is gonna take some work.>
We like persistent in a pup! That leads to great things, even if it is hard to get the toy back right now 🙂
The passive/dead toy actually worked pretty well! She was a little persistent but not too bad – definitely loosening her grip on it and totally on the right track! She was still able to tug so what I suggest with the dead toy is to have your hands lower, one on each side of her mouth, so when the toy is passive she can hold it (boring) or let it go (big party!) rather than re-grip.
You can also reward sooner: when you feel her relax her grip on the toy, you can either mark that with a tug marker and tug again, or mark it with a cookie marker and whip out a treat. That can split the behavior and reward it quickly, to help her learn the joys of letting go of the toy 🙂
Nice work here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>We can try the parallel path. However, on a walk she cris crosses all over the place.>
I don’t think that will be an issue in the game – the prop creates her path, and your line is parallel to that. On a walk. there is nothing that indicates the line and she is probably exploring the world.
The pattern game went really well! She was able to easily return engagement to you, even after the useful distraction of the cookie that ended up under the water bowl LOL You can reward even sooner, the instant she engages in your direction, even if she is not in front of you yet. Rewarding engagement from the side will be super useful when you are moving during this game, out in the real world.
>That game hurts my brain with trying to figure out which hand to use so it’s correct for the blind cross.>
True story, this game has a lot of hands going every direction. I plan it all out in advance, like a mini walk through without the pup LOL! But the most important thing is that the puppy enjoys the game, and I think she had a grand time playing here! Two of the goals of this game, besides the handling elements, are to convince the pups to go from food to toys to food to toys, and also that humans can be unpredictable in their movements but that means more fun is coming 🙂
The session went really well! You used all 3 of your hands perfectly! 😂🤣 You got the blind in on time so she was easily able to make the side change, then you showed early decel so she drove right into your side – nice job with the pivot! And I love that she was immediately able to get right back onto the toy after you threw it. GOOD GIRL!!!
Were you giving her a treat during the pivot? It looked like yes at least on the first few which makes it even cooler that she drove to the toy. And maybe no treat on the last pivot or two, but her behavior did not change. Lovely! If you were still giving her the treat, I bet you can fade it out at this point.
My only suggestion for this game is that you can call her as soon as you are relatively convinced she ate the cookie off the mat 🙂 It looked like she was finding the treat then optimistically looking for me (there was probably some good scent too), but she responded the instant you called her. So you can call her sooner rather than wait for her to start moving towards you. I figure in another session or two, she will grab the treat and move towards you immediately.
Great job!
Tracy
Hi! This went really well! Yay! She was really strong with offering going back and forth around the hamper.
> There was a gap when I moved the hamper out a bit, and she tried the shortcut, at that point I extended by right leg so that my foot kind of blocked that route, leaving about a six inch gap. Pleased to see she chose to wrap>
Her seeing your move the hamper out might have been what caused her to look into the gap, so you can toss a treat away for her to chase – then move the hamper out while she is not looking 🙂 That way the distance is added but not enhanced by her seeing you do it.
>first break it took her about 30 seconds to engage with the toy, second break about 15 seconds and the third break was about 3 seconds.>
That might have been because you were still near the bowls and hamper, so she was a bit in food mode (at the end of the video, she goes over to the hamper and sniffs the air LOL!) So two ideas to get her into the tugging more quickly:
– move further from the hamper setup, so there is less cookie scent floating about (hopefully :))
– use a SUPER high value toy and you can ooh and ahhh over it and kind of tease her with it, all before giving it to her – it is almost like we are adding a build up to the toy before giving her the toy 🙂Since this is going so well, you can go to the next step: this game but now you are standing. If she is happy to keep wrapping with you standing up, you can then go to the Turn And Burn game we added last Tuesday – that one is SUPER fun! You don’t need to add much distance when you stand up, you can still be close to the hamper.
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>then tried again in afternoon, VOILA! puppy brains! and latent learning in action>
I love it!!! Yay!!!!
>Also she and Audubon have some sort of respiratory virus. We are all puzzled because we haven’t been anywhere in several months. >
Ugh that sucks! Hopefully it is just a quick and easy upper respiratory thing and Rou has “met” it before in her life so doesn’t get sick.
For informational purposes: There is a respiratory thing that has been going around the flyball community in the southeast for most of 2025: it started in Florida, then moved up to Georgia/South Carolina/North Carolina. It has a LONG incubation period, up to 6 weeks (!) which is why it is so hard to track. It lasts a while and also resistant to treatment except maybe steroids. PCR testing has been unable to identify what it is, specifically, so the vets are thinking it might be a new strain of something 🙁 Most of the dogs just have an annoying cough. Some dogs have gotten sicker, but that is rare. The incubation is the weird part – we have done some contact tracing and it seems like a 6 week period, based on where dogs have been. Eek!
The agility community has not seen it like the flyball community has, but there is plenty of crossover so I imagine it might be getting passed around to agility too. Because of this, my dogs have all been on lockdown with 3 national events coming up.
Video 1: this went well! You did a great job of reconnecting after the blind even if you were a tiny bit late and you decels looked really good too! She was able to get the info for the decel on time, allowing her to pivot beautifully.
You can add the toy race after the pivot now: have an empty hand for the pivot then as you finish the pivot, throw a toy and run run run 🙂
At the very beginning you almost called her by the wrong name, and I will tell you that I relate 10000% I have a lot of “oops wrong name” moments hahahahahaha
Video 2 (Backing up)
She is off to a great start here! Working outdoors, you can put a towel down between for your feet for the start cookie so she finds it immediately 🙂 She was doing a great job with that first big step backwards. To get more steps, switch to tossing the treats low and between her feet so she continues moving back – rewarding from your hand will get one or two steps because she will stick close to your hand 🙂With all the cookie tossing, this might work better indoors if you have a surface that she won’t slide on.
Turn and Burn: she made great progress here in the 2 sessions! Yay!
One suggestion: Put that line on the ground so you are not twitchy or try to move too soon 🙂 Any of her errors in both sessions were because you were sending to the barrel and trying to leave very quickly so she was not sure if she should go t the barrel or chase your line.
So for these early stages, stand perfectly still (that is the hard part) until she gets to the line placed at the exit of the barrel wrap: then take off and run. That is hard for us humans so the line on the ground gives us a clear visual of what to wait for an when we can move 🙂
I agree that she is probably a lefty – that side seemed easier for her in the first session for sure! So as you move the line around the barrel and begin to do the FC earlier and earlier, do that harder reps to the left first to teach her the concept. Then you can try it to the right after she is successful turning to her left.
>Leaving for Cincinnati Sunday and praying Roulez doesn’t pick it up. Getting the 2nd of 2 immunotherapy injections Monday.
Do we have a week break in this class?>Week 5 is a break-ish week, where we just enhance some of the things the pups have been doing. So that will give you time to get home and catch up.
Nice work here!
Tracy
Hi!
Looking at the collar grab video:I don’t mind that he was lower energy here – it was kind of a relaxed session with cookies, being outdoors, you being stationary, etc. He was engaged and happy to let you touch his harness, so you got lots of reps and value in.
You can totally try it with a toy, because sometimes higher arousal changes their feeling about being touched. And you can also hold his collar until after you throw the treat or toy, to get the most direct association between collar hold and toy/treat.
>Teaching the start of middle is always a nightmare for my mechanics. But we got there.>
It went really well!! I always feel like my arms are too short for this game at first LOL! One other option is to toss a treat behind you for him to get, then cue him to return to between your feet (rather than having to coordinate both hands bringing him into position).
He seemed perfectly happy to let you touch his collar here too, so you can extend that by holding his collar til the reward lands, the let him go race to it after he looks at it (he will probably be looking at it the whole time :))
Great job!
TracyHi!
>This was before I drank all the adult beverages. (Posting this after consuming adult beverages)>
Ha! I can’t decide if it is better to consume adult beverages before or after (or during) puppy training LOL 😂😝
He did really well hitting the prop here, including with you sideways! Yay!
>I was quite pleased with the hand touch reset. I’d never done that with him before but will often do that with my other dogs so I didn’t think about what i was doing til after it happened.>
He was really good in that transition from tugging into his next start position!!
One suggestion: You can add the more of the ready dance before the send for a bit longer to help him be ready for the send. You did the mine-ready-send very quickly together and he was not quite as ready (looking at your hand a lot) as he will be if there is a bit of a ready ready ready engagement moment, then when he is looking at you – big send. And you can add a little more distance so he has to go a full stride past your hand to touch the prop . That can help him say “AHA! It is the prop, not the cookie hand!” 🙂
Great job!!
TracyHi!
> Not sure how you feel about using a prop in this manner but it’s how I taught Benni his back up so I thought I would try it.>
This is one of the ways to teach it for sure, I like it! On this version as well, throw the treat lower: we don’t want his head up high in anticipation of the treat being thrown back behind him – that is what start to happen here: after a couple of good reps, the reward placement started to change his position so at first his end was high, then he was turning around to where the reward was thrown. He wasn’t cheating 🙂 he was giving feedback on the reward placement 🙂
To keep his head down and get the backing up extended, toss the treat low, aiming to get it between his front feet like you are trying to score a goal in hockey, and the goal is between his feet LOL 😂😝
And using a destination target to back up to can help get him backing up more and more.
Looking at the prop games video:
Parallel path – He is committing really well to the prop! One suggestion: instead of using the “yes” as the marker (which gets him looking at you) and rewarding from your hand (which gets him wanting to stay near your hand), use a ‘get it’ marker or whichever one means “the reward is thrown ahead” so he doesn’t look at you and blasts straight ahead after ht prop to get the reward. That will allow you to get more distance and also get the rear crosses (more on that below :))
Countermotion is going really well! He has very clear smack of the prop on these!
It took a little convincing for him to stay in handler focus, so you can actually feed him a treat for sticking with you and not sending himself 🙂 I think he would prefer the reward for staying with you over being touched – when you were touching him, he stepped away.As you added distance, he did best with the countermotion when you were moving away slowly. When you were quick in your motion, he didn’t always commit to fully hitting the prop – so think of your motion as a slow slide away and not a quick step away. We can add quickness soon 🙂
>Not sure how to get him to drive ahead of me to attempt the rear cross. It feels like when I try to hang back he matches my speed or something like that.>
Two things were happening here when you were thinking about the rear crosses:
– he had just done a solid 3 minutes of movement and work, so he was tired and the rear cross can of worms was probably not good to open at that point 🙂 Start rear crosses at the beginning of a session and as the only behavior in the session so he can really think about it and give feedback on what he is seeing.– he was squarely in handler focus because of all the rewards from your hands. Yes, the countermotion puts them in handler focus with hand delivered rewards because it is a turn cue, so don’t do rear crosses in the same session. And since the parallel path game is the pre-cursor to the rear crosses, let’s get him out of handler focus on that by throwing rewards (no rewards from hands on this one, at all :))
When he understands to drive ahead for the reward and not stay locked onto your hands, the rear crosses will be much easier. That way you can start next to hm, he will accelerate past you to the prop, which gives you time to changes sides behind him before he reaches the prop. But don’t start the rear crosses until he has had at least one more session of parallel path with the thrown rewards.And when you do start the rear crosses, reward him anyway even if he turns the ‘wrong’ direction 🙂 The timing of the rear cross cues is challenging at first, so the pups are generally always correct based on what they see from us handlers before the arrive at the prop 🙂
Nice work here!
TracyGood morning!
He was such a good boy here with the target! He was ‘looking’ for the target with his back feet! YAY!!One thing to remember as you work this skill or any shaping skill:
Don’t move your hands til you throw the reward 🙂 Let him offer. When you move your hand, he will lock onto your hand and then rely on it. He did much better when you were not moving your hands to get him to move.I would stick with this target option to keep building distance because he was really thinking about his back feet (we build on this for contact work too, stay tuned!)
When you did the stand up version, I think he had a valid question: the target he was just getting reward for working on was still right behind him, so he was thinking about that for the first few reps.
And, keep your hands low here, the whole time – we don’t want his head all the way up because it inhibits the backwards movement and also, I think he was perceiving the reward as being for stopping and lifting his head because that is what was happening when you threw the reward. That is why he offered the bow when you stopped rewarding, he was like: “I did the behavior, are you waiting for the bow now?” Good boy!!
So when you bend down to put the first cookie in place, stay there (you can rest your elbows on your knees) and leave your cookie hands right there, at nose level. That way you can very quickly get the next reward in by just flicking the treat between his front feet before he stops moving. Yes, he will need some impulse control to back away from the cookie hands, but that is good for him to figure out 🙂
When you got low with your hands behind your back, he probably also thought it was a bow offer session. But then at the very end, you were standing and your hands were lower, and the backing up came back. Yay! So definitely keep your hands low for quick reward placement, before he stops moving or lifts his head.
Nice work here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>[this is me trying to convince myself that I can use the clicker to bring the “pretty” back to his backing up]>
Think of it as a fun training challenge! He will enjoy it because of all the clicks and treats 🙂 and it will be a good physical and mental workout for him. My advice is to stare at where you want his back feet only, rather than trying to see all of him. Our brains are not good at processing the big picture but our brains are great at staring at a spot and marking the instant the foot appears in it.
Looking at the video – I love playing with markers! And it is fun for the pups too – lots of rewards!
>Besides saying the words in a voice that could be heard and waiting for him to finish chewing his food,>
I think your verbals were very clear, they sound different, and you were saying them with intonations different enough, which helps him differentiate. And yes, letting him finish chewing is good for processing 🙂
One of the things we humans do with markers is we either move the hand before the marker (or somehow indicate the reward with a physical cue) or at the same time. That can muddy the verbal understanding – these are subtle movements to us and we don’t even realize we are doing it, but the pups see al of that because they can process it as if they are watching us in slow motion.
So with that in mind I watched this in slow motion to see what he was seeing before or during the marker. (Side note: in training we *all* move before or while saying markers, so don’t worry too much about being perfect or you’ll get paralyzed! The dogs learn them – so yes, we try to be super precise when working on them but don’t drive yourself crazy :))
On a couple of them, you were moving the reward just before the marker (the ‘toy’ marker and the ‘get it’ marker). So for those 2, try to keep your hands perfectly still as you say it: verbal, wait a heartbeat, then throw or indicate the toy.
>though he seems to understand “catch (food or toy headed behind you)” by where he’s anticipating the treat going.>
Yes! The ‘catch’ marker also no perceptible movement from you before or during the marker – so in your training, you might have isolated the verbal better which would lead to the understanding we see here. Yay!!!
The ‘here’ marker also had no perceptible movement til after the verbal, but he was already facing you and your hands were moving back to the treat after the hand touch, so you can stand perfectly still, hands at your sides, while he is facing away… and say the marker and see what he does in terms of orienting to your hands.
>For “cookies” – he misses the cue twice. It’s one I’ve practiced more with a pause, which I didn’t really have for these misses.>
That was the hardest one for him here! It is possible that it is the one that requires the most impulse control, so there is an extra layer of challenge. It also might be that you have a small physical cue built into it as well – on the 2 misses, there were no physical cues. When he did go to it (like at 1:10) you added a turn/lean towards it and a slightly different sound to the verbal. So maybe he was waiting for the additional physical cue?
Or perhaps placing the cookie in the bowl is actually a cue to *not* go to it (impulse control, good boy!) so he was making double triple sure that the cookie was available. You can try it with an empty bowl and then throw the treat into it, taking out the self-control element somewhat. Then when he is driving to the bowl, you can add the cookie back.
He will give us feedback on this for sure, so definitely get video and watch it in slow motion to see when the verbal comes in relation to the movement.
Great job here!
Tracy
