Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Good morning! Thanks for the update!
>Speedway was used for training. I actually chose to work on her start line. It seemed appropriate, since we’d been working on it during the week, even during some play sessions. She was solid, staying quite awhile until I said, “break!”, and showed her tug, which she hit hard and tugged hard. I did a couple lefts and rights around a few barrels, then tug. It went well. Two back to back classes of “pole position”. >
Great! Sounds like it went really well!! I am happy she was tugging in the ring too!
>By the time “slingshot” ( tunnels added, with a gamble set up)came, she did fine the first run, then started getting oddly stressed. >
Was she stressed before she knew that Paul and Chitlin were out there? She might have been mentally tired, or possibly picking up something in the environment?
>At that point, Paul had just run Chitlin and I know she was distracted by seeing him walk her back to the car. She ran to the fence where he was walking around. I finally yelled at him to stand still!! Grrrr… he should know better. It went down hill from there. Yes, lack of experience to hand such a complex situation. We were done for the day. No video.>
Yeah, that sounds like a super hard distraction, plus it was the end of the day where she was probably a little mentally tired too. She is used to Paul being around at home… can you set up a simple sequence and have Paul walking around with Chitlin or one of the other dogs?
>This past Sunday was a new, indoor location. A nice, one ring, training center. We crated inside. I walked her around, did a bit of heeling, some tricks, some on lead stays, lots of treats. She was cool. But not interested in any of the tugs.>
Not wanting to tug is one of her signs that she is processing the environment, That is when you can do a few pattern games, because it really invites their brains to assess and process the environment in a way different than other behaviors do.
>More distracted by people and stuff by the gating, but once we got going, did fine. >
So she was more distracted by the people etc on the way into the ring? You can set up a ready set go type of start where you stick with her, maybe hold her collar, get her pumped up and then run run run! Rear crosses will be your friend here 🙂
>My leg was killing me 😞 so I was really behind. >
Sorry about your leg, that stinks!!
>I yelled wait!, she did, 2o2o. Bless her little heart. >
Yay!!! All of the work you have done paid off right there!
>I told her jump, she did, came to the wall jump, and said, WTF! A second command and she took it.>
Ha! She probably needed to see what the heck it was.
> It wasn’t a brilliant run, but we both ended on a happy note. Once again, when she was halfway through the course, she settled, and seemed to understand her job. >
She was definitely concerned at the beginning of the course and front of the ring then did really well when you got further from it and really started moving. At the beginning, you can see her expressing that concern there with some fawning behavior when she was standing up on you – at the start line then at one of the early jumps. One goal is that rather than trying to work the course and stop to get her to take a jump if she passes it… just keep going and get her moving so she can settle in faster and faster each time. That way her experiences will be all about fast and fun at the beginning of the course, just like the middle and end! She was great about taking the wall jump at the end too 🙂
>Oh, I opted to put a collar on. Maybe a psychological connection? Who knows. But I’m glad I did because I got in the ring and the timer was messed up. I did not make her stay very long before releasing her. A small stay was good.>
It is possible the collar being on is a context cue that reward is available, so she was more relaxed! She was happier to have you hold it while she was sitting during that delay at the start – she didn’t love it as much when she was standing, so you can totally ask for the line up and sit then hold the collar.
Great job here!! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! I agree – these are looking really strong! Yay!
Find The Jump – super nice, he is looking ahead really well! You being ahead and running was harder (he was surprised on the first rep but then adjusted his striding beautifully on the next reps.
>Next time, I should move the jump farther from the tunnel, right?>
He seemed to have no questions about finding his line so yes, you can add distance and you can also move to the rear cross concept transfer game which uses this setup 🙂
>I think he had a lot of fun with this one. >
Yes! He liked the running 🙂 He was not as big of a fan when you were decelerated more – so you can move closer to the line on this game (so there is more motion) and also when you reward him, you can turn and run away so he chases you for it. That will be more exciting than when you face him to deliver the reward – he likes that, but he will probably like chasing you more which will help make decel more exciting.
He found his lines really well here with very few questions (nice connection and lines of motion from you to help that!) He had one question at :18 – on that spot, you pointed ahead which broke connection so he followed the line of your shoulders. Compare to the super clear connection at :38 where he had no questions. Excellent adjustment to help him out!
Looking at the wraps:
>I’m thinking the issues we had at the end are more related to lack of brain power at this time of the day versus a lack of learning. >
Entirely possible! Plus this is a very ‘thinly’ game without a lot of handler motion. There was steam coming out of his ears figuring it out, god boy!!
I think having him chase you for the reward will be helpful – when you backed up fast, he really perked up! So if you turn and run, he will love it even more 🙂
>Oddly enough, he did the wrapping better than the tunnel, as you can see.>
I think that the tunnel is a little harder on this game because the wing is closer.
If he fails, help him with motion after the 1st error – or maybe the 2nd error. But don’t let him go past 2 errors total because when you were telling him he was wrong, he was checking out. That is where you can see him get lackluster but it was mainly because he didn’t know what you wanted and was starting to give up. When you helped a bit with moving, he perked right up!
Be careful not to give him a reward marker to early, because that can pull him off the tunnel like at 1:10 where he started to go in and you started to say “yes” and present the reward… which pulled him right off the tunnel 🙂
That also answers your question about him potentially being a tunnel sucker – if he was over-excited by the tunnels, we would see it here. He did well!
>I’ll give this one a shot in the morning next time, but I still wanted feedback on my form and what I can do better the next time I set this up.>
Yes, try it at a more active time of day for him and see how he does. Running away with the reward to get him to chase you is something to add, and not letting him have more than one or two failures without helping will also be good for keeping him enthusiastic.
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
Really strong session here: you saw her questions and helped her be successful.
The toy on the ground next to the grid was hard on the first rep then having to slow down to coordinate herself was hard on the next reps! All 4 jumps too hard as she told you by not taking them – probably visually daunting and she didn’t quite know how to handle it.Great job breaking it down (forward chaining was fine :)) Her stay is fantastic and that is really helpful! You basically helped her coordinate herself because this grid is not about speed – she actually has to slow down a bit. Slowing down is hard compared to the fun of going fast 🙂 She figured it out really fast and then the rest of the session was lovely.
By the time you got her back to 4 jumps, I think she looked fantastic! You got just a couple of strong reps, then you ended the session. SUPER!!!
>Makes sense that she was having such a hard time committing to jumps with me in motion when she struggled with me even standing still. Next time I’ll change up the angles a little bit. I can’t remember, is this one we can use the moving reward target for?>
Since this was challenging, no need to change the angles yet – but definitely back chain with the moving target (too hard to forward chain the moving target :)) You can be slowly dragging it to add challenge of coordinating herself with you moving. And backchaining will help her sort it out like sh did here. Then you can add the angles. But I think prioritizing your motion (just walking to start) will be the best bet for the next session.
Great job!
TracyHi!
>We haven’t really trained in almost 2 weeks. I haven’t really been feeling it.>
That is totally normal – sometimes we just need to hang out and do nothing 🙂 It helps refresh the joy in training without getting burned out 🙂
> We are really a hot mess express and on the bus of struggle right now. I figured taking a break wouldn’t hurt. I think I need to work on some random tricks and shaping things just to get our team work together and her brain back from somewhere in outer space.>
Tell me more about what the struggles are, or post a blooper video 🙂 We can sort it out – it is totally normal to run into questions from the pups that we have to sort out instead of playing the games. Your videos all look great so you can tell me more about the struggles 🙂
>I’ve been hesitant working with toys around agility lately as I really need to work on her return to hand and drop a little more, especially with a single toy. Our two toy game is pretty strong, but we just need to grow the game more.>
You can think of it as working 2 tracks: if you want to play an agility game, you can bring 2 toys or trade one toy for treats if she likes that.
Or, separately, work the 1 toy retrieve game. One thing that I find really helpful with one toy is to let the pup have it freely for 5 to 10 seconds or so… then when she bring it back, BIG PLAY 🙂 Then let her have it on her own again. Then she brings it back, gives it back… and we reward that by giving it to her again. The reason behind this is that we tend to get a retrieve and take the toy away pretty quickly so we can do the next rep… which is actually a punisher to the dog and results in the dogs bringing it back less 🙂>Working outside has also been a little harder since everything has thawed, so we’ve been working on some remedial engagement skills.>
Yes, being outside is a different party! LOL!! Working silly games and engagement is perfect 🙂
Keep me posted!
TracyYes, eventually 🙂 Because the pups are so young and not really jumping yet, we keep it as a grid for a little while longer. Then it gets spread out and put into sequences 🙂
T
Hi!
Good job sorting out the RCs – it was a timing question, showing the line nice and early. He did better when you were running faster! At first you were walking up the line and that caused the info to be late ( 07, :12 , :20, :49m :58) because he was already taking off to his right when you started showing the RC info).
When you were moving faster (like the reps on the other side, and at :55, 1:05, 1:08 on the harder side) he read the RCs better because your info was better 🙂
So… you can run more on these and get right on his line 🙂 He is happy to drive past you, so running will show the info even sooner.
Circle wraps looked strong – the first side (dog on right) was spot on!
:15 and :20 on the left side needed more connection all the way through to when he gets to the backside. You were connecting then turning your shoulders forward before he was committed to the backside, so he ended up thinking you wanted the front side.I think that was happening (you turning your shoulders too much) because you were running too far into the line blocking the wing) and then trying to turn to it to show him the wing. At :37, you ran a more directly line and maintained connection without blocking the wing… and he was perfect!
He did well with the grids – looks like you also had them a bit angled and it was no problem. Because the stationary target causes him to sort out how to slow down through the grid… time to switch to the moving target! That will add more hind end power and challenge him to organize himself with handler motion 🙂
>We worked a bunch on this as one side was super hard and we got it figured out only to find out I was doing front crosses not blinds. Much sadness. We’ll try again.>
It does take some convincing to get our feet to do tight blinds instead of fronts! I am sure it went well – there was no video, so keep me posted if there was supposed to be one or if you are going to try it with blinds then post it 🙂
Great job here!!
TracyGood morning!
SendnSerp looked great! Well done to you for getting him to be able to do it with you running!!
Dog-on-left was pretty perfect!!!Dog-on-right was super nice – on this side, you were rotating your feet a little on the first rep, and had a little too much upper body rotation which caused a subtle change in motion on the 2nd rep. So you can match your motion on this side to what you were doing on the left side – staying in motion the whole time. If this is a harder side, you can rotate the jump so he finds it more easily.
He had a couple of questions about going to the start wing at :52 and 1:12 – in those cases, I think more connection to his eyes on the send and less arm pointing to the wing will support the send, even though he knows you are going to the jump next 🙂
The 2nd video here had the more advanced backside – and it definitely shows that dog-on-right is his harder side (he was running past the jump when you were staying in motion). 2 ideas for you:
Open up the serp arm sooner, so even before he gets to the backside, he sees the big serp cue (arm back, shoulders rotated to the center of the jump).
– as he takes the jump, drop the toy in behind you on the landing side to help reward the commitment as you continue to move. Try not to rotate too much or stop your motion at all – but in the early stages you can walk through it instead of run.
2 wing zig zags: super easy! He was happy with all of the angles. The 3 wing zig zags were also lovely!
A 1:02 on the release, yo were rotated too far forward to the 3rd wing. Try to face the first gap more to push him into it – moving along the line closer to the gap got it, but you can also get it from a distance by facing the gap a bit more.
For these zig zags, you can move the wings closer (5 feet apart) so he does the lead changes faster as if going over a 5 foot bar 🙂 Then we add the bars (new game added yesterday!)
The Find The Jump game went great too! He was pretty locked onto the jump, no questions. Super! You can add a go verbal, and you can also add more running: laterally and also getting way ahead 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>This one makes m head hurt every puppy I do it with. It’s not having bars I can’t picture it lol.>
The zig zags went really well! She read the cues well and did well with her lead changes both directions. The other good news is that the next level of it has bars so you will feel more comfy with it 🙂
At the end you said “not sure if I did that right” or something similar 🤣😂 and yes, you did it right. Super!!! The wings were close and she had no trouble moving in and out of them. So for fun, you could spread them way out, 12 feet or so: that will challenge her to get the lead changes when she is moving faster!
Not sure why she wanted to go into a down instead of a sit when cued? Pressure of proximity the wing? You can try a cookie for sitting if she feels it is weird to be right next to the wing?
Good job getting all 4 feet taped – you can tape a little further down to cover the big pad on the bottom of each foot. That will be great for traction! You can then let her open up and run so we can see how she feels with her speed socks on 🙂
Nice work here!
TracyGood morning!
>It was not worried before I moved the Teeter. I will do fewer reps with bigger rewards and move backwards.>
Sounds good! And you can drag the teeter to a new spot every day, so he gets happy with it in a lower/easier position but learns that it can be someplace new regularly.
>He is worried in class also in class they do not have their teeter lowered like mine, it’s full height and they have tables underneath it, so I assume it does translate to my lower teeter.>
Because the height is different, you can limit his exposure to it to one or two reps but use CRAZY high value food. I would give the dogs a handful of chicken or steak for one rep, then I would let them chase a tennis ball afterwards… they thought that was GREAT fun! Doing too many reps gets the dogs thinking about it too much, so limit the # of reps and you’ll have a lot of success.
Really nice session on the RCs! Great job sorting out how much pressure he needed to see on the RC line –
Although he spun in front of the jump at :16, it was still a good rep because he really saw the RC cues. Yes, he did a spin but that was him noticing it and sorting it out. The next rep had a good RC then the net RCs on the right were really strong!!!When you switched sides, I thought the first 2 reps were good but he disagreed haha 🙂 Part of that is lack of experience – he had just done a bunch of right turns and needed to switch gears. On the 2rd rep, you got right on the line and right on his tail and the RC looked great!
Nice job with the GO balance reps – those were easy for him but they also help make sure he is reading the cues and not just doing the RCs because that is the only thing he is doing.
Great job here!
TracyGood morning! I am glad the weather skipped over you. That is a relief!
The rear crosses went super well! It looked like you nailed the difference between the go cues and the RC cues, so he had no questions on either side. Super! And there was a lot of high speed there, which meant the cues came early enough that he could easily change his line. Yay!
> I tired to move on to the advanced level and he was fine on the “go” to find the next wing, but not on the RC -so I stopped that before he flattened me. Maybe my wing was too far away for his experience level? >
I agree that it was the distance. The wing was on an extension line after the jump, and the RC created a turn which pulled him off the line to the wing. You can place the wing right on the line after the RC – it will be pretty close, maybe 6 feet, and on an angle away from the jump so the RC line takes him towards it. The goal is that he starts looking for something after the RC and not just for a reward 🙂 This is a new concept with the RCs (doing another thing) so move the wing to a spot that makes it easy for him to find (without him running over you LOL!)
Great job here!!
Tracy
Good morning!
>She’s gone for 14in to 16in spacing in the cavaletti over the last 2 months.>
Nice! The cavalettis are great for extending striding!!
>We had a great time at a novice half-day seminar with Teri O’Neill on Sunday. >
Very fun! I have worked alongside Teri several times and she does a lovely job. Plus she is experienced with a wide variety of dogs which is great!
>Teri was impressed with her layering skills, esp from a little dog so we had a fun chat about how cool it is to teach layering to the young dogs. >
Yes, Lift has some impressive distance/layering skills already for such a tiny nugget!
>We had some debates about sitting at the start at first so I moved to having her do a trick (usually a spin) and then sending to the first jump. I think part of it was she was pretty amped for her first turn.>
Yes, it was probably excitement. In that moment, could she do a spin then a sit? Or spin then a stand stay? Or bark on cue to unleash the excitement… then a sit? You will want to play with seeing if you can get stay behavior in that level of arousal, for when you need it at a trial.
>> I also put her out in the car to chill between turns after the first one so that could have helped too as the morning progressed. However great focus for 3.5 turns (the last was just that speed circle at the end of the highlights video). >
Rest is good! And she has been really strong with her focus on course, so I am not surprised that she did great for the whole session.
There’s one instance (about 0:15) where I was really far ahead of her moving into the blind and she glances at Teri who is walking near me and wavers for a split second, but she locks back on me and still took the jump.>
Good training for learning to ignore judges who are walking around (or European judges who run!)
>she has a novice seminar with Stefanie Theis on Friday morning before the UKI trial at Fusion this weekend. (with Stefanie judging).>
Fun! I haven’t see Stef work as an agility instructor, but I like her a lot as a fitness instructor, and she is an overall lovely person too 🙂 She has a lot of experience with little dogs so I think you will really enjoy it.
>I’d like to run at least one of the SS classes for realizes and am undecided on whether it’s better to try that on Sat or Sun. And if Sat, do I do Jpg NFC as a short warm up (maybe with toy in hand or having a friend toss in into the ring after a short sequence?)>
That is a nice slate of classes to be able to play around with!! I think the decision of what to run/how/when depends entirely on the course design. You can make the decision in the moment: good course design, plus Lift running well: go for it! The jumping classes will be NFC (weaves still a work in progress) so those are good for empty hands food boxing 🙂 And if either/both of the SS courses look good, go for it! Of course you can try it in snooker too as long as it is a really flowing course and you don’t try to fix things because, ewwww snooker LOL!!!!
Keep me posted! Have fun!
Tracy
Good morning!
Working on engagement is a great thing!
Without video of what is happening, here are some ideas but things might be different based on what is actually going on in the session:
>I can throw a frisbee and he won’t leave until I release him. I am not giving him a verbal just trying to teach him not to move unless I release him but he seems a little unclear sometimes, especially when he is standing. My questions is, should I be more clear by using a verbal? >
Remember that engagement is a two-way street, and engagement is not the same as control: yes, we want the dog to engage with us and that means we have to be super engaged with them, in an exciting way.
And that includes a lot of clarity. If you are waiting for him to pick a behavior without a lot of cues as to what you want… then he might choose something you don’t want. Then he might be told that it is wrong, which is not very engaging. If he is failing, then it is not clear what you want and clarity is needed for sure. That is especially true if you are trying to overcome a reinforcement history of other behavior.
So yes, you will want to add the clarity of some type of cue. If he has strong responses to verbals? Then yes! Use a verbal to add clarity. But if you say ‘sit’ and he does a down, then he doesn’t really understand the verbals. Hand signals are also great and dogs tend to understand those better.
These agility behaviors are all cued with physical or verbal cues (or context cues) so don’t leave him guessing.
>If not when he creeps in a stand should I make him start over? He can get frustrated and then he starts doing sits, downs, goes between my legs and barking like come on I am doing everything else!>
>I can see his point LOL!! Without clarity of info, he is likely to get anxious and that is when you see things like moving instead of staying. And if you haven’t given him info about how to be correct in terms of a cue, yet tell him he was wrong for moving… that explains the frustration. Then he starts guessing and gets more frustrated.
If the down is his best position, cue the down rather than wait and see what happens. Help him know what you want.
Also, you will want to double check yourself that you are super consistent with releasing. If you have a history of sometimes releasing with motion, he will offer motion (then get frustrated when it is wrong).
And be sure that the reinforcement is valuable and fun and playful!
So, be super clear with what you want and reward fast, and with a lot of praise and engagement. And live by the 2 failure rule: if he fails twice in the session, change what you are doing to get success (or watch the video if you don’t know what is causing the error).
Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
I am glad you are training even if the editing doesn’t always get done! He is looking wonderful 🙂 You can always turn the camera on, do a session, turn the camera off then just post the session without editing.
>>Set Point With Moving Target
I agree, he did well on the first session and really well here! Looks like he is going to be a lovely jumper! You can add in leading out further, moving the target then releasing him while the target is already in motion. That adds a different and useful challenge to the stay and the jumping mechanics. We add a jump to this grid in week 4:
>Wrap Proofing I thiiiiiink that’s what this video is of.>
This was a tunnel-free smiley face 🙂 I always found these games without a tunnel to be harder than with a tunnel because most dogs will drive away to a tunnel. He did great here though! He didn’t see the barrel as quite the same value as the tunnel perhaps so you had to run a bit more to it. He found the line the best, though, when you were using more connection while running and less arm. When you arm came up and pointed ahead, it blocked connection and he jumped up a bit (pretty common response from young dogs when they can’t see connection).
For example: on the rep that started at :30, you were pretty well-connected as he exited the first wing and then you stayed connected and ran without pointing to the barrel. He found the line nicely! As he exited the barrel at :34, you started pointing ahead – and he jumped up at your hand. Yes, that hand had the toy in it but also you had the toy in the dog side hand for most reps here and he was perfectly fine with that when you were connected 🙂 So keep the connection as the primary cue along with motion and verbals, and resist the temptation to point ahead of him 🙂
And good job with the verbals! As things get more complex with more and more dang words, you might have to give yourself a planning moment to work out all the words in advance. A mini walk through always helped me get the words going before running the pups.
>Left/Right Verbals with Minny Pinny
I agree – he did well with the right and left and committing to the minny pinny. You can move to the more advanced levels where we change your start positions so he can turn away from you on these too!
>but I can’t tell right now if his lack of enthusiasm is the temperature getting warmer or him having little drive for handling drills. I guess I just need to hear that it’s normal for 9 month old puppies to not be super enthused when presented with yet another new handling drill lol.>
I see what you mean about him trotting through – he was happy to play with the toy, so my guess is that he was approaching the setup as a cavaletti setup which brings out the lovely balanced trot 🙂 We of course want bouncing, so you can angle the wings and bars in towards each other a bit, so he bounces more. The distance will probably need to be adjusted to get that sweet spot, plus it will take him a moment to learn to bounce on a bend.
And yes, it could be the heat coming up (he has not yet been alive during a hot summer, right?) and also it is entirely normal for a 9 month old to not fling himself into these drills especially because there is no real handler motion on this one: two of my dogs who turned out to be my fastest ever were also the slowest at this age in training. They kind of galumphed along without a lot of speed or power. Things clicked into place VERY nicely when they were about 18 month old and they could go SUPER fast while also retaining being thoughtful about the accuracy. I kept telling myself to trust the process and not to panic because at 9 months old, they were so slow LOL!!!
You can also do these types of games first thing in a training session so he is fresh and spicy. And you can add in a turn-and-burn on the exit: do a front cross and run the other way so part of his reward is chasing you for the toy 🙂
>>Sends’n’serps:
>He seems to really be into this one. He figured out pretty quickly that he needs to cut across the bar instead of sneaking his way around it. >
Yes, this went great! It is pretty common for dogs to run past the bar on serps, so well done to you both for sorting out getting the serp while you run. Yay!
>You can even see I moved both the MM and the wrapped jump wing out more part way through the video. >
Yes, just as I was typing the suggestion of moving the MM further away to get more room to run, you did it LOL! And adding distance between the wing and jump was great too: he had no trouble and looked great – handler motion here made it fun fun fun!
One suggestion: Try not to use go on the wrap wing here (or on the other games) because we want ‘go’ to be full out extension. You can use the wrap verbal on the start wing here, which helps develop a send to a wrap.
>This feels like a lot of reps, but I promise the unedited video was only 3:30! >
I didn’t think it was a lot of reps – plus you changed some things by changing sides and adding distance. You can also add the balance reps of the FC on the start wing so that he pays attention to coming through the gap and not always serping, depending on the cue.
>But I will say, comparing this video to the one I recorded a week before it, his enthusiasm definitely was much higher. Either he gets higher when his confidence is high, or I hit the sweet spot with the temperature here. He’s also a big worshipper of the Cult of Manners Minder, especially now that I found the right size food that doesn’t jam all the time.>
Yes, all of the above, probably, plus you were running. Were you also running in the previous video? And the Cult Of Manners Minder is all-powerful LOL!
Also, it could be a bit of latent learning: he saw it in the previous session even if you didn’t think it was a great session, then he locked in the learning in his sleep, and came back ‘knowing’ it.Smiley face:
Oh heck yes, I agree that he loves the tunnel. Fast and driven to get to it! He has really strong tunnel sends already – super! That makes it easier in some ways to play these games, but also harder because everything goes faster 🙂Be sure to keep the wing visible to him as you exit the cross: for example, at :25 you were on his line and almost stepped him to the wrong jump.
>I am still really babysitting him here, but this was his second time doing this exercise. What can I improve on or change for the next time we do it?>
You can start the FC sooner and see if he can maintain his commitment to the wing as you run back towards the tunnel. You can also add in the race tracks (going around the outside of both wings, no crosses :)). Then you can move to the other games like the diamond, which adds blind crosses and bigger race tracks 🙂
>Find The Jump! This one bums me out because I had several amazing reps with him and when I went to stop the video, I had an alarm going off on my phone and it only recorded the first 30 seconds,>
What a bummer!!! He looked great here – finding his jump beautifully!!! One detail: Keep moving the whole time to cue extension over the jump (which matches the toy throw).
Don’t stop at the jump (even if you are lateral or ahead) because that is a collection cue and we don’t want to throw the toy ahead on that. Yo can see him turning to his right based on your position and decel on the last rep, good boy!If you are going to run out of room when you are ahead, you can go deeper towards the tunnel then accelerate forward, from a variety of positions.
>I’ll try to do this one again tomorrow and get a video before he gets tired!>
Perfect! I bet he does great because there is a lot of handler motion.
>Phew! I kept each video short and to the point, so hopefully that makes it easy to go through all of them!>
It was great! But again, since editing is a pain in the butt (I hate the editing part of the process LOL!) you can just slap up the whole video. For example, you said the serp video was 3.5 minutes long. I can scroll past the resets etc because that is a lot easier than editing.
Nice work here!
Tracy
Hi!
Before you moved the teeter, he was not worried? You can go back a bunch of steps and see if you can get him back to where he was. I do very very few reps on the teeter, with mind-blowing rewards. For example, one rep for an entire meal 🙂 We do have teeter games in MaxPup 3 coming up soon!
Tracy
Hi!
>I definitely have a tendency to go into drilling mode and “just one more rep” mode. The video of our session includes all reps, 12 total, in the order that I did them.
Here’s a breakdown of the reps: 3 reps on first side, turning Right – go, wrap, wrap 4 reps on other side, turning Left – RC (to right), wrap, wrap (wrong way), wrap 1 rep on first side, turning Right – wrap 4 reps on other side, turning Left – wrap, go, wrap, wrap
>I think 12 reps is a good session length… but if your brain starts talking about just one more 🙂 then you should stop and watch the video to see what was happening before doing more. That will be very helpful!!!
>Maybe there were too many reps, but Mason also did 12 reps and it was fine for him. He had a lot more success though, so he had more side switches and variations. He also had a lot more praise and positive feedback from me.>
A couple of thoughts here:
A different perspective: She had a ton of success and read you correctly on every single rep 🙂Mason might have done more of what you wanted because he is an adult dog who has played this game before and has a reward history. Plus, you probably know his timing better than you know hers, and she has no frame of reference for considering that a wrap turn is coming. So I recommend you don’t work him on the same exercises at the same time, because I think you are comparing things that should not be compared. Plus switching dogs will lock you into his timing more than her timing, which won’t help with her turns 🙂
>Even though I switched sides 3 times with Ellie, we ended up doing twice as many reps turning left, so it wasn’t really balanced. >
It was balanced enough and she definitely was not on autopilot. I can see her looking at you a decent amount!
>When we had more trouble on the left, then I started to get in my head. I wasn’t talking to Ellie as much, I wasn’t as cheery, and I tended to disconnect from her between reps when we had issues. I definitely went into handler focus mode myself.>
The first thing to do when you feel that creeping in is to stop and watch the video. Video is your training partner in the moment and hugely valuable! Generally when something goes wrong, the info being delivered to the dog needs to be sooner or clearer or both 🙂
>Any suggestions for how you would have mixed things up differently, reacted differently when there were issues, or changed the session length?>
The length and balance were good. Two thing I would do differently:
– this game calls for markers on the ground so you can see when you need to time the decel and time the rotation. The decel starts basically as soon as she has exited the wing, regardless of where you are – that gives the info in a more timely way and she will be able to collect (and when you see that collection, do the FC rotation). Markers on the ground for when to start the decel will give you a helpful visual.– watch the video during the session if things are not where you want them
>, and if you know how to tighten up these wraps, that would be great too.>
This is what the video says: you were late 🙂 In general, you were starting the decel when she was getting parallel to you, which was happening about one stride from takeoff – so she did not have time to collect and turn before takeoff (she turned immediately after landing on those, good girl!). That happened at :08, :29, :35, :49,
On two of them, she thought they were RCs because the timing of the decel also had pressure towards the bar.
At :24 and :59 and 1:07, you were decelerating as she was arriving at takeoff, so those turns were really wide (but again, she drove back to you as soon as she was able to)
You had 2 reps with really good wraps:
At :13 you decelerated when she was maybe a stride past the wing, so she collected before takeoff and that produced the best turn. Have her chase you for a few steps after the turn rather than you stopping and throwing the reward.
At :42 you decelerated when she got parallel to you but you were further from the bar, so she was able to collect before takeoff on that rep.
The go and RC reps looked good!
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Trac
