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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
Good morning!
>She had a hard time finding the treats for our Collection Sandwich. >
Finding treats in the grass is definitely a learned skill for puppies! You can use a big towel spread out on the grass as a giant target to toss the treat onto for her to run to – the bigger the towel, the less accurate your toss has to be 🙂
Also – check out this week’s resilience game. It is a pattern game that I also use as a framework for teaching pups to find treats in the grass quickly and return engagement to whatever we were doing. You can teach the game indoors where it is really easy, and when she is able to grab the treat and re-engage quickly, you can move it outdoors onto grass 🙂
If you watch her eating as you run away, she is doing a really good job of grabbing the food and returning engagement to you! She responded pretty immediately to your name call too! So making it more visible on a towel will be even smoother.
>It looks like rather than waiting till she finishes the treat I should continue moving away so that there is more distance for me to complete the blind – >
Yes – and you were moving away really well on these reps. I think throwing the treat further away to start the game will be even easier, giving you more of a head start.
>most of these are late (again). Also I’m not sure if I’m decelling enough before we turn. >
I think the timing of the blind was good! She knew where to be on each rep and didn’t end up on the ‘wrong’ side of you at all. Nice connection as you finished the blind!!! That really helped.
What can come earlier is the decel into the pivot – because she is so fast, you can start to slow down as soon as you finish the blind, so she sees that sooner and can collect into your side better. The decel was happening as she got to you (which is a little late), which is why she would sometimes be a little wide, or sometimes pop up.
She was fantastic about going back to the toy race after the pivots! Yay! She looks to be able to use food and toys in the same session and that is GREAT!!! It gives you so many options to choose how you want to reward while also keeping things super fun 🙂
Lovely work here!
TracyGood morning!
Those stairs are cool! And hard, especially when in higher arousal like he was here! He is a brave dude!
The stairs seem to challenge him to balance, isolate his feet, and also move slowly because the stairs are narrow enough and light enough that fast movement would lead to him tipping off by accident or making the stairs wobble.
Front feet seemed really easy. I LOVE how you positioned yourself in front of the stairs to help give him a safer feel – that immediately got him offering all 4 feet. And then you were able to move yourself out of that position and off to the side while he maintained his bravery. Super!
When releasing him off the stairs, wait til he is calmly all four feet back on the ground before being really exciting with the treat toss or toy – when he tries to explode off the stairs, they tip and I don’t want him to have a weird landing (ouch!) or get concerned.
These stairs would be fun to incorporate into other goat games – you can do stuff like make a trail of crazy objects to go to the stairs, then he goes up the stairs and onto a plank that is a little elevated to walk across. The plank can be straight off the stairs, or at a 90 degree angle so he has to balance and turn.
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>’m sure the food was in my hand. Am I supposed to use a bait bag?>
A small bait bag is fine, or a few treats in a bag in your pocket for easy access – but having the treat already in the opposite hand will be faster to be able to reward her.
> Or, just be sure it’s in the opposite hand from the send? >
That is the priority – empty hand on the send, so for speed of reinforcement. And if she still has trouble leaving your hand (hands have a LOT of value for puppies!) you can send and then toss the treat to the prop rather than reward back at you. That can help balance the value.
>I feel like I can’t do many of this weeks games as I don’t have a send to an object.>
You can definitely do the parallel path game – this is the basis of 2 of the new games and there is no send needed. And you can keep noodling with the sending, and start to rotate a but. The rotated sends move easily into countermotion.
> I’ll try the collection sandwich and see if she can do that. But, I feel like I’ll need to feed the turn still.>
You can feed the turn the first time or two, then try a rep without feeding, just having her follow your hand, and see how it goes.
Looking at the video:
There is definite value in the barrel setup, that is great! It made tugging harder at the beginning, so you can keep the barrel and bowls out of the picture for now (up on the couch, for example) and then put them on the floor when you are ready for that part of the session. That will also make for a clean transition into the shaping so you will be ready with treats and in position before the barrel and bowls are presented.She did really well with you standing! You can move the bowls a tiny bit further back, closer to your feet, so she wraps a little more. The bowls can get further and further back by your heels in each session.
You broke off the session to play at a good spot, and the tugging looked great! In that moment, I bet you could have gone back and done a few more reps t see where she was after the first part of the session. It would have probably taken the session to about 2.5 minutes, but based on how she was doing I bet that would have been perfectly fine. She was on a roll and you can see her look at the setup and start to go back to it right after the tugging at the end 🙂
So if you are still in ‘short session’ territory, meaning you haven’t gone past 2 minutes or so, you can do a bit more. And it will be fun to revisit it today or tomorrow to see what she locked in!
Great job :) Tracy
Good morning!
She did GREAT on all 3 of these videos!!
The first 2 were her turning to her left, which seems to be her easier side but she did super well turning to her right on video 3!The timing of your FC and run worked best when you had the line on the ground, because it kept you from leaving too early or too late 🙂 So definitely keep that line on the ground and keep moving it, so you can have both a visual of when to move and also a way to make it progressively more challenging.
She really loved it when you ran!! I bet you can get even more excitement using a toy reward. She might not be able to go from food to toy yet, so you can either use a toy only in the session, or you can use one of the most boring treats ever (if there is a boring treat for a Dalmatian haha) and the most exciting toy, and see if she can go back and forth.
The only other suggestion for you: you can give her a cue to start wrapping the barrel. I think she was waiting for a cue to start, especially on video 3/right turns. So this is a great game for adding a cue: get her excited, get her on your side (you can gently hold her collar when she is on your side too) and the step to the barrel and give a small hand/arm cue to the barrel. That will be clear for her and also that can get even more speed.
You gave her a cue on the last rep of video 3 (it was a verbal ok) and she exploded to the barrel, tons of speed and excitement! So adding the physical cue will be useful for her too.
Great job!
TracyHi! I am looking forward to your videos!
In case you didn’t get my email yet – the easiest way to put videos here is to load them into Youtube then copy/paste the link here. That will also bring up the preview of the link. Or, posting an iCloud link is great too!
Thanks,
TracyGood morning!
>The hall is in a church where I teach some puppy classes.>
Ah! That is a great puppy class location!
Backing up: this went really well and he was straighter! And you had both hands involved with rewarding: super!
He really only had one question: when to start offering the behavior at the beginning.
You can make the transition from the tugging into the backing up smoother by making the context cue (the target and your position) more salient:
Tug in a separate spot then move into the sitting position at the target. That will basically cue him to start backing up 🙂Looks like you were beginning to reward him for getting front feet on the target here which is great – he has to back up more to do this, and has to have good hind end awareness to know that he has touched the mat and to keep going. YAY!!!
Since you can reliably predict he is going to back up, you can start adding a verbal cue to it if you want to.
For the forward focus: This is going really well in terms of the impulse control to look at the line and not at the treat or toy, then go around the cone to get to the reward. YAY!
>The release timing was a little tricky as it was hard to tell sometimes if he was actually looking at the cone. I figured generally looking forward was ok?>
Yes, generally looking forward is good but when you put the treat in a harder position I think it was easier to see where he was looking. So keep going with the harder challenges because it was actually easier for you both. And it is a good way to sort out what the mechanics look like when he looks forward – seeing small dogs on course is harder sometimes!
On the reps where the treat plate was not too far around the cone, he could probably see the cone and the treat in the same field of vision, so didn’t really need to turn his head much.
But when you moved it so that he had to look away from the target and at the cone (like at :26, :49, :55 with food for example, and also when the toy got pretty far around the cone) there was a much clearer head turn to look at the line.
He is so expressive though – when it was hard, he looks away entirely as part of the forward focus game. It happens consistently and reliably so I don’t think it is coincidence LOL!! It might just be a superstitious behavior that got built in because you would mark and release when he looked away, so by the end he was looking away on each rep. Too funny!
So to remove the looking away, you can watch where his nose is pointing. With the toy/treat in a hard location, mark only when his nose is pointing to the line – not to the treats/toy, and not away from the line LOL! Shelties have a nice pointy snout so that might be easier to see!
>For the last week, Aelfraed has been getting extremely excited when he sees me pick up the tripod. He knows it means we are going to play fun games.>
That is so fun!! He must be pairing the tripod with all of the reward and play 🙂 He definitely likes being the star of Aelfraed TV!
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
Adding the toys to the wrapping was lovely! I think the hardest part for her twas to realize that it was still a wrap-the-thing game and not a go-directly-to-the-toy game 🙂 She did really well! You an also incorporate getting the toy back with a treat – then letting her offer going around the barrel to the other toy. She was really into the toy then it looks like he almost lost her chain of thought when she let go of it LOL! So a few seconds of tugging then trade for a treat – then let her offer – might be the quickest way into the next rep while keep it fun and successful.
You can also move to standing up too with the 2 toys – that will lead you into the turn and burn game really well too!
Nice work!
Tracy
