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Hi!
Hi!
She is beginning to get the idea of the rears! Yay!For the rear crosses, do several warm up reps of the parallel path to get her driving to the prop ahead of you – that will make the rear crosses much easier! Basically, when you turn and start moving towards the prop, she should drive ahead to it. She was looking at your cookie hand a lot here which made it harder to get her to focus ahead of you. So the dog side hand can be empty, and you can toss the treat from the other hand (also, highly recommend using a toy for this because toy throws tend to get the pups driving ahead better than cookie throws!).
Since she is already getting the idea, I think adding in the warm up of the parallel path to get her driving ahead will make a massive difference, because then you can cut behind her earlier and set the handling line for the RC.
Nice work!
TracyHi!
This is going well! She is turning well and has fabulous value for the prop!
>>I could tell I needed to get my hands lower to keep her from jumping up. >>
It was not a lower hands thing, but instead a timing thing. One tweak in the mechanics will smooth it all out:
Be sure to start her with a tossed cookie away from you so you can be ahead and moving to cue this. That way, when she arrives at your leg, you are already cuing the tandem turn. When she starts next to you and you both start moving at the same time, the cue is already late 🙂 That is why she was jumping up and getting a little frantic: information seeking! Yes, keep your hands low for now, but starting earlier and with her behind you will make a big difference.
Nice work!
TracyHi!
You definitely got the ball rolling in the 2nd video with the sits. I think part of what is cuing the sit (without you realizing it) is body pressure towards her and probably a bit of a hand lure – my guess is both of these are built in without you realizing it – on the first video you didn’t have any real pressure towards her and your hands were up high. She was BIG MAD, had no idea what you wanted (and the word is not that powerful for her yet).
On the 2nd video, note how you were stepping towards her on the cues especially at the beginning – that is what she is cuing off of. The most obvious example is at :23-ish.
And she might also be waiting on a hand cue – ether luring up from when you stand up after tossing. Treat, and/or when you put your hand in the cookie pouch. Her sit offers were much better when that happened LOL!! So it is probably just a matter of there are cues that she recognizes and you don’t realize they are there 🙂So for the sit, you can use those cues then fade them out. A little lean towards her that gets gradually less and less will help, and a little hand cue is fine too!
Nice work!
TracyHi!
About the sits – ideally, the pup offers the sit but if a sit is not on their radar, you can totally help with a hand signal. To help get the sit into the repertoire of things to offer, be sure you are playing in a relatively sterile spot at first – nothing else to offer behavior on or go over to check out 🙂And it is fine to help the pup with a hand signal – that can easily be faded. And also getting the behavior with a hand signal can make it very easy to add the verbal cue: say the verbal then a heartbeat later do the hand signal (but not at the same time :))
You will probably be able to get this game rolling really well with a couple of reps with the hand signal – then you can delay the signal or not give it and see if she offers (then click/reward or release to the tug, depending on which version of it you are playing 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
Looking at the pattern games:
Indoor pattern game is looking good, she is happy to return engagement to you. 2 suggestions:
– Use a ‘get it’ instead of ‘yes’ when you toss the treat
– For when we take the pattern into harder situations, toss the treat side to side in roughly the same spots each time so she is going on one line across the front of you, rather than to all different angles around you. Back-and-forth on the same line makes it more predictable, which is very useful for the pups.Outside was a little harder to find the treats but also there are more sights/smells so part of it was that she was assessing the environment a bit. And that is great! It is pretty much what we want from the pattern games. Using the most obvious treat possible will help, but as will using consistent placement side-to-side rather than all around
Strike a pose 1:
This went well! Your mechanics and ‘pose’ were really good, and she came driving into the target each time. Super! This is going really nicely!About the toy – Definitely use it before the cookies come out, so she gets more interested in the toy. And during a cookie session, add toy play after every 3 or 4 cookies, so she doesn’t get fully engrossed in cookies 🙂 After all the cookies, you can introduce the toy in a different spot (so there are fewer cookie smells), even if it is on the other side of the deck. And then have the toy move away from her rather than towards her. You can have her chase it while you drag it, or you can. Throw it like toy races – all of that will pump up the toy play. In this clip, the toy was moving towards her and right in the cookie spot, so she was not interested in grabbing it.
Strike a pose 2:
She did tug on the fries here which is great! It took a moment to get her on it – so you can throw it after she touches the target. At :50 she targeted to it, because that is where you were looking LOL!!I think what was happening here is that she was beginning to understand that the toy is a possibility in this behavior and not just cookies, even after the tossed ‘start’ cookie. Yay!! And yes, the strike a pose element went really well too, but the the cookie-to-toy was the best part 🙂
Looking at the 2 tunnel sessions –
>>had a great level of fascination with it which made recalling her more challenging so I used an occasional food treat fro coming back to me.>>
You can absolutely create a little loop of cookie line up – tunnel – MM – cookie line up 🙂 That will bring her back faster as she sorts out the magical cookie dispensing machine 🙂
On the first session: I didn’t see any loss of focus or robin-visiting in this session 🙂 but being outdoors and with the MM being relatively new, I suggest scrunching up the tunnel for both of these sessions. Having it fully extended added a level of difficulty in terms of distance that we don’t need quite yet. And starting it scrunched up makes the obstacle easier because the environment is harder.
She did well with the offering here but had a few questions. Part of it was the length of the tunnel and part of it was the start position: when you want her to offer, face the tunnel (not her) which will imply more permission to offer. Facing her and looking at her draws her focus off the tunnel and to you.On the 2nd session, the higher arousal ready ready tunnel tunnel helped plus you were facing the tunnel, which gave her a clearer cue to go to it. Try to stay closer to the opening for now – the further back you moved, the more she started to ask a little question – so another session or two closer to the entry will solidify it. And scrunch it up so it is maybe half the length, especially as you add angles and work in the threadle side.
You can definitely loop her back with a cookie in your hand to line up and to start the next rep. Without the line up cookie, you were pulling her a little bit and I think she had some avoidance of that. So a line up cookie will reset her where you want her, then you can take her collar and start the game 🙂Lap turn – I think she is doing well with both sides here, the main thing is to make the mechanics sooner )not faster, just sooner 🙂 Here is what I mean:
As soon as you toss the start cookie, you should present your cue hand immediately so that she sees it before she even turns all the way back to you. Get the cue hand fully extended and down to her nose level, so the instant she turns back to you, she can lock onto the correct hand. That will make the rest of it easier, because you will have more time to show the rest of the cue!
What was happening on a lot of the reps, especially on the cues that felt awkward, was that you were tossing the start cookie then getting the next cookie out of the pocket and then presenting the cue hand… which was often after she turned back to you and was heading to you. This was causing her to focus on your face and not your hand (because the hand was not clearly in place yet) which delayed the response to the cues.So the tweak of having the cue cookie already in your hand as you toss the start cookie then immediately going into the cue will make things a lot smoother and then you can add the prop pretty easily 🙂
Tandem turn – On this one you hd the turn cookies and hand cues ready before she even got to the start cookie, so it worked really well on both sides 🙂 And you got the timing of the turn going nicely too – the hands start the turn then the feet turn, like you did on the last rep.
>>Later we included the prop. I find it interesting that the prop is not a bigger draw for her. We always have to go back to re-introducing it to JJ and building up its importance before we play a game with the prop included. >>
I think she did well looking for the prop! The marker and timing of the reward was what was probably causing her to look at you a little more and at the prop a little less – you can marker earlier (when you see her looking at and heading to the prop) then use your ‘get it’ and toss the treat ahead. That will isolate the moment of commitment to the prop and keep her looking at it. The prop is basically a jump replacer and a focal point for concept training, so you will see her stride over it in these games (and also the parallel path games). She is more likely to hit it with a foot on the collection games where she has to decelerate. But her commitment to it is looking really strong here, no need to ask her t slow down to hit it at this stage – we just want her to drive to it 🙂
>>I have not figured out a way to deter myself from doing that. If you have any suggestions let me know. Maybe I need to use a painters tape line that I am not supposed to cross.>>
I am a big fan of lines on the ground LOL!! I use a light leash to keep myself on the right path so I can see it and also so I won’t fall on it LOL!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Looks like Pap Nationals was a blast!!!
Great job on all of these games – she is doing really well!!!!
Miss SQL was a brilliant girl with the threadle/serp foundation game! The target warm up at the beginning was not all the exciting, she said LOL! But then things got spicy and fun when you added the toy and more moving in to the target. Yay! That was her first time with a toy on the ground – superstar!!
Looking at the next steps: I think feeding her at the target was actually delaying her progress here (she was like “why are you stopping me and making me eat” LOL!), so you can fade that out: when she arrives at the target, you can mark with a reward cue like “get it” for the toy on the ground. You did that at 2:25 and she liked it a whole lot. When you use the toy marker, try not to move your shoulders. Keep your shoulders frozen in place. We want her to go to it while you keep your arm/shoulder open for the threadle (think of it as on a threadle slice, where we want the dogs to automatically take the jump without you needing to turn your shoulders to it at all :))
Turn and burn to the left – This is going well too!!
Keep using the food to line her up – she is doing well with it but still not ready for a cookie-free line up 🙂Make sure you step forward to the barrel and don’t step sideways or back til she hits her commitment point. At 1:28, for example, you didn’t really step forward then stepped sideways and it pulled her right off the commitment. So do the big step forward then wait (that is the hardest part haha) til she reaches the line, then do the FC and run run run 🙂
Wraps to the right – very nice transitions from the toy play to the line up cookie! That looked smooth! More of this will be very happy-making for you both! She was not as smooth going to the right here – harder side? Already did a big session to the left and was mentally tired? Either way, keeping it short was smart, and being patient with your timing also helped her a lot. You can start with the right next time and see how it goes – latent learning will work its magic and she will be smooth to the right too!
>>I haven’t been able to get much distance away from the barrel yet.>>
No worries about the distance for now. With Turn And Burn, stay really close to the barrel so you can add gradually more and more countermotion.
You can add distance to the barrel using this handling combo game:
Start really close then gradually get further and further away, being ultra patient on the sends to the barrel (no need to start to turn until she arrives at the barrel AND turns her head to make the wrap :))
Prop sending is going well, this is where the distance is really beginning to percolate! It will transfer nicely to the barrels and wings eventually. And yes, she is understanding the turn direction a lot better here!
She had a little trouble in 2 spots here:
One was at the beginning here and to be honest, I think it was the bizarre noises in the background (like a screeching animal LOL!) So she was a little sniffy, kind of like “those stressed animal noises are stressing me out!” As soon as that stopped…. Totally engaged. So rather than do a training session when that is going on, you can use your pattern games to help her cope with the bizarro noises (because those noises are stressful!). The pattern games will help her assess the weird noises and shift her focus away from them, then you can go into the training.
Also – she still does not like being handled in this context, so don’t do it 🙂 You are getting stress responses in the form of avoidance and almost got a zoomie at one point – so don’t put the pressure on her about being handled as part of this game (or any game). Be careful not to mistake the stress response for engagement. What works brilliantly with her is to use a toy reward (she will love that!) and then trade for a cookie as you line up for the next rep, which is what you did with the right turn barrel wraps. That worked like a charm! And the collar holding can be built up separately but in the grand scheme of things, it is not that important that you hold her at the start. Happy, stress-free sessions are more important.
The last video was the same as the 2nd to last video. Let me know if there was support to be a different one with rear crosses 🙂
Great job here!! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning! This session went well!
He is hitting his target like a BEAST! LOL!! Keeping the target low worked really nicely. That part was super easy, on both sides. Yay! And he is turning the correct direction after each hit, so the in-then-out pattern looked great!
I think his only question was about where the reward was coming. You were using a general “yes” but I think sometimes you were wanting to feed from your hand and not toss? But he was looking at the ground, then when you tossed on to start the next rep, he didn’t always know where to look. Easy fix – use your markers! If “yes” means from your hand, then deliver from your hand. And if you would rather toss it, use a ‘get it’ marker. And definitely use the get it to start each rep and let him see you toss it, to direct his focus to where the cookie went 🙂 That will help smooth things out because he will know exactly where to look to get the reward or start the rep.
Great job!
TracyHi!
yes, think of the prop games as concept training where we work out the concepts before we start using wings or jumps. So the prop hits don’t need to be perfect as long as the concepts are strong and she is generally committing to the prop.T
Yes, a tunnel threadle is high on the list now because the judges are putting the tunnel and jumps close together… and we are not right there to do the handling LOL!! Darn it! So adding a verbal that is different from the jump threadle verbals will really help.
And yes, you don’t want to add 10,000 verbals all at once so prioritizing will help. You’ve got plenty of reward markers for now, so you can add in the tunnel threadle and then we can come back and get more reward markers too 🙂
T
Hi!
She did well super well here! She was hitting the target nicely, even with the food and toy visible. Nice!!!!
A couple of mechanics tweaks to help clarify the concept even more:
When you present the target, have your arm extended straight, elbow locked, perpendicular to your torso (with you looking at the target). That way she can move directly to it and you will also have more room to draw her in front of you with the reward placement. The target was in front of your leg here, so she was coming in straight and it was a little lost again your leg, and made it harder to turn her.
The other thing to try is having the cookie in your other hand when you present the target (rather than in your mouth). That helps build up the impulse control, and also makes the delivery very fast to draw her into the turn in front of you (like at 1:15).When the cookies where coming from your mouth, the reinforcement was a little delayed and it also drew her focus up to looking at you so she ended up facing you rather than turning.
Using the toy got the line really nicely, no delays! So having the target hand further from your torso will give her the right amount of room to turn after touching the target.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
The stay game looked great here – the most important thing is that the stays are happy and fun. Mission accomplished!>>I am trying to add some reward marker words and this is my first time ever using the word “chase>>
Perfect! Break is a good release an it indicates moving forward, so when you want to throw it back to her, you can use your ‘chase’ word as the marker and release.
For when you do the break and she drives forward to the toy in your hand, you might want to use a bigger toy – she is coming in HOT and I worry for the safety of your fingers LOL!!! And in that moment, you were saying get it – but if that means it is a thrown a reward, you can throw the toy. If you want her to take the toy in your hand, you can use a marker which indicates that (I use ‘bite’) t help her know where to look. If ‘get it’ is your toy in hand marker, cool! Carry on 🙂
Great job for making stays clear and FUN FUN FUN!
TracyHi!
Adding the prop here:
He was SO FUNNY and cute on that first rep when he realized the prop was out there – “Hey dad, my PROP IS HERE!” Lol!!!!He did really well turning to his right at the beginning. The only oopsie was when you tried to go too fast and too soon, so be sure you take your time – these lap turns are slow motion moves 🙂 That means the hand cue is slow and you can keep your feet together til he just about gets to your hand. The left turns went well too! I think you were starting to get the turn going a little early (note how he hops up sometimes) – that 2 inch rule where you stand perfectly still til he is 2 inches for your hand will help keep things smooth. (I can relate to how hard it is to stand totally still for that long LOL!!!!)
He gets a double gold star for easily finding the prop after all the lap turns. SUPER!!!
Great job on all of these. Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Super nice job on the lap turns! The first reps were too his left, which were nice and easy for him, and very smooth. You can wait for one more heartbeat before stepping back with your leg, letting him get closer to your hand (almost touching it).I am very happy with how well he turned to his right as well – super!!!! You were very smooth and clear in that direction too, which made things much easier. I see you went to the prop in the next video 🙂
And you can also do the tandem turn (advanced level) too!
Great job :)
TracyHi!
This is also going really well! A lot of this session was about the impulse control of ignoring the food in order to target, then ignoring the toy in order to target. He figured it out quite nicely! HE did really well with the food, and it is easy to use food for the reward placement. After he gets the reward from your other hand, you can toss another treat away from you, so he then drives back to your target hand for the next rep.
He was interested in the food more than the toy because I think the toy was a little too stationary – he prefers the toy when you throw it or when you drag it for him to chase. So, when he touches the target, you can toss the toy away for him to chase! Yes, it will mean fewer reps but it will help bring the toy into the game too.
Nice work 🙂
TracyGood morning!
Turn and burn – this is going well!! You can be a tiny bit more patient before you start to move away, especially on the right turns. At the beginning, you were shifting your leg back to prepare for the front cross, which drew his focus to you. He did best when you were perfectly still, like at 1:35, til he got to the line on the ground. That was super!I am also seeing a strength to his left turns – very smooth and fast and easy commitment! The right turns which were at the beginning of the session was harder for him, taking him longer to commit. Your boy is a lefty with this game! So you can start with the left turns on the next session to get him going, then switch to the right turns (but you’ll probably have to be very careful not to move early on the right turns).
I think at this stage, you can use a toy with this game too – as you do the FC and move away, drag to the toy for him to chase 🙂
Great job :)
Tracy
