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Good morning!
>>Wisconsin girl here that plays a lot of agility in Minneapolis at On the Run and in Madison, Wi at Canine Sports Zone>>
Very fun! There is a lot of great agility in that area!
>>My verbal system was taught to me by my former coach, Kim Schaefer-out of Rochester MN.>>
Awesome! Kim is fantastic!!!!
I like the verbals system! TONS of clear info for the dog with all of those verbals!!! Do you also have a threadle/wrap or something to differentiate it fro the threadle slice? Threadle/wraps are a hot item in course design lately LOL!!!
>>I use very little arms or hands and I have found this to be effective.>>
Perfect – arms/hands are not all that important and often get in the way 🙂
>>I know Im losing Mira on some of the more difficult courses by not maintaining my connection with her. This fits so great with what Im doing.>>
Yes – connection bloopers are the top cause of faults in dog agility. Video shows us exactly the moment that connection breaks change the info and cause the dog to have to make decisions based on less info.
The video looked great! I love your giant cookie tub target – clever!!!!
Your connection was pretty perfect 🙂 You had your arms back and out of the way which is great too. Have you tried just pumping them like a sprinter to help run up the big lines? She is really fast and course lines are getting longer, so we are trying to find ways to get handlers up the line and arm pumping (while maintaining connection like this) is one way to do it.
>>I should have put her between my legs as that is how we start out. I don’t know why I had her on my right side.>>
I think you did it intuitively perhaps, because it is meant to be like handling the middle of the course rather than a start line? Mira seemed fine with it and sent beautifully to the wing 🙂
She had a bar down on the first jump of rep 2 at :31. I watched it a few times to figure out why he might have had the bar down. Are bars a regular thing for her, or was this a random thing? After watching it, I think two things were happening: you can give your verbal cue sooner (it happened as she was over the bar here and it looked like you looked at you the tiniest bit because you were quiet.
And, I think the wing placement created a lead change to get jump 1 and shift to jump 2 (which is totally fine :)) but she was just a little late doing it so she touched the Bar. It might be related to the verbal needing to come sooner, as soon as she exits the wing wrap. The verbal on the other 2 reps came just before takeoff for her.
Great job here! How did the other side go?
Have fun!
TracyGood morning! I am excited to see you and Bazinga here!!
>>Should Bazinga use jumps in this class since we just added bars at the end of MaxPup 2?
Yes, I think she should totally ue jumps. Yay! She is ready!
Have fun!
TracyHi! These are fantastic questions!
>About the arms, I can hear instructors saying something like “you dropped your arm and that is why Karma came in/missed the jump” as an example. Or if I was sending and thought she was “going” but then dropped my arm and it pulls her off her path.>>
That is why we video things pretty obsessively nowadays 🙂 The refusals/missed jump issues could be that the connection was broken (which is incredibly common when we use too much arm and not enough eyes) so she comes in off the line to try to figure it out (herding dogs often go around the other side of the jump to figure it out, some dogs bite the handler LOL! – same issue, different responses)
Or you might have dropped your arm and looked at where you were going… and that totally changes the line of motion so the dog comes with us 🙂
Or the dog doesn’t understand the distance requirement of a send.
We will be working on all of that for sure! I do use my arms on sends, but for simple straight lines, I often just run and use connection and motion. You can see my just hustling up the lines in the demos, because otherwise my racing whippet youngster would leave me in the dust so much that he’d be in the next county LOL!!!
>>I know it’s hard for you to say without actually seeing an example, but could it be that dropping my arm was NOT the reason for the refusal or missing an obstacle but simply the quality of the connection???? >>
10000% yes! And if you have a video example, feel free to post it and we can see what the cause was. And then we can work on it!
>>I have always been told that the arm(s) support the rest of the cue so my arm(s) is ALWAYS out. >>
We humans made that up somewhere, probably because we like to use our hands LOL!! The dogs get most of their info from our motion, where our shoulder are pointing, connection. The hands are useful for some things to support all of this, but hands are really not a primary cue to the dogs that motion and connection are. And hands/arms tend to mess up the info more often than they help, on some types of lines LOL!
>>I have been told to “keep my arm lower”, but never to run without any arm support, maybe this is my problem!!! >>
Try the simple lines without the arm support – your motion and connection are doing the work there (along with verbals) so you can just hustle along the line. I think sends are good to have some arm support, but my arms are really just extensions of my eyeballs 🙂
>>So this is a HUGE change of thought for me to run with my arm(s) not what I THOUGHT was “supporting” the cue……..am I making any sense????? >>
Totally makes sense – it is a BIG change of thought!! I think motion is a primary cue for dogs (fast versus slow motion, and the direction of our motion/feet). So that is lower-body driven. The details of motion (like which side to be on, exactly what the line is, etc) are given by our connection because it is our connection which controls the upper body. The dogs definitely read where shoulders and chest are pointing!
And interestingly: the better our connection is, the less the dogs look at us. But when our connection is poopy, the dogs look at us because they need more info. Feels so counterintuitive, right?
Let me know if that makes sense :)
TracyI see what you mean! You asked if she was ready and she definitely said “no thanks”. She didn’t fully disengage and leave she just didn’t want to do the obstacles. She wanted the ball and the treats so you were able to get her to do the tunnels…
It looks like she is wearing a harness here – you can try running her without it because it looks like it might be restricting her movement (she was not moving that fluidly here). And when she had her physical checks, did a soft tissue specialist check her out? She might have something going on that might be the underlying cause of her “no thanks” to doing the obstacles. I know the Chiro adjusted her but there could be something causing her to be out of alignment. That is where I would totally start looking.
>>And exit line connection should really help on those tunnel exits, I believe!
yes – the exit of the first curved tunnel is a serp where exit line connection would work great!
Tracy
It is super subtle – when she was on your right and running past the jumps when you turned your shoulders down the line, you added in a brief moment of facing her as she was doing the wing wrap (:07, :12, :37. That rotated your shoulders towards her and got her onto the line but put you too far behind (she is FAST!). Plus, we want her to find the line while you turn and face it 🙂 Let me know if that makes sense!
Tracy
Welcome!! I am glad to see you here! And it sounds like good timing to be able to start building up his sequencing skills while we sharpen up your connection. YAY!! Have fun 🙂
TracyHi! Thanks for re-setting the privacy!!
This is great video for figuring out what he needs for connection and for training.
He had a question about the wing wrap start:
On the very first send, you were looking forward and pointing forward which turns your shoulders away from the wing and towards the jump – which is why he was headed that direction (then he got Big Mad because the info was not clear).
The send to the start wing at :22 and on the last rep was much clearer – low and better connection, so he committed really well!On the first rep, you were running and connecting and pretty far ahead. The position ahead combined with the motion was toooooo much so he could not quite coordinate taking the jumps.
Compare to the 3rd and last reps, where you brought the wing in closer (smart!) so you could be connected and a little ahead, without running hard – and he was perfect 🙂 Yay! Your connection was great there too.
The 2nd rep was more like a jump grid with you leading out and not moving that much – easy peasy!
So as you work through these – add one challenging variable at a time. I think the 2 challenges are you being way ahead (and also possibly behind when you get to it) and moving really fast. So either be waaaaay ahead but doing a fast walk/slow jog to start. Or, be closer to him, only a little ahead, and going fast.
We will work them separately then merge them together so you can be fast AND ahead, and he will still take the jumps.
Great job here!
TracyHi!
>>two words or 1 for both play and toys?
I use one, because it means “all done, let’s go get your reward”. The dog doesn’t need to know if it is a toy or treats in that moment – they can trust it will be good stuff and they won’t be asked to do a discrimination on which reinforcement it is 🙂
>>My word is corny. I use Cookies in a sing-song voice for my competition dog after her run, and we go to a stash, so this is already part of my vocab. But I will feel dumb saying cookies as we get a toy stash.>>
Perfect! It is not corny at all!!! It sounded really good on the video. And no one will think you are dumb if you use it for a toy; they will be too busy admiring the brilliance of your teamwork!
> Let’s Go is my cue to trot on a show lead ingrained over 45 years.>
Ah yes, so probably not a great choice for this game 🙂 Use a word/phrase that you enjoy, makes you smile, and you will remember 🙂
Good morning!
Good job with the sit releases: catch versus break! And adding arm movement and re-connection was great, she is holding her sit nicely on all of them and didn’t release on any of the non-releases 🙂 Yay!Remote reinforcement is off to a great start!!! She was terrific about ignoring the treats in the bowl as you moved away and asked for tricks.
Having the toy on the ground for remote reinforcement was a little confusing to her at first, so a clean playing field will be more straightforward. She also did well when the toy was the remote reinforcement object. Super!!The cookies marker was perfect and you also had the let’s play when the toy was on the table. 2 separate markers are fine if you can remember them 🙂
Head turns: you were getting her to do the double circles (yay!) but we can smooth it out to isolate the head turns. 2 things will really help:
For each rep, start her at your side so you can send her forward to the cone. That will be a cleaner start and give you time to set up the turn away.
Then use a low and slow hand (nose level for her, so feel free to sit so you don’t have to bend too much) to get her into the turn away: put the magic cookie hand right in front of her nose, the do a slow-ish wrist flick to indicate the turn away :and when she leaves your hand to turn away, click that moment. You hand was pretty high here so she doing the turn but looking up so not really leading with her head through the turn. The low hand will help that 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
I am glad you are getting her teeth sorted out, poor pup! That can definitely change her mood!!
Good job on the threadle video:
I was wondering what you were waiting for on the first rep LOL! You were waiting for the Pet Tutor LOL!
She was tending to stop near your hand, so we can get her to move more fluidly – click it when she is heading towards your hand but before she slows down to ask you questions. When you do that, keep the PT clearly on the landing side (even more clearly that you had it here), so it is really obvious that she should go over the bar.
Once she gets the hang of staying in motion and not stopping near your hand, then you can shift the timing of the click to when she looks at the bar as she is moving. I think that is what you were waiting on here, but she was building stopping into the behavior so we can focus on ‘keep moving’ instead first.Nice work here!!
Tracy
Good morning!
>>Rocking Horse with a toy is still sticky for her. Any advice? I think she was frustrated here when she stopped moving and didn’t wrap. >>
I can answer this one before looking at the video:
She’s a whippet! So the one thing I have learned about whippets is that to get the best results, train the skill less LOL! So, put this game away for a week and I bet she comes back to it with far fewer questions (or maybe no questions :)) Whippet latent learning is MAGIC (and also a little bit mind-blowing).Watching the video – it is frozen on a photo until the very end where there is one rep that looked good! So I can’t really comment on what happened LOL I tried it on 2 devices – let me know if it works for you?
Common causes of not committing if that is what happened would be:
– not enough connection, so add more eye contact before the send
– too much distance, so you can move the barrels in closer>>
Should I keep the toy in my pocket for a bit?>>Usually the toy is not the question – although it can appear that way when the connection is not that strong. So as long as the toy is scrunched up and not flapping around, you can keep it in your hand and ramp up the connection and get closer to the barrel. But I stick with my initial response to leave the game for a week and come back to it, because latent learning will kick in. The last time you posted them (December 27), they looked great so now the new stuff is added and we let her brain cement the new info 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
>>The first time I used the little blue bowl sitting on the mantle with a bunch of kibble in it >>
It sounds like the bowl with kibble was the right level of challenge.
>>then I switched to the MM on the ground with boring crunchy treats in it.
And this was too hard as he told you 🙂
You can use the blue bowl on a table for the remote reinforcement game but you can split the difference with the MM – teach him to leave it alone until cued but *not* as part of remote reinforcement yet. As you want him to move away from the MM, reward him with food for moving with you (no tricks needed, just moving away is fine). Then when you click the MM, he can run back to it. Use the highest value food needed to convince him to move away from it, without diluting the value of the MM.
Then when you use the MM in training, like for tunnel games, you can food reward him for leaving it and lining up, then use the MM to reward the skill. Eventually you can fade out the food rewards for moving away from it but for now, I think he needs them.
>>I was using a piece of kibble placed on a dustpan as my “get it” reward. It was soooo hard for Mason to focus on anything else besides that lone cookie behind him, that I struggled to get any connection at all out of the turn. >>
This is another place you can using reinforcement of matching value to teach him to leave the reward target on the ground until cued.
He did a good job of it overall! You can start with an empty dustpan to develop the framework of doing the barrel then the handling then going to it – then add the treat to it. When the treat is in it, give him more agency to choose (less collar holding!) but also a LOT of quick high value reinforcement for staying with you. You were tending to hold his collar a little too long on the send to the barrel which delayed the next cue.
There were a few reps where he seemed to think he should go straight but you wanted him stopping with you – it was a conflicting indicators question that was causing it. For example, looking at the rep at :35-:36 approx: you were moving forward at the same pace but showing your hands to get his attention onto you, so he was moving forward (based on motion info) and then did catch the info to come to you, but you can see the question there.
I think sending to the barrel from further and then slowing down sooner and showing the hand cue to come to you after the decel will make a big difference, even when a cookie is there in the dustpan 🙂
The rep at :40 had the most trust (letting go of his collar die and early) and the earliest “come to me” decel and cue. The last rep was good too – I think the dustpan was empty on those? You can do the same thing but with the cookie placed in the pan 🙂
Looking at the rocking horses:
“”The new red crate had previously been used by Annie so it smelled like her and Mason wouldn’t stop sniffing it””
His interest in it could have been a combination of it being new & different, plus smelling like her, so he had a little bit of trouble processing it as something to go around. Using the upright was a better choice for sure.
>>I wonder if this amount of arm motion is good or if I should wave my arms a little higher for the sends.>>
Your arms were good here! And your connection after the first FC as you sent to the 2nd barrel was GREAT, which is why he always went to the 2nd barrel. Super!!!
>>It was working pretty nicely except that I would always get a refusal on the third send.>>
On the 3rd sends (at :06, :11, :20), you were not as connected as you were on the previous send – you were pointing ahead of him, looking at the barrel, and your shoulders were f acing the a-frame in the field (:06 and :11) and towards the camera at :20. So he was behind you and no longer saw connection plus saw your shoulders turning to a different line… so he looked up at you to figure it out.
Compare those reps to the 3rd send at :26 – SUPER clear connection to his eyes as he exited the upright and you maintained it as he passed you to the barrel. Note how at :27 your shoulders were pointed to the barrel 🙂 So he was perfect and went to the barrel – very clear info for him. Yay!
So be sure to make the clear connection each time, and if you get the refusal, add in more connection on the next rep.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
She did great here too! I think she liked the toy in your left hand a little better (ok a lot better LOL!) but she was terrific about going to the other one as well in the first part of the session. I think the value of that left hand toy got really high during the game so it was harder to let go at the end, but she did it and did end ups going to the other toy. Yay!You can add in an ‘out’ cue (just before your tug hand goes stationary) to help with the release of the toy. And you can add a marker that indicates that she can get the other toy you are moving around (I added “bite” for that).
One more challenge to how her is to use food – she outs the toy, she gets a cookie, then try to get her to go to the next toy. That way she will get used to going back and forth between food and toys in training (I think she will have no trouble with this).
Great job!
Tracy
