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Good morning! He is doing really well with all his games – so fun to watch! And he seems to go back and forth between food and toys REALLY well. Yay!!!
On the first video:
Strike a pose is looking great! One small tweak is to hold the target hand out fully extended from your side so it is clearly separate from your leg – that is when he can see it and hit it best.I was going to suggest playing this with the tug as the next step but you did that at the end of the video. Super!
He seemed to have no trouble with the impulse control on the toy. Good boy! To help strengthen the markers, try to stay perfectly still and say ‘bite’ before the yes and the movement of the toy – the ‘bite’ marker is coming last right now after the yes word and the movement, so he won’t be able to pair it as well with what we want it to mean. I find it really hard to stay perfectly still and say the marker, so there is a voice in my head reminding me of that all the time LOL!
Next step on strike a pose: have the toy or an empty food bowl or MM on the ground on the reward side, rather than in your hand.
He is also doing great with the decel and the driving ahead combo game! Because he is already very speedy:
Start your decel sooner, no later than when he is halfway to you. You can start moving away when he is on the way to the start cookie (walking away, if running is too distracting) then as soon as he starts coming towards you, run! That will give you more space and time to decel so he can prepare his mechanics. You were decelerating just before he arrived at you, so you can see him bouncing up a bit as he was trying to dial back the speed into collection. Earlier decel will set him up to turn really tight and smoothly next to you. You can add a toy to this too, throwing it for the go go go at the end of each rep.2nd video:
He is doing well with his stay! This game relies on very clear markers, so remember to say the markers then wait a beat then move the reward – you were perfect at :33-:35 with that, so keep doing the marker – wait – move reward rhythm.The toy makes things more exciting for sure, but that is exactly what we want!!
He broke the first toy stay when the toy moved so be SUPER clear with the mechanics there: stationary toy (for now) say the marker wait a beat then move. The toy moving before the marker might accidentally make the toy movement the release, which we don’t want. So you can definitely add a rhythm for yourself like “Catch – wait – throw” This is what the voice in my head says 🙂
Driving to the tunnel was easy for him! Yay! When adding the tunnel threadle angles, because he has to turn away, start on an easier angle so he can turn away more smoothly (turning away is HARD for baby dogs!)
For all the verbals (tunnel and eventually the tunnel threadle verbal) – you can add them more cleanly too so he knows exactly when to move to the tunnel, and to get him to look at you less (he hit his face on the tunnel at 3:02 trying to watch you move and do the tunnel). You can do this by holding his collar – say the verbal 3 or 4 times, then let go. That way he can focus on the tunnel before he starts to move and the verbals will get added really easily.
The big zoom at the end means he probably needs more decompression mixed into the sessions (like a snuffle mat, or scattering treats around). And you can also use the decompression as a bridge at the end of the session, from higher arousal (like running through the tunnels) to ‘we are finished now’ arousal 🙂
Great job on these – he is SO FUN and clever too!
Tracy
Good morning!
>>She was superb at her dog shows. Happy friendly and confident. First time at a dog show, first time out without her crew. So many wonderful good things.>>
Oh, that is so awesome! Happy dance!!! And be sure to give her a day or two of decompression – sniffing around, leash walks, nothing hard, etc. Even though she was perfect, the dog show definitely fired up her internal physiology and that will take a couple of days to settle back down. The body doesn’t really know the different between good stress and bad stress, so we give puppies a couple of recovery days even after good times and big successes 🙂
On the parallel path game: She is finding the natural line really well (and also reading deceleration well too!) She had a couple of misses so to fix that: add more movement. Your movement 🙂 You were standing still off to the side in the moments where she had a question (:05 and :15 for example) so she is not really incorrect to drive to you. To help support the parallel line, you can toss the cookie then move all the way down the line to where she is eating, then turn and move up the line again to set the parallel path. That will cue the line to the jump more smoothly.
Wow, she did so well with the barrel wrapping while you used your hand, that it took me a minute to remember that the hand was even a distraction. SUPER!!!! You were adding the wrap verbals on some of the reps, so definitely keep adding them – and you can say them multiple times (turnturnturnturn) to match what she will be hearing on course.
Tunneling is looking good too! For the tunnel threadles, wait longer before moving away to be sure she is fully turned. These are rear crosses so being too quick to move away might pull her off. Do you have a tunnel threadle verbal in mind? I think she is ready to have that added too: ‘tunnel’ can mean to take the tunnel entry on the line, and a different verbal means to come to the other side of the tunnel. I use “kiss kiss kiss”.
Rear crosses looked great! Yay! You can add the prop in now, to the spot where you t tossed the treats. You can bridge the session by tossing the treat onto the prop then doing the RC. And if she is happy with that, you can send to the prop rather than toss the treat, then do the rear cross.
Great job here! I am looking forward to the stay video!
Tracy
Good morning!
Good start to the session with cheese on the table, then off to the side, then right in front. She looked at the cheese moving when you put it on the floor, then went back to leg bounce mode. Yay! So it all falls into the category of “Things Are Different Every Day With Puppies” LOL!!Down and sit with the cheese on the table was a little harder. I am not sure if it was the context of you leaning/crouching for the sit (I haven’t seen enough sit or down with her to be able to recognize a context or pattern) or if she does better with sessions starting before the impulse control element is introduced, then adding it once she gets rolling (like you did her with the leg bumps).
It is possible that processing is too hard at the beginning when the charcuterie is RIGHT THERE (I can relate) but it is fine to be added when she is already doing the thing. This is good to experiment with and track, as it can give us big insight into how she does best in training sessions, which will make things more efficient and reduce any potential errors or frustration!
So the next sit or down session can have the cookie bucket out of the picture and then try adding it once she gets rolling, to test the theory.
Side note: Super adorable when she was gently hitting you with her little feet! So cute!
>>Now it looks like I need to shift back to more rewards for the sit! She had a pretty snappy sit on cue several weeks ago but clearly that needs more attention.>>
Probably just needs a refresher session or two – she has been busy with other things 🙂
>>Do I need more of a pause between marker and the toss? I feel like I pausing as I do it but the video looks like I’m running it together. >>
Yes – try to be perfectly motionless when you say the marker, *then* move your hand to toss it or otherwise deliver it. SO HARD!!! So yes, try to be ‘clean’ but we can also operationalize what the heck that means LOL!
Since you are musical, think of as having a largo or andante 3/4 or 4/4 time to it, with the marker on 1 and the delivery on 3 – and a silent motionless rest on 2 🙂 We are all guilty of either saying the marker and moving the hand at the same time, or moving the hand *then* saying the marker. That all weakens the marker of course although the dogs learn it eventually because, well, they have us well-trained LOL!!
For example I was doing a demo video yesterday with a marker and a tossed reward, and the voice in my head was saying DO NOT MOVE YOUR HAND UNTIL WELL AFTER THE MARKER. It felt like an eternity but on the video it looks normal and has the pace of a slow waltz.
>>It’s also hard to hear me cue it sometimes so maybe I need to get more deliberate and a bit louder about the whole process.>>
Yes, the verbal on the downbeat can be louder but then don’t forget you have to rest on 2 (no tossing on 2 LOL!)
>>She’s very boingy in general and it seems to be more frequent recently. (Not just when training. She’ll bounce off the back of my legs when I’m standing in the kitchen. At first I thought it was a demand for attention but now I’m wondering if her brain is just overheating and she needs a bit of reassurance to reset.>>
The more we learn about young dog development, the more interesting it is! My young dogs all needed to move more during adolescence. Not in a bad way, but just more movement. Sometimes they have all this energy and don’t know what to do with themselves.
>>If I wait a bit and then crouch down and pet her she seems to relax into me and then trot off to go do her own thing with Kaladin or a toy. It may be a fluke but it also seems like she is more likely to grab the toy instead of jumping if I am on the ground and also if I bring her in next to me and touch her more first. >>
I am noticing this too with her, on the videos! She definitely seems to like the being held at the start of a tug transition. It is like a bridge behavior that settles the arousal into a good place. Keep trying it, adding it deliberately as part of the transition but also doing it in the lower arousal moments of everyday life, to keep it ‘neutral’. If you only do it when she is aroused or about to do something in higher arousal, then it will be associated with increasing arousal and we want it to have more of a centering effect.
It is fun to sort out the specific learning needs of each dog! She is really fun!
>>And she’s definitely in the throes of adolescence. More so than all my previous dogs…or maybe I’m just blocking out random behavior at this age with Tari and Kaladin was just more subtle about it. Lift is definitely not subtle! >>
Yep, adolescence can be a wild ride LOL!!! I do recall having conversations about stuff like this with Kaladin, but he was definitely more subtle and his questions were different. With him it was mainly about which reinforcement was best in which situation.
>>Last night I asked her to release from the crate and put her head through a leash loop while I was holding the full dish off to the side and her head exploded. Ran back into the crate and then out again but couldn’t do the behavior. I put the dish on the ground about a foot off her path and no problem. Head into leash loop. Picked up the dish and then she could do the leash loop again.>>
So this is a game she has been successful with repeatedly, then couldn’t do it yesterday, then could do it again with the bowl in a slightly different place? Ah, adolescence. Sounds like the processing parts of her brain were having a busy day, maybe? The more I learn about it, the more I am like “wow that is fascinating” and less “ OMG I BROKE MY PUPPY” hahaha because the scientists are correct, it all turns out fine if we don’t add pressure 🙂
>>I didn’t try the barrel with the toy since she’s been rather meh about the toy as a reward during a game unless it is the toy races. But I’ll try a left turn around the barrel toy race combo.>>
You can try it as toy races: holding the toy in whichever hand makes for easier throwing, you can send her around the barrel and as you do the FC, throw the toy and race to it. Then that can morph into lining her up near the barrel, holding her, throwing the toy, then immediately sending her around the barrel to race to the toy.
If you are training with other people at any point, you can have the toy on a line and they can be dragging it for her to chase as she comes around the barrel.
>>For the comment on the prop and having the food already there are you talking about having it down on the ground already or just on the counter so I’m not placing it before asking for some toy play?>>
Since the ignoring-the-food can be challenging sometimes, no need for the toy play when you are focusing on the ‘do a thing with food on the ground’. You can just play with some prop touching with the cheese bucket very close by, making the cheese visible then putting down the prop. The prop coming into the picture last should (theoretically) make it more salient and therefore (again, theoretically 🤣) more likely that she will interact with it. Dog brains (and human brains) have a preference for novel things, which is why I like to add the prop in after everything else is set up and ready. The toy play can be added back later on when the impulse control is easier.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
She is doing great with the tunnel! She is starting to move on her own when you say the tunnel verbal – that is what we want (rather than her waiting for you to move). The angles were not trouble at all. Yay! So next time you play with the tunnel, add in the threadle side (where she is between you and the tunnel, and has to turn away to get into it). Start on super easy angles and for now, use the tunnel verbal but we will switch to the threadle verbal as soon as she is happy with it.
The spin on the barrel looked good even though it was not the plan LOL!! The 2nd rep was good with the blind, even though you had to convince your muscles to turn away from her and not towards her. I think it will be easier when you have more motion coming into it (stay tuned!)
The stays are looking good! You can ping pong the # of steps you take before you reward with the ‘catch’. And, add in more arousal with tugging before (and you can toss the toy back to her). Being able to do the stay in higher arousal (from the tugging) will be VERY useful!
>>I read the info for the running contacts info this afternoon and this morning I introduced Vesper to the Ready Treat machine,>>
Perfect! It is a good thing to introduce at this stage.
>>It says on only start retrieves if we have strong tugging behavior. Especially right now with teething, her tugging is not strong and even before that, she’s not pulling on the toy much. Should I wait to work on the retrieve games? She has a pretty good retrieve with things like rubber inflation toys and small fuzzy balls.>>
She has strong tugging behavior even with the teething, so you can go ahead and play with the retrieve. You can work it with simple retrieves of toys/inflations/balls without tugging, as long as she brings the item back to you.
Great job here! Have fun!
TracyHi! This went really well – he is getting the idea that sometimes humans do weird things, and he will get rewarded for just finding you 🙂 On the first rep, you can see he jumped up a little- so you can reward sooner as he is coming back to you, before he jumps up.
He was perfect on the 2nd rep!You can play this every now and then, to keep his resilience levels in a happy place and to keep giving him coping skills for when he gets frustrated (so you won’t need to be perfect :))
Great job!
TracyDefinitely keep putting numbers out and discourage him from playing with them LOL! Redirect him to a tug toy if he tries to party with a cone 🙂
Good morning!
I agree, the threadles are going well, totally smoother!! The best ones were early in the reps when you were closer to the threadle jump and not pulling her off the line as much – using more upper body and verbal to bring her in then out.
When you added more speed like at 1:11, there was a little too much foot rotation and pulling her away from the line, so you ended up pushing back which is why she went to the backside there.
>>I seem to always be late with my blind. Is that why she is always bumping the first wing of the last jump?>
She has so much speed that I think you need to layer the middle jump to be able to get up to the blind sooner on this sequence. Otherwise it is too hard to outrun her to get the blind on time (like at :21 and 1:36) The rep at :48 was better timing but you had to have serious hustle to get there! And if the blind was a little late plus you were a little disconnected after it, then yes she would bump the wing.
When you had a head start like at 1:55, the blind was much easier and that is about where you would be if you were layering. So you can work on the layering skill to make the handling easier. It is perfectly fine to put a placed reward or target out on the line to help her out there!
She did see you starting the blind which is why she found the correct side each time – teamwork!! That right there is one of the reasons we reward anyway even when things have gone wrong… so the pups keep trying hard to get it right and are not afraid to take a risk like changing sides even when the info is not perfectly on time. She knows that you are not going to get mad, so she is going to make the big effort to solve the puzzle 🙂
Second sequence:
Nice job with your position on the send to 4! You adjusted things really nicely after the first rep, starting the turn cues sooner and being a bit further away too.>>The blind is late here because I’m pulling her over the second jump of the serp. What do I need to do better with my body to keep her going over that jump instead of past it?>>
Your feet can keep going parallel to the bar (don’t rotate towards her) and you can rotate your upper body a lot more. Ideally, you would turn at the waist so your upper body is facing the bar (parallel to it) with the serp arm waaaay back and the center of your chest pointing to the center of the bar. And, looking at the landing spot instead of at her can help a lot too! At 2:29 and 2:52, you shoulders were closed and perpendicular to the bar.
At 3:33, you opened up more (left hand pointing to the bar) and you can see how it helps her immediately. Opening up even more will help you be able to stay in motion while moving through the serp.Try not to rotate your feet at all on serps – 3:55 had foot rotation so she came in for the jump, but it makes it really hard to keep moving past the serp for you 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Prop countermotion is going well! You were not asking for a lot of countermotion so she was able to move past you to the prop. The countermotion for now can be simple leaning, so she maintains touch the prop (even if it is just one foot).She really wants to start without you because the prop has BIG VALUE and did a big leap up when she was asked not to start without you (I swear I heard her say something about “Darned human rules” lol), so you can reward her for sticking with you in the ready dance moment then reward again after the send (I think she will be happy to get the extra cookies :))
The toy play and retrieving-ish went well at the end!
During the barrel session – she was a little frustrated if she sees food indicators and doesn’t get food – leapt up when you put the food bowl down on the counter, then leapt up again (with dirty words) when you asked for toy play.
So when entering a session, you can set up the environment with the food and barrel already in there before you bring her into the room, so that the toy is the obvious thing as she comes in and you can toss it around a bit. That way she doesn’t see food or a bowl, then get asked for toy play (“MOM I WANT FOOD I AM STARVING” lol) and should make for an easier transition (transitions are hard for puppies and teenagers!)
>>She decided she really wanted to only go around the barrel to her left. >>
Totally see what you mean! She was a complete lefty here, for whatever reason.
>>When I knelt down to make it more like the wing wrap foundations she did go to the right, but I just worked her to her left after that.>>
That was smart! She seemed to recognize that right away and was able to turn to her right. With that in mind, when doing the barrel wraps to the right with you standing up, you can help her by putting a bowl out where it would be on the right turn shaping game. It would be a visual target for her in this case, and the cookie would still come where you had it (in the other bowl). It might help jump start the right turns and then we can fade it out.
>> She was able to go around the barrel to the left even with cheese in the food bowl behind her.>>
Yes! The left turns looked awesome and she was great about being able to ignore the cheese in the bowl!!!!
You can try doing this game to her left entirely with the toy as well, no food present: toss the toy around so she is excited and interested in it, then place it behind you and try the left-wrap, following by racing to the toy. I am interested to see if she will like that!
>>I can’t remember for sure where the cheese container was in the first leg bump section but I think it was on the ground since it doesn’t fit well in my pants pocket when I”m sitting down. >>
It might have been in the exact same position as it was here, but there might have been so much more ‘stuff’ in the environment that she didn’t really ‘see’ it, as compared to the comfy home environment where it was super obvious.
Also, adolescence. ‘Nuff said. LOL!!! She is about 24 weeks old, so some of this might just be adolescent brain changes. There are seriously huge things happening under the hood as she is entering adolescence, hitting puberty, etc.
>>’ve done a lot of work with her when the food container or dish is on the ground next to me but who knows what is going through her little noggin.>>
See above about adolescence LOL!! Things that are great on a Tuesday might be totally poopy on a Wednesday. Totally normal (and totally hard for us humans to wrap our brains around LOL!!)
So you can make the leg bump behavior easier by removing the cheese bucket for now, and you can refresh the cheese bucket skill by having her do something really easy while the cheese bucket is on the ground (a hand touch or even just hitting the prop). And then she will wake up one morning and it will all be perfect (and in true adolescent style, it will all be gone again the following morning LOL!! We need a support group!!!!)Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
I think those will work! The poles look small and thin. And you can tape them onto the ground too, so they are even lower and won’t roll. Or punch a 1″ hole into the cones to make them lower. I could not find the link to the exact set that I bought, but here is a close up of one of them being used in a strengthening exercise:
You can see how skinny the pole is (Hot Sauce is the same size as Kaladin, minus the floof LOL), perfect for Lift.
T
Good morning!
>>I also had gotten sucked into doing longer sessions with Obi which fried his baby brain! Greedy human…>>
TOTALLY relatable! He is such a cool puppy! He is SO FUN and it all goes well… until we accidentally go for too long, then their brains leak out of their ears. Oopsie! I have certainly done that too. A 2 minute timer will keep you on track and help you resist temptation to go too long.
The other hard part for us humans is to trust the latent learning process and train something, then NOT train it for a day or two (even if the session was not great). The science tells us that he is learning it when we don’t train, his brain is re-wiring it, and sleep helps consolidate it and cement it in. But all of that is invisible to us humans so we want to train train train LOL!! I love that he gets to walks in the woods as a great balance to the ‘formal’ training.
He did a great job balancing on the log, what a good boy! Think of all. The textures on the log, all of the environmental distractions, the curve of the log, it might be a little slippery… so many amazing things happening here for his brain and body.
It also reminds me of the log scene in the movie Dirty Dancing:
Hopefully you have seen the movie so you don’t think I am completely nuts LOL!!!!
Great job here :)
TracyHi!
>>Speaking of food rewards – full disclosure, I only has kibble and paper bowls the day I decided to start wing wrap foundations. It went ok, but was taking forever for him to eat the reward so we took a break and started again with cheese!>>
Ha! Yes, chewing does slow things down a lot. The cheese here worked really well and he got into the flow really nicely!!! By the end, he was offering the bowl-to-bowl pattern really well.
>>When he’d stare at me, I’d try to just look at the bowl, is that ok?>>
Yes, that was great patience on your part. Those moments looked like he was sorting out the impulse control element:
Oakes: “Why would I go to the bowl when the cookies are right there in your hands??”
You: “because no cookies come out if you just stand there and stare at my hands”
Oakes: “Got it, to the bowls I go”
If he really struggled, we could help more, but he really was not struggling. He was just asking a valid question and he answered it without much help LOL!
Since this went so well, you can add in an upright for him to go around when you do the next session. Wam up with a couple of reps of back and forth between just the bowls to make sure he remembers it, then slide in the upright for wrapping around it 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>>Tugging in between the food rewards is brilliant and working so well!! I noticed the same thing and have spent several sessions just figuring out the food rewards and what “level” gets him where I need him. never even occurred to me to add the toy in to keep that enthusiasm.>>
Awesome! Figuring out what is needed to get him to the right arousal level, plus how to help him get himself there, is a process that will take us though adolescence and into adulthood. So if he is doing this well at 7 months old? Hooray!!!!!
The deceleration game is looking really strong! He was support about driving right to you, and was amazing about going from food to tugging to food.
He is already very speedy, so you will want to decelerate sooner: when he has taken 1 stride towards you, start the decel so he can organize his collection, then you can start the pivot as he is arriving near you (like you did here). You were starting the decel when he was maybe one stride from you, so you might have noticed that his butt was swinging out wide because he didn’t have time to process the mechanics of collecting. Decelerating sooner will get him to be able to turn super tight with you 🙂
Great job here!!
Tracy
