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OMG! Her head down trick is so adorable!!! Love it!!!! Now to get her to hold it there so you can take photos of the cuteness LOL!!!!
OK, next trick to do while she recovers: teach her to hold something in her mouth (setting up for future photos where she holds her ribbons :))
There are a lot of ways to do this, but mainly it is shaping her pick something up and gradually delay the out cue so it builds up to a hold. Start with something easy and eventually you can build up to crazy thing – a friend of mine taught her dog to hold a hot dog and an egg.
Have fun!
Tracy
Hi!
Great news about the stay ‘catch’ game, especially in a new place! So fun!!!Parallel path looked great – nice timing of the ‘get it’ marker so she was looking ahead really well! She was looking ahead perfectly on your left side and almost perfectly o your right (a few more glances towards you). You can throw a toy for this game too! Because of her age, this game does not need to go into the regular training rotation yet – she picked it up really quickly and there is not a whole lot of stuff to do with actual jumping at this point 🙂
The lap turn looked good! One small tweak to the mechanics is to step directly back and draw your arm straight back as you turn her – you were moving your hand a bit to the side so she was a little wider and not as snappy on the turn. Hitting the prop after the turn looked really strong!
>>she had no issues even without the treat in my hand.>>
She did look at the empty hand a bit like “what the heck, no cookie??” It was funny and cute!
>>She’s in full on teething mode and really not gripping or pulling well on her toys. She seems to still in interested in chasing them while I drag them and biting them. Is it ok to keep using them?>>
Yes – keep throwing and dragging the toys, and use the softest fuzziest ones you can fine. She will get back to biting and tugging hard soon 🙂
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
Thanks for the video!!! One thing worth pointing out: LOOK HOW WELL SHE RAN OFF THE START LINE RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE RING ENTRY AND ALL THE PEOPLE!!! That is a huge win. A few weeks ago, she couldn’t do that nearly as well.
>>She went straight to check out a new person that was hanging over the fence to the field. It took her 10 seconds or so to return to me. I think my substitute dog is loosing its power.>>
I think two things might have happened to cause that. Yes, the stop at the end of the contact was part of it (see below) but also she might have had to use of so much brain juice to ignore the people at the start, that she couldn’t do it twice especially since she was moving towards the new person and not away! And the two things together (new person + stopped contact) made for a zoomie. Some ideas for you:
>> I try to make a point of getting a good connection at her stopped contact as that’s a place where I have lost her. That said, I reconnect and then fail miserably at staying connected. >>
I am not sure this was a matter of not maintaining eye contact. It might have been too much stopping changed her arousal state (she was definitely on the edge here but doing well). She was engaged at the bottom of the contact – so if you reward in position, I think you should also re-start her differently.
Many, many dogs struggle with being rewarded in the stop and then waiting for the handler to lead out again. So you can release her to you then reward, or throw a reward to her as the release – both of those involve movement and a Viszla needs movement as part of arousal regulation (I have never met a V that didn’t need to move as part of arousal regulation). So the reward process on the DW can look different – or you can release and reward with movement. yes, stay connected and she might need a ‘brake’ arm (opposite arm) as part of the turn cue to the weaves, but the release to keep going will be helpful. And you can use a target to help her stop so you don’t lose criteria there.
With the new person in class, since that triggers some zoomie action, you can also add in doing short blast runs near the new person: turning towards the person then turning away and rewarding. It can even be flatwork, on leash, just shadow handling front crosses on the flat! And if she can’t do that, you can do some pattern games around the new person before you go into the ring 🙂 New people are a great opportunity to use them to practice the arousal and engagement games.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning Annalise and Team Prytania!
Super job working through the challenging backside and rear cross on the sequence!
For the backside, you can run to where the wing and bar meet – but maintain big connection as you move forward until she is past you and heading to the backside. On the first rep, you curled away too early, so she followed the line of your shoulders to the front. I call that a ‘banana line’ because you ran a curved line in the shape of a banana LOL! Try to run a straight line to the backside til she is committing to going around the wing.
On the 2nd time through there, you kept moving forward longer and that totally helped! You got closer to the entry wing to support her, so you can work on being a little further away but maintaining the connection like you did on the 2nd rep.
She let you fix it there and stayed happy (the other option is to keep going and fix it in the next turn) and then had trouble with reading the rear cross.
The rear cross is HARD here because of the weird angles and the straight line jump right in front of her. You were a tiny bit late getting close to the RC line at :16 and :31 for a baby dog (when she is more experienced, she will read the pressure as you moved towards the line for the RC)
It was great to have you mom throw the toy, and you also got onto the RC line earlier and earlier (it feels weird to get on the RC line that earlier, right??!!)
>>She did have a loss of focus when there was a mistake(backside positioning proved difficult for handler) and it was a more difficult skill for her (rear). >>
Yes, at about :55 on the start line, she was a bit deflated. She is definitely getting more resilient to bloopers on course, so keep rewarding and continuing like you have been doing.
One other idea:
When there is a really hard sequence and there have been a couple of bloopers, you can mix things up differently to keep her pumped up: instead of do the hard sequence again right then, you can do a really easy one that starts on a different jump. And, you can take out the stay and just start by sending her into the tunnel to get her pumped up again.The other thing you can do is get her pumped up with the cartoon mashup lead outs – check out the And Beyond – Releases games in packages 3 and 4. It is goofy and fun and she might LOVE it when she needs a boost 🙂
She came back to focus after she got into the tunnel the 2nd time in that sequence (great job staying in the moment and getting her happy!!) and you got on the RC line SUPER early at 1:19 so she got it. YAY!!!!! It seems so weird to get on the RC line that early and from ahead of her, but it was correct here on the hard angles.
When you revisited this sequence at the end:
I think on the opening at 2:01 you were running straight and didn’t really turn your shoulders, so she thought you wanted the jump. Good job to just continue! She let you fix the backside but you can isolate that tunnel-backside skill to work on the straight line she needs to see to commit.
You got on the RC line really nicely at 2:17! Because it might feel weird to do a RC from a little ahead of her, you turned your shoulder to the left turn side of the wing (watch it in slow motion and you will see your right arm pointing to the jump). That is a really small movement but it cues a left turn for her, so you can see her start to turn left but then she realizes it is a right turn (verbal and motion helped a lot there) so she switches to the right turn.
So you don’t need to turn your shoulders to the jump as much – trust her commitment and she will drive past you 🙂
The 2nd sequence here looked great! The timing of your first wrap cues at 1:31 was good – you can decel sooner and keep running straight – you were moving towards her so for a moment, she looked to her right as if considering a rear cross!
Compare to your next rep – GREAT timing at 1:52, starting the decel and verbal as she was in the air over the jump before the wrap, and nice decel. The turn was amazing and she had no questions!!
And great drive on the line back to the. Tunnel. YAY!! And don’t get too mad at your mom if the throw goes wild LOL!!!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
This was an interest session!
>>We had done a session of this at EOTT using some cheese and then a toy for a few reps and it went quite well. >>
Do you remember if you had the cheese container on the ground next to your leg at EOTT? The 3-heads look appeared to be because she couldn’t possibly get near the cheese container and needed to be a little herdy – couldn’t quite process working with coordinated movement next to it. So the session was more about the processing of doing a thing while her brain was dealing with the cheese-on-the-ground distraction. So she was watching it, herding it a little, and couldn’t quite process the cue to do a coordinated jump over your legs. The puppy brain will prioritize certain things and literally make them appear bigger. So it is possible that her brain was making the cheese container look HUGE and your legs look tiny by comparison, so all she could “see” was the cheese. That delays the processing and the mechanics of other behavior.
This is exactly why we play these goofy puppy games – for the processing, not just the skills 🙂 Processing this on your leg bumps will make it a lot easier when she processes it on real jumps 🙂
Then when you tried to get tugging, she gave you the look of “I can’t right now” so you changed gears (smart!) so you didn’t get frustration behavior. Excellent job supporting the pup as she was trying to work through it!
You were able to get her to walk through and use your legs like cavalettis which was a HUGE win considering how hard the cheese container on the ground was for her here.
You put the cheese away at about 3:00 and she could tug but needed a coffee break with it first (took it way to chew for a moment) – then you got toy interaction really nicely!
It would be interesting to see how she does with leg bumps with the cheese starting up high on the counter first to get the behavior rolling… then move the cheese to the ground after a few successful reps to see if she can still process her mechanics even with the big cheese distraction.
>>2 questions – I don’t have a ladder. What’s a good substitute? poles stuck through low holes on cones?>>
Yes – I did a cheap and quick set of cavalettis from amazon. Skinny poles and cones with holes, and I use them for conditioning stuff too. I can find the link if you like. A real jump bar might be too thick for her at this point – the set I got from Amazon has poles that are really thin.
>>Is Lift’s parallel prop work strong enough that I should try the jump?>>I think so! You can warm her up with just the prop and see how she does with it. Then you can transfer it with an intermediate step of the prop between 2 jump uprights. And if she is happy with that, you can put a pool noodle or tiny bump in to replace the prop.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
The barrel sending looked really strong! She needed a warm-up rep on the first one, when she came back to you when you moved away quickly. So let her have an easy first rep then you can move to the harder ones. After the first rep, she was zipping around it at a million miles per hour LOL!! As you add the sideways and backwards sending to the barrel, add in using your arm to send as well. The toy can be in the opposite hand and the arm & leg closer to the barrel point to it. That will look more like what she will see on course.
The rear crosses are working well! She needs the cookie tossed close enough to the wall that she really can only turn the new direction 🙂 That gives you time to get the new side and gives her less opportunity to turn the other way. Most of the cookie tosses here were perfect so you had time to do the rear and she could only turn the new direction, which helps her to process it. The one cookie toss that was too far from the wall (and too close to you) made it easy to turn the wrong way and hard for you to get to the new side. So definitely keep using the toss to the walk to help her out 🙂
Nice work here! Good luck with the puppy show today!!! Get lots of photos!!!!!
Tracy
Good morning!
>>I’m struggling with when to move on to the next games vs continuing to work towards the more advanced versions. The games build on each other over time so do we need to get all the way to advanced level or move on, let the skills build, and come back to more advanced levels if we struggle later?>>
This is an excellent question!!!!
In thinking about it, it will depend on the individual puppy and how hard the skill is in terms of what is needed to be ‘successful’ at the advanced level.
For example: backing up requires a lot of development and coordination, so it is likely to lag behind the other skills and will take longer to get backing up onto something that moves. So you can re-visit it here and there, no rush, because we cannot rush coordination and physical development 🙂Another example: the handling games like turn and burn or the games on the flat are a bit of commitment training for him, and mostly handling from you 🙂 So you might find that you get to the advanced level really quickly on those.
One thing about the levels, especially the advanced levels: nothing needs to be perfect 🙂 You can be ‘good-ish’ or ‘mostly correct’ 🙂 The advanced levels all get re-visiting somehow when we build up the baby level of a new game, so if he needs more help, we can always help him out. That way you can feel confident moving forward and even if the skills are not perfect at each level.
>>For example, we worked a more advanced level of back up to a large balance disk tonight.>>
That is really hard for most puppies! So if he needs more sessions spread out over time, no worries – it won’t hold him back from moving forward with the other games 🙂
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>I think I am doing better on focusing on the process and making it as successful as I can for her.>>
You are doing a great job of that! Teenage dogs give us know choice to focus on the process 🙂 The videos are showing that you and Caper are making huge progress!
>> I wonder if having the walls of the indoor help her focus on the jump ahead but she sure thought it was fun.>>
I was trying to figure out what the differences could be versus outdoors at home. Fewer distractions indoors? Early puppy experiences there that bring her to a different arousal state? No cats? LOL!! We will never know, but we will embrace it as a fantastic way to get closer to the goals.
The throw back looked good on the first rep! You just need to reconnect sooner to show her the next jump. You did that at :42 and she took the jump. Yay!
I am pretty sure she went straight over the #5 jump then past it on the next rep through there because of the rewards previously for driving straight. Good job getting her back on track and breaking it down so she could look for it (and soon as you were like “Caper we need you to take this jump” she was great about finding it.For the jump after it (jump 6) – you need a collection cue before 5 so she gets a pretty significant left turn to landing facing the next jump – otherwise she is on the backside line and would run past it to the backside, like she did a few times.
She did have a couple of questions about jump 1 – you need to face the takeoff spot of jump 1 more for the release to it. On. The very first rep, you were moving parallel to it which worked for her. At :24 and :33 you were turned away from it, so she did not even consider it. You can get to your lead out position and turn to face the takeoff spot before you release, then step towards it as you release to support that #1 jump.
She was terrific with the high arousal lead outs!!! he was able to ignore the reward station even though it was literally in the middle of things LOL! And she was VERY stimulated )sa were the other dogs) but she did a brilliant job of holding her stay and FINDING HER JUMPS. YAY!!!
Do you have snow on the ground? If the ground is still usable, it would be interesting to re-create this exact same session at home and see if we can get the same or similar behavior.
Great job here!!!
Tracy
Good morning! He was quite brilliant here!!!
He did really well with the 10 tunnel game to targeting on the plank. It is a really easy way to practice his contacts LOL! The best thing about this is that I didn’t really see him get overaroused. He was more excited, yes, but still happy and able to respond really well. That is part of the reason why he is doing so well with his FEO runs and is just about ready to run for real 🙂
I love that you did it with weaves too – it is definitely something all dog need to see and he was perfect.
And the stay on the last video was perfect. He did SO WELL here!! It is unusual that young dogs have no real struggle with this game, but he is perfectly fine with managing his arousal. YAY!!!!
So one thought to add to this: the only time I can recall him ever getting overaroused is when he is a little frustrated (handling goes wrong or something) and he jumps up at you (and there was a video with him jumping up at someone else a while ago).
You can directly address that with this game – 10 tunnels then a short sequence that you mess up and disconnect on purpose, and stop moving (don’t be your usually good dog trainer where you keep going or reward LOL). Do you remember the Find My Face game? It is basically getting him wild with the tunnels then doing that game, to see if he can regulate his arousal when he is frustrated.
Great job here!
TracyHi!
>>They are sequences, not drive ahead, but Sid did drive ahead! AND he tried to pick up the numbers!>>
He did great! I watched them and commented in the order you posted them (but it might not be the order you ran them in).
What do you mean by pick up the numbers? Was he trying to run around with them LOL!
Looking at the videos:
Driving ahead 3 and 2 were posted first –
Really nice! He really liked the crouchy lead out on the Driving ahead # 2 video 🙂
Good job with the wrap verbal. The better & faster line for him will be to turn him on the slice (to his left) on 3 at :18 on the #3 video and :25 on the #2 videoDriving ahead video – really nice!!!!! On the #6 jump, you flipped him to his left and it was GREAT! He turned beautifully and you were able to layer the jump so get ahead of him to the last jump. Super!
On the last video – really nice opening here! At :16 on the turn from jump 5 to 6, he needed an earlier cue to come in and take 6. When he was taking 5, you said Go so he appeared to think you were wanting to layer the jump. If you call him as he takes off for 5 then keep calling him (along with the serp cues) then he will come in to the jump more easily. That way you can do. The blind if you want to, or have a smoother rear cross.
Great job on these! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
I am glad your knee is getting better!And yes, you can start a new thread – sometimes the apple products can’t process the volume of videos so they crash.
T
Hi!
She is already moving better here! This is super!!
The ‘catch’ game is a great way to work the stay without explosive movement. She was great – lovely stay! And you have very good aim with the cookie throws 🙂 She didn’t have to move to get it! I admit to laughing out loud when she caught the toy you tossed LOL!!! Good girl! When she is back to 100%, you can use toys and treats to release her forward out of the stay.
>>The head down trick is getting pretty solid

Please send video! I want to see the cuteness!!Have you ever played the shell game with a dog? She might like it as a nose game: you take 3 paper cups, and while she is watching you put a cookie under 1 of them. Then slide them around and change the order… then ask her to find the cookie 🙂 It is a good mental game and fun too 🙂
Tracy
Hi! She did really well with the tunnel here!
And adding in the verbal was easy peasy. Yay! You can more angles of entry now, and if that goes well you can start on the easy angles but add the threadle entry 🙂
Nice job here!!!
TracyHi!
A question for you – on the start of the video, did you have treats or the ball with you, or was it all behind her? For now, have all reinforcement with you and we will leave the remote reinforcement and come back to it later. That way she can run without dragging a line, hopefully, because that can be weird feeling for her and also it might get caught on something. But also:>>She is becoming more and more hesitant about performing certain obstacles. The current one is the tunnel!!! She is super insecure or something! How to make her more confident?>>
I can see that here for sure. When we have a drop off in behavior or thing backslide, even with a ton of reinforcement in a relatively straightforward environment, it is entirely possible that it is not a confidence issue, it could be some underlying pain issue that manifests as lack of confidence. She might have something that hurts, or possibly some underlying illness that is causing her to not want to do the obstacles (tick illnesses are something that are quite common and can totally manifest as a drop in speed or confidence).
I have seen this happen a lot over the years, with friends/students and also with my own dogs. Something medical is going on, behavior slides back, we can’t solve it with training – but we can fix it with figuring out what might be making her not feel great. So give her a quick break from training and see if you can get the vet to do some bloodwork (particularly a Snap test or C6 to look for potential tick issues. And do you have a soft tissue vet or PT who can check her over, to make sure nothing hurts?
An example would be that recently one of my dogs seemed a little ‘flat’ in training and competing. At a routine appointment, we turned up a positive for Lyme. We gave him doxy and voila! Back to normal. So whenever I see behavior change going the wrong direction and the dog avoiding things (like when she can’t be caught, or when she tries to scoot away at the start), we do medical tests first.
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>he walks slowly in a wide circle for just a couple of seconds and then drops it. >
And then you go get it? That is fine for now and we can start to shape the retrieve.
>> should I have another toy on me to run away with?
Yes and you can work the retrieve separately, in a toy races context: throw a toy, let him drive to it. Then just as he arrives at the toy, you can turn, run the other way and call him. When he starts coming towards you, you can reward with the 2nd toy 🙂 He might drop the first toy at that point, but that is fine for now 🙂 We will gradually have him bring the first toy closer and closer before you show him the 2nd toy.
Let me know how it goes! Feel free to get some video of it 🙂
Tracy
