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Hi!
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 :)
TracyGood morning! He did great here, and the toy is perfect for this. Look at home much he has advanced the game: you are standing, moving, and using the pop up barrel. Big changes and he was terrific!
I think his only question was when, exactly, to start moving to the barrel. Easy peasy, we can answer that:
You can start each rep by cuing the barrel wrap, with an arm and leg send to it That way he will have a clear starting point.
And you can use a low value cookie as a lure to line him up at your side, so he knows where to be to start each rep, then you can do the big arm & leg step to the barrel.A couple of other mechanics tweaks:
Face the barrel straight on (belly at the center of the barrel), don’t be sideways to start the rep – when he was on your left turning to his right, your position was angled and past the barrel, so he was not sure.>>I think I spent too much time on this particular training session. Pesto let me know when he was finished by picking up the rope and carrying it off into the toy tunnel.>>
Yep, he said “this is confusing” (the starting line up) and I am done. So two things:
– clarify the line up and start (see above)
– set a timer for 2 minutes and then be done, take a break, come back to this later on. Don’t wait for him to be done and leave the session.Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>It feels so weird to be working with a baby dog, I have to do things I’m just not used to having to think about. But if I get it right, Georgie gets it right.>>
This statement right here is why handling young dogs is SO HARD! They are different than our adult dogs, and they don’t know a whole lot yet. And it is also why we reward a lot: if I get it right, the dog gets it right. If I get it wrong (which happens a lot with young dogs LOL!) then the dog gets it wrong, but should still be rewarded.
>>need connection, and it improved right away. >>
This is great! When in doubt… add more connection 🙂 Yay!
Nice job with the blinds at the beginning! You were making fabulous connection and that is SO important!
As things get faster, you will need to be a bit quicker with the blinds – One thing I have found helps is to keep my arms in tight on the fast blinds: elbows bent and tucked in next to my ribs. That makes the bind quicker because you don’t have to pull your arms in (they are already puled in) and all you have to do it look over the new shoulder.Speaking of arms – on the big circle around the outside, you probably don’t need to point to the wing at all. I am curious to see if she will remain committed if you just ran, pumping your arms, but with the same great connection you had here. I think the arm pointing was blocking connection a little, over-rotating your shoulders. And, with the pointed arm, we can’t run as fast. So you can try doing “sprinter arms” where your arms are bent and pumping, and you are running near the wings making great connection.
This will help keep her on the line more – on the last rep for example, the arm was moving up and down so she was watching you more than needed (and barking every time she didn’t have clear info :)). I think the sprinter arms and connection will smooth all of that out and help keep you ahead on the line.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>Checked my email again and it went to spam!
Darned spam! Glad it showed up though!!
Keep me posted about how she does with the moving target 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! Nice work here!!
Get out videos:
Video 1 & 2: really nice difference between the go straight and the out cues! You are moving pretty straight on the out which is exactly what we want the dog to see: feet straight but upper body & verbal showing the different cues! Make sure you do some straight line (not out) reps mixed in so that he doesn’t get locked onto the out jump.3rd video – nice job adding the cross after it – good timing of seeing his head look at the jump then doing the cross! You said it might be a fluke but then he nailed it again 🙂 Yay!
4th video – you said back and your videographer caught it 🙂 Hooray for training partners!
He did well on this one too – you did a post turn after the out, so you can also add in a blind. That would be the exact timing and line that you moved along, but instead of looking over your left shoulder you would do a quick switch and look over your right shoulder.
Lateral lead outs:
1st video – when you release to send to the jump, make more eye contact, It feels counterintuitive, but being more rotated towards the take off spot and look gin at him more will work a lot better to get commitment because it points your shoulders to the line you want (going towards the jump).Having someone out there to reward definitely helps (2nd video) but I am not sure his stay is ready for that yet. He got it in the 3rd video, but you can also take the tay out of the equation for now: you can bring him to your lead out position with you, so you get settled into the right spot. Then, using a tossed cookie, send him back to the spot where he would be in the stay then after he eats the cookie and turns back to you, you can cue the jump (because you are already in position). That way, he won’t have to multi-task the stay AND the line to the jump, and you can focus on the line to the jump 🙂
On the last video, you were on the landing side of the jump and he read the line much better! We found that to be true with at least half the dogs, so you can start there on the next session to build up the commitment. He is asking questions about the stay, so taking it out for now and using a cookie toss start (or someone holding him) to isolate the jump commitment and then we can add the stay back later on.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
The weekend was good, hope you had a good weekend too!MiG did well here with the set point! She was pretty consistent in what she was doing (this is good!) and powerful. Question: what was the spacing between the 2 jumps? I know she is little but she might need a bit more room 🙂 Maybe 6 more inches between the 2 jumps? She is small but powerful!
I think in general the reps where you were walking with the moving target were stronger than the reps where you were running. She did’t break her stay, but she shifted her weight forward when you ran, which changed her organization into the 1st jump (you can hear some ticking). She was more balanced when you were walking, and while she did get better with you running towards the end, for now keep walking with the moving target because if she is happy with a slightly longer distance, you can start to raise the height of the 2nd bar. It ended up at 12” here, so you can do a couple of reps at 12 to start the next sessions then go to 14 🙂 My guess is that 16″ will be her full height?
Also really nice job on the zig zags 🙂 Yes, they do feel a little awkward because the cues are awkward (all the pointing and stepping LOL! But she did really well! The goal is to get her shift her leads back and forth – mission accomplished! She seemed fast & balanced in both directions AND you got it worked up to 4 wings too! Fun!
Sp you can go to the next step here, which is adding the bars. You can see it here:
Great job!!!
TracyHi!
Lots of great work here! She is doing really well!Great job with the plank intro – it is a good plank to get her started on: low, stable, and relatively wide. She seemed pretty comfy getting on it!
The only thing to add at this stage is a little more arousal. You can do that by tossing cookies off the board after each click, then having her scamper back onto it 🙂
And you can also add tugging before, during, and after. The higher arousal basically asks her to be able to do some proprioception work in a higher state of arousal. And that is great for the future, when she will be more stimulated and still needing proprioception 🙂 And the state dependent memory comes into play too, because the state they are in when they are learning should be closer to the state they will be in when they need to do it. So we add a bit of arousal early on in training.The wobble board did move around a lot but she seemed happy to drive on it, across it, and off of it at the beginning. Yay!
She got a little turned off of it about halfway through, so two ideas for you:
– She did not love getting on the high part (which was off the ground) so you can move your position to help her get on the part that meets the ground.
– keep your sessions insanely short, like 20 seconds, to guarantee you are finished before she really starts to think about it too much. Set a timer because it will be waaaaay too easy to go for longer than 20 seconds. On this video, you got in 4 click/treats in the first 20 seconds. That is a good time to run away and do something else so she doesn’t think about the board moving and making noise 🙂>>Next time I’ll try tugging around and on it. There is also a tippy board there which I put down for her but thought it was too tippy for now.>>
For tugging on the wobble board and also for using the tippy board, stuff a bunch of towels under it (or tunnel bags) so it doesn’t move much at all. That will help her feel super comfy with the balance while tugging. (And definitely do a 20 or 30 seconds session so that she doesn’t have time to come down in arousal and start to think about it too much :))
She did well on the giant fit bone… which doesn’t look so giant anymore LOL!! The girl is growing!!!
Position changes looked fabulous 🙂 especially at the beginning, then she got tired. They are hard, so just a couple are needed so she can retain the tight sits – you can see by the end her core was tired and her leg muscles were tired, so she got a little floppy.Since this is such a workout, you can set the timer for 1 minute, or limit the session to 2 sets of position changes: after she gets on, you can do one sit-stand-down, reward, release, toss a cookie to the side, then one more rep of get on, then a sit-stand-down, then release.
You can totally put two of these together to make a bigger playing field, so you can keep playing these games without her needing to scrunch all the way up as she continues to grow 🙂
The leaf barrel is huge and perfect! FUN!!!
>>I got her a new tug toy and up trying to build a bit more interest in tugging.>>
You can definitely build more of it into life and training – it is easy to use food, but then al the games get associated with food so the pups get confused when we ask to play. I try to tug before and after every food game, and also play lots of these games just for tug.
On the video – I think she was too engrossed in the first bowl and totally missed that you put a cookie down in the 2nd bowl LOL! But then you put it down again and she got into the rhythm REALLY nicely! Super!
She didn’t have a ton of trouble making the transfer to the big barrel. She seemed a little more fluid going to her right than to her left.
When you introduced the tug toy, you will probably have to pick up the bowls and move away from the barrel – too hard for a baby dog to tug over the top of food bowls 🙂 You can see at the end she did engage with the toy – yay!!!! She probably needs a bit more running or toy throwing to offset the treats but she was really interested in the toys here!
So next steps with the big barrel: you are sitting in this session, so get her into the groove like you did with you sitting and using the bowls. Then, after a couple of back and forth moments, you can stand up. She will of course look at you like you have 47 heads in that moment LOL! So you can help with faster cookie drops to get her going again.
And on the session after that, you can begin by standing then when she gets into the rhythm of it, you can slide the barrel away a tiny bit so the bowls are less visible. If that goes well? Onwards to the turn and burn game!!!
The Cato Board is a good way to get her to do rear foot targeting! She was VERY into whatever the cookie was so I don’t think she realized that perhaps you want her to offer something other than eating LOL!!
Your plan of starting her on the board was a good one, you just needed to have perhaps fewer treats in your hands or more boring treats :). You night need to have one treat in a closed fist – and when she backs up onto the board, you can reward with the one treat, release her off it (grab another treat to toss) then reload. That can help with the whole ‘ignore the yummy’ thing. When she is understanding the “back up from the treats to get the treats” thing, this behavior will flow very quickly 🙂
She started to offer the getting on the board and then at 1:59 actually backed her front feet onto it – Super!! Backing away from yummy cookies is HARD but she was figuring it out. Good patience on your part to let her sort it out.
I think you were maybe 2 or 3 inches too far from the Cato Board here, so she was able to come just a shade too far off it and then got engrossed in the cookies. So try it with you a couple of inches closer, and the one boring cookie in your hand to start. I bet latent learning will work its magic and you will be able to see a lot of progress in the next session.
Great job here!! Let me know what you think.
TracyHi! Thank you for the kind words – it is a pleasure having you in classes!!!
The collar holding is a good thing to work on separately, but you can still do barrel stuff…. Without the collar holding 🙂 Line her up at your side with a cookie, then just send to the barrel. Barrel stuff is fun fun fun so keep doing it as you work on the collar stuff separately. At least two other pups are working through it too, if you want a peek at their threads: Carol with SQL has worked out a great line up routine while she does collar stuff separately, and Jill with Pesto is doing it too. You are not alone, it is pretty normal 🙂
>>We feel behind, but we’ll work on as much as we can, at her pace.
You are not behind at all, you are doing awesome! I assume that each pup will require detours into something else (like collar holding :)) so that is all built in. You are right on track.
>>even though I know more now, it all seems harder. I’m just not as physically capable of precisely carrying out the mechanics anymore. >>
As the sport evolves, those of us who can’t run like the wind anymore can just train better than anyone else 🙂 So that is what we are doing 🙂 Yay!
>>‘Crate games’ 15yrs ago was a breeze, now much harder on my body.
Good news – you can put those away, no need to do them anymore 🙂 Yay!!!! They are REALLY hard with tiny dogs! So… no worries, you don’t need them. I have not trained or taught crate games in years (and the funny thing is that one of my dogs is one of the ‘stars’ of the video hahahaha!) So, one less thing to worry about with hard mechanics. I just train my dogs to NOT bolt out of crates in the car – leash on then release.
>> I don’t mean to be whiny or complain, it’s just the way it is.>>
You are venting about the challenges of agility, in terms of the mechanics and training required – and you are correct! It is complex and difficult, but worth it 🙂 Honesty is always appreciated and you are in a safe space here to vent it all out 🙂
Have fun!
TracyHi!
This is looking really good! Very nice commitment in both directions!!!! He is definitely interesting in the flying squirrel toy but was great about doing the barrel first.
>>I think I need a bigger, more obvious toy for grass that long!
Changing the placement of the toy so you were running directly to it and not past it really helped. And he was beginning to out run you for it too! A bigger toy can help and also trying to get the toy in the same spot each time, roughly, and not too far away. He didn’t always know where it went LOL!

>>And it seemed like when I was holding his collar with my right hand he was a bit more annoyed with it, but we got through it.Could be that it is his less comfy side, plus it took you longer to let go. But overall he was good on both sides (more below on that).
>>Also, I wasn’t sure if I should be stepping forward with my leg as I’m letting go to help indicate or to start with it forward and just let go.>>
You can totally step to the barrel with your leg; in fact those were the reps where he did the best!
At 1:00 you were a bit too far away – he did better on the next reps especially with the big step to the barrel. You were far away when you switched sides to the right turns and he did great, so maybe the right turn wraps can be the ones where you add more distance and you are a little closer on the left turn wraps for now 🙂
And he also had enough distance and commitment that you were able to add the blinds too – super!!!
Great job here!!
TracyDarn it, sorry about the time change!! If it was 7pm Eastern, would that work better? It looks like having a morning and evening class will allow for more time flexibility!
Hi!
I don’t think she was losing energy here on the grid or asking striding questions – I think she was reading your decel especially on the last 2 reps, and also collecting for the dead toy. She was mirroring the handling/target quite nicely!
On reps 1, 2 ,3 – you were moving briskly! On the next reps, you were basically stationary. That, plus the stationary toy, read as collection cues.So, to keep the striding the same throughout with no collection cues, you can use the moving target: lead out well past 3, release her and drag the toy target, staying in motion until she gets to the toy. That should give you a better picture of the striding!
I love the title of the second video! 🌟
She did really well, the wing commitment and turning all looked great! For the Go without a head check, you can add a couple of things:
– throw the toy a lot earlier, so she can see it before she exits the tunnel
– use your go verbal and acceleration sooner, so she sees and hears it a stride before she gets into the tunnel (about 6 feet before the tunnel entry) You were a shade late here, so she was not sure of the next line.At :41, her go was correct, totally straight! I think you wanted her to find the wing but it was off the straight line, she would have had to shift away to find it. So, be sure the wing side you want her to take is on her straight line – that will also really help the Go verbal because she can lock onto the next line 🙂
Great job! And congrats on the adorable new pup!!!
Tracy
