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Good morning!
>I meant to tell you before how much I appreciated your flowcharts and progression info. Loved the decision trees and flowcharts! That’s totally speaking my language>
HA! Glad you like it!! It is outside of my comfort zone way of thinking of things, but the visuals helped people so I put them together 🙂
>The first was I had the handler before me pause a bit while we came into the ring while I would see if Reacher would notice. He did not, but there was some stuff in the way and the dog/handler combo were not being very interesting!>
Still an excellent rehearsal, though!!!!
>The other thing I tried was to rev him up with some sneaky talk at the start line, partly because we had a “delay of game” while our instructor remembered to put the hoop on the dog walk, and I wanted to try something kind of between the normal stay + lead out with the extra sneaky cartoon mashup. The first try was too much! And I didn’t lead out far enough. >
I think he liked it! And I agree his question was more about your lead out position – you didn’t lead out that far, then took off and ran without a lot of connection, so there was no real cue to go the DW. You can lead out further while doing the crouchy silliness and maintain connection on the release, and he will have it. Remember to lean away from him when you are lining him up, not towards him – that can be a lot of pressure.
>Second try was better and he seemed to really enjoy me talking a bit dirty to him at the start. I’ll keep working on this with him to hold the stay while I rev him a bit >
Yes! And you can creep away more slowly, then throw a reward back to help maintain the stay 🙂
> he seems to respond more to verbal volume dialing vs. me touching him so much. Same is true in barn hunt when he finds the rat he does NOT like to be touched, whereas my other dogs have really liked that and it revved them up way more. Reacher no likey. Verbals and goofy faces he likes!>
I think Reacher is actually in the majority here – most dogs working in the optimized arousal state might tolerate hugs and kisses and being touched or playing smack da baby… but they don’t actually want it or enjoy it. My dogs all hate it too and move away from it.
>Anyway, I think I had an extra weave round in the video, sorry, but the other interesting and unexpected “proofing” came in with the noise during our last sequence of weaves. Do you hear that screeching sound?! Yeah, a guy was sawing metal just on the other side of the ring wall by the entrance and it was loud! Didn’t seem to phase him though so I was really happy with that. Felt like a fun victory to share so I included it here.>
That was a BIG victory!!!! It was a crazy noise! I bet his ability to ignore it is directly drawn from him learning to work outdoors while your hubby was making machine noises in the his shop! That was hard at first, remember that early video? Then it was no problem, which is probably why this noise was no problem. Plus, you have built a ton of value for running courses. Big win!!!
Great job :) Tracy
Awesome! It sounds like he was able to work through a challenging environment! Question: did you use the pattern games? Doing the back and forth pattern game might be the most helpful thing for him n t his situations. Yes, you will be tossing chicken around in Home Depot 🤣😂 but I think that will be fine!
Keep me posted 🙂
Tracy
Hi!
Turn and burn with the toy in your pocket went great! You can keep working on doing the FC earlier and earlier, using the line on the ground. This will build in to the rocking horses too!>Still finding novel items that are too tasty or too novel!>
Ha! Everything is exciting LOL!!! So you can use distance for it (putting the stuff further away) or height – put it up on a chair so it is visible but out of reach. She did well with it (that bag of ziwi peak must have smelled great!) but you can use distance or height to help her not want to investigate it as the first order of business 🙂
The beginning of the rocking horse game looked terrific! Watching her here, I think we can make an adjustment because she is so small: rather than reward rom your hand, toss the reward slightly ahead on the ground. I suggest this because she is trying to wrap the cone and barrel and look all the way ip at you hands, which makes it harder to pass your hands (she is looking up or jumping up towards them). So if we change the placement of the reward by putting it on the ground, so she looks forwards and downwards more, and less up at you.
When you did 3 barrels, she did really well! Just remember to make that big connection to her eyes as she is catching up to you, before sending to the next barrel. If you don’t connect, she looked up and jumped up a bit there.
And you can add your wrap verbals to the sends now too, since she is going to the barrel/cone pretty consistently.
>Dream was playing with his squeaker toy in an attempt to disrupt class.>
That was so funny! He wanted to make sure you knew that he was available to play at any time LOL!
Great job!!
Tracy
Good morning!
Great job playing with the markers here!
>I used to be resistant to multiple markers, but I found myself adding them anyway!>
Same! Plus, I found that it helped my get better behavior and less looking at me (and less frustration in the dogs). We don’t need a zillion markers, we just need a few useful ones that the dog understands.
>As I’m looking at this video, I see they aren’t terribly CLEAN, though. I’ll need to work on that. 🙂 And I have more markers than I thought I had.>
You’ve got plenty of good ones!!! They are pretty clean 🙂 Yes, try to say the marker before moving the reward and you were good with that for the most part! It is something that you will want to actively plan before each session: which marker to use, and remind yourself to say it then move the reward (or let the him move first, like with the dish marker).
My only 2 suggestions are small:
For the ‘yes’ marker, move your hand to him slowly to deliver the treat, so he doesn’t explode forward to it or move his feet – that can make it even more useful for when you want to deliver it when he is holding a position.Yay for the party marker! You can say it once or twice, and then when you arrive at the cookies you can switch to praise as you deliver them. If ‘party’ means that you were going to move to the cookie bowl, then it might be confusing if you are saying it and handing him treats. So using praise while you deliver them can keep the ‘party’ marker clearer.
The only other marker to consider adding is a “the reward is being tossed back to you” marker. I use ‘catch’ for this (although the dog is not actually required to catch it 🙂 ) and it really helps for stays and stopped contacts!
Great job here!
TracyText and demo from future MaxPup discussing exit line connection:
After every cross, clear connection is critical to cue both the turn and the next line. Exit Line connection is the ‘regular’ connection that the dog needs to see after every front cross and blind cross. While finishing the rotation of the turn, the handler MUST look back at the dog’s eyes while keeping her dog-side shoulder and arm back (and out of the way) so that the dog can see her face and front of chest.
Here is the ELC demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWCVQlbIbUs
If the connection after the cross is too soft (or non-existent), the dog might end up on the wrong side of you, or go wide, or drop a bar, or slow down waiting for information. Dogs often find a way to ‘buy time’ on course while waiting for more information, and that is why we often see dogs collect before a jump but drift wide. Good connection solves this problem while also helping your timing for the cross and for the line after the cross. “Soft “ connection looks like the handler looking down towards her side, and/or using her dog-side arm to indicate a spot near her or ahead of her. This is unclear for the dog who is behind her and looking for information about the next line.
Training YOUR Mechanics
In order to create a good connection on the exit line of your crosses, we are going to train you to use specific mechanics as you finish the cross. Be sure you have a reward that is visible and attractive to the dog, such as a tug toy or a food dispenser toy (like a lotus ball or treat hugger).
After finishing a cross, you are going to reward the dog by continuing to run while looking at the dog’s eyes and presenting the reward with the opposite hand across your body so the reward is on your dog-side hip. Be sure the dog sees the reward! Keep running until the dog reaches you then let him run through the reinforcement (allowing him to grab the toy and take it from you, or you can throw the cookie holder forward).
This creates the exit line connection by dropping your dog-side arm and shoulder down and back to fully reveal the connection the dog needs. Trying to connect with the dog using your dog-side arm/hand is simply not as clear – the dogs simply do not read the dog-side hand as something to drive towards after a cross.
Add exit line connection to the crosses and spins you use on your sequence and you will see amazing results!Good morning!
>Not the greatest session today. >
I read this before watching the video – but I think the session was far better than it felt in the moment! SO MANY good things!
>This was definitely a lot for her brain,>
She did well overall – the errors were handling errors, she was correct all the way through 🙂 And there were gunshots in the background (or something like that) and that might have added to the processing burden but she did great!
I do think the session was too long though – it was a 4 minute edited session, which means it was longer than that. That is a long session for a skill that involves running.
> you can see she even left working at the end to go try to see a friend (who was close to 100’ away and with two fences in between us). >
Yes, the friend said something or became visible so she went to say hi. This was at the end of a long session and at the end of the video, you open the can of worms of a different skill so she didn’t have a lot of bandwidth left there. You were approaching it from the perspective of getting easy reinforcement, but it was a self-control challenge so it was harder than it looked. Plus, you don’t need to end a session with easy wins, you can just end it. The session had a ton of reinforcement (more on that below).
Looking at the video – she turned well in both directions (I was looking for a strong side or a weak side, but both were strong! When you sent and let her get almost to the obstacle before you turned and ran away, she very consistently committed 🙂 Super!
On a couple of reps, you were trying to leave earlier as you mentioned which ended up with you not really giving her a strong send cue (like at rep 4, then at 2:52. So the strong leg send makes a big difference for her.
And if you accidentally pull her off the obstacle – no worries! Keep things ‘clean’ by resetting her with a cookie (which also keeps the overall rate of reinforcement high and offsets the handler error) then send her more clearly on the next rep. If you try to send again without a smooth reset, you are possibly going to be unclear and pull her off again – so the reset cookie rewards her effort with unclear info, and also allows you a moment to set up clear info for the next rep 🙂
Plus reset cookies help the pups not get any BIG MAD feelings when we mess up the handling because we humans will indeed mess up the handling LOL!! !
The other thing that was happening was as she was exiting the obstacle, she did not always see the very clear connection to get to the side you wanted her to be in. You can see this on rep 6, and at 2:20, for example.
She was not incorrect and definitely not cheating LOL So you can still have big rewards on those moments and don’t mark it as wrong or deflate your energy.
What was happening was that as she was exiting the obstacle, you were running forward with your dog-side shoulder closed (arm swinging back and forth, but the shoulder was closed forward so she could not clearly see your eyes). Ideally, you open the shoulder by locking your dog-side arm back towards her, with your fingers pointing allllll the way back to her nose 🙂 and trying to make eye contact. Don’t use the next verbal til you see she has gotten the cue to go to the correct side – then you can say “go” or “toy”.
If she doesn’t see clear connection, she will be guessing as to which side of you to be on so is likely to stay on her line. Then if yo say Go or the toy marker, she will drive to it at warp speed 🙂
So if she ends up on the ‘wrong’ side of you… that is great feedback from her that connection needs to be clearer as she exits the obstacle.
If you check out the rocking horse game posted last night, you will see how important the exit line connection is – and I left in a good blooper where I closed my shoulder forward and the dog did not see which side to be on, so he ended up on the ‘wrong’ side of me – my fault, not his, he got rewarded (I wish I had *not* edited that out of the video! Oops!)
I have videos of specifically what I mean about exit line connection, I will post them in the next reply here.
>So I guess I’d love hints on how to make progress and keep up without over facing? I struggle to keep sessions short enough and the success rate high and still add even 1-2 reps of anything new.>
For the handling stuff, I live by the mantra that errors are handling errors 🙂 So I will reward the dog even when it goes wrong, because chances are I was either late or unclear with info (or both! I can be an overachiever like that LOL!) and the dog is doing the best she can with the info she has. I reward and then if I know what happened… I fix it on the next rep. For example, pup ended up on the ‘wrong’ side of me? I was probably not connected clearly enough, so I connect more. If I don’t know what was wrong, I will go watch the video before the next rep (usually it is a connection issue with young dogs, they need a LOT of connection).
And during the rewards for when I mess up – I still reward with high energy (even if my brain is processing at a million miles per hour) because the pup was reading me correctly. I don’t think you were over-facing her at all – I think she was correct in how she read the info so you can reward that.
Ramping up the connection will help things move forward very quickly!
And setting a timer on the session (3 minutes is good for a handling game with a toy, or turn on a pop song) then taking a break is a good way to keep on track. And you can look at the video on the break too, to see what you liked and what can go better for the next session.
I also live by the 2 failure rule (even if I am happily rewarding the dog for ending up on the ‘wrong’ side of me) – if it goes wrong twice, I will change *something* to get more of the behavior I want to get. This can be slowing myself down, or really ramping up the connection, or looking at the video, or ending for the day and letting the latent learning gods work their magic LOL!!
Overall it was a strong session! Stay tuned for more on the connection on the cross exits – everything happens FAST when there is sighthound involved, so the connection info needs to be early and clear.
Tracy
Good morning!
>plowable>
Ewww I don’t like that word when used with snow, not at all! LOL!
>Sorry in advance for the long video >
It was 2 minutes, not a long video at all, no apologies needed!
What he was doing on the strike a pose game at the beginning was spot on – using your target hand to create the in-then-out behavior. So the actual target hit started to change to more of a sideswipe, which is perfectly fine, you can reward the more complete behavior chain and don’t need to worry if you get a really hard nose touch. We are fading the post it soon anyway and getting this behavior with handler motion soon too!
For the circling you starting at :30… he was absolutely convinced about it. So my question is: what other behaviors does he know that might look similar, in terms of the cue? Does he have an around-the-back line up or finish? Around the back for a frisbee throw? My guess is it looked like another cue and he was like “I GOT THIS!” For example, I have a line up between my feet cue for my baby maligator, so he will offer than when I am doing something that might look similar. They will offer those behaviors with confidence and joy… just like he did here LOL!
Or, he knew it was a left turn but for whatever reason, a tight left turn was hard that day. So he did a wide left turn. This is a possibility, but he was convinced it was correct so I think maybe he was offering a different behavior?
Either way, to help him out, you can do two things:
– clarify the cue by making the reward placement more obvious: put a bowl on the ground past your feet below your reward hand, as a visual aid (and then drop the treat into it 🙂 ) You can make the reward hand more visible too.
– Stand with your back to the wall for a few reps, so it is easier to go in front of you and harder to go behind youYou can also look at the concept transfer for the serps (adding the jump) from last night. The presence of the jump might add the visual he needs to stay on your front and not go behind you.
The parallel path game went GREAT – I think he had a great time running back and forth LOL! You can mark even sooner and throw sooner too – the throws were tending to come as he was between the uprights so he was looking at you. He looked at you less as the session went along, but you can mark and throw on his very first step towards the jump so he doesn’t look at you at all.
The backwards sending to the barrel looked super fantastic too! You can add countermotion: when you send and he takes that first step or two towards the barrel, you can slowly move forward in the opposite direction away from the barrel. Then when he wraps it, you can take off and run as part of the reward. You won’t want to take off and run as part of the countermotion quite yet, but I bet he will be able to do it soon!
Since this went so well, check out the rocking horse games we added last night – I bet the baby level will be super easy for him (just be sure to establish great connection) so you will move to the advanced level of it really quickly.
>I know this is a long session for an 8 month old – I could never have worked Dellin like this, but Judge is so into it and needs a lot of activity – mental and physical and that parallel path really let him move. Mal, gotta love it. And then we played fetch. So I can have peace to get back to work in the afternoon.>
How long was the session in total? I didn’t think it was all that long for his age, plus it was a very clear, high rate of success session. And I agree about the Mal… I only have half-a-mal and he can work with a clear head forever and ever and ever and ever. The other half is mainly whippet, and their brains can go forever (their bodies get tired if there is a lot of sprinting). And when we are finished training, he asks to do more or runs back to the training area or sits up there by himself, hoping I will come back LOL! So you can do longer sessions but keep track that you don’t over-do it. The high rate of success is key!
>I don’t know how Judge will start to act in the next week or 2, but am wondering if there are any strategies you would employ with your adolescent males specifically aimed at living nicely with your “sister” when she’s in season.
>Having had this when my girls were intact, I made sure the boys got a lot of physical and mental activity, more than usual, so their brains and bodies were tired. Lots of running around, playing, chew bones, training. And they were fine 🙂 I did separate them from the girls so that their teenage boy brains were not flooded with scents, and also so I didn’t have any accidental breeding. But there were only a few days in the time span where the girls were REALLY interesting 🙂 so I just did more management/separation and lots of activities so they burned off extra energy.
Great job here!
Tracy
That is interesting! There might be something in the dynamic with all the dog, and she might be entering adolescence where there are a lot more emotions 🙂 One thing I have found with BCs is that if I am cranky at one of the other dogs in the house (like telling the Papillon to shut up haha) then the BC internalizes it and gets a bit shut down – so if you were telling Abbie to go in her pen, maybe 10 was thinking you were mad at her? BCs can be sensitive like that. It is definitely something to watch for and see if she changes moods in times like that 🙂
T
Hi! You know I totally love geeking out on stuff!
> I started doing the pattern games and volume dial with Cricket. Pattern games worked super well to bring her arousal down around hairy barky competitors.>
That is basically what pattern games are intended to do. Yay!
>> She had some tricks so I did volume dial before runs. Over the course of a few weekends I got perfect startlines (EMPHASIS HERE- perfect)>
What do you mean by perfect, as compared to what you might get otherwise?
> and a very sticky dog. By this I mean she did not want to go take things (uber handler focused). So, in the last 2 weeks, I worked with her ball (no treats) and did 180s and pinwheels; she was on fire. I attended to her physical needs before we left and was sure this was nothing physical. I go to the event, and Vol dial before my first 3 runs, and she is super sticky and has perfect startlines.>
Very interesting! This might fall into the category of Volume Dial Use Is Very Individual 🙂 See below!
> The volume dial tricks with her are fast spins, but after thinking about this, I realized for her they are also pivot into heel. So I think the Vol dial was not done correctly by me and instead I jammed stay with the momma thoughts into her head. >
Ah yes, absolutely! The spins are associated with heeling, and that can tip her into a more handler-focused mode.
It is also possible that for her, the added tricks were not creating the optimized arousal state – they might have been over-arousing for whatever reason (Added pressure? Change in the normal rituals? Change in internal state and physiology that led to behavior change? All of the above? None of the above?) Overarousal can present as sticky, clingy, frozen-ish behaviors because overarousal can tip the dog into one of the “F” responses rooted in the amygdala: fight, flight, fidget, FAWN and FREEZE. The fawn and freeze sound close to what you were seeing. And the ‘perfect’ start line might have been a sticky, overaroused start line – one of my dogs will be so perfect on the start line if she is overaroused/stressed that I can lead out 3 miles down the road… but she won’t really release, totally frozen. So a perfect start line is not actually ideal.
>>On the last day I stopped the vol dial, and there was a subtle difference on the first run, but on the last run was a much bigger difference. By the way the start lines were still good. >>
For her, what is the difference between a good start line and a perfect start line?
>Sorry, for you to have to read all that, but I kind of geeked out on it and thought you would.>
No apologies!!! You were correct that I would be very interested!!
>My questions are about Taq. I don’t tend to have focus on me problems and I think that Taq’s vol dials are as you would want- at least the spins (I may lose the hand touch and keep the cute kiss). But I wonder if I should decrease to 2 spins and then run to keep her up and not increase the focus on me?>
Since Volume Dial (and arousal optimization) is very individual, the only way to know the answer here is to ask the dog, through trying things a few times and see how she does (N=1 is not the answer, we need more data. Arousal optimization is not designed to increase what we would call handler-focus on course (versus line focus). It is designed to help the dogs moved to the optimal arousal state for execution of *trained* skills and responses to cues. So you will see the dogs better execute what they know about the sport, rather than shift into things they don’t normally do.
With that in mind, Taq might have a different agility foundation and her personality might bring a different approach to agility on course in general, so her obstacle/line focus is stronger than her mother’s, which means in the optimal state she will attack the lines even better than usual and be less sticky to you.
Basically this (but also with shifts to sustained attentional states, HPA Axis activation and all sorts of other geeky things haha)
>> Are there other ways to handle dogs that are VERY handler-focused? For Cricket, the game is almost 100% about me;>
For dogs that are very handler focused, two things come to mind:
– over-emphasizing lines in training, meaning you never reward near you and all rewards are thrown out on the lines for her to accelerate to. Sounds like you were doing this with the ball! Make it a lifestyle for her until you get a lot of off courses 🙂 And use big connection to get her out on the lines – I have found that universally, dogs get sticky and focus on the handler too much, when the handler connection is unclear or too “soft” (not direct enough).– experiment with what optimized arousal is for her, so she is bursting with excitement to get out on the line – what does it look like before a run, to produce that? Which tricks? Or pattern games? Or decompression with a snuffle mat? It looks different for each individual, so experiments will give you the feedback from the dog herself!
> Taq, it is less; she enjoys moving her body, but with all of our training, I see her becoming more focused on me. With the environmental issues she is more focused on me but we have tools for that 🙂 I am adding in people and strange places I promise.>
One of my favorite lines from Taylor Swift’s TTPD album is “Old habits die screaming” (possibly taken from the title of a Noelle Sorensen book, but I digress) – what this lyric attacks us with is that we all have habits and they are very hard to break. This applies to dog training: we each have strengths that get trained into every dog we have – in this case, you might be strong at training handler focus! So you can get that habit to die screaming by shifting the value out to the big lines, with tons of thrown rewards as far from you as you can get them (and almost nothing near you or from your hand).
Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Hi!
>This makes perfect sense and I’m not sure why I thought this would be hard. I work in rescue from time to time, rehabilitating fear aggression. I do something very similar with those dogs.>
You are probably more emotionally invested in her 🙂 She’s your baby BC!! I can relate. Things that I would tell other people are fine would probably freak me out with my own puppy LOL!!
>Now I’m thinking about what would be happy to her and not frustrating that she can’t have it (ie toys on the ground). I’ll start with the balance equipment I think. She likes the goat work, but I think if I did a pattern game with it around she wouldn’t be frustrated by being asked to ignore it and happily choose the cookie toss rather than the balance disc. I can easily do two toys and we do that anyway, but I’m not thinking about something else in the environment she needs to notice but ignore.>
It can be anything that is relatively neutral – a chair, a random person, the fitness stuff, etc. Neutral or happy are both fine for this (scary and weird gets added later).
>I did try and teach a trick to her last night and she completely shut down. >
Why did she shut down? Be sure to make the pieces of behavior very tiny with lots of rewards… then let her sleep on it so latent learning can work its magic 🙂
>So, I worked Freedom and my other dog Link. Boy did she get jealous when I pushed her away when she was trying to get into the action with Freedom and Link. It was funny, but I didn’t ask her to play again. Then when I was finished and the treats were all gone, she came up to me and tried what I had asked for. She is just too smart.>
She is very smart!! I am glad she got back in the action! Just be remember that motivation in that moment probably came from a place of frustration, which we want to avoid – slicing the behavior smaller in the initial teaching stages will really help.
>I think I’ll try harder to notice if she is investigating anything on our trail walk today.>
And bring AMAZING treats! I got one of my dogs through adolescence thanks to the power of Egg MucMuffins LOL!!! We never know what might cause an adolescent to be concerned.
>I’m so thankful for this class and the access to my answers.>
I am thankful you are here! We might be on opposite sides of the continent, but we have great technology to chat frequently about Miss Perfect 10 🙂
>I’m hyper sensitive to the development of her personality. I want to raise a bomb proof girl. A dog that has the tools she needs to recover and adapt.>
That is relatable! I think puppy raising is challenging because we have to be ‘scientists’ and trainers with our beloved pets. Luckily, the neuroscience people who have come onto the scene in the last couple of years have expanded our knowledge of puppy brains and teenage dog brains, which has helped so much!!
Keep me posted!
TracyHi!
She did well with the novel-exciting addition to her self-control game!
>she did come back once she was convinced the bowl had been licked clean – not sure if this was too exciting?>
Food bowls are very exciting (even empty ones) because she has spent almost all of her life getting super delicious things out of a food bowl 🙂 So there is a very exciting conditioned response. You can use less-exciting things but I think anything that is exciting might end up in the same category as the empty food bowl 🙂 You can change things a little by having it already in the environment as you bring her in, rather than her seeing you put it down – when you put it down, it might draw her attention to it more than if it is already there.
She did really well though! It is fine that she investigated it a bit first because she processed the distraction then got really into the ‘work’ part of the game. She is SO CUTE when she stopped to think about it then gave a big pounce on the mat LOL! So feel free to switch up which novel-exciting thing you use and play different games with different novel-exciting things in the environment.
Turn and burn went really well in both directions! Super! You can put a line on the ground (her leash would be perfect) so you have a visual indiciation of when to do the FC (when she gets to the line) then you can gradually inch the line around back towards you, so you can do the FC earlier and earlier.
And yes, add the laundry tub to this! You can also revisit it with a very small toy, so it is present but less visible and scrunched up in your hands?Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>Good to know about Kirsten O’Neill – I will check out what she offers for RDW as I’ve seen her Mals do theirs and it’s impressive. Dellin learned hers with Justine Patterson.>
I don’t know her personally, but I have admired her success with the RDW with a wide variety of breeds that move differently than BCs (and with BCs too :)) Sounds like Dellin did the Shape Up approach to RDWs which is also great – I have not seen the same level of success with non-BCs/Shelties with that method, but that might be more about who registers for their classes/posts their training and less about the actual method 🙂
The parallel path game looked great – nice timing with your ‘search’ marker so he was looking ahead really nicely here! For indoor training, you can ue wingless uprights to give yourself more room to add lateral distance. And if the jump bump here was 4 feet, you can use a 3 foot long weave pole as the ‘bar’ (tape it to the floor) to add more room for lateral distance too.
And if the weather is halfway decent, take this outside so you can add more distance and more speed for you both 🙂
Lap turns – awesome! Great job with the hand cue to draw him in and through the turn, then moving forward after it to let him find the prop (nice timing of your marker, too!). He was straighter to you and his turn was ‘snappier’ when you kept your feet together til he was almost to you. You were tending to step back as soon as you released him, so you can see him consider going to the prop based on the foot motion (he did a bit of a zig zag line on those).
Now, the lap turns are a low priority cue for now (tandems and threadle wraps will be much more important) so I am not super concerned about footwork for it – but keeping your feet together and not stepping towards the prop will be super useful for the tandems too, and for the threadle wrap behavior that is coming soon too! So onwards to tandems with the prop, and threadle wrap games are coming soon 🙂
Great job here!!!
Tracy
Good morning!
The turn and burn game went great!
Yes, he gave a super clear “turn right” indication right at the beginning 🙂
And he told us that he needs the leg stepping forward as part of the cue to go to the barrel. You didn’t do it on the very first rep, so he was not sure if he should go to the barrel. You did it on all the other reps and he committed perfectly!
Great job with the verbals!!
A cookie lure to line up will get him to your side before you hold his collar – he did great with the collar holding! And the cookie lure to line up will have him facing the correct direction with you needing to move him by the collar.
And nice job going from treats to tugging!You were nailing the timing of the FC based on where he was relative to the line – super!!!
For the next session… try the left turns. Make it easy, starting nice and close to the barrel and use a big step with the leg to indicate that he should go to it. Reward even small pieces of the left turn behavior. You can even replace the line on the ground with the bowl from the original wrap shaping game, to help him turn left. It is harder so we can ‘slice’ it into small pieces.
Parallel path is going well! Your connection was much clearer (and he did all this with a helicopter or something buzzing your backyard LOL!!)
>Because I was thinking so much about looking at him, I was struggling to toss the cookie and leave a little early or get lateral.>
In this session, staying a little closer was helpful to him – you got a lot of reward in with him looking forward and not at you – YAY!!!
You can toss the reward cookie further, which will give you more time to get lateral or get ahead of him. You were tossing it close then tossing another one to get him to be further for the next rep. He was definitely NOT SAD about the extra cookies LOL but you can be more efficient with tossing the treats further away.The running contact box work showed us he definitely has a lot of value for th box! YAY!! So now we get the bowls involved so he doesn’t look up at you. Even with your ‘get it’ marker and quick throws, he was looking up at you (nothing else to look at because the behavior is so simple at this stage).
>I start improvising lol, I started to change the picture by adding motion without REALLY realizing what I was doing, thankfully my puppy is brilliant. I meant to bring the bowls out to toss the rewards to, and completely forgot until after I did this game, >
This is where you can grab the field guide on your phone – it will give you the reminders of what to add. And you can add the bowls to the field guide. I use them so I don’t forget what to do – it is amazing how much can leak out of my brain in the 35 seconds between looking at the game and going outside with the puppy hahaha!
>But then a couple hours later I found him in the garage getting all up close and personal with his new robot friend, so I think he’ll learn to love it soon 😉>
OK that is HILARIOUS about the TnT!!!!! I am glad he made friends with it LOL!!!! I think maybe breeders should introduce it in the litter, to save the rest of us from having to introduce it when the puppies are like WTH is that?!?!?! I will tell my breeder friends 🙂 Checkers is very motivated by food so I think he will love love love the TnT and you will be able to use it for a lot of things.
I am so glad he had a great time at the trial! So fun! And Agree, he is doing great with all the pieces of the training.
>I am definitely struggling a little with keeping all the pieces straight even when I write them down so will just keep muddling through and being very thankful for my SUPER cool puppy who is willing to try even when I’m being kind of silly and unclear. >
No worries! The games are designed to be small chunks so the pups are still having a grand time even when we humans screw it up 🙂 And mechanics are important… but keeping things fun for him is MORE important. You are doing great with both!
Tracy
Good morning!
>I’m not sure if I need to worry more about how spooked she gets with things that might be in a room. >
I don’t think we need to worry, but we can definitely acknowledge her concern and help her out! It is normal for pups to point out things that concern them, especially early in adolescence when they have bigger reactions to things.
Side note: I hate the vacuum cleaner too 🙂
Some ideas for you that can end up being a training progression and a plan for helping her when she points out things that concern her:
Most importantly, don’t make the scary thing the focus of the training session. Emphasizing it more will not help her relax 🙂 but we can teach her how to ignore it and be relaxed around it.
Before thinking about adding scary things, get the pattern game incredibly fluent at home or in the training building with happy distractions and using incredibly high value food and toys. The happy distractions will ‘train’ her brain to notice things in the environment and then ignore them. The high value food (human grade stuff, like cheese/chicken/meatballs) will make the game incredibly motivating. And you can also play this game with two toys! With my BC/Whippet cross, I used a 2 frisbees when he was young because he would tug on a frisbee in my hand and he loved those frisbees more than anything in the world.
So adding simple happy distractions will accomplish 2 things with the pattern game:
– teaching her the game and the framework for ignoring distractions
– Making the pattern game VERY exciting and motivating – best game ever!!(Side note: if the game is only really used for scary things, then the game becomes associated with scary things… so starting the game will actually *increase* anxiety rather than help her relax).
When she is just loving the pattern game with happy distractions and motivating reinforcement, you can start to sometimes use it with scary things – but not ALL the time and also, don’t make the scary thing the focal point.
When you are playing the pattern game with a vacuum in the room, for example:
– toss the treats away from the vacuum, not towards it. She doesn’t want to go near it, so trying to convince her to go near it can backfire. You can see in the video here she was going to get her treats but was getting more and more concerned and getting closer to you (and asking to leave) instead of getting happier about the vacuum. If she is reluctant to get her treats, that is a sign that you are too close to the scary thing.
– keep the sessions super short (3 or 4 cookies, so she can be successful and leave happy) and also use distance as your friend: don’t get close to the scary thing. And if you are accidentally too close, move away from it.
This can also be used in real life situations! I remember when one of my young adolescent dogs suddenly became terrified of a fire hydrant that had been in the same place for his whole life 🙂 So to help her out, always have fabulous treats or toys with you when you are out and about. And if you notice something scary or if she notices is it: move her a little further away and start the pattern game… then get her out of the environment pretty quickly.
Getting her out of the environment pretty quickly is really important – even if she is doing well, young dogs have a limited mental ‘bank account’ for working through scary things. So she can go from ‘this is fine’ to ‘OMG THIS IS TERRIFYING’ in one rep (pretty typical adolescent dog behavior LOL!). So if she is having a hard time and asking to move further away? Move further away until you find a spot where she is doing better. And if things are going great? End the session 🙂
Adolescent dog brains do weird things in terms of identifying things as being scary. Then they take twice as long to bounce back after a stressful event, compared to an adult or even a baby puppy. And definitely don’t punish her or get mad (you were NOT mad here 🙂 ) or get her to come closer to the scary weird thing – all of that can be perceived as punishment and adolescent dogs are far more susceptible to stress from punishment than they are to building behavior through reinforcement.
Adolescence is a crazy time LOL!!! But I appreciate when the pups tell us what they are concerned about, and I take it as a cue to help them out. Resilience can be built! And adolescence can be survived, thankfully 🤣😂
Let me know what you think and keep me posted about how she does!
Tracy
