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Hi!
Yes, if Maze is the self-elected fun police, then he does not get to insert his opinions when the puppy is training or playing 🙂
>>Should I submit more videos of these games?
You don’t need to submit more of the pre-games. After the live class tonight, there will be a bevy of new games to get started on (one of which uses Pre-Game 1). Have fun!
TracyHi! I think it posted twice, but it was great either way 🙂
She is doing super well with her foot target! Nice job with your clicks and tosses. Try to stand totally still and also, try not to talk to her while she is offering behavior on the shoe 🙂 You can be very quiet in the shaping part of things, and then you can be wild and silly and talkative during the tugging 🙂 Speaking of tugging… was she able to play with the toy before and after the cookies?
Great job here! You can take the clicker out of it now, and go to using a marker like ‘get it’ then toss the treats.
Have fun! See you in the live class!
TracyHi!
She is adorable! It is never too late and a dog is never too old to start foundations. And she did really well with these games. Good job making the sessions really short – she did really well 🙂For the nose targeting – she wants to look at you a lot, so we can tweak the mechanics to avoid that 🙂 You don’t need the clicker at this point – instead, you can have the cookie ready in your hand. when she touches the target, you can say “get it” and toss the treat to the side. That way it is fast, she moves away – and she doesn’t watch you between the click and getting the treat out for her. All of that watching you can get built in, so we can shape her to look at her “work” at this early stage. And to make things easier – you don’t have to have the target low, it will never be on the ground when we use it in the future, so you don’t need to bend over 🙂
She was REALLY good about the foot targeting as well! And she also wants to look at you… so you can do the ‘get it’ marker and toss cookies here (don’t click, just say get it). And talk to her less 🙂 The clicker and the praise draw her focus to your face, so you can be quiet during the shaping then use the praise and verbal engagement during the tugging.
She did a great job playing with the toy! I bet if you made that toy a little longer so it was twice the length, then slid it around the floor for her to chase, she would engage with it even faster. And when yuu do that, pick up the foot target so she doesn’t try to offer more targeting – that way she will be clearer that you want to play with the toy 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! What a good boy in his first video here!!!
He did really well with his paw hits and was also a great little tugger 🙂One thing that can help him look at the target more and less at you: have the target in the picture only when you are actively shaping, so it is very salient.
Try to have the paw target stuffed into your armpit and not on the ground during the tugging sessions, so as soon as the tugging is finished, you can put it down – that will basically guarantee a first hit as when he says “what’s that?” LOL !Then when you break out for a tug break… pick up the foot target and move away as you present the toy, so he is not looking at the target for the cookie potential 🙂
For the next session, if you are indoors in particular so it is easy to find the treat, you can go to tossing the treats off to the side. So when he hits the target and you mark it (I use ‘get it’ like you do) then toss a treat to the side to get him running back and forth and not looking up at you (or your magical cookie hands) as much. He was having a little trouble finding the tossed treats in the grass, which is why it will be easier indoors on a carpet or something.
Excellent job here! Looking forward to seeing more!
TracyHi! Super nice sessions here – she is so keen and adorable!
The foot target session was great! She was pretty perfect 🙂
With the clicker, you don’t need a yes, you can just say “get it”. Also, you don’t need to click at this stage. The value has been built up nicel yalready, so you can move directly to marking the paw smack with a ‘get it’ followed by the cookie toss, because it will tell her sooner where to look and where to go for the reward (and then you won’t need to grow a 3rd arm :))The sail cloth was smart for now! She will get better at finding treats and then you will be able to get her back onto the rug.
Hand touches also looked really strong~ good job getting rid of the paw smacsks. I think you can leave the target hand out to the side (rather than bringing it back in closerto you then moving it back out) so it is stationary and present when she looks up from eating thecookie, more like what you you did at :49.
My only suggestion is to do more frequent tug breaks. I am sure she is happy to eat the whole time LOL but the tug breaks allow you to change hands, give her a mental break, and assess what you want to do next.
I really liked this without the clicker when you got rid of the clicker haflway through. She looks at you less without the clicker (which si good, we don’t want her looking at you too much) and the ‘get it’ works great when you toss the cookie (you don’t even need the ‘yes’ at all if yo uare saying ‘get it’ and tossing).>>’ BUT when I then taught FOOT target to the collapsible colander, she started pawing at the target in my palm. So here’s an entire session of each where I think we were able to isolate NOSE from foot.>>
Yes! There were very few paw targets here – the only paw hits where when the target was too low. Any rep where she went straight to the target or lifted her chin to hit it had zero paw hits. Any rep where the hand target was lower than her chin so sh ewould have had to reach down for it also had some paw hits. So easy answer – keep the target high enough that she lifts her head a little to hit it 🙂
Great job!!! See you in the live class!
TracyHello and welcome! I can attest first-hand that he is adorable! Just because he is a little older does not mean you are further behind 🙂
>>Stitch is great with food and toys which makes it nice when training.
Yay! That does make it super nice in so many ways 🙂 It expands the training toolbox!
>> He will lunge after some dogs… I am working on rewarding him for looking at me before he has the choice to lunge and this has worked well, he will also listen (if I miss the opportunity to reward) to a correction. He will take advantage of me if I am not fully focused on him and find a dog to get mad at.>>
This type of behavior is usually rooted in underlying anxiety about the other dogs… it all goes back to the fight or flight basis of behavior. His reflex happens to be more fight-based LOL!!! So yes – be SUPER fast to get cookies to him before he lunges – you don’t even need to wait til he looks at you for now, just drop cookies on him and move him away. Ideally, you never correct him as that can add more fuel (anxiety) to the fire – it might appear to suppress the lunging in the moment, but the root of it is still there. So for now, keep him at a distance where he doesn’t feel the need to lunge so it is far easier to get the cookies or tug to him. And if you happen to get a lunge? Just scoop him up and get him outta there. (I can provide the science behind why the corrections can be problematic). I do have some resilience games coming in this class that will really help too 🙂
Have fun! See you in tomorrow’s live class!
TracyHi!
>> Having an expert eye on the situation helps GREATLY, especially with a pup that didn’t seem operant at all to begin with!
Video is magic, we can see things that we don’t see when we are actually training. And Sid is VERY operant and brilliant!
>>Yeah I kept rewarding AT the target, makes soooo much sense to toss it more away and build independence.>>
Rewarding at the target was the 100% correct way to begin. And since it went well, we can move to the next step. And since I haven’t told anyone else what the game turns into, it makes sense that you wouldn’t realize we want more independence LOL!
>>BTW, I named him after Sid, in the movie “Ice Age”. because his silly factor is quite high. I love that about him………>>
I love it! The silly factor is perfect 🙂
Have fun!
TracyGood morning!
>>I’m really happy how he switches to play. My other Farmdogs only work for treats now, I didn’t really keep up on the play training with them when they were puppies. And I LOVE using toy rewards for Dreamer, so I definitely want to keep that toy drive!>>
I totally agree – having toy play with a Farmdog is TOTALLY worth keeping! And you know how great it is with Dreamer so you will be motivated and we can figure out how to keep it fun with Casper.
He is a keen happy little worker! Pre-Game 1 looks great. The target folder is a great choice – you might need to put a piece of a yoga mat under it so it doesn’t slide when we start adding more speed LOL! I loved his intentional foot smacks 🙂 Perfect! You can fade the clicker and just use a ‘get it’ marker and cookie toss at this point.
He was GREAT about going from the treats to the toy, and you were smart to just do a few treats then get back on the toy. One thing I noticed was that at the very end – you were tugging and having a great big party… when one of the other dogs started to bark. Casper immediately backed off the tugging. And since we want the tugging to stay strong and for Casper to have a blast, the best thing to do is to do all of your training away from any other dog that might bark. Casper is really young so we don’t want to challenge his resilience skills by asking him to tug or train when something startling happens. My dogs are all somewhere far away when I train my Ramen puppy, so they cannot insert their opinions haha 🙂
The hand target to the post it notes looked great too 🙂 Yay!!!
You can continue to reward by placing in your hand like you did on the 2nd or 3rd reps – and you can also fade the clicker and use a get it marker to toss the food away here as well. Ideally you don’t feed him in front of you, it is always either at the target or off to the side so he can move back to the target.He did well with going back to the toy here too – as with the other game, the barking of the other dog turned him off of tugging here too. He was engaging with the toy, the dog barked, he stopped, so you went to the food. To protect the toy drive, I think Casper will need tugging privacy for now 🙂 so he can be really relaxed and not concerned about what the other dogs are saying.
The choice of toy was great – nice and long! You can get up and have him chase the toy as you slide it around the ground. that is also super fun for pups! He was like that a lot, because most baby pups don’t like tugging as much when our hands move torwards their faces (you can see he was letting go when you did that).
Great job here, he looks wonderful! Let me know what you think!
TracyI remember that class with you and your Corgi! That was fun! And I am excited to see you here with your new baby pup <3
TracyGood morning!
Great job getting the concept and framework of the skill going here! She very quickly figured out the backside approach and you were able to change your position. Try not to move tooooooo quickly after the release, because it draws her attention to chasing you and not to taking the jump 🙂
Since this went well and her sitting and form looked good, the next step is to add a reward target at the exit of the wrap so she looks at you less. I suggest an empty food bowl because she will have to move over it to get onto the plank – then after you release her and move forward, you can drop the treat into the bowl.
>>What do you mean “make the angle tighter”?>>
For the zig zags, making the angle tighter involves moving the two outer wings further from each other (without moving the inner wings) so she can see the straight line *less* easily and the line is flatter. That changes the jumping effort so she will have to shift back and forth even more. We only move the wings by about an inch or so, but that can make a significant change from the dog’s perspective.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
I think you will enjoy the US Open! A really fun event! It will take me a few weeks to catch up on my sleep, though….
He did really well on the front side wraps here! The MM adds a good challenge – he really wanted to turn and face it which made things harder at first. But it is a great brain puzzle to work through – and since the beep does mean that he should go to the MM, beeping it when he is jumping was good to get the jumping and the focus on the MM as the reward target.
And in a great display of how dogs just don’t generalize well (neither do humans haha)… he was GREAT on the last few reps of the right turns and you had to re-start the concept on the left turns because he had many of the same questions. Fascinating! But normal LOL!
This is looking good on both sides, so I think the front side wraps can move to the fading process now. The demos show 2 ways to do it: having him approach the plank but yu using your wrap cue instead of the sit cue, so he moves over the plank directly into the MM. And, separately, you remove the plank and get the sit on the ground. You can do these both and ultimately we merge them by having him approach without the plank and directly into the wrap 🙂
Backside wraps:
>>The hardest part was convincing him to sit and stop on the platform….even with the cued sit. He was like “Hey! I know how this is supposed to work!”>>
Yes! The dogs all say that they know how to pull from their front ends to get over the bar on these and we are like “DUDE YOU NEED TO USE YOUR REAR” haha! You did convince him to sit but it was definitely challenging for him, and the sits were not as tight & stable except for the very last one. That last one was beginning to look as snappy as the front side wrap sits! So, this is a good start! for the next session, repeat what you did here. If he picks up where he left off, you can start to add more of your motion and a reward target. The reward target would be an empty bowl out where you are tossing the treats here. The MM might be too challenging at first 🙂
Great job!!!! Let me know how he does especially with the fading process!
Tracy
Hello! Lots of really good work here!!
Looking at the videos by skill group:
Front side/backside slices:
He is doing really well with the slices here! Both videos started with front side slices and then you added the backside slices. I think things went really well! And he was really targeting the reward bowl, which helps with form.
The main thing on both of these is that his best reps came when you were moving slowly and steadily the whole time – not too fast and not stopping. Perfect! That is ideal for now, because on course you will be in motion the whole time. Try to keep the slow/steady pace (medium speed walk) so that you can keep moving and he can still find the sit and the organization. If you ended up going too fast, he would have more trouble and you would stop moving to help him – so dialing back your speed will help him while also letting you stay in motion 🙂 He had plenty of his own speed going, especially when you started him from the wing and sent to the backside. Yay!
And if you end up past the jump or past the reward bowl when you are staying in motion? That is great too, because that is what he will see on course and we need to make sure he can still organize himself.
The zig zags are going better too – he was bouncing the distance a LOT more than he had been in previous sessions. The 3 foot bars help, and keeping the distance between the bars the same as they flatten out will help too (more on that below).
You can be very precise about his start position and the reward placement – when those were precise. he was perfect. When he moved from the sit (like on the 4th rep of video 1), he got himself to close to the first bar, hit it, then added a stride. So if he moves from the sit, go back and reset him rather than re-sit him in the different spot.
And, he REALLY loves the tennis ball so it is very useful on the backsides. With that in mind, be sure you place it on a very straight path after landing from jump 2. When it was a pretty straight path? He nailed it! When you tossed it off to the side too much? He had to add strides because the ball placement created a left turn and the bounce line is straight (you can see it at 1:45 and after on the 2nd video).
One other detail on the backsides – he did better with the power bouncing when you sent him to the backsides and then turns and moved forward sooner. When you were facing him as he was approaching the first jump, he added a stride (because facing him is a collection cue, so it makes sense he would naturally read that :))
>>The third video was after the first two and maybe I should have just stopped as the first two were pretty good. Too much do you think?>>
Yes! Those were terrific reps! You made the 3rd rep and beyond a bit harder by making the angles flatter. I believe what happened is that as the angles get flatter, the distance gets longer so he adds strides. So, to help him keep the power bounce when you flatten the angle, you can keep the distance short like it was with the easier angles by overlapping the wings even more, or replace both of the 2 inner wings with a single upright and both bars balancing on it.
One other thing I notice here and on the slices (and wraps) video – you have a pattern of getting 2 good reps then making things harder (we all have our patterns LOL!!) I think you don’t need to make things harder that quickly. You can get an entire session of the good form with the same exact challenge… and then be done and NOT make anything harder within the session. That can really help to solidify the form where he doesn’t even have to think about it. If things get harder pretty frequently, he is going to have to think through the puzzle more and that doesn’t solidify the form as much.
Front side/back side wraps – going great!
>>. I was going to put a yoga mat on the platform, but we have been practicing running dogwalk mat work and I was worried he might confuse the two. Let me know if you think it wouldn’t matter.>>
I don’t think he will be confused because the context is so specific here… but also I didn’t see him needing the extra help here, so you probably don’t need to add it 🙂
Front side wraps video: he is doing well here! He was coming in a little wide on the left turns then tightening them up. I am not sure if he was shaping his own turns or not quite as strong to the left (or both) but he was sorting it out beautifully so I don’t want to interfere. Dogs that shape their own turns always create the fastest lines for themselves when we let them do that (yes, I have obsessively timed this haha) so we are going to let him solve the puzzle on his own.
On this session, you had the 2 reps then harder pattern too (raised the bar or changed the plank angle which was too narrow for his butt LOL ) – you can leave things the same for the whole session here too.
Based on how well he did here, I think you can move the front side wraps to the fading stages: the setup is the same by having him come across the plank towards the wap – but instead of saying sit, you canuse your wrap verbal. He will use the plank as a way to organize but he will never actually sit.
The other way to do it is to remove the plank and ask for the sit on the ground in front of the jump, as if the plank was there – then release him to wrap over the bar.
Both the fading concepts should have the bar back at 4″ for now.
The backside wraps are going well too – it was too hard to pass cookies in the bowl, but the empty bowl worked well! The backside wrap concept is still a little newer, so for now keep the bar lower (4″) and do one more session of getting him happy with the setup. He was sitting on the plank really well but he was not as sure about taking the bar or going directly to the reward target 🙂 As you release him and move forward, you can support going over the bar by looking at (and pointing to) the landing spot. Do one more session with everything the same as it was here, and if that goes well, I bet we can start the fading process for this skill too! Yay!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! You are off to a fabulous start – both games look really strong 🙂
Pre-game 1 looks great! The pillow is a perfect choice of target! He did great with very clear, intentional fot touches. Great job building the value! He can go to the next step: no need for a clicker anymore, you can mark his foot touch with a ‘get it’ marker and toss the treat to the side (rather than hand it to him). That will build even more independence – and we add th efirst ‘official’ game to it tonight 🙂
Pre-game 2 also looks great! There was no sound on this video (youtube might be acting up!) but based on the strength of his touches, you had great timing of your marker! Yay!
You don’t need to get the target to the ground at all, you can hold it out to the side only a little lower than your hip 🙂 You can have your arm fully extended, elbow locked, so the target hand is far from you and he has to move away from the front of you to touch it (looking at the target and not at him will help that). You can deliver the cookie over by the target, or toss it away past the target so he can grab it then come back to the target (this builds up the independence towards the future application of this).Excellent work! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning, and welcome!
Charlie is adorable!!!!! He is so cute that it is hard to concentrate on the training, I had to watch more than once LOL!!!
The first thing I notice about him is that he is brilliant about placement of reinforcement. That means he notices where the cookies get delivered, so that is where he wants to go. SMART! That makes some things easier and we will pay careful attention to the placement.
Pre-Game 1: excellent job going from cookies to toys! Super!!! That is probably the most important thing at his age. And he was being really good about hitting his target!!!
He was very clever and adding in the down – maybe because you have already been training the down, or maybe because the down is closer to you and the cookies… or both 🙂 Your instinct to go to tossing the cookies was perfect. For the next session, you can toss all the cookie rewards: whenhe is aproaching the target, you can mark it with a ‘get it’ instead of a clicker, then toss the treat away to the other side of the target. He will then turn an dcome back to the target, so you can mark his approach and touch with another ‘get it’ and cookie toss. No need for a clicker 🙂 All the tossing means he is not going to off the down anymore.
You can also raise the target a bit so he has to step up onto it by maybe an inch, which will also help him not want to down. And, since he likes to be in the down next to you, you can try sitting in a chair or on the couch.
hand target session: He was great about going to the toy after the cookies here too! and was a brilliant baby with the targeting too. An his sweet rolling over was irresistible 🙂
Because he is so smart about cookie placement, we are going to change the placement to help him build value for the target and stay closer to it (notice how he would look at the target by lie down and stay closer to the hand delivering the food LOL!! So clever).So – have the cookie ready to go in the clicker hand (it is fine to not use a clicker here, since the cookie needs to go in that hand). And when he targets the target – bring the cookie hand over to the target and feed it to him from right on top of the target (the target hand stays out to the side). That way we will be using placement of reinforcement to build value for staying by the target hand and not going away from it to where the cookies are being delivered.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
