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Hi! I think overall your mechanics are going really well! I have a couple of suggestions but overall things are going well.
Ladder:
She is doing really well with the ladder! Try to keep her moving slowly and have your hand nice and low – on the rep at :32ish, you had a low reward and a hand in front of her, so she was straight, accurate, and didn’t look up. Yay! When she was moving faster (sometimes when she was behind you, or when she was not sure of where to look) her feet would click the ladder or fall out of the ladder, or she would look at you. So you can drop the reward in the ladder itself, that will help her move more methodically and look straighter.Handling combo!
Nice toy release at the beginning! As she got more stimulated, she got more leapy for the toy – so you can leave the toy low and still as she releases it, and toss a treat on the ground as a reward. The higher the toy, the more she leaps, so definitely keep the toy low as she works through the impulse control and arousal.And nice wrap of the stool, she has good value for these!! And your handling is looking good 🙂
The FC to BC looked good! Nice connection and rotation! As you add the decel and pivot:To make the pivot more smooth, do the blind and decelerate immediately (not time to keep running forward :)) Keeping your hands in tight to your sides will really help too, because you can be super quick with the blinds when you have your arms in tight. But overall, looking great!
Rocking horses: Also going well!!!
The toy is really big and she really likes it, but it gets in the way 🙂 so you might want to stuff it into the pocket of your hoodie as you do the handling. It is not a precision reward in terms of timing or placement, so you don’t need to have it immediately available. One other thing that will help is more room between the stools: give yourself another foot or two (or three) between the stools because she is really long.
Overall, the handling and connection looked great. There was one blooper of no connection (1:04) but you kept going and had an adjusted to great connection again at 1:08. Yay!
Remember to use your leg on the send: arm and leg move to the stool, and let her offer. Don’t help her with your arm to draw her around the stool 🙂
Nice turn and burn with the toy at the end!Lap and tandem turns:
She had a little trouble getting into the toy at first, but the dragging of the toy for her to chase really helps.Tandem turns at the beginning looked good – putting the toy in your pocket will help because otherwise you can’t use your arm fully 🙂
You were doing the tandems with one hand which is fine, but if it felt weird, you might want to try using both hands so you can turn her more easily. One other detail of the mechanics is to decelerate as she is heading towards you on the tandem turn, so she is prepared to turn.On the lap turns… these might have felt awkward because you were too early 🙂 You were doing the arm and leg movement while she was still several feet from you, which is why it was hard for her to get close and make the turn, and it was why your arm ended up high. Hold the position (feet together, arm extended towards her at her nose level) until she is literally about 2 inches from your hand… then you can step back and draw your hand back to pull her through the turn. That should feel much smoother!
Strike a pose: this looks great! It might feel weird because there is no motion, but it went well! You can have your reward hand hanging at your side in a more natural position, you were holding it tight and that might have felt weird too 🙂
One mechanics detail:
You are too far from the jump, so she is coming fully across it before turning. Be a relaxed arm’s length away from the jump upright so she starts to turn before arriving at the jump.
Since this is going well: Next time you can try this with a cookie bowl on the ground (to drop the cookie into) or a toy in your hand (then a toy on the ground).Great job here!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
I totally understand the feeling of needing to go slowly with the baby pups… all of the 4-5 month old pups in this class are in about the same place (weeks 3 and 4), including my pup who just turned 5 months old today 🙂We’ve got 6 more weeks of class games, then a few weeks after that so folks can finish things. Once you get past week 5, you’ll find that the games build on each other really quickly. The first 4 or 5 weeks of class is all about value building for a zillion different things… then the next 7 or 8 weeks are all about concept transfers which are easier than value building. So we’ve got til the end of February, which should leave the pups with being able to have played all of the games 🙂
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
The play looks fabulous! Keep mixing in tons and tons of driving ahead of you and toy races, especially as we add more and more turning. 🙂Great job on these!
TracyHi!
First video:
This was a fun, high energy session. I love that the play was longer than the training 🙂 you were doing two things really well:– Doing the FC and moving away sooner
– Helping him less with the toy on the other side of the cone and letting him offer it more.Because of this, his commitment is definitely expanding and he is turning nice and tight!
Only one suggestion:
When there is an error, don’t whip the toy away… play with him then be more patient on the next rep. We want him to trust the toy placement so if you show it to him then whip it away, he will get confused: presenting it tells him he was correct on the cone, whipping it away tells him that he was wrong to come to you. So no worries, play anyway then reset and be one step more patient on the next rep.
The 2nd day video looked even better! This is very exciting! And his tugging looks really strong too. One thing I really like is that he is going to the cone FAST which is what we want (no slow walking LOL)
Since this is going so well, 2 ideas for you:
Use the cone for the harder games, but also add a barrel of some sort so he has more experience going around different things, and it will also give him more room to run around something because it will be bigger.
Since he loves this, it is time to a line up 🙂 you can try giving him a super boring cookie to get him to come to your side to set up the next send. That should get him in position (he wanted to hang out near the cone :)) and also keep the toy value really high.
Super job!!
TracyHi!
His backing up looks really good!! And if this was after tugging, then gold star for being so good even when more stimulated.You can revisit this game, just like this, maybe once a week as he grows. You can add in different things to back up to, but don’t make it too hard: he is growing a lot so he will have to find his back feet every day LOL! When he is fully grown, you’ll be able to add harder stuff very easily.
Onwards to the wraps!
Hi again!
The baby dog plank work looks great – she’s confident and fully engaged, in a new location 🙂 Super!!!
It took her a moment to find all the treat crumbs but I think that was crumb hunting and not stress. Something unexpected did happen about halfway through, the board moved in a surprising way or something but she recovered immediately – big resilience moment!!!
Walking across and turning around and the sit and the down looked great. For the next session, add in hopping off the middle (to rehearse bailing off the DW if she ever loses her balance). And, you can raise the board or use a bigger/taller board 🙂The decel game was so easy she looked shocked on the first rep: “thats all there is to it, mom?” LOL!
Nice timing with the decel and solid connection during the pivots, so she was perfect <3 For the next session, you can make it super spicy by adding in tugging, so she's faster which requires you to be earlier with decel 🙂Great job!!!
TracyGood morning! I just saw the videos above this, I’ll look at them right now 🙂
I think maybe the problem with the blinds was that you were standing still, like on the 2nd rep – then it will feel super unnatural.
When you were in motion on the 3rd rep, for example? Perfect!
So the more you move, the better it will feel – just keep reminding yourself to start on one shoulder then look back to her across the other shoulder and run forward the whole time. If the toy placement across your body ends up being a pain in the butt, don’t worry about it 🙂 just worry about moving forward the whole time. 🙂 and don’t walk, try ro jog or run because moving faster will actually make it easier.And if things were going wrong and you kept motivating her with cookies and toys so she stuck with you? That’s a great resilience exercise. 🙂
The hardest part of the wing wrapping might have been releasing the toy LOL!! You can add tapping the other toy to help at first, as a bit of a lure. When she dropped the toy, she needed a moment to remember what she was doing, so tapping the other toy can totally jumpstart the behavior after the tugging moment.
As she gets quicker to go around the barrel (lower latency, as in not faster in her speed but quicker to move around it after the toy release :)), you can change your position to standing. That will lead us in nicely to the turn and burn game 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!!
TracyHi!
>>I did some latent learning overnight myself LOL. When thinking about this (in the middle of the night LOL) I’m envisioning how this will look on course and it clicked with me that I don’t want to be bending down while moving forward so to fixate on him hitting the target in my hand isn’t possible. With the fixation in my head of not worrying about him hitting the target the whole exercise started to make sense to me.>>Yes, another proven psychology thing about learning: we stop thinking about it actively, but the brain continues to process it passively – so latent learning gets involved and we also remember things (I think that sudden recollection in the middle of the night is called “passive search” but I need to look it up). Either way, the brain is amazing!
>> I want him coming in to me and then continuing on in whichever direction our motion will be carrying us.
Correct! Which is why we are using something salient like a target and the consistent placement of reinforcement – and it doesn’t matter if he hits your hand or not. That is why we could lump – I mean, fast track – to have you standing up and using the jump last night 🙂
He did a great job on the session here! The hardest part was eating the cookie at the beginning LOL! He definitely has the in-and-out of the serp from the different angles. He did fine with the cookie rewards and REALLY likes the toy reward! You can now move the reward to the ground, placed out a step or two from your feet (close to where you were tossing the cookie reward). It can be an empty food bowl to start, the toss the treat to it. Then try the toy on the ground! That will be a lot harder but it really helps mvee the behavior to the next level.
So about the cookie in the beginning…. as soon as the food starting movon when you tossed it, he was happy to eat it. So at the beginning, try tossing the food for him to chase as a motivator (rather than rewarding in position after the sit) and see if that turns him on to the food faster 🙂
>>Enjoy my wet mophead puppy LOL.
He is adorable as a mophead but I am ready for this rain to be gone! Ha! But it is still far far better than snow 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! I am glad you are feeling better each day!!!!
>>Usually, I use Get It for everything cookie related, whether it is in my hand or on the ground. So I will modify my words and work through the resilience games.>>
Perfect! I learned from my dogs that if I use the same word for a variety of placements, they will default to looking at my hands or coming towards me. That caused too many errors 🙂 The different verbals help the dogs know where to look and it totally speeds training 🙂
>> I will have to keep a note by me for a while to remember which position goes with which word.
I can relate! I have a google doc with all the words in it LOL!
He was VERY HAPPY to participate in this session 🙂 All sorts of free and easy cookies LOL! And each one will eventually get paired with the word, so now it is all about being as consistent as possible with the words.
>> And… how do you teach a puppy to catch? Casper has no clue. LOL. I’ve never thrown food toward him before to have him catch. And with toys I’ll toss a small light toy but he doesn’t catch it yet. I’m thinking he may need to mature and have more coordination to actually catch. I use a slow arc so he can see the treat coming.>>
I don’t require the catching, I just use the word LOL! So when I say ‘catch’, it is more of a ‘the reward is coming to you, don’t move forward’ marker and not a ‘you have to catch the thing’ moment 🙂 For flyball, I do try to teach a catch: I start with the dog in front of me. show the cookie or toy, and do a 1-2-3 count before I throw so the dog can predict when the throw is coming.
Great job adding these markers!!! Hope you are back to feeling 100% soon!
TracyThink of the rear cross line for you as a line that creates an extension rear cross, as if the flag as a jump. That can help!
Since she has a solid stay, you can show her that parallel path side change in a way that takes out the motion so there is less to process. Note the 2 dogs in these demos are spicy girls like Muso LOL!
Have fun!
Hi!
This was a good choice to balance the turns! His parallel path commitment looked really strong, and you were able to add more distance pretty easily. Nice!My only suggestion is to mark and throw sooner: you were saying get it as he arrived between the uprights, so he was looking at you and watching the throw. In the interest of getting him to look straight the whole time, you can say “get it” when you see his intention to drive to the jump (might be 2 strides before the jump, or more!) and throw the reward so it is landing before he arrives at the jump. That should keep him looking straight 🙂 This will be especially important when he is driving ahead of you.
Great job on all of these! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
This game is going well, you were smooth and clear, and he was reading the decel just fine on both the lefts and rights videos. Super! Two things to keep in mind:Be sure to mix in a lot more reps where he does get to drive to the hollee roller as part of the combo! Otherwise, it just fades into the background and loses value. You did one toy race to it on each video, but he didn’t get to see it in the context of switching from handler focus to line focus. So you can do a FC on the cone and sometimes just accelerate to the toy. Or, do the FC then a decel and turn… then send to the barrel, FC, accelerate to the toy. Or sometimes do what you did here and do the FC on the barrel, decel/pivot, and reward. Mix it all up and keep it spicy! We want him to be on edge for the thrown toy, not thinking it gets ignored when you are playing the game.
The other thing is to keep the reinforcement for the decel/pivot out of the picture until just before the moment of delivery, after you mark the behavior. You were tending to cue the decel/pivot with the toy presented the same way each time: two hands, up high at around the center of your chest. That was becoming the cue, and we want him reading the motion change and not looking high for the toy. So, easy fix: keep the toy in your pocket the whole time and just use physical cues for the decel and pivot – that will DEFINITELY be spicy because the only visible toy will be the one on he ground 🙂 I think he will do fine with it!
Great job!
TracyHi!
>>I think she needed the sniffing break because I was getting frustrated.>>
That still counts as a resilience flex! We are human, we are going to be stressed, frustrated, nervous, etc…. allowing her to see it and process it as part of a bigger picture is actually incredibly useful. Outwardly, you appeared calm to me 🙂 But I am sure she could smell/see changes in you when you were frustrated and that is part of building resilience! And even if you were frustrated, you were still motivating and made it a good experience for her. I score it a big win in ways that are more important than RCs.
>>I know when she is going to turn the wrong way, but I feel like I set it up the same each time and I just can’t get there before she starts turning; she turns her butt as she’s eating.
it is the line you were moving on (the 90 degrees versus the parallel line, like in my super fancy artwork LOL!). Change the line and you should see the RCs percolating more. There are other ways to show her this game but this is an excellent challenge for you both!
>>For some reason, this one is bringing up some rage. It’s really not that complicated.>>
Actually, it is far more complicated than we give it credit for!! I spoke to the neuroscientist DVM about this game and the sighthounds yesterday, and she totally agreed that it was hard AF for dogs in terms of the multi-sensory integration- especially for sighthound types where the brain prioritizes motion. It goes well beyond the operant conditioning way that we look at it, but it is sooooo good for teaching the dogs to process and through things. So if it feels hard – yup, it is because it is hard 🙂 I find rear crosses to be one of the hardest agility moves to really solidify with youngsters 🙂
T
Good morning!
This is looking really good – really nice exploration and engagement here! Yes, there were some distractions but definitely nothing overwhelming: smells, noises, etc. You can use this game when you enter a training area and when he engages, you can start the training. It is kind of a sign from the pup that he is comfortable and ready. He did this at the beginning and at the end, in the area closer to the camera. If you didn’t want to train and just wanted to wander around like you did here, playing this game in different parts of the building is great!Only one suggestion from the processing perspective… tape his tags together so there is a lot less noise from them. It might not seem like a lot, but his brain still needs to devote bandwidth to processing the noise, and with teenagers we want that bandwidth devoted to processing other things like the cues and training 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning! I love your training yard!!!
Really lovely session here! She is showing good commitment to her prop 🙂 which will allow you to move through the games quickly!
One thing to add across the board will be a couple of reward markers. You can use the ‘yes’ marker when you hand her a cookie, but I think a ‘get it’ marker will help for when you are tossing it. Both markers tell her she was correct, but they also tell her where to look for the reward which helps develop even more independence. When you were using yes, she was looking at you before going to the tossed treat – a get it will help her look forward and not at you.
And with the toy, you can use a “toy in hand” marker so she knows where to look and when she can come grab the toy (versus a softer mouth for a cookie) – this is especially important when you have AND cookies in your hands LOL !
>>Once thing I notice when I’m using the toy, it looks like I need to get it lower for her.>>
Her tugging looked strong here, and the nice long toy was an excellent choice: you gave her the option to grab the fancy end of it and kept that end nice and low… but she wanted the skinny boring part of it that was higher up LOL! So yes, I agree in general that a lower toy is good but she was choosing to tug higher up on the toy, so don’t worry about it too much 🙂 As long as she is close to the end of it and not grabbing at your hands, it is fine for her to play how she wants to play.
A couple of small details for you:
The tug break was great after the cookies in the beginning! Try to pick up prop during tugging and keep it up during the transition from tugging to the cookie reload, so she doesn’t start offering behavior when you are not ready – she had a great hit during the transition at :51 and we don’t want those to go unnoticedThe various positions looked really good: forward, sideways, backwards 🙂 On the sideways sends, you can be further to the side so she always turns the correct direction (she did a rear cross a 1:24 because it looked like you cut across her path behind her).
The backwards sending all looked strong!! She had one question at 2:07 where her hit was not as strong – it was still rewardable even though it was not as strong of a hit, because the cue to go to the prop was not as clear there. So remember to engage with her with eye contact and a bit of ready ready… then make a clear and snappy indication 🙂 On that rep, you didn’t have the engagement piece so the indication to send was not as clear.
Based on her value for the prop here, you can add more countermotion/moving away as you send to this game, as well as the parallel path games and rear cross games after that.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
