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Hi!
He definitely loves his tunnels and did really well! Just be careful of the dog walk legs there when you throw the toy, and also when there is another dog out working. I was worried about collision potential when the other dog was running to the table and he was exiting the tunnel, or when the dog was running towards the weaves as you were cuing the tunnel. Both dogs were aware of each other (even if the handlers weren’t), and both were a little uncomfortable: one error or slip, and there can be an injury or collision. He is an adolescent so likely to make a bad decision at some point… I don’t know the other dog, but we don’t want the other dog to struggle with it or potentially make a bad decision.It is also super hard for him to process the mechanics of going fast through a tunnel, and being aware of another dog running towards him… so while he was able to do the tunnel, he was having it split his attention in terms of processing, which makes it much harder and sent him into higher arousal. Also, it risks building in high arousal and even some anxiety into the tunnel behavior that we don’t want. So help him feel more secure by not asking him to do these behaviors while another dog is running, more like what you did in the 2nd session.
Also be aware of how tight the turns are on the tunnel entries here, and do fewer reps total across the 2 sessions: if he does 15 of these tunnel entry wraps, and 15 reps of turn and burn, and 15 reps of handling combo games….it doesn’t seem like a lot within each game but it totals out to a lot on repetitive turning on his body.
Because it might be hard to fit the tunnel in your hallway 🙂 or get a lot of room for the handling games, another way to plan your training is to do all 3 of the games, for example… but a maximum of 5 reps of each (not each side… total, both sides). So using my math from above as an example: 5 reps of each game is 15 reps which is fine, as opposed to 45 reps. And if something is easy (like the tunnel game), you don’t need to do 5 reps. And if something is harder, you can do more than 5 reps but that means you skip one of the other games. Planning puppy training is hard in that way!!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
This is also going well because his commitment is good. One thing to think about with him: he is super fast…. so you need to NOT try to go faster than him LOL!!! I think that was happening here a bit. The places I see that are:
– on the initial send to the cone, you were sending and leaving and he had a little zig zag: should I go, mom? Or chase you? So you can slow the mechanics down: if you are starting from a stay, take one step ahead of him, make connection, then release and send. That will be smooooooth so he can go fast AND have no questions.
That will also allow you to be sooner on the FCs and spins and BC, because he will commit sooner (no questions = earlier commitment!).– the decel before the pivot has to be sooner and more obvious, so he can set himself up to collect. As he exits the cone wrap, let him see you transition from running fast to a massive decel. The decel should happen no later than when he is halfway to you. Then do the pivot slowly. You were not really deceling and the pivot was fast, so he was scrambling a bit to chase you through the turn. If you decel sooner and more clearly, you will see him collect into his hind end and be super tight through the pivot.
As with the other cone wrap games… do fewer reps and don’t do more than one cone wrap game per session (per day). Otherwise, the wraps add up quickly and it is easy to end up doing 40 or 50 repetitive wraps, which is too much for a baby dog.
Great job!
TracyStrike a pose is looking good:
Really nice stay rewards!
You were really emphasizing the mechanics of where to look, how to stand, how to reward, etc. Really super!!
he had super strong drive to target hand, and impulse control on the toy (nice toy markers!!)
Also super good job to him for ignoring the other stuff that was happening in the background 🙂Only one minor tweak: when the toy is on the ground, don’t close your shoulder forward to it t tell him to get it, keep your shoulder open so he goes to it without a physical cue – you were better about keeping your shoulder open on the last 2 reps, so be sure to hold your pose til he arrives at the toy.
Excellent!
Hi!
This is also going well – strong commitment and really nice impulse control on the toy behind him, followed by excellent drive to it! You can use a bigger toy, like a hollee roller, so he can just scoop it up as he drives to it – that makes it easier on his body.When he is turning to his left, he did well with all of the motion through the FC. When he is turning to his right, he has a harder time and needs you to be closer and not quite as fast. At :20, he was wide trying to sort out the right turn, so you can help him by staying closer (to show more connection) and not moving as fast so he can process it without it getting covered up by all the motion. The right turns will catch up to the left turns, but for now it is fine to help him out.
Nice work!
THi!
Turn and burn is looking great too, in terms of commitment to the cone. Yay! He is probably a lefty but he looked great in both directions here, pretty balanced! That is unusual but in a really good way 🙂 Nice job working systematically to do the FC and run away soon and sooner.Two suggestions for you:
– start closer to the cone, this game ideally has the handler so close you can almost touch the cone 🙂 That is actually MORE challenging for the countermotion, because you (and your motion) are RIGHT THERE, so tempting LOL!!! And he will see the countermotion more clearly which is more challenging. The furthest from the cone you want to be for now is 3 feet.– particularly since he is coming back to fitness after a long break and he is young, do far fewer repetitive turn reps – there were about 15 here (most were cued and a couple were offered on his own). Limit to 4 or 5 on each side, maximum, then be done. If he is doing well, you should end the session rather than do more 🙂 If this was the only training session he was doing that day? Ok, 15 reps is fine…. but this was not the only session and the total number of repetitive movement really adds up. I find turn and burn to be a human self-control exercise: it is super fun for me and the dog, so it is easy to do a lot of reps… but we don’t want to do that many tight turns with a baby dog.
Great job! Onwards to the handling combo!
TracyHi! He definitely likes his prop games! Yay!
Since he likes these so much, and he doesn’t need any extra help getting jazzed up: slow down your mechanics so you can very clear, so he can be correct more. He had some questions and I think mainly that things were just moving very fast so it was hard for him to process it all.
With this countermotion game – set yourself up closer to the prop more to the side of the prop, so he has a clearer idea of which way to turn when he exits. On the first couple of reps, he turned to his left when based on your starting position he should have turned to his right. But, your send and then your line away had a lot of fast movement and you were directly behind him, so when he got to the prop at :13 for example, it could have totally been a left turn cue. I think he is a bit of a lefty, so setting up those right turns definitely needs to be clearer and slower: motion muddies the water, so use less motion so you can show him the line.
And, starting closer will help too: when you send from further away, his brain is prioritizing chasing motion and he doesn’t see your position as clearly – so he will default to turning to his stronger side and higher arousal state because there is a little frustration. I think that higher arousal state played a part in his grabbing of the prop and also in the perpetual motion/running around he was doing here. So, don’t go for big distance away from the prop til he is more solid with you being close, in terms of turning the correct direction and not picking up the prop. Stay within 4 or 5 feet for now.
Now that he is cleared to tug, you can try this will a toy (and a toy-in-hand marker like ‘bite’) instead of treats – it might help him to *not* pick up the prop 🙂 The other reason he might have been picking up the prop was that in the higher arousal state, the treats were lower value and he wanted something to tug or run around with. A toy can totally help that!
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
He definitely has good value for the prop here! Super! A suggestion for you as we build up this game:
At this point, no more ‘yes’ markers unless you plan to feed from your hand. For this game, use a get it marker for the tossed reward and not a yes marker – the yes causes him to look at you and watch the throw (because ‘yes’ has been conditioned to mean a reward is coming from your hand, so he looks at you :)). Ideally, you say get it as he is arriving at the prop, even before the hit because you will want to use ‘get it’ to both mark the intention of going to it, and to tell him to look ahead for the reward. The hit of the prop is not important – looking straight is more important – so don’t worry if he strides over the prop and doesn’t hit it.
When he is looking forward, it will be easy to progress to the rear crosses. Let me know how the use of the ‘get it’ marker goes!
Tracy
Good morning! I am glad he is back in action, that must be a relief for you both!!!
Based on the videos below (I watched them all before beginning to reply), I think he is doing really well in terms of the levels of games. More specifics below 🙂 The trick is going to be taking a “less is more” approach and *not* trying to do all the games all the time or moving too quickly. Bear in mind how much repetitive turning there is, and explosive movement in agility. I bug everyone to keep sessions short, not do too many turns, and not too many games per day. 2 minutes of training is a relatively long time, and is just the right amount of reps! So set the timer for 2 minutes and then be finished 🙂 Since he is just coming back to training, this is especially important! So since there are a ton of games to play and they are super fun… and you don’t have to run a lot so you won’t feel how much he is running too: a timer and a calendar will be your best friends 🙂
Find a little time to do one or two games per day, and really not more than that. If you do 4 or 5 games, things start to get muddy for the pup (and for us humans LOL!!) so focusing on the mechanics of 1 or 2 games will set you both up for success. And set a timer so you don’t end up doing too many reps – this is especially important with the games that involve repetitive turning, which includes all of the cone wrap games. Fewer games and fewer reps will go really far in terms of learning and development, for 2 reasons:
– it gives him time to sleep between sessions and consolidate the learning (and not rest in a crate, I mean a real sleep :)) There is some really interesting neuroscience on this! I did 2 games with my pup yesterday, then he passed out dead asleep for 5 hours. I will revisit those games today to see what got consolidated when he slept!
– it protects his developing brain and growing body! He seems like a pup who will not slow down if he is physically or mentally tired – he will keep going and maybe get a more aroused. So limiting the sessions in terms of #, time, and reps will really help get him into that optimal zone for training and work, without going past it.
One last thought – when training, take off his collar with the tags and use a collar that doesn’t make noise. He is processing a lot, so removing the tag noise gives his brain one less thing to have to process – which leaves more bandwidth for all the other things 🙂
Onwards to the videos!!
TracyGood morning!
>Most happy with how it is getting easier to move him from cheese to tug! Yes, I have to work at it but… he’s doing it.>>
It is a huge accomplishment – cheese is super high value and also smells really gooooood so getting tug in the presence of cheese is awesome! You don’t need to use cheese for everything, you can save it for harder environments, but it is great that he can tug when it is in the area.
On the lap turns – the mechanics were going well with the hand cue and leg step! You can try it with an empty magic cookie hand (hold the hand as if you have a cookie, and look at the hand) and after he turns, toss the cookie reward from the other hand. That should help him turn on the ground and not jump up at the cookie 🙂
I think the hardest part was finding the tossed treat, it took a couple of reps to figure that out. Part of it was that you were doing a marker of “yes” or “yay!” which both mean “look at the momma. So when you toss the treat, just say “get it” and don’t say yes or praise until after he gets the cookie.
Part of what was also happening was that you were tossing a tiny cookie but holding a GIANT stick of cheese (from his point of view) so it didn’t make sense to him to leave you and the giant cheese to run to the smaller piece. So rather than hold a whole stick of cheese, break it into smaller pieces so that you can have a couple in your hand but they will be less challenging than the whole stick of cheese 🙂
I think you can also use a charlie bear or something light in color but less exciting than cheese in this quiet indoor environment, and save the value of cheese for the harder environments. If he gets the really good stuff here, you will run out of high value reinforcement for when he is in a harder environment and needs to have a higher value reward.
At 2:34, the video freezes so I can’t see what is happening (lots of good happy noises but no video) – let me know if it plays for you?
it resumed at 3:47 with backing up: He is definitely making progress here! Yay! The one suggestion here is to not have you as low:
I think having you sitting on the floor was producing the down, so try this in a low chair or on an inflatable donut or something. That should raise his focal point just enough that he backs up without going into the down. And if he goes into a down, don’t reward in position (because that gets more downs :)) – throw the cookie off to the side to keep him moving.This part of the video froze and 5:42 – I tried it on a couple of devices, let me know if it plays for you?
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>.I need to figure out a better prop that won’t do that.
I don’t think you should change props, I think you should stabilize this one – attach it to something heavy and put some yoga matting under it, and it will be fine 🙂
>>I worry about the splatting on retrieves. I’ll look around and see if I have anything. She really likes those tugs with the rubber ball on the end and they’re easy to throw but I don’t want to break my little girl.>>
I have found the big hollee rollers to be great for this, because they can be thrown, you can put a heavier toy inside them if needed, and the pups can scoop them up rather than try to grab them off the ground.
Thanks again!
Found one! Ok, it is a little old but still good – the pup in the video is almost 11 now haha!!! But she did NOT like coming in close to me or getting grabbed.
This video is more of what we want for the end result – you can start with just a hand touch, then a hand touch while you step back… then add in turning her and sitting at your side. This takes multiple sessions and goes at the pup’s pace, because we are trying to build the love for lining up nice and tight to our leg 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! Lovely work on these!
Wing wraps: the turn and burn element is fabulous – her commitment is gorgeous, you were doing the FC and running the other way earlier and earlier and your connection was great! She looked very balanced on both sides and you were able to start the FC just before she arrived at the barrel. Towards the end you were trying to do the FC event sooner, but it was a little too soon so she had a question -no worries, I bet she will be able to do that in the next session.
I want to add in a line up at your side without touching her, that was the only hard part (getting her lined up for the next rep). You can start it by having her coming near you for a hand touch and rewarding that (with a treat, but it can also be a tug reward). At first, all we want her to do is touch your hand and then you can send her to the barrel. Then we can shape things over time to use the hand touch as a way to line her up at your side, facing the direction you want her to go 🙂 So at first it doesn’t matter which way she is facing – the hand touch in any direction is good enough 🙂
Yo can play with the hand touch line up in the house, for cookies, with no pressure, so she learns to love being right next to you. I think I have a video somewhere of what I mean – if I can’t find it, I will make a video because it is fun for all the puppies!
Collection 1 video: Super nice session, she was very responsive!! You were super connected during the blinds and the decels, which really helped her. You were also showing a clear decel, which helped her collect nicely.
My only suggestion is to pivot more slowly after the decel: you were moving pretty quickly, so she didn’t quite keep her hind end in tight. For now, keeping the pivots pretty slow will help her understand how to keep her hind end in tight – then we can start to speed up the pivots again 🙂 It might be easier to use the dog-side hand for the slower pivots – you had the connection arm across your body which was great, but your connection is so good right now that you can maintain the eye contact and use dog-side hand for the decel and pivot.
Collection video 2:
This session added the go go go with the toy. She was surprised at first LOL! “Wait, there is my toy!” But then she was totally happy to go to the toy. Be sure that when you throw the toy for the go, you are also driving forward so she sees the acceleration cue (like toy races). That will also help her drive to the toy – she had questions when you tossed it but stood still.This game works the handler mechanics of accelerate-decelerate-accelerate as well 🙂 Remember to decel and pivot slowly after the blind. You got going really fast and the pivots ended up being too fast. For example, at 2:10 and 2:29 you were too fast so she thought it was another blind and changed sides. Compare that to 2:19 and 2:38 where you slowed the pivots down, and she was great!
She did well going back and forth between cookies and toys here – it looks like the cookies were higher value (which is fine for a baby border collie :)) You can try using more boring cookies and a higher value toy to balance it out a bit.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Thanks for posting these, it is great to be able to see what happened.
>> I’m glad I’m not freaking about this less than stellar training session because he’s an adolescent. Thank you adolescent Brain Camp!>>
It is a relief to know that it is not naughty behavior. But also…. I don’t think this was full on adolescent brain stuff LOL! I think he was giving excellent feedback (in the way that adolescent dogs express themselves 🙂 )
>> I’m glad he’s having the time of his life!
I don’t think this was necessarily a party, it was mainly information and feedback. More below.
>>I wasn’t recording when he was doing zoomies all through the yard at breakneck speed.
Was this before, after, or during the sessions?
>>I can’t remember what it’s called, closing the circle or something like that?
Completing the stress cycle 🙂
>>There is SO MUCH information there. Anyway, what I really want is to foster and develop the speed that is in there.
yes and yes! So much great info, he gives great feedback, and he is SO FAST!! I love it!
The other thing to remember is that latent learning will kick in and even though you might not have had glorious results in these sessions, he likely learned the skills and then he will have them the next time you ask for them.
>> When he’s that excited our recall and retrieve went to crap.
Actually, that’s not what happened, see below 🙂
>>I need to put a collar or harness on him when I train, but he objects to being held or positioned.
Yes, I can see that he didn’t like being positioned and that was a source of some of the issues. You can leave a harness on his and a like tab? Also, since he does not like being positioned, use a hand touch and a cookie lure to get him into position. Being positioned after being grabbed was part of the reason he was leaving the sessions.
>>I’ve done collar grabs with him from day one but since he doesn’t wear a collar at home they ultimately are light neck/coat touches. I’ll need to get him more used to a collar.>>
Ah yes, this is definitely part of it – neck/coat touches are wildly different from grabbing a collar or moving him around with it. You don’t want to put a collar on only for training – that could create negative associations if he doesn’t like being held or moved by the collar (he seemed OK with being held but NOT ok with being moved around). You can try putting a harness on him in the morning at breakfast when you are going to be home and leave it on, then train later on. And take it off when you aren’t home or he is unsupervised. That way there is less of a risk of a negative association with the collar/harness being put on. You can also put it on and then do crazy fun things like go for a walk, or run around the yard, etc.
>>I’m familiarizing him to the treat and train. Currently he doesn’t get it.>>
Try using it as just a food target without the remote element of it – just do a thing and the you toss the treats in it, with the noise or gears grinding.
>>His tug is improving but now that I let him win a lot he’s running away with the toy.
Yes, some of it is a bit of decompression, some of it is avoidance (see below). No worries! You can tie the toy to a longer line and hold the other end when you want a few reps in a run, and mix in cuing a “go for a run” with it when you want him to take it for a run and decompress a bit.
> Please please please help me not have a dog that runs into the tunnel (with or without toy) and hides :-0
Ha! No worries! Here is what I see on the videos:
Tunnel threadles:
this was a great session for learning about reinforcement! I was expecting to see full on zoomies and that is not what happened. What happened here actually had nothing to do with adolescence 🙂 and he wasn’t being crazy. He was providing excellent feedback. He didn’t lose himself to excitement, he was giving feedback on the rate of reinforcement and accidental punishment. Brilliant! It is easy to see on video but a lot harder to see in the moment.Here is what happened, in chronological order:
He was really focused and engaged at the beginning. Lovely! The leaves made it harder to pick up the thrown toy, so it took a little longer. And, he was confused about what the reinforcement actually was: he was picking up the toy but then dropped it at :34 when your hands went to your pockets… and then ended up not getting a reward so he got a little confused about that.He was getting on the toy nicely – but you were taking it away immediately when he came towards you to put him back to ‘work’. For example, at :55 he got it, brought it to you, you reached for it and took it away to start the next rep. You were in work mode (“onwards to the next rep!”…. but what happened from his perspective was that he got negative punishment (removal of something desired, the toy and interaction in this case) at the moment he brought the toy to you. Punishment suppresses behavior and in this case, it suppressed the retrieve and the engagement. Oops!
He is a fast learner, so when you reached for the toy again at 1;14 he took it on the run. At 1:27, he brought it towards you and you took it away again….
So he quickly figured out that the tunnel was the fun and being near you was the work or punishment because bringing the toy towards you resulted in the toy being taken away, followed by you grabbing him to line him up. I know that is TOTALLY not your intention… but based on his response, that is how he perceived it. And we all do it at some point (accidental punishment) and the dogs ALL give us this feedback.
Then at 3:00, he was still engaged: you said tunnel and stepped backwards (so the physical cue was directly opposite the verbal cue): he didn’t know what you wanted. You marked it as an error and he didn’t come back after the next rep 🙂 Low rate of reinforcement, too much punishment even though it was accidental.
So basically he was offering the tunnel a lot (including staying in the tunnel) because that is how the toy got thrown and how he got access to positive reinforcement. He was offering staying away from you, because that is when the reinforcement was taken away (neg punishment) and he was grabbed a lot. Mix in a little frustration (from the accidental punishment) and you got a whole lot of very fast tunnels and not a lot of coming near you.
For the next session, prioritize the reinforcement and don’t emphasize the tunneling. What I mean by that is: the play and engagement and transitions to the next rep should be filled with reinforcement and take up the bulk of the time… and yes, do some tunnels in there too 🙂 So start with play, transition to the line up with a cookie or a hand target but not a lot of grabbing. Send to the tunnel, throw the toy and play play play and when he brings it to you, keep playing or trade for another toy or cookie…. don’t take the toy away. Then make a transition to the line up with a cookie, and do another rep. A boring cookie should help, but if even a boring cookie dilutes the toy play then try a hand target to line up. And if something goes wrong? Use a reset reward and try again because chances are it was handled error 🙂
But mainly it is about maintaining a high rate of reinforcement and no accidental or unintended punishment. You can also run and drag the toy as the reward in case he has trouble grabbing it in the leaves (he basically has to shove his whole face in the leaves to get it and that might not be super fun) and to maintain engagement between reps when you don’t want him to run off with the toy.
Wraps with the toy behind him:
>> I wanted to try a front to a blind and maybe some decels but at this point he was so high he couldn’t ignore the toy behind him.>>
He was not too high here, he was great! And super fast. Here is what the video shows:
First rep: start quicker, it was a solid 15 seconds of being held and that was too long before starting. He looked at the toy, then he was ready and looking at the cone, but then you didn’t send him so he looked at the toy again. He did well with the wrap here – a bit wide but that is his harder side plus you need to use a little less motion on these for now so he can find his line tighter to the cone on the side change. He is insanely fast – but not too high.
When you go get him, make sure you play or trade for a reward rather than just take the reward away. Some of the running off with the toy was the excitement of being outside, and some of it was that when the toy was near you or you went to the toy, the toy was taken away. So he offered not bring it back LOL! That happened in the tunnel session and in this session too.
2nd rep – Good job rewarding things that you thought were his error but were in fact handler error LOL! You were miles late on the FC at 1:14 so he was correct to run as fast as he could to the toy on the line: he was already past you by the time you started the FC so there was no way he was able to make the side change you wanted. GOOD BOY! So even if you think it was dog error, pretend that the rep was perfect and play as if it was. You did play, but there was a moment of you telling him he was a bit wild. All of these types of games are handling games, so there is plenty of room for handling error when the pups move so fast – so if something goes awry, just reward as if it was perfect and adjust the next rep so you are sooner with the timing or better connected.
Leg bumps: he did well too with this skill and gave you a lot of feedback about the grabbing and positioning: Too much grabbing at :31, for example. He was ready for the next rep, but you grabbed him and he checked out by looking away, did the bumps then left. Such great feedback. He came back but set himself up further away so he couldn’t be grabbed. Brilliant dog!
At the end, you made it more fun and less grabby and finished strong 🙂So for anything that requires positioning, you can use a hand touch or cookie lure to position him as you separately build up the enjoyment of being touch or moved. And if he is not in a perfect starting position, no worries, you can start the rep anyway.
Let me know what you you think! I think he is doing really well so I am trying to translate his feedback for us humans 🙂 A couple of little adjustments in terms of the transitions from the toy back to the next rep, and the line ups, will make a massive difference!!
Nice work! Thanks again for posting sessions that were not quite perfect 🙂
TracyIn my same pajama party session, I added bigger things to wrap and got myself standing, in preparation for the turn and burn game:
first up, a little suitcase:
that seemed easy enough so I went to the next thing, a laundry basket. This was a little harder because he could stick his head in it and look down (in retrospect, I should have turned it upside down so there was no distracting opening on top LOL!!) He was looking at me a bit here, but no worries because that will all change when I go to the turn and burn game later this week 🙂
He is about 20 weeks old and has started to develop more hind end coordination, so here is Ramen’s first backing up session. Long legs going every which way!
In the next session, I will get a couple more steps back which should bring his head up to a neutral position – the low head here was getting some bows but that is fine because placement of reinforcement will fix that:
