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Hi! I am glad the seminar went well! Yay!
>> I guess I was probably stuck on “but she can doooo thiiisssss” and didn’t quit when I should have.>>
Totally relatable. The other thing you can do is grab one of your other dogs – if Muso is using questions, give her a break then try it with one of the others. That can help you sort out the handling and lines without also having to go at baby dog lightening speed 🙂 Bear in mind that adult dogs can also save us if the cues are not clear, but they can also show us when the cues are unclear LOL!
>>Darkness, rain, wind and lack of time is not helping me make good choices.>>
Yes, winter is annoying. WE HAVE PUPPIES TO TRAIN, MOTHER NATURE!!!
>>I SOLEMNLY SWEAR TO WATCH MY VIDEOS AFTER ONE ERROR. >>
It is such a pain but it is SO worthwhile. If after one error you know what went wrong, you don’t need to watch the video. But if it is still going wrong? Definitely watch the video in slow motion, freezing it at the point where she is taking off for the jump before a turn or off course. That can be really helpful 🙂
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
TracyHi!
Yes, I agree that she is really confident here! She didn’t even mind when it was spinning like a Disney ride LOL! Good girl! You can get a rug or yoga mat to put under it, so it doesn’t slip out from under her.You can create a field of moving objects for her to walk across, such as this little wobble board, any bigger wobble boards you might have or any fitness stuff like discs or fit bones (keep them a little under-inflated for now). The more practice she gets with different moving surfaces, the easier it will be to teach the teeter. And be sure to play tug before and after.
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>>It rained today but we managed a fun Farmdog family walk. We practiced cookies for checking in.>>
This is awesome! I am glad she had the chance to do this!
Excellent work on the video! Her tugging looks great and she is happy to switch back and forth to cookies. That makes training so much easier!
Backing up – both sessions of this went well!!! She really had some good steps back in the second session at the end of the video. You will get more backing up steps if you can keep your hands low, so they aren’t moving up and down. Ideally your cookie hands stay just below your knees, so she keeps her head low. When she lifts her head as your hands come up she stops moving backwards.
Now, you are welcome to do the whole session bent over but your back might get angry about that 🙂 So the other option for low hands without back pain is a regular chair, and you can lean a little and rest your elbows on your thighs, so you can have quick cookie delivery without your hands moving up and down.
The wrapping games are going super well, both with the bowls and with t he tugs. YAY!!! She seemed perfectly fine with the laundry basket as the ‘jump wing’ 🙂
Onwards to the next step here, which will be you standing up 🙂 The easiest way to do it is with the 2 bowls and the laundry basket, and you can drop the treats in (or near) the bowls as she goes around it. That will set her up perfectly for the new games coming next week!Only one other suggestion: she has very quick feet, and sometimes slips on the floors indoors – so since she is getting faster and faster, you might want to get a couple of cheap area rugs or yoga mats so she can really grip the footing for when you play the games indoors.
Great job here!!
Tracy
Good morning! He is doing well with all of these!
The on and off the plank is looking good! He seems very confident and is also happy to switch to tugging even after the cookies. Yay!
You can add yourself standing now, mainly so that when you are cuing him to turn around you can move your hand more slowly. When you were doing it fast he was also doing it ast… and losing his balance. So, have him follow your hand slowly in a full circle (a cookie in the hand as a lure is perfectly fine :))
And you can also then work a sit on the plank – it should be easier with you standing for him to get into a nice tight sit.
The Get it for the toy is looking really good too! His focus forward on it was great! You can take this outside and do some driving ahead at bigger distances, and add some toy races too!
Goat tricks on the various inflatables & Paw pods – he is happy to put his feet on all sorts of things. Yay! Try to let him offer interacting with the thing before you put your hand or cookie in as a lure. You can change your position to help indicate which object you wanted him to interact with.
The next step would be to push all of these together so they are touching, and take about 50% of the air out of the disc – and then let him offer getting all 4 feet on the various objects.
Having them all next to each other will make it easier for him to get all 4 feet on (they are a little small for more than 2 feet right now). Plus it introduces the concept of different feet feeling different surfaces. You moved 2 of them together towards the end which definitely made it easier for him to get all 4 feet on! Yay! The disc was overinflated which makes it a lot harder for him in terms of balance, so taking out a lot of the inflation will help him balance more and be able to changes positions more easily.
Great job here! Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Tracy
Hi!
>> I was skeptical as I have been working some hind end awareness with Teagan without much success>>
Yes, hind end stuff with baby dogs is hard! He did really well here – you got multiple steps of backing up! And it was a nice short session so he was able to be finished before he got tired physically or mentally.
My only suggestion is to place the first cookie more under you, between your feet back by your heels, so that he comes forward more- which creates more backing up 🙂 which you can then toss the cookie as a reward for like you were doing here.
Great job!!
TracyGood morning!
He was a good boy with all the toys here! He liked the white one in particular, so you can bring up the excitement level by swinging the others more (like lure coursing LOL!) or throwing them. You can also tie them together so they are one ridiculously long toy that you can swing in big loops for him to chase. It might be easier to do that standing, but that should help him balance the value of the various toys.
Nice work!
TracyHi!
>>. We were the crazy fangirl and fandog stalking you at CanAm until I realized you were back to back and we held our awe in check.>>
OMG was that you who was so nice and saying hello, as I waved and sprinted away to get the next dog? LOL!! I am so SORRY!!! Running 4 dogs at CanAm was a bit, um, challenging LOL!!!!
>>Should be viewable now. >>
Yes! Thanks! They are both of Pre-game 1, sorry I didn’t notice it sooner. Can you re-post pre-game 2?Pre-game 1 is looking good! He was very happy to interact with the prop! If he likes toys, you can mix in tugging after every couple of treats so he can move towards it even more explosively.
Beaus this was easy for him, you can go to the week 1 game where you send. All of the sending applies to agility of course and also to flyball (especially when we add countermotion!)
Great job here 🙂
TracyGood morning!
This is going well! I agree that she did a great job!
She definitely figured out that it was wing-jump-wing for the layering and seemed very happy to ignore the tunnel to do the line – SUPER!Getting the turn into the tunnel from the jump was a tiny bit harder – in these early stages, the cue to the tunnel is mainly about making a BIG connection from jump to tunnel with very direct eye contact until you see her turn her head to look at the tunnel – that big connection will emphasize the line to the tunnel by turning your shoulders to it. And it will get easier as she gets more experienced – on the last rep, you can already see her recognizing the context and turning over to the jump to get to the tunnel. Yay!!
You can revisit this with a mirror image, so she does the layering on your right side as well 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning again!
>>Today’s episode of “How the F*$& Do I Run This Dog?!”
The answer to that question is two-fold:
First, be sure that your motion and verbals match! Plenty of the errors were because of conflicting indicators: voice said one thing, body said another, so she had to take her best guess.
Second, live by the 2 failure rule (that is 2 failures for the entire session, not necessarily in a row). If you get a 2nd failure, that is basically her saying that what you want is not clear so the rest of the session must be broken down to help her understand what you want.
And when you get that 2nd failure, the first thing to do is look at the video so you can see what she is seeing. So on the first video, you will see that the decel was a bit too “forward facing” and not enough motion the new direction, so she was seeing parallel line motion to the tunnel entry you didn’t want.
And, stopping to look at the video after failure 1 and definitely failure 2 will keep you from getting cross with her and using negative markers or withholding reinforcement. That stuff plus repeated failure will make her careful or frustrated, which we don’t want.
Ideally, when she lands from the pinwheel jump, the brake arm would be more visible towards her (opposite arm moving towards her and dog side shoulder moving out of the way) as you decel and turn to the line you want.
The video will tell you if you are doing this (or not LOL!) and if she can see it 🙂 Otherwise you will end up pulling waaaay away from the line you want to get it done on shoulder turning, which is what was happening along with adding other things like spins or rotations towards her (I don’t think you needed either 🙂 )
Yes, it is a pain in the bum to stop and watch the video, but if you are getting off courses you can assume it is a handling question – and if you get the error twice, definitely look at the video.
So I think this skill might be something worth breaking down, first on the jump before the tunnel then starting on the pinwheel jump so you can time the cues of the threadle then driving to the tunnel entry. Do it all at a walk first, so she can read the info through the motion, and so you have an easier time showing the line of motion and not pulling too far away from it.
When she is getting it and the handling is solidifying… end the session rather than try to put the whole thing together 🙂 Trying to add more speed to put it all together can make it harder for your both, but ending the session and both of you sleeping on it will allow for a lot of learning without working hard 🙂
Nice work! Let me know how the seminar goes!
Tracy
Hi!
She did really well here – lots of success!
Yes, I think being calmer and more deliberate with your words and motion helps! No need to get her more aroused when the leash stuff is already pretty stimulating. You can do the happy voices and jumping around during the reward moments 🙂You can also be more deliberate with the cookie delivery when the leash is in play – you can have cookies in your pockets, but try to have empty hands and don’t have a hand in your pocket or have cookies in your hand in front of her nose 🙂 All of that needs to be faded out anyway, so we might as well fade it out now LOL! You don’t need to do it as remote reinforcement- you can still reach into your pocket to pull out a treat after the leash is off (or back on) but empty hands is the next step for sure.
Adding behaviors before the ‘chips’ marker is good! Remember to mix in some rewards for engagement when the leash comes off, so it is not all about making things harder. Easy reps mixed in with harder ones will keep things spicy in a good way 🙂
Great job 🙂
TracyGood morning!
>>I’m envisioning sustained chill outside the ring while waiting for her turn. So, it would be after leaving the stash.
It would probably be used in the time between leaving the main reward station and the last ramp up to go into the ring, so you would likely still have cookies or a toy with you. The order is something that you will sort out in coming weeks and as she starts trialing, but to give you an idea: I generally bring the dog to the reward station, let the dog seem me put the stuff down, then I get closer to the ring but I still have cookies or a toy. Then, depending on the dog, I will go do some engaged chill near the ring. Then into pattern games, then into Volume Dial, last cookies used up, then into the ring.
That is a general framework and is slightly different for each dog/each scenario – there is no way to know exactly til we ask the dog 🙂 And then as they mature, you will see that some elements won’t be needed in the lead up to the run. Stay tuned for more on that coming soon 🙂
>>Here’s pink panther creep. She thought it was fun. But, other than barking sister she’s not too excited in the backyard.>>
It is great to work this when she is not too excited – that sets up a lot of success and also stimulates her into a different arousal state. Even just getting her physiology to ‘rehearse’ getting stimulated and then returning to baseline is hugely helpful. This is all good rehearsal for working in the higher arousal state at class and trials! So while you might not ever use the Pink Panther at a trial, you can still train her in that state by using it in training. And training in that state is great for trialing in that state!! It is also good for obstacle skills – you can use this game with weave training, for example: can she hit and hold her weaves, after you do some pink panther to get her blasting into them? Fun! Anything that can mimic trial arousal states is good to have in training.
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
Good job with the focus forward game! You can now start to move the bowl further away, so he can start moving further ahead of you. You can start the bowl right in front of you, put the cookie in it (while you are holding him), the slide the bowl away – if he looks at it, you can let him go.
Adding distance will make using the bowl a bit unwieldy at some point, so you can switch to using a lotus ball or treat hugger (much easier to throw!) or a tug toy for this game. That will really help you expand the distance he can drive ahead.
>>was trying to lead him around instead of moving him into position. I think it worked a lot better but I need to work on his just following my hand I think.>>
Lining him up is the hardest part of this, because he doesn’t really want to follow a cookie lure to line up. So here is an idea: he was fantastic with the decel game and drive directly to your side. So you can mix that in here to help with lining up! After he comes back to you and you want to start the next rep, you can toss a treat behind you and then have him drive forward to your side for a cookie. Then you can gently take his collar and he will be in line up position for the next rep of driving ahead 🙂
Looking at the 2 bowl game:
>>I didn’t really point but felt like he was going to the bowls better tonight.>>
Yes! He was offering a LOT of behavior, going back and forth really fast! Super!! And he was not relying on your placing the cookies as a lure – he was offering to go back and forth before you put the cookies in. Super!
He is ready for the next step: if sitting on the floor like that was comfy, you can sit on the floor and put the upright in front of you for the next session.
If sitting on the floor like that was NOT comfy 🙂 then you can sit on the Klimb and try the 2 bowl game. If he is happy with that and goes back and forth easily, you can add the upright.
He did really well with the decel game too! One thing this will also help is the lining up at your side – he wants to dance around in front of you or be a little further away to ‘do the thing’ so this game of driving to your side can really help get the line up position to be valuable too!
You can definitely add in the pivots to this the next time you play, and you can also try it outside or in a long hallway, where you both have more room to run before decelerating 🙂Great job on these!! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
You and Hazel were great here! One thing I really loved was that after that little ‘ready dance’ moment, she was pretty explosive to the prop. That is what we want! Yo can add a little more excitement to the ready dance to get even more of that quick-feet drive to the prop.
She was looking forward to the prop really nicely here too! It looks like she is ready for you to do the advanced level with the sideways and backwards sending.
Great job here!
TracyHi!
Good job getting the rhythm started! He was offering a lot of good behavior, with a couple of sit moments mixed in. I think that after 2 or 3 back-and-forth moments, he loses his train of thought for a moment, perhaps, so ends up in a sit.
So for the next session, try getting 2 back-and-forth from bowl to bowl… then either break off for a tug moment, or toss a cookie out away so he leaves, then comes back towards the bowls for another couple of reps.You can also let latent learning kick in – rather than daily practice with these games, you can rotate them so he sees each game every other day or every 2 days. That can be really effective for letting his brain cement the learning (and it will be easier to do this as we add more and more games 🙂 )
Great job on these!
TracyGood morning!
>>First off, thank you for all your replies, even while getting up at the crack of dawn and staying late to course build at the US Open. >>
Thank you for the kind words! Things are nuts this week LOL!!
>>I don’t know how you are doing it. >>
I could lie and say it is good time management, but the truth is that it is a lot of caffeine LOL!!!
>>(BTW, I was not able to open your first Wobble Board video, it said Private)>>
Thanks! I will try to convince YouTube to let me fix it.
Looking at the wobble board – I think he was keen to eat the treats, but the board itself was really hard so he was not comfy putting his back feet on it. He was more interested in the toy, so you got more front feet which is good! He did get his back feet on it a couple of times with the toy but then he immediately took his back feet off, which means he was not entirely comfortable with that.
So the next step is to help him want to put his entire body on it: start by stuffing all sorts of towels under the wobble board so it barely moves. It will be a tiny bit unstable but generally won’t move more than 1/4 inch. And that way you can use food or toys to help him jump on it, run across it, etc. Make it really easy for now then when he is really happy to put his whole body on it, we can start fading out the towels and stuff that is supporting it.
Nice work!
Tracy
