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Hi!
The gates are clever! And also much harder (more challenging visually and less room for little puppy feets) so I am glad you started with that easy back and forth. You can probably take the cookie lure out and let her offer now, as long as you keep the rewards nice and low like you were doing here.She was SUPER clever at :26 where she went to the end: she was using momentum to get it done LOL! Smart! But sadly for her, we want to slow her down to get the footfalls like you did after that. Continue to reward every step or two – when she wanted to go faster at the end, she was also looking at you and her feet were more scattered. Sorry (not sorry) Prytania, you need do this slowly for now hahahaha
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>> (that totally grew omg like 4” overnight!) >>
I can totally relate!!! That is why we keep body awareness games easy for the puppies: every time they wake up, they have a new brain and a new set of legs LOL!! Prytty is still pretty balaned looking, her rear is a little higher than her front right now perhaps. My Ramen’s back legs look they they were removed from a Great Dane and stapled onto him. It is pretty hilarious!
She did really well here and looked really balanced! The main thing is to just revisit this same exact game, no changes, no asking for speed, maybe once per week so she can keep “finding” her trot and her legs and her balance. And don’t be surprised if, as she becomes a teenager, she sometimes can’t do it at all… that is normal when they hit about 6 months or so. So if that happens, no worries, just stop the game and do something else til the enxt day 🙂
Nice work!
TracyHi!
Nice work on the lap turns! She had a little trouble finding the cookie in the grass, so you can use a get it cookie marker when you toss it, and also put down a towel so to toss it to so she can find it really fast 🙂
The mechanics on this one are hard too, great job sorting them out! Remember to keep your feet together when you toss the treat – that way it is easier to remember the step back as you draw her to your hand and do the turn away.When you added the prop, I think she was locked onto the cookie in your hand as you moved towards it, so you can now try the lap turns with an empty hand to draw her in, and the cookie can be in the outher hand. If you hold yur hand as if there is a cookie in it, and look at it… she will totally come to it 🙂
The resilience game looks great!!!! Nice job adding the get it marker to the resilience game, and extra nice job with your patience to let her find it, sniff for a second, then offer engagement. It was very cool to see Prytania getting faster and faster with her engagement!!! We build on this game later this week, so try to get one more short practice session in with an easy peasy distraction. The grass and the great outdoors were the distractions here, and she was lovely 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
The restrained recall at the beginning looked good! She seemed to want to grab the part of the toy that Annalise was holding LOL!The strike a pose looked really strong – very nice mechanics, Annalise!!! The mechanics are the hardest part and you nailed the foot position, the target hand, the cookies, a;; pf it. Yay! For the next session, you can a ty instead of a cookie in the reward hand 🙂 For the target hand, you can also have the target hand out before you call her and remember to look at the target and not at Prytania (that is hard, because Prytania is SO CUTE!!!)
Nice work!
Tracy13th video –
Tunnels sending, maybe done before the threadles? He was very happy to go through the tunnels 🙂 He only had one question, which was a 2:01 when he took the tunnel behind you. You can reward anyway in that instance: that tunnel entry was closer to him, and he was looking at it when you said tunnel and let go, so he was a good boy 🙂 Be sure he is looking the correct direction before saying the cue and letting him go (adding more connection will totally help him out there too). There were approx 13 reps in this session and by the end, he was slowing down too.Like with the Threadle session, 13 reps is not too many reps if it is part of doing one or two sessions in the whole day. But as part of all of these videos, it was too many and we got slowing down. Even if these were done across 2 days, it is still a lot of sessions for a 7 month old puppy. Less is definitely more, in order to really maximize learning and to allow time for sleep consolidation and latent learning.
So a few ideas on structuring the training so you can get all the training in without doing too much in one day or in one session:
Since we know that sleep is when puppies consolidate their learning, it is better to spread these sessions out and do one or two short games per day, rather than 13 sessions in one day 🙂 The sleep that works for learning is the deep long (like overnight or during the day when the house is quiet) sleep, not a crate nap, so we definitely want to spread these out. You will get better long terms results!
And, by the end of the sessions here (I don’t think they were posted in the order you did them, but I can see where he was getting tired in the earlier sessions plus the longer sessions) – puppies use a lot of physical and mental energy in training, so shorter sessions/fewer reps/fewer sessions will go a lot further in terms of learning, as opposed to lots of sessions or reps.
Bearing in mind that you don’t need to do the advanced level at the same time as the baby level games, you can tape the baby level games and submit them for feed back, unless you he did so well that you can add in the advanced level (like on the tunnels or ladders). That way two things will happen: he can consolidate and cement the learning, and we can make sure the handler mechanics are in place before going to the next step. That will help make the advanced levels even stronger!
There are a lot of different types of games to play, so you can create a calendar to schedule them at this point. This is especially important if you are also training obedience or other sports, so you can train bits of everything and make great progress in everything. For example, you can do 1 or 2 body awareness games on Saturday. And then on Sunday, do 1 or 2 handling games. Then on Monday, try to add in one of the games you didn’t do on Sat/Sun. By scheduling like this over the course of a week, you get everything done really progressively, he never gets tired, and you both make tremendous progress. And if life gets busy and you miss a day or two or more? No worries, you can just go to whatever is next on the calendar to stay on track.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy12th video: ladder foundations (I think this was done before the session posted above)
Nice intro here with the ladder! He did a little better with the ladder a couple of inches off the ground – when it was flat at the beginning he didn’t really perceive it as something to place his feet over but when it was a couple of inches elevated, he did really well! Good choice to turn it over, that really helped him realize what it was about. He is a big boy, so it the ladder being a couple of inches off the ground was no problem at all.
Video 11 – this is the tunnel threadle foundation game (maybe done after the tunnel game below?)
He is doing well on these – you moved a little too fast on the first one so he missed it, but then the rest were all good in terms of getting into the tunnel. What I see here, though, is that by the end he was trotting where he had been running more at the beginning. It was a 12 rep session, which is technically not a lot of reps until you add in all the other reps he had been doing with everything else. So to keep him moving fast on these games and not getting to the point of being tired and slowing down, definitely keep sessions shorter and do fewer sessions per day (more ideas on that below).
10th video: This was the resilience pattern game with a distraction on the ground. He was definitely looking tired here, his movement was more scattered and less coordinated as he walked into the session. He was still able to engage nicely and ignore the distraction (yay!) but I am not sure how much gets retained when we work the pups when they are tired. For the mechanics, have 4 or 5 cookies in your hands already so that you don’t have to get more out of your pocket each time: I looked like he was cuing off the hands going to the pockets rather than making the choice to re-engage each time. Ideally, you would not move your hands at all til he re-engaged, and having the cookies in your hands already will help that.
You can also add in walking back and forth with you moving forward rather than backing up. This will help him be able to apply it to the real world stuff coming later this week 🙂
9th video: Good ladder video, although I think it was done after the ladder video posted below. You did a great job of moving slowly and placing the reward low: both of these really helped him sort out where his feet needed to be and he did really well without rushing his footwork. Nice!!!
8th video – handling combo with the barrel – this started really nicely! He did well with the barrel commitment, with the toy on the ground behind him (nice impulse control!) and then he drove to the toy really nicely. You can start a little further from the barrel and that will allow you to do the turns a bit sooner (which will straighten out his line to the toy). When you were late, he was a good boy to watch you to see which side you wanted him on.
Earlier I mentioned that the length and # of sessions was impacting his behavior a bit, and so on this one you can see it for sure. After about 3 minutes he was losing the crispness of response and having more trouble with the impulse control (looking at the toy more, going to the barrel more slowly). So to help build up the skill, do a much shorter session. This game has both a lot of running and a lot of thinking, so setting a timer to 2 minutes will make for a fast and fun session, and no drop off in behavior when he gets mentally tired. He seems to be the type of pup who will keep working when he is physically or mentally tired, but there is a change in what he is doing: less impulse control, he moves more slowly, muddier responses. So keeping sessions short will definitely help all of that!
7th video – sits with toy – this was definitely harder for him! (Also it is the 7th session so it is likely he was tired mentally – he kept trying hard but wasn’t quite able to get it).
He was offering downs which is fine for now… but ideally we would get a sit with you standing. You can help him a bit to jump start it: I think he has a good sit verbal so you can use that at first. Eventually he will be able to discriminate the sit and down verbals when is really stimulated, but we can help him for now.
6th video – this one was clicker stays 🙂 He already has some really lovely stay behavior, so you can change your position to be facing away from him and moving away as if you are leading out, rather than facing him or backing up. As long as you stay connected, I think he will do well with this. And as you move away, you can keep your hands low (but have the cookie ready) rather than up high in “I’m gonna throw it” position 🙂
I think he is also ready for you to ping pong the # of steps you take before you click and toss – you had a lot of instant clicks for the sits, which was great! So he is ready for more: you can do a step then 2 steps, then 1 step then 4 steps before each click & toss, which will allow you to gradually extend the duration of the stay.The 5th video – these were lap turns on the flat (no prop), you can be later on these too. When he was a couple of strides away from you and you started the turn, note how he pops up at your hand (:25, for example) rather than turns on the ground. So be sure to be facing him as he is approaching you, feet together, cookie hand fully extended towards him. And hold that position til he is about 2 inches away, then you can step back and move the arm back to starting cuing the turn.
4th video – a-ha! This one if the tandem turn video without the prop, I think they are posted a little out of order here. As with the video with the prop, you were pulling him across your front to get him on the other side of you. So as you move to the camera with him on your left like you started, you would turn him away (to his left) and then head away from the camera with him on your right. The tandem turn sets up that U-turn on the flat, which should feel smoother than pulling him in front of you to change sides.
