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Hi!
The backing up is looking really good – he is smooth and accurate, going step-by-step and not flinging himself back. Super! I couldn’t see you in the video, but it looks like you were getting increasingly further away. You can have more of a variable approach to increase the distance: sometimes be close, sometimes be further, then start close again – so the distance gets harder very gradually and not always getting harder. That will actually help to increase the distance!
You can also shorten the session – at the end, you went into a down and that was probably fatigue. It doesn’t seem hard to humans or adult dogs, but this is quite a workout for baby dogs 🙂 So you can keep the session to 3 or 4 reps, then let him take a break 🙂
Nice work!
TracyHi!
Great question about the barking:
>> This is a bit odd: we’ve been wrapping wings, with motion, in sequence, for a long time now, and she has never barked at me. I’m not sure why we’re getting barking with this exercise. She rarely barks when we work outside, even with Frisbee (her favourite), she will do tricks prior to sending to a tunnel or a wrap or just a throw. Why is she barking now?!>>
I can think of 3 reasons why a pup would bark in work or play: Arousal, frustration, genetics.
Genetics…. um yes, both of her parent have been known to be a little vocal in work haha particularly when frustrated (which is why we look carefully to make sure she is NOT working in frustration because we do not want o build that in. We are building resilience!)
And since we are working in arousal, you might get the barking sometimes, like you did at the end on the ready, ready moment at the end of this session. That is fine and gives us a good barometer of where she is on the Yerkes-Dodson curve (high, and also maybe a little tired). But that bark at the end was not a frustration bark from what I can tell, just a “yeehaw!”
There was one bark here that I would consider a frustration bark, right at the beginning (:10). You sent to the barrel but did not have strong connection (you were looking forward at the barrel and not at her). So she barked: “WHICH SIDE MOM” – she almost turned to the right then went to the left. Good info from her!!! You were wonderfully connected on the rest of the session, no more barks.
Also, the session had a SUPER high rate of success – no barking. If you scroll up, you can see a session from earlier this week (Prop game you posted on Dec 6) where she had some frustration barking when she had errors and didn’t get rewarded. Rewarding effort and slicing the behavior into smaller slices (especially if she has had an error) will help reduce the barking.The whole session was really mostly silent and really awesome! On the handling around the barrel you were doing BCs instead of FCs which is fine as long as you sometimes do FCs too to build that skill- your blinds had SUPER nice connection! The toy on the ground was hard at first then she did great with that. When you have more room, you can add more running too the toy by placing it further away. I am pretty sure she will love that LOL!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think about the barking ideas.
Tracy
Hi!
Very nice mechanics on the lap turn! It was actually hard for her to play with the toy after the cookies at the beginning, good job clarifying that for her. She was definitely seeming to think that the prop = COOKIES LOL! So this was more of a session about the back and forth between cookies and toys in the presence of a toy-based object. She did great!
After the cookie toss, when she turns back to you, let her see a bigger picture of the lap turn cue: have your magic cookie hand fully extended towards her and you are leaning over. And hold that position til she is just about at your hand. When you did that, she was really perfect (like on the very last rep). When you were a little more upright or later in showing the magic cookie hand, she had questions about where to be (like at 1:29).
Great job here! Next step is to use a bigger space so she has more room to go past the prop, and also add in the advanced level which will look more like the fancy threadle wraps 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
Great job with the Strike A Pose game! She showed some lovely self-control to hit the target first and not grab the toy – that is hard!
Try not to use a stay here – she was either breaking the stay (too many failures in one session, at least 5, and remember that failures can condition frustration into the game and we don’t want that especially when stays are involved!) or pushing the bed out from under her. So use a cookie toss start instead: she starts in front of you, you send her away with a cookie toss (tossed from whichever hand is easier for you) and then you strike the pose so she can drive back without any potential stay breaks.
The other reason to use a cookie toss start is that you can toss it on a variety of angles, so she learns to drive into the game from all sorts of different approaches, like she will see on course eventually!
One more next step to add here: have the target hand out like you did, that was super, and add the toy dangling too. HARD!!!!! So when she hits the target, you can use your toy marker and she gets the in-and-out going without you even needing to move your shoulders at all. I think she is ready for that!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>-I really get lazy with reconnecting after a blind and I really need to be more mindful of that with all my dogs, but especially with a puppy.
I don’t think you were being lazy, I think it is more about using a soft connection as you move (which works for most adult dogs) and a puppy needs a ‘hard’ connection in the form of very direct eye contact. When Rogue is older and more experienced, she won’t need as much connection.
>>>I’ve been bad about actually posting videos, but we are working on stuff and having so much fun with this class!
You are posting more videos than I am with my own puppy LOL!!!! The training is easy and fun, the video editing and posting is a pain in the patootie sometimes LOL!
>>Here’s a bit of goat tricks with a slightly moving object. The problem I’m having with goat tricks is that this dog is super serious while she’s working (with food particularly) and I don’t feel like I am getting “play” out of her. She is definitely progressing with toy play when I play with toys only, but isn’t quite ready to integrate that with work, and especially not with food involved.>>
This is not a problem at all! You were using the cookie in a fun playful way which is great: the reason for the toy play is to get her amped up for the shaping, and you were using the cookie really well here to accomplish that.
And yes, she is a foodie when she works and that is great: she offers behavior immediately, and she offers with confidence. That is what we want. On the disc shaping, you can toss the reward to the side after she offers, so she gets off it to get the cookie then runs back to it to get on it. That will add a little challenge to her balance.
I think the disc is a little too small for her to get all 4 feet on right now, so do you have a 2nd disc? You can put both discs down on the ground next to each other, or the disc and a couch cushion or dog bed (or whatever things you have that she can offering getting on :)) That will give her a bigger playing field for getting her hind end on. The objects don’t need to be the same; in fact it is better if you have a field of different surfaces and textures and movements for her to interact with.
About the toys: I can already see a massive change in her approach to playing with toys. So, keep going with what you have been doing: saving the toys for the toy-only games. And do these shaping games with cookies. And down the road (probably somewhere in adolescence, maybe when she is a year or older) we can gently merge the cookies and toys. The trick is that you keep things playful and happy just like you have been doing, and not add pressure to either the food or toy play. She is doing awesome and you are 1000% on the right track 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
I love watching Prytty and Annalise work (and I love Prytty as a nickname!!) My only concern is that these clips are too short, it is so fun to watch them both hahaha!!!
Annalise did a GREAT job with her decel on the first video – there was a SUPER clear difference between “I am going fast” and “I am slowing down”, plus the reward was low, so Pry was able to sort out her mechanics of collection. Pry was a typical puppy with legs everywhere on the first couple of reps… but then check out the coordination on the last rep!!! Lovely! Great job to both of them.
Turn and burn looks great – so adorable to hear all of the praise for the puppy and kiddo members of the team 🙂 The patience to let Prytty get to the line is the hardest part. I can relate – it is VERY HARD for me to stand still LOL!!! Annalise got better and better at standing still til it was time to do the FC and run, which resulted in Pry getting better and better with the wrap. So keep reminding yourselves to stand still til you see her arrive at that line.
The backing up looks fabulous. There was the one moment where Pry ended up too far forward following a cookie and kinda forgot to back up LOL! But the rest were great. Annalise was very quick with the reinforcement, and kept her cookie hands low which TOTALLY helped. And it is brilliant for us old people to have a junior handler do this, because her back is still flexible enough to remain bent over for the rewards LOL!!!! You can gradually add more distance, in a variable way: do a close up rep, then get a step or two further, then get close again, then get further, and so on. This can build distance without continuously making it harder.
Great job on all of these! I am going to ask Amy if she wants me to add her to the class, so she and Annalise can see the videos and read the feedback about Annalise’s brilliance 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
I love watching Prytty and Annalise work (and I love Prytty as a nickname!!) My only concern is that these clips are too short, it is so fun to watch them both hahaha!!!
Annalise did a GREAT job with her decel on the first video – there was a SUPER clear difference between “I am going fast” and “I am slowing down”, plus the reward was low, so Pry was able to sort out her mechanics of collection. Pry was a typical puppy with legs everywhere on the first couple of reps… but then check out the coordination on the last rep!!! Lovely! Great job to both of them.
Turn and burn looks great – so adorable to hear all of the praise for the puppy and kiddo members of the team 🙂 The patience to let Prytty get to the line is the hardest part. I can relate – it is VERY HARD for me to stand still LOL!!! Annalise got better and better at standing still til it was time to do the FC and run, which resulted in Pry getting better and better with the wrap. So keep reminding yourselves to stand still til you see her arrive at that line.
The backing up looks fabulous. There was the one moment where Pry ended up too far forward following a cookie and kinda forgot to back up LOL! But the rest were great. Annalise was very quick with the reinforcement, and kept her cookie hands low which TOTALLY helped. And it is brilliant for us old people to have a junior handler do this, because her back is still flexible enough to remain bent over for the rewards LOL!!!! You can gradually add more distance, in a variable way: do a close up rep, then get a step or two further, then get close again, then get further, and so on. This can build distance without continuously making it harder.
Great job on all of these! I am going to ask Amy if she wants me to add her to the class, so she and Annalise can see the videos and read the feedback about Annalise’s brilliance 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! Lots of great work here!
The blinds look great!!! Nice timing and nice connection! He did well going back and forth between food and toys. You can definitely take this game someplace where you have more room to run… has he been to your barn or to any of the training buildings yet?
For more toy play, try a much much longer toy. The toy is very short so he has to reach up to get it, which is hard to tug on. And when you bend over, it is a bit of pressure on the puppy. So, take this toy (it is a good toy) and tie it to another toy or two so it is 4 or 5 feet long. That way you can scrunch it up as needed then let it drag for him to attack 🙂 as a reward.His little tail wagging on the wing wrap game was adorable!!! He did really well – his main question was about where to look: at the upright or at you! Try to be quiet because every time you talk to him, he focuses on you and we want him to focus on the wrapping and be silent until you end the game with the tugging. You were pretty quiet towards the end of the session and he was great about finding the wrap! The upright was a little far for now, he had a little trouble going to his right, so keep it a couple of inches closer til he gets it then we can move it back out. You were kneeling here and that was perfect!
Goat tricks were super fun to watch 🙂 He was great! The paw pod at the beginning is really hard for pups, because it is relatively small and I think the hard, knobby texture doesn’t feel great. So far all of the pups here have said “no thanks” when working on the paw pod in isolation and that is fine. But the disc was much easier for him to interact with and he got his back feet on almost immediately. You did a good job of rewarding ALL interactions. Be sure that you also use a lot of objects that don’t move – everything here was moving so we want him to also build confidence to know that most objects wont move. He was particularly happy on your wobble board!
The next thing you can do with the goat games is to take ALL of your things and blanket the floor with them: set them up very close together and reward him for moving around on it, touching all the things. That helps him learn about different textures and surfaces.
Great job here!!! Looking forward to more!!
TracyHi!
Superstar puppy added the big barrel as if he had been doing it for years! YAY!!!! In fact, I think he liked it better than the other steps of the game. SUPER!!!! I like how you had the variable approach happening: sometimes the barrel was close, sometimes it was far – all times he was perfect.
The turn and burn with motion is crazy fun! There is one more step before you go to it: he wraps the barrel like he did here, but with you standing up. Try a short session of that (start sitting then move to standing in the same session, staying close to the barrel). And if that is peachy keen? Give him a break then come back and try the turn and burn a few minutes later or later in the day. If he has questions with you standing, stay at the standing level for a session or turn. I’m guessing he will be happy with you standing but we want to be sure.
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
He did well with his two toy game! His current play style involves getting low and chewing/looking for the squeaker, and that is fine. He is teething as you mentioned so we can go with his choice of play style until his adult teeth come in and he is more comfortable clamping on the toy. When he is squeaking one toy, you can totally squeak the other to help get his attention for the switch! He did get distracted by the car or something, but it is also possible that he was just finished with the session – 2 minutes is a long time for a baby dog! So you can keep things even short, especially when teething and toys are involved.
He is doing well with getting close to you and touching your hand! He is a little more comfy with it when your hand is a little further from you and he was doing it well for the most part. I don’t think it is his favorite thing but he is certainly happier to do it as part of training!! One other idea for you: you can use a plastic lid as a hand target, and shape the chin rest on the plastic lid on the ground. He was doing the chin rest on the ground, so you can take a plastic target (or post it note haha) and shape the chin rest on it on the ground… and eventually transfer that to your hands!
And yes – you are totally not behind! I feel like the fist several months of having a pup should be all about figuring out who the pup is, getting bonded with them, and eventually starting to train. You are doing great! And if you can get to the House Of Robert Of Sponges to train, great! If not, no worries, it is all good and he will still learn all the things 🙂
Tracy
Hi!
I totally noticed her amazing weaves in that trial run!!! She is makin amazing progress and is not even 2 years old yet, correct?!?! So she still has a few questions? Yep, that is normal, I think you are totally on the right track!! YAY!!T
Hi!
Thank you for the video! It helps a whole lot!!!>> I did these in the basement and for the most part it went better than the previous sesh in the barn.>>
There could be multiple reasons for this:
– the agility barn might be SO STIMULATING that he is very aroused and you are then trying to go faster which causes him to be more aroused so you go faster and so on and so on…. You were cool as a cucumber here and that really helped! In the barn, you should do some of the pattern games to help him self-regulate his arousal, and also just give him time in there to just sniff around so it is not always a big party 🙂
– could be that you are seeing latent learning in action. Sometimes during a training session, it appears like the dog is not ‘getting it’. The science tells us that this is fine and normal – keep the session positive, reward all the things, then let the dog have a big sleep. When you come back to the skill in a day or two (or a week haha) – the skill is locked in because the pup’s brain consolidated the learning. Knowing that this is a normal part of learning is a relief because it means we don’t have to be super concerned with what happens in the session as long as we keep rewarding and breaking things into small bits for the puppy.
– could also be that you were lumping in the barn (asking for too big a chunk of the behavior) and in the smaller space, you were splitting things into smaller pieces so it went better (because splitting always goes better than lumping!)
– also could be a combo of all of the above 🙂
On the video:
Backing up looked super awesomesauce here. You can do it in a chair so you don’t have to do more than lean over with your elbows on your legs, and drop cookies when needed. I think Bob would also benefit from beginning to add a destination, like starting with all 4 feet on a big, low dog bed or a big mat – then you lure the 2 front feet off, and let him offer putting his 2 front feet back on. Then you can work up to luring him all the way off, so his back feet are off too (you can use a cookie lure or a hand touch to get him off the destination) and add backing up so he puts his back feet on it.
The prop games also look good and we can clean up the mechanics to make them look even gooder!
One suggestion for all of them: no more clicker. Getting rid of the clicker will free up your hands to use for cues and rewards. Plus, the clicker causes the dogs to look at us in many cases, which we don’t want on these games. So the easiest thing to do is to use verbal markers (more on that below) and ditch the clicker 🙂
You can also elevate the placement now by attaching it (duct tape!) to a small box or phone book (is that a thing?) or anything an inch or so off the ground, so the prop is more salient and will slide less. His value for it looks really strong, so he is likely to be hitting it harder – and if that moves it, you will be adding in more challenge than needed.
The parallel path game looked good! Replace the click with a ‘get it’ marker and toss the treat like you did here. So instead of clicking, you will say “get it” when he touches the mat (doesn’t have to be a perfect touch – you can reward as soon as you see him about to touch and before he looks back at you) and toss the treat. Don’t say yes or anything – just say get it because that means that he is correct AND tells him where to look for the reward.
Take this to the barn so you can add more distance 🙂
Countermotion also looks good! His prop value looked great! Yes, you can move away VERY slowly for now, almost a weight shift more than actually moving away. Be sure to keep looking at the prop (and not at him as you move away). Get rid of the clicker on this one too, and move to reward markers.
If you are using food (tossing it) you can say “get it” when he hits the mat and toss the treat. If you are using a toy and tugging, you can say a “bite” marker so he knows that it is ok to come back and grab the toy.
These clarifications might seem minor but they will be HUGE to him because it tells him where to look and how to earn reinforcement. If he doesn’t know when the toy is available, for example, he is more likely to look at it and follow it.
>> (I think I’m traumatized by him concisteny pulling away in reaction to my motion when I try to leave sooner.>>
Yes, and you also can reward effort. His prop hits don’t need to be perfect. If he gets almost to the prop but not 1000% hit it? Reward anyway, good effort, and get closer or move slower on the next rep. Withholding reinforcement will make him frustrated and frantic.
>>(This doesn’t happen with a toy, but that’s not the exercise now, is it, Keith!?)>>
Correct, it won’t happen with a toy on the ground or a MM… but in that case you are not training the countermotion concept, you are training a ‘get the thing’ concept. You would then have to leave the lure of the toy or MM out when you add a wing or jump to the skill, which can be super frustrating to the dogs if we move to the wing or jump without the understanding. So it is far better to sort it all out on some rando placement on the ground than it is to lure but not really teach the concept 🙂
OK, the good news for the rear crosses is that you were late so he was correct every single time. You did a great job rewarding everything though, because he was giving you good feedback about timing!
To get him to do the RCs, you might need more room so you can start a lot further back (and no need for a clicker here either). Then as you both start moving forward, you need to cut in behind him when he is about halfway from the starting point to the prop. You were starting to cut in after he arrived at the prop, so he never quite understood that you wanted a turn the other direction. Starting 15 feet away will help you have time to be fully on the other side of him when he is still a stride or two away from the prop – and baby dogs need us to be fully on the new side because it is a hard cue to process.
To give you a visual, I grabbed some screenshots. You can see when he is arriving at the prop, you were still on the parallel path side so he was not being asked to turn the new direction. Ideally you would be on the other side of him already, having completed the side change, before he arrived at the prop. On the document, you will see screenshots of Elektra from the demo video, where I am fully on the other side of her when she gets to the prop:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YcDskxrf_7wBI4gSqgArvsT8mDoI33ieuDoC_DREn6M/edit?usp=sharing
Great job on these! Let me know what you think! And I will see you tonight in class!
Tracy
