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Good morning!
This session is exactly why we use video – hooray for easy access to being able to share videos!!! She is an excellent communicator – and seeing the session as a 3rd party from the camera angle you used provides great info.
2 things I see as feedback from baby Dot 🙂
Good toy play info here at the start:
The moving toy is a winner! Chasing and grabbing it is very engaging, according to Dot. The dead toy in front of her – not a winner. She would stop engaging and look up at you. I think you were trying to let her grab it, but she was like ‘why did it stop moving’. So keep it moving more and she will grab it more.
>She doesn’t seem to want to offer to come back and touch the object. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.>
You are not doing anything wrong – she is letting us know what she thinks the game is… and she appears to think it is about waiting and watching your hands move, as a cue to move. When your hands were not moving (:50-:53 for example), she was indicating the prop by head bobbing towards it but did not move until your hands moved. Then she moved towards your hands. There were a lot of rewards here with her being stationary while you delivered treats, or with her stepping towards your hands. So I think your hands are her focal point, which would explain why she was not smacking the hat with her feets 🙂
No worries – we can change that pretty easily! You can make the hat even more salient by maybe putting something under it so she has to setp up onto it a bit (a rolled up/mushed up towel would be good). Then we can minimize the hands as cues and get her moving to the prop more by having you sitting on something low so your hands are a little more out of the picture. And start the session by tossing a treat several feet away so she really has to take a bunch of steps to get it. Then be ready: when she takes her first step back towards the prop, drop a treat on it – then after she gets that treat, toss a treat several feet away so she gets off the hat to go get it (using the markers for each delivery). But you won’t be rewarding directly from your hand, and you won’t be doing much hand movement other than flicking a treat or dropping a treat. And you can gradually delay the reward for the hat til she is really driving back to it and getting on it.
Let me know if that makes sense or if I need more coffee 🙂 And let me know how it goes! Nice work here!
Tracy
Good morning!
First of all – what a gorgeous cat!!!! And there is another one behind you! I love cats!
Second – cats are magical about knowing when a camera is on and getting in front of it LOL!!!! My cat Hercules Mulligan makes an appearance in one of the week 2 videos LOLI laughed SO LOUD when the toy landed on the cat, Dean drove to it, carefully grabbed it, and brought it back to you… and the cat was like… ‘whatever, this is fine.’ OMG that was sooooo funny. Then Dean had to drive over/past the cat, who just remained entirely chill. Good boy Dean!
You actually accomplished 2 big training things here: you built on the forward focus, and you added a new level of stealth self-control. Dean absolutely rocked it. Thanks for your help, Mitten! I will be smiling about this all day for sure.
> Trying to work on delaying.>
The delay went great! And he is looking at the toy even with the cat distraction.
> And lo and behold the cat provided a distraction so I didn’t run with him.>
I’ve tried running and more than a few steps he runs to the toy but doesn’t pick it up. >Try walking slowly and see what he does? And the toy races posted yesterday might get him to pick it up when you run, because if you win the race, you party with the toy 🙂
> Tried food to get him to drop toy and boy does he drop it and then doesn’t want the toy right away again. For now I’m just waiting him out. I think it’s a little better.>
I agree – waiting is better than losing the toy drive especially for this game. You might get a quicker drop of the toy if you are not holding his collar – and mix in lots of immediate giving the toy back or tossing it right away. If my pup gives it back really quickly, I reward quickly by giving it back to the pup or throwing it.
>Do I need to post video of one game and then move to another game. I am trying to train a lot of things but I don’t want to get confused. >
It is kind of a ‘choose your adventure’ format: you can post one video then move to another game, or post a few videos on one game, or do a couple of different games and post several videos (no limit on how many videos you post a day, as long as the pup is not getting toooooo much training). For most people, depending on how busy life is – they sometimes post multiple because there was time to train, or sometimes only have time to post one video because things are busy.
In general, you can do a session or two and then move to the next step. Everything builds on the previous steps so it is easy and fun to move forward 🙂
He has plenty of forward focus and drive to the toy, so you can start looking at the toy race game – start by walking forward and see if he grabs the toy. And you can also win the game once or twice and party with the toy (without him haha) and see if that helps him pick it up even when you are moving 🙂
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
> so I have some catching up to do! >
I think you are in great shape – you have done enough of week 1 that you can proceed to week 2 on any of the games you have touched on. Most of them build on each other, so you won’t feel like you are falling behind.
Looking at the blind cross video:
> I thought that went pretty well, I think I need to “cross” a bit faster.>
Totally agree that it went great!!! I think the element of the cross you can show sooner is the big connection after the cross. You had really strong, clear connection as you started moving away from her when she was eating the start cookie: your arm was back, your eyes were very visible, just lovely! And when you gave that same arm-back, eye-contact heavy connection as you finished the blind, she got to the new side immediately. The rep at :44 is a great example of getting the connection as you exited the cross. The connection being visible is more important than the arm cue, so you can even point your arm back to her eyes more to let her see the connection sooner.
The forward focus session also went great!
> I think I need to “cross” a bit faster. >
It was excellent 0 You basically using all 3 of your hands LOL!! I agree that the toy-treat-toy transitions went super well, your lineups rocked, and it was all really fun and exciting!
So the result was really fantastic forward focus from her, super drive to the toy, and she was bringing it back really well! There was a small delay in her bringing it to you at the end – hard to see what she was doing, maybe she was kind of chewing on it like she did at the very end? That might be a bit of a decompression behavior, where the pup shreds the toy a bit (repeated mouth movements are known to be good for self-regulating). She might have felt a change in her internal arousal state and was self-regulating back to baseline. THIS IS GREAT because we want puppy brains to ‘learn’ how to self-regulate. And it is good for us to see, because it is a sign they need to regulate. Some of my dogs also shred the toy a little to decompress so I build in decompression to their sessions: this could be letting them shred for 5 or 10 seconds then asking for another rep (this is an expensive habit because expensive toys are sacrificed in the name of self-regulation haha) or I build in a snuffle mat or lickimat for a quick decompression moment. It is fun to play with because it really helps the pups.This went really well, so you can go right into the toy races posted yesterday.
Have fun! Great job!
Tracy
Hi! He did really well here! Not being hungry because he’d already had a little breakfast probably helped.
When you were working the cookie to toy, I don’t think you lost him at all – I think there was something interesting on the floor, and the toy lost its squirrel-like excitement 🙂 That is a really cool toy but when it was just squiggling around in front of his face, it was not interesting to tug on.
But then when you swooshed it away at :43? He was right back on it. Yay! So always remember that the toy is a squirrel-substitute and needs to run away from him to get him to engage with it.
You can see the power of the moving toward in the outdoor part of the video: he could have easily taken the thrown toy and had a nice party without you… but you were running away and that made the toy in your hand really come alive, so he drove back to you! Yay! And when the toy remained ‘alive’, he stayed with it. If you let it die a little (1:48), he considered going back to the other toy.
You can slide a cookie into this game: throw toy 1, he brings it back while you run, he plays with toy 2, and then before the next rep you give him the most boring possible cookie ever (maybe 1/4 of a Cheerio? LOL!) then go back to throwing toy 1.
And wow, that is a great retrieve and he is carrying that toy all the way back til you say strike! Love it! We need to teach him some flyball too LOL!
>I think I can probably add the novel object next time 😃>
Totally agree! I think it will be easy for him.
Great job!
TracyHi! He did well with the nose touches here – I think he had a few questions about cookie smells.
He had a little trouble engaging with the toy at the beginning. JHe was happy to chase it and grab it, but then started thinking about something on the ground – I wonder if he could smell treats from the previous session and that made the toy play hard? And then when you were tossing the treats to reward the hand target, he got a little caught in smells too. Perhaps it was pools of scent being a little distracting. So for this game, you can have him touch the target then reward from your other hand, so he doesn’t have to find the tossed treat in the pool of scent from the other treats. And to get his engagement back after treats tossed in the grass, you can play a little cookie game with him: toss a medium value treat for him into the grass. Then after he eats it and he re-engages with you, whip out an amazing treat and hand it to him. That can help him ignore any potential pools of scent on the ground because better stuff will be available for engaging with you 🙂Nice work here!
TracyHi!
Happy birthday, Spirit! Welcome to class! He is super fun 🙂
He did well with the pre-game here! I agree – he did a great job especially if this was the first time! Since this went so well, you can move to the next steps for your next session: do a quick review of the foot targeting and if he is fine with it, move to the sends we posted in the week 1 games.
Nice work!
TracyHi!
Wing wrap foundations are looking great!He seemed to have no questions until the cone got a little too far away – that was the threshold until you kind of pointed it out to him but he still had a couple of questions. You worked the cone back out to that spot slowly and then at the end, he had it! Fantastic!!
Thinking about next steps: we want to get you to be able to stand up, so you can do that for the next session with the cone close to you. The cone is short, though, so you can stack a bunch of them up to make a taller cone. And the new stuff for today includes adding different (bigger) things for him to go around – that will help when you are standing, and it might also help when adding distance because a bigger/taller object is more salient. But based on where we take this in week 3, being able to stand up is a top priority (and then we can fade the bowls too!)
Great job!
TracyThe toy play here was fun to see!
On the first ready moment at the beginning, he was perfect in terms of being able to regulate his arousal. Then you can see after the first rep, the toy brought a new level of excitement so he was jumping up more and it was harder for him to regulate the arousal.We can help him by having you think of your ‘ready’ dance as being on a volume dial (have you ever seen the movie Spinal Tap?) What I mean by that is we can dial up or dial down the intensity of the ‘ready’ based on what else is happening in the session. A calm, quiet ‘ready?’ with no movement from you and no toy play happening before it is probably a 1 on the volume dial of excitement here. If you were tugging like a crazy person then did a big READY READY READY with a lot of movement – that would be more like a 10 (or 11 haha). You did *not* have him dialed up to 10 – it was more like a 7 or 8, with the word being repeated and fun body language.
So since the toy play brings him up and the volume dial being at a 7-ish got jumping up, you can dial down the ready game a little by using the word maybe once, with more relaxed body language. After he tugs, that level of ready dance might feel like a 5 but that might be perfect!
It is fun to noodle around with just how much we can ask for as their bodies learn to self-regulate. And starting it now helps us tremendously through adolescence and into adulthood.
Using the treats as part of the transition from the tugging back into the session worked GREAT. Your mechanics were lovely and he did great!!!! The yoga mat works well until he added more speed, so it will be fun to see this outdoors!
Nice work 🙂
TracyHi!
> We’ve done some set points to keep working on jumping, worked on weaves (he’s doing amazing), and his RDW.>
Yay!!! That is exciting!
> I’m feeling the pressure of summer ending and there being too much to do.>
This is relatable! Prioritizing what needs to get done outdoors is important (weaves and RDW, probably) so the other stuff can wait a bit.
> We saw our conditioning guy yesterday and we talked about jumping (and showed him) and adjusted our exercises. Judge is well muscled, but he tends to use one of his rear legs more, so we want to address that.>
That is great! It is really cool to have someone who can pick up the small details and adjust.
>I’m not sure if Max Puppy 4 will work out for us – stating at the end of October means weather could start to be a factor after a few weeks. BOOOOOOOO! I guess I’ll see what kind of Fall we have…>
Yes, the weather is a pain in the patootie! MaxPup 4 has a slightly different format – a lot of it is devoted to trial-prep behaviors that can be done anywhere. And for the folks who might not be able to train outdoors, we adjusted the format to look at indoor training. The MN folks in recent years have posted videos of sequences from ring rentals or seminars/classes so they could get more ideas (rather than being locked into the class sequences).
Great job with him! It is so much fun to watch you and Judge work!
Tracy
Hi!
Beautiful job with your yes tunnel-no tunnel game! Your connection and verbals were super clear and he had no questions – having your dog-side arm pointed back to him and not pointed forward on the reps where he had to go past the tunnel made the line REALLY clear. It would have been useful to see you make a connection mistake so we could compare how the connection changed the line… but nope! You were spot on, so he was perfect. Yay! Well done!!!!!!!In the middle of the session, he was indeed slipping a bit in the tunnel. You can stretch the tunnel out as much as possible so there is not a lot of curve – that helps the pups avoid slipping. And a zillion tunnel bags will help too 🙂
I hope to see you in person soon! You and Max are looking great. There is a league at Close Enough Farm in Louisa, VA which is super wonderful for young dogs getting started! And you can of course keep going with MaxPup 4, as we get these youngsters ready to trial.
Great job here! I am excited for the future of Team Max!!!!
Tracy
Hi!
These are looking good!
She is strongest with her GO exits and I think that is perfect! We want a tiny beast like her to drive out of her tunnels like that! She was also good with her left turns, that was the perfect amount of turn. She seemed a little wider on her right turn exits – they were still good turns, so maybe she is a little more of a lefty than a righty at this stage. Her last right turn (2nd to last rep) looked great!!You did a rep of a rear cross at :54. She didn’t pick up the side change, but that was because she was already in the tunnel when you started the RC so motion overrode the verbal. Try to get right on her tail so before she goes into the tunnel, she already sees you cutting behind her.
>not being distracted by Dream who may be helping out a bit in her directionals.>
Grace did well learning to ignore Dream, it was hard! Dream might have distracted both of you, because I think that you switched to saying right on some of the left turns at the end 🙂
Overall, these are going really well in terms of her tunnel commitment and how well she is getting the exit cues. Great job!
Tracy
Hi!
>This was so much better (cookies were on the table).>
I agree! This went great and supports the idea that it was the treats making it harder in the previous session, and not the session length. I think this session had more reps and more running, and he was perfectly happy & engaged all the way through. Super!
At the beginning (approach :22) he did look at your hand as you moved your hand towards you leg. But then you opened your hand to show him it was empty, so he focused on the toy. Yay! And it was smooth sailing after that.
He had a couple of questions towards the end on your left side – might have been the distance or the toy being a bit under other stuff or the motion. He did not have a question on the last rep, where he was on your right side, so it might also be a slight side preference plus as you mentioned, you dialed back the motion.
So in the next sessions, you can add little bits of the motion: standing up, stepping forward, walking forward, etc. It will be easier when you have more room, so this game can go outside too!
>At the start, for some reason I kept waiting for him to bring the toy back, he doesn’t really know retrieve so not sure what I was doing haha>
Ha! He might have brought it back, after he found the correct squeaker spot to chomp LOL!
Great job 🙂
TracyHi!
The drive to handler and pivots looks great here! He was more than happy to drive to the magic cookie hand and pivot with you. You did a great job getting your hand low, so his chin could be parallel to the ground. If your hand is too high, you will see him popping up.
Plus, he was moving in an area with all sorts of visual ‘clutter’ and he acted like it was not even there!! Yay!
He is ready for the next steps, with more motion: you can move faster when he is getting the start cookie. Then show him a big decel as he starts to move towards you (then pivot). This might work best outside, which is a harder environment of course – so you do a few reps of what you did here outside to see how it goes, then add the motion in. I think he will really like the motion!
Great job!
Tracy
