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Good morning!
I am so glad you liked the class – it is the first time I’ve done it and it was FUN to see all the dogs learn!
>>I never did any of the Slice Organizers, should we? Or did developing the skills from that exercise also happen with the ZigZags?
The zigzags have a lot of momentum, and the slice organizers do not – they are more plyometric. So I recommend a bit of both, because the organizers isolate the footwork and strengthening for the skill in a way that the zigzags don’t. The zigzags totally help but the 2 games work nicely together, like peanut butter and jelly 🙂
>How often would you suggest reviewing these exercises to keep the skills strong?
I think maybe once every couple of weeks, or once a week? they are great conditioning games so maybe once a week for one game during the competition season, and every couple of weeks for general conditioning during break periods.
Have a great holiday season!!! 2023 is going to be great!
Tracy
Yep, it is hard to get it ALL done! So we remove the pressure – we have plenty of time and it will all come together.
Tracy
Hello and welcome! Great to see you hear and in the live classes 🙂
What does she do that makes her more challenging? Let me know and we can tweak exercises or prioritize things to help 🙂
TracyThe beginning of this video might answer my question about her cookie drive – looks like she had a hard time tugging and retrieving with a bowl of treats on the floor, nom nom! So move the treats a little further away to make things easier – up on a table, and have a few in your hands for the shaping. And you can work this as a separate skill, ideally after she has eaten a meal so she is not hungry 🙂
She was easily able to get on the object, so there is not much more to offer when she is on it other than standing still – so you can reward for getting on it then release with a cookie tossed off to the side. Good job getting the object out of the way during the tug breaks then back in for shaping – really nice transitions! You can definitely transfer this skill to as many different objects as you can find 🙂
Great job!
TracyHi again!
She did great here! No problem wrapping the cone with the 2 toys. I think you were saying drop before each rep, to get the toy back – that is great. If you were saying go, don’t say go because this is a wrap (but I do think you were saying drop :))Her food drive is strong, yes? She will eat cookies in this type of session when toys and running are present? Spot check that from time to time to be sure she still will eat – it helps us retain the cookie balance and also helps us check her arousal level (too aroused means no cookie eating LOL!!)
The next step is to move this skill off of the cone and to a barrel or laundry basket or something – that should take her about 3 seconds LOL! Start it like you did here, with you sitting and then working up to standing. When she has it transferred, you can move directly to the Turn and Burn game we started last night 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
This is a GREAT session in a couple of ways –
Yes, the sends to the prop were really good and she is learning about sending with the foundation of countermotion Super!!!The other part that I thought was great was the arousal level of the session and teaching her to work in arousal (because sport mixes work in high arousal and if we don’t teach them how to self-regulate, then they work in a FRUSTRATED arousal which is not good!) – it also teaches you how to work with her in arousal.
That ready dance is important as it clarifies the transition to the send and the behavior is CRISP! And it heats her up nicely to a high state of arousal, similar to what she will be when running agility. And adding that also teaches her a bit of self-regulation by getting her HOT and then she has to cool herself down just enough to do the behavior properly. And she did !! Good girl!
>>The bite was totally my fault; she couldn’t get a hold of the tug properly. I should have let go. On the other hand, it did happen immediately after she wasn’t rewarded.>
I watched it a few times… I think was happened was on the previous rep you were closer to the prop and she nailed (:55 ish). Then at 1:10 you moved further away, so added challenge and probably reached the edge of her send ‘bubble’. She was *almost* perfect…
I would have rewarded it, because it was a darned good effort at a harder distance. We are shaping, so we can reward the almost moments. Resist temptation to withdraw reinforcement if she isn’t perfect, because it is negative punishment which is frustrating.
So, you got teeth with t he tugging (actually pretty normal with sport mixes LOL!). So I think it was a frustration behavior. With that in mind, read the almost reps – and then you can ask again and see if she can get it right – if not, move closer.
I know that rewarding effort seems counterintuitive when we look at operant conditioning… but it turns out OC is the weakest link in what drives behavior LOL!! So rewarding effort pulls in all the other ways the dogs produces behavior and then we end up getting the behavior we want.
You moved closer after that and she was great, then further away again to the bubble edge and she had a slightly harder time but did it (same as on the last rep).
So while we are not striving for errorless learning (I don’t like that phrase because it is basically impossible) – we can reward effort and also use reset rewards (cookies are great for this) to shape our way to the perfect behavior while teaching the dog the resilience skill of self-regulation. This is something I wish I did with my older dogs because it is so helpful! My 2 and 3 year old dogs all have been taught this way and they are so much more confident and fast in training and trialing.
Let me know if that makes sense!
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
I see what you mean about the backing up LOL! And you tried my next suggestion which would be to sit in a chair.
Ok, so since he loves the down so much, we can take a different approach to the backing up (your back will thank us haha). Do you have an x-pen? We can make a channel out of the x-pen where we lead him in and then he backs out. I will see if I can find video of that.
Also, the game where we start them on a destination then they step back to the destination will really help: start will something big and all 4 feet on, then lure front feet off so he steps back out, then we build it up to backing up fully. You can see more of that in the advanced level backing up games.
Your mechanics on the wobble board session were GREAT! Tugging, cookies, moving the board in and out – worked beautifully!!
He was very happy to get his front feet on the wobble board – good board! He was less enthused about back feet, and that makes sense – the board moves a lot and he is still developing the skill of balance 🙂 So, to get more confident back feet on it, stuff a whole bunch of towels under it so it barely moves – then you can reward for back feet on it, and even tug on it! Then over a series of sessions we can fade the towels out one by one
Great job here! See you in class tonight. :)
Tracy
Awesome! I am looking forward to the wrap videos to! And yes, we can reward “almost” as the games get harder, because it is all shaping where we can reward successive approximations 🙂
Have fun!
TracyHi again! Another super nice session here!
he only hard part here was the timing 🙂 Because she is so fast, the timing worked best when you started moving while she was eating the cookie – that allowed you to do the blind as soon as she finished the cookie and took one step towards you. That was the timing that Amy did on her rep (hi Amy!) and that was the timing that you did on the last rep. She has great food drive, so you can even start moving away before she arrives at the cookie – I am pretty she is going to continue to to cookie 🙂
Keep up the good mechanics and connections! You were very clear with that and she read it beautifully.
Great job on these! See you in class tonight!
Tracy
Hi again!
She was great about offering getting on the object here. She looks like a pup that loves to keep moving! If that is the case, you can give her a more advanced version of the goat games: instead of instantly rewarding her for interacting with it, you can delay the reward by a second or two so she stops moving LOL! She doesn’t have to sit, she can stand – but standing with all 4 feet on the object can be the goal in order to get her to offer without the need to keep moving 🙂
And keep playing this with as many different objects as you can. Great job!
TracyGood morning!
Her drive forward looks FABULOUS! And it sounds like it was in a new location (for the first part (hi Susan!) and out in the big field for the second part. Yay! She was SUPER FAST here, driving ahead easily even with you running. That was great and I also love that she did bring the toy back pretty quickly. In the big field, she brought it back after a little bit of a loop around, but that is fine because she is a teenager and probably needed a couple of seconds to look at all the ‘stuff’. And then she brought it back even faster on the 2nd rep! Super!Since this is going so well, you can add in the deceleration game so she balances her drive forward with tight turns.
Great job!
TracyHi!
We definitely don’t want frustration! And knowing both of Muso’s parents… we want to do lots of resilience work and make sure we don’t build in frustration (then Muso will be the most utterly perfect creature ever). Both of her parents can get frustrated easily and don’t have a ton of natural resilience – but that is fine because we know it and we can add the resilience conditioning and ward off frustration in training 🙂
>>Also, I did a Soshana Dos seminar months ago and she encouraged teaching a ‘get in to me quick! And bypass everything else’ cue. It startrd as a pivot in place, and progressed to adding it into sequences similar to the advanced level of your exercise with the turn/pivot. I have a cue for it: soo soo. Should I use that here, or just let her turn off my body cue?>>
Since there is nothing to really bypass, you can just use a body cue. And we can don’t need to train a lot of bypass on a small dog, we need to emphasize commitment 🙂 Plus the current International trend plans more towards commitment than bypass, so it is not a high priority for baby Muso.
T
