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Good morning! (Or is it afternoon there?)
I think this session was more about sorting out reinforcement for now – she seems to like the thrown reward, she seems to love the obstacles, and she seems not terribly interested in the food from your hand if it means lining up LOL!
Overall she did well with the directionals – they were all correct except one, so that is a really high success rate!!! You can have her chase the thrown ball as a reward like you did here – then to get her to come back, you can try using a tug toy or another ball, so the reward and the line up are (almost) as fun as the obstacles.
I think most of the ‘ma feets won’t move’ moments were the line up, so that is no worries and we can figure out what it more motivating to convince her to line up.
Yes, you can definitely move to the handling games – the challenge is motion and connection, so you will both enjoy being able to move more 🙂
Great job!!!
TracyGood morning! I think you will have fun! We are seeing jump-tunnel discrims everywhere nowadays (plus when Audie is a little older, you can play these games because they are good for pups too – maybe when he is 9 or 10 months you can start them 🙂
TracyGood morning!
This session looked really good! She seems MUCH happier to move away to the obstacle!
>>We are still struggling with the high value of the toy as a reward. That was a separate, but good lesson.>>
It looked like the toy was mostly in your position and one rep it was on the ground between your feet, and she did much better about moving away from it. That is a good start! You can keep it in your pocket and then gradually get it into your hand. Moving away from the high value reinforcement is part of the challenge, in terms of creating commitment. She is doing well!!! I think you should stick with the toy as she is making tremendous progress.
The tunnel commitment went really well, and so did the jump commitment.
You can still reward the backside, it is jump-ish enough for now 🙂 I think it had to do with your chair position because she was convinced of it – then took the front when you moved.
You can shelve this game til next week so she can percolate on it and let latent learning do its magic – we build on it and also we will have new games coming on Monday. Have a great time at the trial!!!
Nice work 🙂
TracyGood morning!
>>both words ended up sounding the same – but crazy the other way, loud, lots….Sly was SO confused!!! New plan; no dog, me just sit in a chair and work on the words. We’ll give it try and see how it goes!
I like that plan! And it is good rehearsal to make sure the words are different because we do often end up making them sound too alike even during runs.
On the video:
>>How soon can I give the verbal cues for Jump and Tunnel?You can start them as soon as he is finishing the barrel wrap, and repeat them a bunch of times – that is mostly what you did here and it all looked really good!
If you give them much sooner than that, you run the risk of him looking at and going to the wrong line. It won’t happen in this training setup but it sure can happen on course!
I think the only time you were a little late in starting the verbal was the jump verbal when you were way ahead, and then you only said it once. He had the widest line there on the way to the jump when you were way ahead – the motion and the proximity of the tunnel definitely made it harder!!! But he still got the correct obstacle – YAY!!!!
>Should I do this from the other side – have him wrap the barrel to his right?
You can if you like! The games all balance out in the end, so a few reps on the other side are fun or you can add in turning to his right. I decided to only work one side on this game because the variable changes came in the form of the different positions and disconnection, so I didn’t want to change too many things.
>>one each from the spin. I was curious to see how much which side he was on exiting the barrel was impacting his decision of which obstacle to take.>>
Your position does impact his decision – which is why we do the reps where were are way ahead, past the entry of both the obstacles, to negate the positional influence and see how he does with the connection (or disconnection haha) and verbal. He did great!!!!
And yes, disconnection is weird and hard when we WANT to disconnect, but somehow it all feels natural when we don’t want to disconnect LOL!! He did well there too – it is the hardest element because it really emphasizes the verbals.
Great job!!
TracyGood morning!
This is a really hard game!!!
>> I think she just remembered that the jump was the last successful thing she did the last time I was being a total weirdo>>
I agree, she thought this was WEIRD haha! But the good news is that she figured out that it was “go do a thing while the human is sitting” even if she didn’t yet have the discrimination between the tunnel and jump. That is a big step in the right direction (pun intended hahaha)
So to help build up the discrimination, 2 ways to tackle this:
– you can be sitting in a chair, closer to the obstacle, but only have one visible so she learns to independently leave you for a jump or tunnel without motion and without the other obstacle visible.
– separately, you can be in the chair in front of both obstacles, a little closer… and point to the obstacle you want. That way you are fading the motion and handling help, rather than removing it entirely from the start. Then we can fade out the pointing.
Let me know if that makes sense!! Have fun!
TracyGood morning, great to see you here!!!
She was amazing on that first video! The jump was a little harder at first but then it evened out and she was great at both!
The handling 1 game went really well too!! You can increase the challenge with position 2 by getting even further ahead – if you can send her to the start wing from miles away and be passing the center of the tnnel when she exits the wrap, that should increase the challenge because she can see a lot o fmotion and both obstacles… but needs to look at your upper body and listen for the verbals.
When you do the disconnection, yo ucan add more motion to that now – basically you would be moving forward and not really looking at her at all 🙂
Great job here! You can add in the Handling 2 combos as well 🙂
Tracy
Hi and welcome!!
yes, it would make sense that there were too many things changing: chair, collar hold, discriminations, etc. So you can do it standing up – but we want her to not start until you have said the verbal a few times, so a hand on the collar is something worth working through.
And since motion is harder for her, you can do the handling games – no need to wait for the verbal-only game to be perfect, because the handling games focus on different skills (connection, motion, etc).
Have fun!
TracyGood morning!
The MM blooper was hilarious!!! His expression was so cute!
He has always been amazing with his verbals, so I am not surprised that this session went so well – a super high rate of success!!!
He easily went to the jump or tunnel when he was on the same side as the obstacle – you can also have him do each obstacle from that same side: for example, when he is on your left, you can cue the jump or the tunnel which makes it a whole lot harder because being at your side adds a bit of handling info… and now we would be asking the verbal to override that.
He did really well with the neutral position starts!!! Super!!!!
The first game next week builds on this, so you don’t need to revisit it unless you wanted to try each obstacle with him at your side (rather than switching sides). You can totally go to the handling games too 🙂
Great job!
TracyHi!
For the longer distance sends to the wing, you can totally use physical cues. The only game which has no motion is the first one with the jump-tunnel discrimination 🙂
TracyHi!
The rocking horses looked really good!! You got a lot more commitment and connection going on most of the reps here and she nailed it! She is VERY responsive to all of your handling and cues, which is good news but also bad news LOL!! All of her little questions were handling bloopers:
The rep where you messed up the verbals was the one where she messed up the commitment -she was probably saying “what the heck is the momma doing?!?!” LOL!!!
She didn’t fully commit to the left turn wrap at :52 – you can drive forward longer, you rotated too soon there and left wraps seem to be ever so slightly harder for her on this game (but it is a small difference).
At 1:37 she pushed away to her left – because you stepped that direction, almost like a rear cross line. The next rep you stepped straight forward so she went to the wing. Yay!
We do more rear cross stuff in the next class, but it is good to do a refresher here! I think the session overall went well – you did a couple too many parallel path reps at the beginning because the first rear cross rep at :28 was a total surprise to her LOL!! You were a little too close to the jump on the next couple of reps she it made the cues a little rushed, but then you found the sweet spot of how far back you needed to start in order to show her the RC line – and then it looked great! She was able to turn nicely in both directions on the RC, and go back to the straight line when you cued that at the end. SUPER!
>>I used food since it is a little less arousing but would a toy be good to use on this?
For dogs that like toys, I think the handling stuff like this should be all with toys and not all with food (yes, you can reward the retrieve with a cookie but the main rewards should be toys). We want the arousal for a variety of reasons – and also, she prefers toys over food! I think she does it fine with food but it is more like drilling… doing it for a toy will be more like play!
Nice work here!
TracyHi!
She is definitely improved with this game – it is wicked hard!! She did well taking the tunnel on just the verbal. It was harder when the jump was there, but I think there are a couple of tweaks that will help her:
– she seemed to be moving to the obstacle as soon as she heard noise come out of your mouth LOL! That means she was not really processing the verbal, she was just go go going LOL!! So hold onto her until she hears the verbal 4 or 5 times… then let her move (she might have big mad feelings about that but… LOL!!!)
Yes, I like your idea to shorten up the tunnel but also I think moving the obstacles further apart will help too.
And it sounds crazy – but you might to try it without the MM out there. She might be doing things as fast as she can to get to it 🙂 so throwing the rewards might end up being the better plan. The rewards might be later but that is fine because the visual of the MM might be too stimulating for now.
At one point on the video, you asked if the verbal should override position – yes, it should 🙂 Eventually! So this is a good game to revisit once a week or once every two weeks or so, to rotate it through the games you play. It takes a long time to get it perfect but she is on the right road. Yay!
And yes – you can do the handling games because those tackle a different skill set (more about the motion and the connection, with the verbals in there too)
Great job!!! I am looking forward to the handling games!
Tracy
Hi!
The decel game is going well too! After a couple of parallel path reps, he was terrific about shifting into collection immediately when you were stationary. YAY!!! That is hard to do and he nailed it. And great job rewarding some stays too – very lovely session!Great job on all of these. Let me know what you think!
TracyThe tunnel-to-wing looked great! Easy peasy! He seemed very confident on both sides in the first video 🙂
On the 2nd video – he did really well here too! No trouble adding the 2nd wing. You can reward after the 2nd tunnel, so the two of you don’t get dizzy LOL!!
The 3rd video looked good too – I think you were doing the tunnel threadle arm/verbal, so you can send him back into the tunnel when you do that. But he was very responsive to all the cues! Super!!
So… as soon as the snow melts 🙂 take this game outside so you can stretch out the distances and run run run 🙂
Great job!
Tracy
He is doing well here too!
On the first video,
It was hard to see your head on these to see where you were looking, so be sure that you look back behind you to the landing spot and point to it (rather than look at his cute face LOL!). You can also throw the reward sooner – that will help him look at the jump and not at you. As with the start line games, I think using a cone or barrel might make more sense for him as something to go around – the pole doesn’t carry the same valueThe second video had the barrel and he had an easier time for sure! And it looks like you were looking at the landing spot which really helped. Super!!! You can start to add the counter-motion with you moving forward and still looking behind you and pointing to the landing spot.
I think you might find it easier to do a one-arm serp (dog-side arm) rather than a cross arm serp, because it is easier to run fast forward through them. He is going to be super fast so using one arm and connection (looking at the landing spot) will be easier for you because you will run more easily.
Nice work :)
Tracy
