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Good morning!
>>Our session last evening was so bad that I almost did not submit this video. But there were a few nice things. My leaning over and steering with my behind was not one of them!>>
After reading this but before watching the video, I was expecting disaster LOL!! Nope, not disaster at all!!! Tons of good stuff 🙂 The main thing here is to use more connection and less pointing – the pointing forward to the wing was what was causing the questions, because it breaks connection when he is behind you and he does not know where to be. For giggles, try to run the whole thing looking at his eyes, closer to the wings, no pointing 🙂 I bet it is much easier because he is terrific when you are connected!
For example:
:39 – nice connection when he exits the tunnel and you cue the wing, so he commits really well.
:40 – he is done with the wing and you look ahead to the next wing, so he looks at you (connection is breaking)
:41 – you point ahead, connection is broken, he jumps on your back (information seeking and frustration).So try it with just eye contact, using the verbals here but not trying to send or point. As a side note, you were doing spins on the wings rather than blinds, so keep reminding yourself to turn away from him for the blinds. But the handling (blind versus spin) is less important than the connection, so prioritize the connection or now 🙂
>> I tried doing the latter grid, but I was by myself and we had several failures with him staying. Later that evening I took him for a walk and asked for a few stays, and used a few different releases. He was perfect so either it’s something with his understanding of doing it in my yard are in front of equipment he knows there is a higher reinforcement history.>>
Or all of the above! The history in front of jumps is basically about arousal. My guess is that dong a stay in front of a jump grid is more stimulating, and also a lot more challenging. Doing it on a walk might be challenging in new places, but less so because there is no jump and also less stimulating.
>>Or is this just his adolescence
Adolescence makes it harder when he gets frustrated and fails. So from now on…. no more failure with stays! Otherwise frustration gets built in and we definitely don’t know that.
So how to avoid failure in stays? Don’t ask for them in there is even a tiny chance of failure 🙂
Work them separately – on a mat or platform, on walks, in different places, on the flat with no obstacles, then eventually with a jump wing around (but not releasing to the wing, just releasing to a reward). Then you can gradually add the stays back in to agility stuff, when a longer history of successful stays has been developed. You can train the skills either with a cookie toss start, or by having someone hold him instead of a stay, for now.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! I definitely am liking what she was doing here!!!! Nice form!
And yes, the awkward bounce distance (reps 2 and 4) is still a weird distance, but her head position and form was much better here with the moving target – so she bounced it more easily. And the one-stride on rep 3 looked great!So – what are the distances here? Remind me, I am a little caffeine deprived LOL! I am asking because we can do a slight adjustment in the order of festivities here: using the distance in rep 3, you can make rep 4 another 3 feet wider than the distance from rep 3. She should still do a balanced one stride (or maybe 2 strides, that is fine too). And after she sees it at the lower height, you can raise the height for rep 5 by 2 inches (no need to change the distance at all since we are raising the height) and then for rep 6, either keep it the same height or if she looked very comfy, you can raise it another 2 inches. And then be done after rep 6 🙂 And use the moving target on all of these, it really produces great form 🙂
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>.Noticed that Changtse was slow until I said “Yes!”, then she sped up. How to incorporate into the sequences more?>>
Yes, I totally see what you mean! The handling was correct, her lines were correct (even the one time when she was on the wrong side of the wing at :45 was because you pushed into the line so she was still correct).
So looking at why she was not moving fast on a lot of it:
– the ‘yes’ is a reward marker so she definitely perked up when you said ‘yes’ – which also probably means that you will need to mix rewards in more frequently and in the early parts of sequences.
– I think the ‘yes’ markers also generally coincided with tunnels, and she was faster through tunnels here – so more rewards for wrapping wings will help balance the value too
– rewarding for the wings will also build value for when you decelerate and keep her going fast even when you are not. Whenever you took off and really ran, she was plenty speedy 🙂 When you were decelerated, she matched that by decelerating. So for now, you can get closer to the wings so you can drive more and accelerate more… and throw the toy more frequently for the wing wrapping and not just tunnels.
– as the weather gets hotter, you might find she loses steam faster with thrown toys. You can start with a thrown toy for a rep or two, then go to a thrown lotus ball with high value food. That might help keep the speed up as temperatures get warmer.The handling is going well, so we can emphasize getting more speed 🙂 Let me know what you think!
TracyShe was a brave girl in those different environments! How are the pattern games going? The field trips are good for exposing her to different environments, and the pattern games will help get engagement in different environments.
>>Not sure how much training I’ll get in with Mochi. Maybe just being at a trial experience.>>
No need to train anything at all – just being at a 2 ring trial is plenty challenging for a baby dog! Just let her experience life at a safe distance from anything that might be challenging.
>>>So, I’ll be starting to get her out with a baby class. She’s so social I’m a bit concerned about getting her to work with me. Any suggestions?
In a baby puppy class, working with you is not the goal. The skill are not important! Being comfortable in that environment is the MOST important thing. Then the next thing is seeing if she can eat cookies and play with toys (but not in the same session). And if she is too close to people or puppies, and it having trouble ignoring them? Move her further away or put up a visual blocker. Again, any skills are unimportant – it is the engagement and fun that we want!
This is where I definitely recommend that the pattern games get pumped up into good shape: I use those pattern games to bring my pups into new environments all the time so the first thing the pups does is relax and engage 🙂 The rest is easy once we have that!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
She was definitely happier with the barrel here – cookie line ups for the win! She has really good value for the barrel so did well here. You can line up with a single cookie, no need to lure her all the way back to it, and that will help her have a moment to breathe and then line up.>>I figure since we don’t have a stay, and I can’t hold her, it’s very hard to expect her not to run after a tossed toy when we play fetch for fun and don’t want to ruin my retrieve.>>
What you did on the last rep was a good start to being able to place the toy. You just put it down and she got a cookie (I am 100% confident she saw you put it down). And you can build up to her seeing you place the toy and then get a cookie for moving away with you. Eventually it builds to tossing the toy.You won’t ruin the retrieve, because if she goes to the toy too soon, you can reward her for bringing it to you (god girl!) then you can place the toy again with quicker reinforcement for *not* going to it.
Great job!
TracyHi!
Looking at Strike a pose:
>>One treat, show her the treat, let her see it as I throw, that’s our best shot.>>
Yes, that definitely helps her, along with a visible treat and maybe one that makes a little noise when it lands. It was good clean mechanics, without rushing. Clarity is the way to go! You can also put a towel on the ground and toss the treat onto a towel, so it is more of a target for the tossed treat and easier for her to find.
>>had to put some peanut butter on the target to build up its value.>>
Ah, that would explain why she was a bit sniffy coming to it… peanut butter! And it made it harder for her to engage with the toy (a slightly longer toy might help her be able to grab the toy more too – she was interested in the toy but didn’t quite get a mouth on it all the time before you took it for the next rep).
One other thing that will help the target value is if you look at the target and not at her. Have the target out to the side like you did here, and look at it so she goes where you are looking. I am not sure the peanut butter on the target is helping much – yes, she is going to the target hand but really she is going to peanut butter 🙂 We want her to offer behavior on the least salient thing here (the target) and then get the big prizes 🙂
>>n between these vids we had discouraging session, she couldn’t find the tossed treats and just couldn’t get her in the rhythm of the game. So I regrouped, applied more peanut butter and tried again with a lot more energy, and tried to be very distinct with the treat I was tossing. She seemed to respond well.>>
Yes, the clarity of the mechanics made a big difference! For the tossed treats to start each rep, it is really hard to see them (I can’t see them at all) so doing this on a mat or tossing the treat onto a towel can give even ore clarity about where it is, so she can find it quickly.
Nice work!
TracyHi!
Hi!
She is beginning to get the idea of the rears! Yay!For the rear crosses, do several warm up reps of the parallel path to get her driving to the prop ahead of you – that will make the rear crosses much easier! Basically, when you turn and start moving towards the prop, she should drive ahead to it. She was looking at your cookie hand a lot here which made it harder to get her to focus ahead of you. So the dog side hand can be empty, and you can toss the treat from the other hand (also, highly recommend using a toy for this because toy throws tend to get the pups driving ahead better than cookie throws!).
Since she is already getting the idea, I think adding in the warm up of the parallel path to get her driving ahead will make a massive difference, because then you can cut behind her earlier and set the handling line for the RC.
Nice work!
TracyHi!
This is going well! She is turning well and has fabulous value for the prop!
>>I could tell I needed to get my hands lower to keep her from jumping up. >>
It was not a lower hands thing, but instead a timing thing. One tweak in the mechanics will smooth it all out:
Be sure to start her with a tossed cookie away from you so you can be ahead and moving to cue this. That way, when she arrives at your leg, you are already cuing the tandem turn. When she starts next to you and you both start moving at the same time, the cue is already late 🙂 That is why she was jumping up and getting a little frantic: information seeking! Yes, keep your hands low for now, but starting earlier and with her behind you will make a big difference.
Nice work!
TracyHi!
You definitely got the ball rolling in the 2nd video with the sits. I think part of what is cuing the sit (without you realizing it) is body pressure towards her and probably a bit of a hand lure – my guess is both of these are built in without you realizing it – on the first video you didn’t have any real pressure towards her and your hands were up high. She was BIG MAD, had no idea what you wanted (and the word is not that powerful for her yet).
On the 2nd video, note how you were stepping towards her on the cues especially at the beginning – that is what she is cuing off of. The most obvious example is at :23-ish.
And she might also be waiting on a hand cue – ether luring up from when you stand up after tossing. Treat, and/or when you put your hand in the cookie pouch. Her sit offers were much better when that happened LOL!! So it is probably just a matter of there are cues that she recognizes and you don’t realize they are there 🙂So for the sit, you can use those cues then fade them out. A little lean towards her that gets gradually less and less will help, and a little hand cue is fine too!
Nice work!
TracyHi!
About the sits – ideally, the pup offers the sit but if a sit is not on their radar, you can totally help with a hand signal. To help get the sit into the repertoire of things to offer, be sure you are playing in a relatively sterile spot at first – nothing else to offer behavior on or go over to check out 🙂And it is fine to help the pup with a hand signal – that can easily be faded. And also getting the behavior with a hand signal can make it very easy to add the verbal cue: say the verbal then a heartbeat later do the hand signal (but not at the same time :))
You will probably be able to get this game rolling really well with a couple of reps with the hand signal – then you can delay the signal or not give it and see if she offers (then click/reward or release to the tug, depending on which version of it you are playing 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
Looking at the pattern games:
Indoor pattern game is looking good, she is happy to return engagement to you. 2 suggestions:
– Use a ‘get it’ instead of ‘yes’ when you toss the treat
– For when we take the pattern into harder situations, toss the treat side to side in roughly the same spots each time so she is going on one line across the front of you, rather than to all different angles around you. Back-and-forth on the same line makes it more predictable, which is very useful for the pups.Outside was a little harder to find the treats but also there are more sights/smells so part of it was that she was assessing the environment a bit. And that is great! It is pretty much what we want from the pattern games. Using the most obvious treat possible will help, but as will using consistent placement side-to-side rather than all around
Strike a pose 1:
This went well! Your mechanics and ‘pose’ were really good, and she came driving into the target each time. Super! This is going really nicely!About the toy – Definitely use it before the cookies come out, so she gets more interested in the toy. And during a cookie session, add toy play after every 3 or 4 cookies, so she doesn’t get fully engrossed in cookies 🙂 After all the cookies, you can introduce the toy in a different spot (so there are fewer cookie smells), even if it is on the other side of the deck. And then have the toy move away from her rather than towards her. You can have her chase it while you drag it, or you can. Throw it like toy races – all of that will pump up the toy play. In this clip, the toy was moving towards her and right in the cookie spot, so she was not interested in grabbing it.
Strike a pose 2:
She did tug on the fries here which is great! It took a moment to get her on it – so you can throw it after she touches the target. At :50 she targeted to it, because that is where you were looking LOL!!I think what was happening here is that she was beginning to understand that the toy is a possibility in this behavior and not just cookies, even after the tossed ‘start’ cookie. Yay!! And yes, the strike a pose element went really well too, but the the cookie-to-toy was the best part 🙂
Looking at the 2 tunnel sessions –
>>had a great level of fascination with it which made recalling her more challenging so I used an occasional food treat fro coming back to me.>>
You can absolutely create a little loop of cookie line up – tunnel – MM – cookie line up 🙂 That will bring her back faster as she sorts out the magical cookie dispensing machine 🙂
On the first session: I didn’t see any loss of focus or robin-visiting in this session 🙂 but being outdoors and with the MM being relatively new, I suggest scrunching up the tunnel for both of these sessions. Having it fully extended added a level of difficulty in terms of distance that we don’t need quite yet. And starting it scrunched up makes the obstacle easier because the environment is harder.
She did well with the offering here but had a few questions. Part of it was the length of the tunnel and part of it was the start position: when you want her to offer, face the tunnel (not her) which will imply more permission to offer. Facing her and looking at her draws her focus off the tunnel and to you.On the 2nd session, the higher arousal ready ready tunnel tunnel helped plus you were facing the tunnel, which gave her a clearer cue to go to it. Try to stay closer to the opening for now – the further back you moved, the more she started to ask a little question – so another session or two closer to the entry will solidify it. And scrunch it up so it is maybe half the length, especially as you add angles and work in the threadle side.
You can definitely loop her back with a cookie in your hand to line up and to start the next rep. Without the line up cookie, you were pulling her a little bit and I think she had some avoidance of that. So a line up cookie will reset her where you want her, then you can take her collar and start the game 🙂Lap turn – I think she is doing well with both sides here, the main thing is to make the mechanics sooner )not faster, just sooner 🙂 Here is what I mean:
As soon as you toss the start cookie, you should present your cue hand immediately so that she sees it before she even turns all the way back to you. Get the cue hand fully extended and down to her nose level, so the instant she turns back to you, she can lock onto the correct hand. That will make the rest of it easier, because you will have more time to show the rest of the cue!
What was happening on a lot of the reps, especially on the cues that felt awkward, was that you were tossing the start cookie then getting the next cookie out of the pocket and then presenting the cue hand… which was often after she turned back to you and was heading to you. This was causing her to focus on your face and not your hand (because the hand was not clearly in place yet) which delayed the response to the cues.So the tweak of having the cue cookie already in your hand as you toss the start cookie then immediately going into the cue will make things a lot smoother and then you can add the prop pretty easily 🙂
Tandem turn – On this one you hd the turn cookies and hand cues ready before she even got to the start cookie, so it worked really well on both sides 🙂 And you got the timing of the turn going nicely too – the hands start the turn then the feet turn, like you did on the last rep.
>>Later we included the prop. I find it interesting that the prop is not a bigger draw for her. We always have to go back to re-introducing it to JJ and building up its importance before we play a game with the prop included. >>
I think she did well looking for the prop! The marker and timing of the reward was what was probably causing her to look at you a little more and at the prop a little less – you can marker earlier (when you see her looking at and heading to the prop) then use your ‘get it’ and toss the treat ahead. That will isolate the moment of commitment to the prop and keep her looking at it. The prop is basically a jump replacer and a focal point for concept training, so you will see her stride over it in these games (and also the parallel path games). She is more likely to hit it with a foot on the collection games where she has to decelerate. But her commitment to it is looking really strong here, no need to ask her t slow down to hit it at this stage – we just want her to drive to it 🙂
>>I have not figured out a way to deter myself from doing that. If you have any suggestions let me know. Maybe I need to use a painters tape line that I am not supposed to cross.>>
I am a big fan of lines on the ground LOL!! I use a light leash to keep myself on the right path so I can see it and also so I won’t fall on it LOL!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Looks like Pap Nationals was a blast!!!
Great job on all of these games – she is doing really well!!!!
Miss SQL was a brilliant girl with the threadle/serp foundation game! The target warm up at the beginning was not all the exciting, she said LOL! But then things got spicy and fun when you added the toy and more moving in to the target. Yay! That was her first time with a toy on the ground – superstar!!
Looking at the next steps: I think feeding her at the target was actually delaying her progress here (she was like “why are you stopping me and making me eat” LOL!), so you can fade that out: when she arrives at the target, you can mark with a reward cue like “get it” for the toy on the ground. You did that at 2:25 and she liked it a whole lot. When you use the toy marker, try not to move your shoulders. Keep your shoulders frozen in place. We want her to go to it while you keep your arm/shoulder open for the threadle (think of it as on a threadle slice, where we want the dogs to automatically take the jump without you needing to turn your shoulders to it at all :))
Turn and burn to the left – This is going well too!!
Keep using the food to line her up – she is doing well with it but still not ready for a cookie-free line up 🙂Make sure you step forward to the barrel and don’t step sideways or back til she hits her commitment point. At 1:28, for example, you didn’t really step forward then stepped sideways and it pulled her right off the commitment. So do the big step forward then wait (that is the hardest part haha) til she reaches the line, then do the FC and run run run 🙂
Wraps to the right – very nice transitions from the toy play to the line up cookie! That looked smooth! More of this will be very happy-making for you both! She was not as smooth going to the right here – harder side? Already did a big session to the left and was mentally tired? Either way, keeping it short was smart, and being patient with your timing also helped her a lot. You can start with the right next time and see how it goes – latent learning will work its magic and she will be smooth to the right too!
>>I haven’t been able to get much distance away from the barrel yet.>>
No worries about the distance for now. With Turn And Burn, stay really close to the barrel so you can add gradually more and more countermotion.
You can add distance to the barrel using this handling combo game:
Start really close then gradually get further and further away, being ultra patient on the sends to the barrel (no need to start to turn until she arrives at the barrel AND turns her head to make the wrap :))
Prop sending is going well, this is where the distance is really beginning to percolate! It will transfer nicely to the barrels and wings eventually. And yes, she is understanding the turn direction a lot better here!
She had a little trouble in 2 spots here:
One was at the beginning here and to be honest, I think it was the bizarre noises in the background (like a screeching animal LOL!) So she was a little sniffy, kind of like “those stressed animal noises are stressing me out!” As soon as that stopped…. Totally engaged. So rather than do a training session when that is going on, you can use your pattern games to help her cope with the bizarro noises (because those noises are stressful!). The pattern games will help her assess the weird noises and shift her focus away from them, then you can go into the training.
Also – she still does not like being handled in this context, so don’t do it 🙂 You are getting stress responses in the form of avoidance and almost got a zoomie at one point – so don’t put the pressure on her about being handled as part of this game (or any game). Be careful not to mistake the stress response for engagement. What works brilliantly with her is to use a toy reward (she will love that!) and then trade for a cookie as you line up for the next rep, which is what you did with the right turn barrel wraps. That worked like a charm! And the collar holding can be built up separately but in the grand scheme of things, it is not that important that you hold her at the start. Happy, stress-free sessions are more important.
The last video was the same as the 2nd to last video. Let me know if there was support to be a different one with rear crosses 🙂
Great job here!! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning! This session went well!
He is hitting his target like a BEAST! LOL!! Keeping the target low worked really nicely. That part was super easy, on both sides. Yay! And he is turning the correct direction after each hit, so the in-then-out pattern looked great!
I think his only question was about where the reward was coming. You were using a general “yes” but I think sometimes you were wanting to feed from your hand and not toss? But he was looking at the ground, then when you tossed on to start the next rep, he didn’t always know where to look. Easy fix – use your markers! If “yes” means from your hand, then deliver from your hand. And if you would rather toss it, use a ‘get it’ marker. And definitely use the get it to start each rep and let him see you toss it, to direct his focus to where the cookie went 🙂 That will help smooth things out because he will know exactly where to look to get the reward or start the rep.
Great job!
Tracy
