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Hi!
>>And I decided to show you the meltdown instead of the good one.
Thanks for posting it! These are always the best sessions to learn from. It was not a meltdown – it was excellent feedback from the pup!
>>She seems frustrated, and I can see why. Then she barks at me for the First time in a training session??>>
She was saying that you were unclear about what was happening so she couldn’t get it right, and it was frustrating her. So like just about everything with puppy training… it is about mechanics and she was letting you know 🙂
At :09, you added too much distance, it was too hard, so she didn’t go to the prop. On the next rep at :15, it was still too hard with too much distance so she missed, but you started the reward delivery process of pulling the treat from your mouth to deliver it, then changed your mind. That was really frustrating for her (bark bark!) because by starting the reward delivery process you are essentially telling her she is correct but then when you withdraw it, you are telling her she is incorrect but by then, it is not clear what was incorrect.
You had a good couple of rewards closer, that really helped. Yay! No barking. Then an error at :30 which also looked like you were going to reward then didn’t.
You were closer at :46 and she was able to be successful. Yay!
And play the section from :49 – :55 and watch what you are doing, don’t watch her:
At :50 – you indicated the prop with too much distance while looking at her and not at the prop and while your other hand was moving the cheese stick to your mouth. So she had a lot of confusion about where to look and where to go, then didn’t get any reinforcement for trying… frustration!
When pups are frustrated, I count the # of reps and how it breaks down on reinforcement versus punishment to see what the overall rate of reinforcement for the session is. Pups should be working at 85% rate of reinforcement or higher so they don’t get frustrated, and being closer to 90% or 95% rate of reinforcement is even better! On this video, she was working at 65% rate of reinforcement which is why she was frustrated.
So what to change to listen to her feedback and reduce the frustration? Three suggestions:
– Stay closer for now – no need to add distance any time soon!
– Have all of your mechanics squarely in place before each rep. In this case, it means having the treat already in your hand, broken off the stick, ready to deliver (and not in your mouth because that adds an extra delay in delivery and pulls her eyes up to your mouth/face)
– pay close attention to the number of errors. We want to keep the rate of reinforcement really high so you will want no more than 2 errors in the session, total. If you get one error, make things simpler to ideally avoid another error in that session.So get that all ready, then engage with her, then while once and close to the prop, so the send (and with the countermotion and backwards sending, you can shift your connection from her eyes to looking at the prop). Then when she hits it, you can reward, then get ready for the next rep.
If you start to reward – don’t withdraw it even if you think maybe it was not the greatest rep. No worries! You can get closer to the prop. And if she misses, also no worries – get closer again so she doesn’t not continue to miss.
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>Crooked backing up here. Should I care? Trying to line her up better. Also her head lifting to look at me?>
Crooked backing up is generally a handler mechanics issue, when we ask for too much before the pup is ready. On this session, the video didn’t show how it started but I think you are a bit too far from the mat to start it, so she is not really targeting the mat at the beginning – it as just a little to hard at the start. So, you can start really close to the mat at the beginning of each session, and start her with all 4 feet on the mat to refresh the backing up. Then you can move back a little but we don’t need a lot of distance on this, so emphasizing being close and having good mechanics is key. Her head position during the backing up was mostly good – she only looked up at your face when you were talking to her while she was backing up, so be quiet til you mark the behavior 🙂
>>Should I reward if she doesn’t touch the mat?>
Yes – and if she doesn’t touch the mat, then you are adding too much distance too quickly, so move closer. On all of these behaviors, distance is the least important part of it all 🙂
>>She’s trying with enthusiasm.
Yes! She sure was!!! Good girlie!!!!!!
Nice work!
TracyGood morning!
>>When I first brought her home, I decided that the ‘yip’ was better for her than the clicker. And the first thing we worked on was eye contact, lots of eye contact. So I wonder if that’s part of why she looks up at me when I ‘yip’?>>
My guess is that all of these contribute to the looking at you: the stimulating sound, probably lots of reward delivery from your hand, and also emphasis on eye contact on the early days. And that is fine – as long as you use other markers like “get it” when we don’t want her to look at you.
>>Today we worked on Prop Work, Balance Bone, and Wobble Disc.
Since she’s now liking string cheese, I tried it for the Prop game, and voila…she perked up, was more excited, and went faster. I gave her tug breaks and that helped too.
For the bone, she was more than happy to get on, balance, offered a turn around right and left, hoping off to get back on, with tug breaks. Having fun.
The wobble disc still has flat towels underneath it. She’s excited to get on, happy to stay, turn around, hopp on and off with tug breaks. Tugging her into the room has really helped my mechanics.>>Great update! Yay! The understanding built through simple sessions & great rewards build up the confidence and that builds the speed.

>>So, she’s also happy to tug on the wobble disc. You mentioned her correct position tugging on it. Can you please describe her correct position or how do I get her into that position?>>We want her head to be low and her lower jaw parallel to the ground, so she can shift her weight into the rear. That will mean you will want to get really low (sit on the ground, perhaps?) and let her do all of the pulling back on the tug toy. You can move your hands side-to-side slowly, not up and down and not pulling forward.
>>Also, yesterday she did Not want me to take her collar, say to start the barrel game like some people did in live class. At one point she threw herself on her back when I took her collar. Ish!>>
But a little later she tolerated it for the toy race game. Weird.>>We want her to be happy about it, so try changing your mechanics: line her up in position where you want her to start with a cookie lure, slip a finger under the collar, then delivery the cookie. Don’t move her by the collar into position or pull the collar forward or back – that is when we see things like avoidance or rolling on the back. Most pups really don’t like being moved around by the collar.
Onward to the videos!
TracyGood morning!
Sounds like she had a great weekend! So fun! And I am excited to hear she is in a fun, small puppy class – those can be so valuable 🙂
Looking at the 2 wrap foundation videos:
On the first one:
The first part went perfectly! At 1:11, the cone was a little too far from the sweet spot but then she figured it out nicely in the next reps. Adding the 2nd cone seemed fine for her and got more distance. Yay!
Adding the 3rd cone was a big visual change for her, and really hard… you can see as soon as you did that at 2:19, she froze and looked at you. You helped her out with cookie dropped, but it was probably a little too hard in the moment (plus, at over 2 minutes, the session was a little long for her age and she was due for a dance break with the toy LOL :)) A quick 10 second dance break then returning to that setup can help her out when she has a big question.>trying to remove first cone. She takes the short cut every time. Not sure what to do except make the space available smaller. >>
The reason is that one of the modes of learning, enhancement, was directing her focus to the gap:
When you removed the cone closer to you, the gap between the cone and your feet became more noticeable which is why she immediately went to that space (enhancement of that space, by revealing it when you removed the cone that was there). And enhancement is a powerful, non-operant form of getting behavior. So rather than remove cones to reveal an unwanted space, gradually moving one cone out will get the behavior because it keeps the cone as the main focal point.
>>I know this is quite a long session but being a Border Collie she loves working so I lose track of time.>>
That’s the good news and bad news of Border Collies LOL!!! They will often continue to move their bodies for as long as we want, but it doesn’t mean they are in the ideal internal state and able to focus on the learning like we want. And it is really easy to lose track of time 🙂 So what you can do here is set a timer for 2 minutes and when it goes off, you can break the session off for some tugging, then come back and do another 2 minutes of shaping.
The trash can on the 2nd video went really well! You can jump start any new object by doing the quick cookie drops like we did a the very beginning of this game (so she goes “ah yes, this is the go around game” ).
She got into the groove really nicely and did super well with you standing!!!She has a little trouble when the barrel moves away (like at 1:28), so you can move it away very gradually, half an inch at a time. Distance is not that important right now, so you can move it away more gradually so she can get the first rep correct after you add distance.
The next step is to choose the object that you will stick with for the next several weeks, like a pop up laundry basket (or this trash can LOL!). Something easily portable will be good so that you can start to take the wrap games new locations in coming weeks. And after a session like this on the object you choose, you can move to the turn and burn game posted last week 🙂
She did really well getting onto the bog fit bone! What a brave little girl! Yay! When she has all 4 feet on the bone, while she is still small enough to fit comfortable – you can have her do position changes: sit, down, stand. You will probably need to lure these with a hand cue and/or cookie to give her a hand to focus on (it is harder than it looks to balance on the bone while changing position!)
Also, you can incorporate tugging before and during the sequence: the goal of adding the tugging is to teach her to use her body and develop good proprioception when she is in a higher arousal state, which she will be during agility when she needs the proprioception the most 🙂
Looking at the backing up:
The first 20 seconds were really strong backing up! So it is possible that it is simply a hard behavior (which it is) and all she had in her was 20 seconds of it. And yes, add in that the treat delivery might look like the down cue, and I can see why she went to the down behavior.>>I’m thinking of switching to using training gates to assist with learning a back up. They help with the puppy learning a straight back up too.>>
Yes, you can totally use training gates. That gets the backing up going for sure!
The other option is look at the game from last week:This adds back foot targeting and can help her figure out the difference between the down and the backing up. Starting her with all four feet on the mat and the just starting with front feet backing up, then getting all four feet off the mat and going to back feet stepping back onto it – that can help clarify things for her.
And to help avoid the down behavior, 2 ideas:
Sit in a chair or on balance ball or something like that so you are not bending over.
Deliver the reward with her head higher, in a more neutral position: jaw parallel to the ground and her nose pointing at you 🙂
Let me know how it goes!Great job here!!
TracyGood morning! Thanks for your patience, I am finally home! Great weather made it easy, but it is still incredibly long. I am happy to not drive anywhere, any time soon LOL!!!
One thing to consider on both the first and 2nd videos here: there are a lot of large visual things in the environment, and both of these games ask her to pick out something relatively small… and the giant visuals of the tunnel/teeter/jump are inhibiting the behavior a bit. Is there a clear place on the floor to play this? Or can you move the jump away so she is further from the other stuff?
On the toy races, she did start to drive ahead really nicely! It took her a moment to ‘see’ the toy in the environment and then she as driving to it really nicely. Yay!
You can now start more of the toy race variation, building on the motion you had here: keep throwing it far like you were doing at the end, so she keeps driving ahead even as you run faster and faster. And every now and then, throw in a rep where you try to beat her even if you cheat to win a little 🙂 And if you can’t beat her to the toy, that is cool too 🙂
On the hat sends – the forward sends are looking good with some nice distance too!
The sideways and backwards sends are much harder in general, but I don’t think it was the treats in your hands that caused her questions – adding in the visual distractions around her made it harder (you can see her looking around a bit more and responding less, especially on the left turn backwards sends). Getting closer to the hat totally helped but I also think getting further from the jump and tunnel will really help too. The environment is really challenging: other obstacles, other people, other dogs squeaking in the background 🙂 so we want to reduce the environmental distraction as much as possible 🙂 Then it will all lock in really nicely and you will be able to add the countermotion as well.
Barrel wraps are going well! You had a couple of good reps at the beginning and at :23 it looks like she left a cookie to do the wrap! Yay!!
You can be a bit wilder with the toy when you do the FC and run, so she is more stimulated by it as the reward.
>>One of the workers came out of her office and it was a bit too much of a distraction
Yes- that was when you switched to the left turn wraps and she whacked it with a paw, then left to explore the distraction. And if it was the 3rd session, she might have also been a bit mentally tired.
>>Wing Wrap – cone (5/14) This went much better with the cone! Is Ginger a righty or a lefty?>>
Not sure if you had a video here? She did well to the right on the barrel and had a question to her left, so she might be a righty but more video evidence will help us sort it out more 🙂
Great job!!!
TracyYes! The home session looked GREAT! High success, low pressure. The stay is a tiny piece of the puzzle, so it doesn’t not have to be the main focal point.
T
Good morning! Thanks for your patience, I am finally home!
Great job on these sessions!! Operation Surviving Adolescence is really all about frustration reduction for the pup (and the handler :)) because their adolescent brains are just not set up to process errors or big changes or frustration. So you did a great job on both sessions of keeping things fast and fun and highly reinforcing, so he was able to process really well and be successful!!
One thing I realize is that based on what we starting to learn about adolescent dog brains: sometimes they cannot process info like cues and how to respond because that part of their brain underdeveloped (science!) and that is particularly true when there is a distraction. With a distraction, their brain might prioritize processing the distraction, and cue response processing definitely gets reduced.
Distractions can be stuff like smells or other dogs, and also frustration if there are too many errors. And when we reduce distractions, the brain can process cues better. So when we reduce frustration from failure, the brain can process everything else better as you saw here. YAY!!!!
He did really well with the games in the first part of the session. He had a couple of bars down when he was set up really close to the bar, so you can use a bump or lock the bars in so he isn’t rehearsing dropping bars (and we don’t want to punish bars).
Be sure to mix in games without stays – there were probably still too many stays here, even short ones with rewards 🙂 It is ok if his stay behavior takes longer to percolate because it is such a hard behavior! So you can start a to of reps with cookies tosses or have someone hold him if other people are around. Again, that help his teenage brain prioritize info: if he doesn’t have to think about holding the stay and also reading a Serp cue, for example, the serp cues will go much better.
During the home session:
>>I decided to try a different approach to training in my yard. Instead of letting him roam the yard while I set up, I crated him before and also in between sessions.>>
It is interesting to see the difference! Perhaps he was expending too much mental energy exploring etc while you set up or between turns and didn’t have much left for the training. It might not have seemed like he was expending energy, but he was and we can see the difference here! He did really well with the game here, finding the jump whenever you cued it. The one time you didn’t cue it (you didn’t have thew connection or verbal or motion to it at 5:29 like you did on other reps) he didn’t take it – so you can reward and reset that anyway, because that is handler error (especially since you started to throw the toy then withdrew it)
Compare that to the next rep at 5:38, which had very clear info!
Great job with seeing any potential errors or frustration, and shifting things towards success. What a massive difference it made in both session!!!!! Not a fluke!! Love it!!!!!!!
And don’t get discouraged if he wakes up tomorrow and can’t do any of this LOL!!! Teenage brains….. if that happens, you can do something else and try again a few days later 🙂
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>Did I tell you yet that I hate Quail??>>
Haha yes, you might have mentioned that… 😄 🤣
She did well here too! When you send her around the barrel, try not to step to the side at all, we don’t want your leg or arm visible on the other side of the barrel (we don’t want her to think that is part of the cue). Just send her then stand still, feet together… then when she hits the line, you can turn and run like you did.
And, when you do the FC and run, especially with food – run pretty far so she really chases you a lot more, rather than prepare to stop. It is this chasing that helps the pups really set up amazing turns 🙂
You can try using a long crazy toy to combat the birds!
And yes, we often have sessions that don’t go so well… the neuroscientist behavior people tell us to not worry, and that the dog brain is still learning. So, stopping the session and trying again later or the next day can totally make massive improvements, like you saw here.
Great job on all of these! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Rears are hard for puppies! To help her out, get started with a bunch of parallel path reps, so she gets warmed up driving ahead – then you can throw in a rear. If you can get behind her and on the other side early enough, she will read it nicely (like the last rep).
Then, since a rear will tend to put dogs into handler focus, after one rear you can go back to several parallel path reps to make sure she is driving ahead on the line again.Handing her the treat can work for the rear but not for the parallel path… so you can use a toy! You’ll have to get the toy back after each rep, but that’s fine because she’ll have a great time and be less likely to find bird poop 🙂
Tracy
Hi!
Yes, there are a ton of things to do with this little game, so many mechanics! It gets the handler to be super quick, which means eventually running courses will fill much easier!!!
You did a great job- she had fun, she read all the cues, she got lots of rewards 🙂 Your connection was super clear and that totally made everything clearer for her.I noticed that when she got to you, she sometimes jumped up a bit – that might be that the decel can come a little sooner so she shifts into collection sooner. So, try to decel when she is half way to you.
Or, it could have been that she thought it was toy time, so now the decel hand can be empty or have a cookie, and you can throw the toy from the other hand 🙂 She accelerated to the toy at the end beautifully!!!
Great job 🙂
TracyHi!
Another really strong session here! You got her the perfect distance from the foot target so the backing up and head position looked really great.>>I’m starting to see how my ‘yip’ causes her to look up at me>>
The yip is click-like in how stimulating it is, so like a click, she looks up. The quieter ‘good’ kept her head low. And, to start adding more distance, you’ll need to toss a treat to her so that is where you can use your “get it” or “catch” markers, which will also help her not look at you 🙂
So now you can oh-so-gradually add distance, literally an inch at a time, getting to her to come further off the foot target then back up to it. There is no big rush to add distance, though, because the correct mechanics she had here are far more important than longer distances.
Nice work!
TracyGood morning!
This session looked great – very playful, and her retrieves were lovely! Not much to suggest here because it went so well… just remember to wait a heartbeat between the ‘out’ of the toy and throwing it, so she doesn’t miss the throw (that happened one time, the throw was too quick). The rest was pretty darned perfect!
TracyHi!
The jump grid looked really strong!!! She was balanced and striding beautifully! What was the height of the back on the 9 foot distances? Maybe raise it 2 more inches 🙂
But on the 12 foot distance, put the bar back down to a pretty low height – she is not having an issue, but she was trying to decide if she wanted to do 2 strides (which is what she did here) or one stride. I want to convince her to do an extended one stride (stride 2 here was short and a little uncomfortable at :33 so the low bar might help her feel comfy add the extension 🙂 She might still be a but young to get the big one-stride (her power and speed are still developing, which is exciting AND a little scary hahahaha) so no worries if she still does 2 strides, we will let it percolate 🙂Lateral lead outs:
>>Admittedly, although I reviewed my notes before we started, they weren’t as precise as usual, so I think I was doing this right for the Advanced level, but I might have missed something.>>
She is doing well! The more you turn and face the takeoff spot, the happier she is to drive to it. Yay! You can add more of a step to it as well, which will come in handy when there is even more distance.
At this stage, when she commits to 1, you can take off and run past 2 (which is what you were doin more of after 1:15 🙂 You were doing post turns but you can also try serving that jump (you might want to angle the serp jump to help her out.
And when you are on the landing side of jump 1 (takeoff of jump 2), do the FC and get her to take the #3 jump, like you did at the very end (and the tunnel was a fun addition!). And you can alternate between a a full rotation to the tunnel, and a throwback/countermotion to get collection and a wrap on 2 (no tunnel :))Great job!!
TracyHi!
Thank you for the Ronin update!!! It I a relief to get a firm diagnosis and it is not orthopedic. The gastroc is actually something I head about all the time in agility. Sounds like there is a good plan now. I am sad to miss you and Ronin in June, but SUPER glad he is on the road to recovery.
This was a good plankrobatics setup! Part of the fun is using all sorts of weird looking setups, so this was perfect. And the smaller board was pretty narrow so he really had to think bout his back feet – don’t move too fast yet when going back and forth because that is where he kind of feel off with this back feet 🙂 But definitely keep using that narrow plank, it is a good one for him!
Parallel path – he definitely love his prop!
I think at this point, you can fade the clicker (because it causes him to look at you a bit) and just use a “get it” and throw the reinforcement. As soon as you throw and he gets to it, turn and go the other direction immediately so when he finished eating, he can turn around and hit the prop again going the other way. You were restarting with him after most reps, but you can make it a little loop and just toss then turn the new direction.
>>After watching the video I see on this one that I ended up being a bit farther away laterally than I thought I was and thus it was harder than I intended,>>
Yes, being lateral was totally fine because he could more easily see you with his peripheral vision 🙂 The other thin you can add is to move a little faster – a fast walk then a little jog 🙂
Countermotion – he is doing well here! For the start, use the ready game: have him in front of and then send back – so that way he doesn’t rehearse sitting then moving without a release (or confusing him with you point but don’t release :)) He was offering sits so we don’t want to confuse the stay, so we just avoid the sit here entirely 🙂
I think you were a but too far from the prop at the beginning, so do a war up on each side of being pretty close to he prop, then you can increase the distance: rather than start where you left off on the last session, you can start 50% closer as a refresher and then gradually increase the distance after getting some success.
One other thing I noticed was that he was turning to his right on some of the reps when he should have been turning to his left (like 1:39, 1:47 for example). So on the right turn reps, step off to the side like a triangle line (instead of moving up and back on the same line to exaggerate the left turn line, to hep him make that left turn.
Right wraps are going really well! When you do the FC when he arrives at the line, you can take off and run run run to make the reward even more exciting 🙂
Since this is his strong side, you can probably progress more quickly by moving the line to a slightly harder position after every 2 reps and see how he does!
Left wraps are also going well! You delayed your FC a little extra which was good to solidify the left turns, but you can also try moving the line after every two reps, The difference can be that on the left wraps, you will move the line by an inch 🙂 and o the right wraps, you can move the line by 3 or 4 inches at a time since it is easier 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Lots of great work here! She is doing so well, especially with the distractions of the other dog watching and people around!Looking at the sideways and triangle videos:
I like more of the ‘all business, less touchy” approach on the sideways sending – she seemed happier with this crazy game 🙂
Start each session super close as a mental refresher, then add more distance. She would often go towards the prop but not really hit it, so there were a few too many failures. Start each session about 50% closer than where you left off in the last one s she can have her “oh yeah no I remember” moment 🙂 then you can build up the distance more pretty rapidly.>>Noticed she turned the wrong way a couple times. Brought her back out later and did front sends so they made a triangle shape and BAM! Perfection on turns.>>
The triangle approach totally helped her! Yay! Interestingly, I believe she turns away in both directions so it is not a side preference, may be something about the pressure on the line? Rear crosses will be easy to teach 🙂
You can also try to use toys on this – can she leave the toy toy to go hit. The prop? Start super close on those at the beginning, in case the toy is super simulating 🙂
Parallel path is looking good too – she had a bit of a lightbulb moment on the 3rd rep where, when she was chasing you to catch up, she went out of her way to go hit the prop – huzzah!! Then the rest went well too. You can revisit this one one more time just like this – and if she is all like “I remember this, no problem” then you can add more lateral distance away on both sides.
Decel with BC – she is reading all the handling here really nicely!!! Because you are using a stay, you might want to lead out further before you release, then start to run when you release – she failed a couple of times of the stay when you were going fast and we want to avoid that – so a long lead )because she I a speedy little devil LOL!) following by release then run should help her with the stay and also with a giant head start for you.
>>Maybe one day I will learn how to decel properly. >>
Actually… I thought you did really well! You were early and that helped, plus she was beginning to predict what was happening as you started to decel, so you had less popping up as you decelerated especially towards the end of the session. Now, with a bigger head start, you can totally start it sooner (when she is halfway to you – you were tending to start it when she was more like 2/3rd to you) and that should get even more tight turning. She did a great job driving ahead to the toy after the decel! Try to win that toy race – don’t lay off at all and see what happens if you really accelerate (she will probably still smoke you haha!) end!!
Barrel wraps are also going well – patience is a virtue and all haha! When you were patient: absolutely perfect! When you were early and perhaps not patience – like just as she was driving at the barrel at the beginning – she didn’t finish the wrap to the right.
And as you turn and have her drive to the toy, take off and run more so she really digs in and chases you around the barrel.
I think the left wraps were a little stickier, a little harder? Maybe she is a righty which is 100% NOT what she told us on Wednesday LOL! We will figure it out. Maybe it was because the left wraps were in the 2nd part of the session, so next time try them first?
In future sessions, keep advancing the timing when yo uFC and run, bit by bit, to be able to leave earlier and earlier. Great job adding the verbals!!
>>I’m so happy with how she lined up next to me with these sessions. I continue to work on the neck/collar grabs and desensitization. I threw a little bit in during this training session but not much. She let me know when she wasn’t happy and I listened>>
YES!!! I loved it! It looked like a stress free thing with the lineups in this video and the others too. Yay! You did slide in a little collar touch or petting her but not too much, and you were great about not pushing her with it. She will keep getting happier and happier with it 🙂
Great job!!
Tracy
