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Good morning!
> He is getting a little better about me reaching for him and picking him up. I have been scooting backward with a treat and he comes to me and will put his legs on me. So it’s becoming more of a good thing>>
This is great!!!! That is quick progress – keep up the good work being patient and making it super fun for him to come in close to you!
He is a cone-wrapping rockstar! So fun! And yes, he sorted it out nicely when the cone got further away. Good boy! You can ping pong the distance: start easy, then do a couple of reps with the cone a bit further, then pull it in closer for a couple of reps, then push it even further away… then bring it in closer to an easy position. That will help him really lock onto it.
>> Should I start with a wing and have it closer to me since that will change the picture?
There are two ways we can move to the next step with this. I suggest doing both, in separate sessions:
– using the same cone you had here, change your position to sitting in a chair. That changes the picture pretty substantially for a little dude, so bring the cone back in closer for the start of the session. His confidence will tell you if you can push the cone back out or not. The goal of this is to have you sitting as part of the gradual progression to you standing up.
– while you are still on the ground like you were here, swap the cone out for a wingless upright (not a full wing yet, try for a tall skinny upright that is halfway between the cone and a full wing). And as you mentioned – bring it in closer to you to start because you are changing the picture and we want him to be successful. And if he is highly successful, you can push it back out 🙂
>> was kinda a bad trainer, you can hear Connor whining in the background… he wanted to play. But Casper didn’t seem bothered by it.>>
I didn’t even notice it LOL! Casper seemed fine. And I think whining to play is different that dog police barking LOL!
Great job here! Let me know how he does with the next steps!
TracyGood morning! Great session here!
Both sides looked pretty equal here, I didn’t see her asking any questions even as the cone got further away. Super!Do you have a jump upright for a wingless jump? You can replace the cone with that. Start it maybe 50% closer to you than the cones ended up here to see how she processes a new item. If she is fine with it, you can move it back out pretty quickly. I believe she will be fine with it but I always like to make sure before we add too much more challenge 🙂
Yes, the bowls were further back and can still be further back – and we can also fade the bowls out entirely. That gets us a little ahead of the game, but that is fine :). You can fade them by moving them further back while getting the cookies in them, and then moving them behind you entirely while plopping the cookies where the bowls used to be 🙂 You can also replace the bowls with smaller targets like post it notes or something if she struggles at all without the bowls – but somehow I don’t think she will struggle 🙂
You are welcome to post more videos, or you can hold off til we build on this game soon 🙂 I am always happy to watch whatever you want to post.
Great job!
TracyHi! So much good work here!
I think the send session went pretty darned well! I agree that she got amped up but I don’t think it was the clicker – I think it was when you were REALLY exciting with the ready dance and she was leaping around, she was in leap mode for the prop too. When you were more calm for the ready dance and she stood with all 4 feet on the ground – great prop hits, whether or not you had the clicker. So she can totally stay 4 on the floor in the ready dance 🙂 And if she is not perfect, you can still reward for the effort of leaving you to go to the prop. You can also try this with a toy, because the toy will be more stimulating and that will challenge her to hit the prop even when she is more stimulated 🙂
The decel game also went well – the towel was SMART!!! She is a powerful girl, so from now on, always do the pivots so she learns to anticipate the turn when you decelerate. When you are facing forward, she was happy to blast by you and your cookie hand was stopping her LOL! So nice slow pivots starting right before she gets to your fingers, like you did at 1:22 and after, were great: she had lovely turns! And there is a lot of running for her – I just noticed the palm trees so you must be somewhere warm 🙂 Keep the sessions short so she doesn’t get too hot: 3 or 4 reps then a break is fine 🙂
The wing wraps went great too! Bazinga seemed to think that this was the BEST GAME EVER (basically, free and easy cookies haha!) She was doing a great job of getting the back-and-forth rhythm. At 1:08, Frankie distracted her and Bazinga lost her train of thought – if that happens, you can get her back in the rhythm by plopping the cookies into the bowl faster.
I think she is ready for you to add in an upright between the bowls for her to start going around! And if that goes well, you can try it all with you sitting in a chair (the next step towards getting you standing up).
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyYes – she is the one that can go fast… you don’t need to 🙂 Plus, decel cues for the dog means that us humans have to slow down 🙂
T
Hi!
She will find the ready dance engaging if you are a bit silly and if you give her cookies for it!T
Hi! This also looked really good – I thought your connection on the other videos was good and this was good too. You probably felt better because you didn’t have to think about it as much. 🙂
I am going to be a pain about the rewards 🙂 You had the cookie in your mouth here, which slows down the rewarding and caused him to look up to your face too much. So, have it in your hands 🙂 he will be great about ignoring it and you will be very fast to get the reward to him: the faster you get the reward to him, the more precise the behavior is that we are rewarding. And definitely try it with a toy, that will be more like what you do eventually on a course.Great job!
TracyThis was excellent! It looks like he had no trouble transferring it to a new location and with the bowls a little further back. Yay!!!
One thing: talk less 🙂 While he is offering, don’t say anything at all. When you put the cookie in the bowl, say a quiet yes, then be silent again 🙂 Let him work when yo are quiet – that way he won’t need praise in order to keep going, and also so the praise doesn’t distract him 🙂 But, after every 3 or 4 cookies, you can break out of the game and have a big tug party. And during the tug party, you can talk all you want and tell him how brilliant he is 🙂 Yay!
Give this game a day off so his brain can really cement it. Then in a couple of days, bring it back out. Start where you left off here and if he does well, after a few cookies you can change to sitting in a chair. Our goal is to eventually have you standing up but he is really small, so sitting in a chair is a good next step.
Nice work!
TracyHi!
He definitely looks pretty fearless and happy to interact with things – super!! For the next session with these paw pods, try moving them very close together so he can get 2 or more feet on them (if you have more than 2, you can put more than 2 out and have all the pods touching). you can also use anything big enough for him to get all 4 feet on, so we can start teaching him about his back feet too 🙂You can also have the treats in your hands, for a couple of reasons:
If the treats stay in a treat bag, it takes too long to deliver them after a good paw touch, so he might not really understand why he is getting them. Plus, with all of the praise, he is getting drawn to your hands even more than if the treats were in the hands, because you are very exciting when taking the treats out so he spends a lot of time looking at your hands 🙂I think it is also a great self-control game for the pups to learn to ignore treats in our hands, so you can have low value treats in your hands that he has to move away from in favor of touching the item. And that way you can be super quick with your rewards as well.
Great job!
TracyHi! You did a great job here, and so did he 🙂
Yes, rewarding across the body with the opposite hand feels WEIRD at first, right? But what it does is that it opens up your shoulder very fast on the exit of the blind, so he sees connection immediately. This helps you make a fast connection and he picks up the side change immediately. Perfect! Think down the road when you are doing those crazy tight blind on course – this connection will really help!You can also do this with a toy in the reward hand, he will like that 🙂 And, if you have someone to hold him, you can do this as a restrained recall: rather than tossing a cookie, you can have someone gently hold him while you run away. Then call him, they let go, and you do the blind.
Great job here!
TracyHi! This was such a fun session!
Her drive ahead to the toy was great here and you were effectively counterconditioning her desire to run off with it but running the other way with a new toy. Super! You can see if she will bring it a bit further by moving away sooner, before she even arrives at it. But even if she does not bring it further, no worries, because she is NOT running off with it. YAY!>> getting some drive which she does not have much of at this point. I will hold off on some things I was doing (RDW, channel weaves). We will do the touch game with the toy, too.>>
I think she has plenty of drive! Is she a deranged loony tune? No, thankfully hahaha! She is doing GREAT. And, as you build up reinforcement procedures and teach her body awareness, I would totally wait on the RDW and weave stuff. That is really complex stuff that requires retrieving, forward focus, body awareness, etc. It will be easier to teach all that when she is more adult and more experienced. She is doing great!
TracyGood morning!
He looked great here!!! Since he says that this is now easy, we can add challenge two different ways:
– open up the angles a little bit so the yare easier… and raise the bars 2 more inches 🙂 Everything else remains the same, no need to tighten things when the height is harder.
or
– open up the angles a little bit, leave the bars where they were here… and add more motion to the moving target 🙂 You can be jogging and eventually build up to running. The challenge becomes: Can he stay organized like he was here, but with the added distraction of more motion?
They sound like subtle changes but they are not LOL!!! And eventually we will merge the 2 together, ending up with higher bars AND you running with the moving target 🙂
Great job! Let me know how he does!
TracyHi!
>>It was very windy.Yes! Eek! But she seemed to ignore it 🙂 She was great here!!!
>>She did well so I tightened the angle.
That was the correct thing to do. She did super well with it – the only hard part was she wasn’t always sure where to look for the reward. Sometimes she looked up at you, sometimes had to look for the reward. So, if she will hold the stay long enough (the stays looked great here!) you can go to the moving target/dragging toy. That will also add more stimulation and challenge for her – she is ready for it!
And you can also mix in going back to 2 jumps and raising the bars just a little bit. That will be harder too, but again – I think she is ready for it.
>> I think she is really learning from this course and has gained a lot of muscle 🙂 Not sure if she is using her rear, though.>>
I am glad you see the difference in muscle! Much of this is based on conditioning exercises, so the dogs should be gaining muscle and also gaining core strength. And yes – she is using her rear 🙂 I think she looks great!
Let me know how she does with the moving target!
TracyGood morning! She did really well on these!
You made a good adjustment to move off her landing spot when you released her, on the first rep she couldn’t release because you were standing in the landing spot LOL! the rest all looked good.
>>Although Changtse’s rt rear foot is off the plank in the last 2 clips, #8 & #9, it looks like she is lining herself up for the turn.
Sometimes this happens because they are fatigued or they don’t understand… but I don’t think that is the reason here 🙂 What happened on those 2 reps (:54 and the last rep) was that you were blocking the wing then stepping to your left so for a heartbeat, it looked like a slice cue and not a wrap cue… so she was setting up a slice. Good girl! Then when you cued the sit for the wrap, it was too late for her to adjust.
Compare your position and movement on those, to the first two reps (especially the rep at :17) – on those, you were where the wing and bar met, so she could see the wrap wing, and you didn’t move to your left at all. So she nailed the wrap organization. Good girl!
So as she comes around the wing, even if you are moving forward, be moving to where the wing and bar meet so she has the visual of the whole wing. She doesn’t need you to step outside of the wing to show it to her, because that changes the cue and she correctly should change her approach.
And if she does end up with a back leg off the plank, ask her to get on the plank fully before you release her, so she can push off equally with her back feet.
Nice work here! Do one more session like this but with you showing her the wing, then I think we can begin the fading process!
Tracy
Good morning!
She is doing well on all of these! As you move to the next steps, I want you to be a total stickler for mechanics and reward placement, because they are super important to get the correct form.Wrap organization:
She did really well with you facing her – nice organization! And she has the concept of th eplank and the sits. Super!! Because this is a wrap collection, you will always be close to the wing (at 2:36 you were in an extension position several feet past the wing so she was confused about the collected sit). Since she did well with the sit here, we can move to the next step:
Instead of facing her on the landing side, you will be in the wrap position where you are on the ‘takeoff’ side of the wing (basically next to her). If you visualize where a bar would be, you can tuck yourself in between the plank and the wing so you are both facing the same direction with the bar in front of you. And, rather than let her loop herself back around to the plank, start her either from a cookie toss or a stay so she can approach the plank straight on with you already in the wrap position. The demo videos have all this if my words don’t make sense LOL!
Zig zags – she is doing well here too but she is too far from jump 1 and facing straight, which changes the form. Remember to start her right next to the first wing, with her shoulder next to it, so she leaves the sit when released and begins the jumping as a slice immediately, rather than taking a few strides straight into it.
This starting point will be significantly harder, so you can open up the angles a little bit and you don’t need to make things harder on each rep like you did here. The progression to the flatter angles will take a few sessions because starting up close is harder.
Also, this is a good spot to add in the moving target rewards (dragging toy) so she gets to practice her organization with more motion added, which simulates what will happen on course.
Slice organization – She is doing well with her sits here too! On the next session, a reward target will help a lot – she is organizing on the plank nicely but looking at you (because the reward is in your hands: so her jumping form is upright (ideally she is looking down and not up). A reward target will help that – you can place a manners minder (or food bowl or toy) about where you were tossing the rewards, but not more treats from your hands on this game 🙂 All rewards come in the reward target. That will also allow you to add more of your motion.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>With the toy in each hand, do I tug lightly/calmly then wait for her to let go or ask her to release and wait for her to go to the other side?
Tug a little, then let the toy go “dead” and if she has a great ‘out’ cue, you can use it. Otherwise, juts wait. You can practice this on the flat without the upright, to establish the back and forth like you did with the cookie bowls.
>>Put the dead toy away on my lap or under my arm?
Nope! They can stay out there, like the cookie bowls were. Doing it that way is also a nicely stealthy way to add self-control 🙂
>>Is there any benefit to using a real wing rather than the upright? I have wings I could use, too.
It is too soon for the real wing 🙂 We have things to add before we get those added 🙂
>>We plan to do the blind cross foundation today outside. I tried it in the house this morning but there just wasn’t enough room and I came too close to walking into walls when looking back at her. It will be safer for me outside>>
Oh yes, safety first! You definitely need room to run with the blinds 🙂
Have fun!
Tracy
