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Hi!
>>For the taller item will an oval-shaped tall laundry basket work or does it have to be perfectly round? I can buy a soft barrel from the hardware store if it needs to be completely round.>>
Oval is great! And if you find yourself in a Walmart or dollar store, you can grab a pop up barrel – but definitely don’t spend more than a dollar or two on it 🙂
>>She cracks me up with the back-up too. I will try standing up and try the between-the-feet approach next.>>
You might want to also try some flyball with her: I know she is going to be an amazing agility dog, but her spunk and sass and willingness to do flyball turns off of your stomach made me thing she would be great at Flyball too 🙂
T
Hi!
Hooray for the goat games! Sounds like there was a puppy party going on during the first part!
I think you have truly embraced the full meaning of goat games: I have never seen so many different objects in one video LOL!!! It all looked really good!
You had a really nice variation of surface textures, location, and movement of surfaces. She seemed SUPER confident on all of it. The only thing I noticed was that the narrow plank was too narrow, perhaps, she couldn’t quite get all of her feet on it. But everything else was really great.
You can make a puppy obstacle course for her, by putting all of the various objects together in a row so they are touching, and having her walk across it one after the other like a giant bridge so she is experiencing all of the different surfaces and movement one after the other, and one foot might be touching one thing with another foot is touching the next thing. That can be a great next-step for what you ave already started here.
Great job here!! See you in class tonight!
TracyHi!
His goat games with the bowl are looking good!!! It is a little hard for him to get both front and back feet in because the space is small 🙂 He is trying and does get all the feet where the need to be LOL! Yay! What do you have that is bigger – as he grows, you’ll want to use different objects partially so he has more room to get all his feets in, and partially to help him get on or in all sorts of different things. So for the next session, try something really big 🙂 One of your classmates was using a couch cushion yesterday and it worked great – big enough for the pup to get all four feet on, and also a little wobbly 🙂 So maybe grab one of the cushions that his brother was sitting on?Great job 🙂
TracyHe did really well tugging here! You can start to add a little if him weight shifting during tugging: when he has his mouth on the toy, you can move your toy hand a little less, and gently tap him with the other hand: that often gets the pups to pull even harder and gets more tugging and weight shift 🙂
Great job!
TracyHi!
Really nice session here – he was offering beautifully and both directions looked pretty equal. You were great about mixing the bowls back, and being quiet while he worked but then being loud and silly during the tug break 🙂 Yay!!!!So on the next session: keep everything the same with you standing, and start to move the wing a little further away, bit by bit. We don’t need a lot of distance, but he is ready for us to add some distance.
And if that goes well? Then on the session after that, you can start the turn and burn game we added last night. Fun times ahead!!!!
Tracy
Hi! She did really well with the wrap game!!!
On the food version of it:
She definitely had the back and forth rhythm!! As you add distance, you can move the targets back with you as you get further from the wing – they can stay near your knees when you are kneeling or at your feet when you are standing. And you can now start working up to standing: try moving from kneeling to a chair, then from the chair to standing. She might be fine with it all in one session, or need a session or two to sort that out.
Good job seeing her question when you moved further away and helping her by getting closer! Do you have a big cone or laundry basket? I think you can move to that now, because it is a little more obvious-looking to her than the skinny upright 🙂
She really liked the 2 toy version of it!!! The next step is to see if she will offer wrapping the upright before the next toy comes “alive”:
Start just as you did her to get her in the groove of the back and forth then when she has done that a couple of times, add this:
Tug tug tug then let that tug go silent, so she drops it… but don’t tap the next toy til she looks the new direction or takes a step the next direction. When that happens, you can go wild with the next toy. You can gradually stretch the time before tapping the 2nd toy so she wraps it on her own 🙂Great job!
TracyHi!
>>Also, I was listening to a podcast and they had an episode on the Resilience Rainbow & you got several shout outs
Oh! I will have to totally listen! Thanks!
Looking at the wing wrap video:
>>I may have lumped a little, but she didn’t get confused so I kept going.
You call it lumping, Bazinga called it fast tracking! LOL! Things can move very quickly like this when the dog understands the predictability of reinforcement 🙂
You can probably move even more quickly from sitting to standing, she had no problem with that. Do you have something taller for her to go around (like a pop up laundry basket) so you can start the turn and burn games? She seems ready!!!
She was cracking me up during he backing up LOL!!!! I particularly liked the reps where she launched herself off you to start the backing up LOL!!! I think she understands that it is something with ,moving backwards away from you – but she is working it all off her front end and not using her back feet separately. So you can try shaping it with the between-the-feet approach and see how she does. Plus we can add in shaping her to back up onto a target like a dog bed.
Great job!!!
TracyYes, that’s correct! The prop is a foot target that we use to teach commitment concepts… that eventually transfer to wings and jumps 🙂
Have fun!
TracyGood morning! He did well on both of these!
On the slices:
Try to keep moving the whole time, and have the reward placed out on the line – the movement will have to be very slow, which is fine, we just don’t want him to rely on your decel or stopping to get organized.The same theme can apply to the wraps (staying in motion) but in a slightly different way: you can decel, rotate, do the FC… all while he is moving into the sit on the plank 🙂 That will be a good mental challenge!!! And you can release the sit at any point in your rotation.
>>Leave them there and try a backside wrap and/or threadle?
Yes, leave them low to add the wrap challenges on the backside 🙂
He did well on the zigzags even in a smaller space – he didn’t need to add strides, he was confident to power bounce even though he didn’t have a ton of room to stride out after it. Super!!!
>>Dead toy is still not a draw.
Yes, the fling definitely worked better! Do you think the PT would be enough of a draw?
You can start to flatten the angles on the backside slices too! Fingers crossed for a short winter 🙂
Great job here!
TracyGood 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!
Tracy
