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Hi!
>>A question about the threadle wraps. This looks like the “Flick” (OMD) that I’ve learned elsewhere and have practiced with the girls. Are there any important differences or body motions I should use with the “flick” that will improve my handling threadle wraps?>>
I think the major differences between what I am calling a threadle wrap and the OMD flick are
– with the flick, there was a bit of leaning back and hand cue to take the jump by the handler to commit the dog to the wrap, and we don’t want to lean back at all (we can start with a hand cue but eventually want to fade it)
– OMD was not very big on verbals… but things have evolved a lot so we want a specific verbal for this move that is different from the other verbals. “Flick” would be a great verbal for it LOL!
>> I love this dog, and really enjoy running her. She’s feisty, fun, and loves agility.
She is hilarious AND talented! It is so fun watching her!
Tracy
Perfect! The toy on the toy in the NFC runs can help bridge the gap between training and trialing for the weaves.
T
Hi!
>> I find that I “need” – either for real or because I think I do, to get a course “in my head” and that if it’s not in my head that it’s not going to matter how many times I walk it. And if it’s in my head I can frequently “get through” it, even if I don’t walk it.
I think that part of it can be in studying the course map and looking at it from outside the ring before the walk through, to convince yourself that it is in your head 🙂 Doing the faster walk throughs gets the course into your muscles and your vocal cords 🙂
>>she got all the expected answers; weaves, contacts, dada, dada. The “correct” answer, whatever is after a tunnel. All about that connection.
Ah, I totally believe it! We all rely heavily on our motion… and the dogs cannot see us in the tunnel. A common error is that we don’t let the dog see the new line or hear the new verbal well before they get into the tunnel… and then we are not connected when they exit. I can see why the obstacle after the tunnel would be an issue!
>>I think that also at play here is the strength of his backside verbal. I almost never get a head check or hesitation if I’m good about the timing of a GO on entrance to the tunnel and almost always get that little wobble to a backside out of tunnel, even with good timing of my verbal and good connection…..combination of understanding of the cue, stronger connection needed and experience? We occasionally get the wobble from a line of jumps, but in those cases it’s almost always because I disconnected.>>
My guess is it is a combination of inexperience with fluency on the verbal, and also maybe more convergence towards the backside before he enters the tunnel is needed.
>>Do you want to see the whole walkthrough? That’s a lot of video for you to watch! Or I could edit it to the last couple of at speed walkthroughs…..or something in between.
the full walk through is fine, I can scroll through it or put it into fast forward if needed 🙂
T
Hi!
Great job on this session – the layering looks good!First rep – yes, you pulled away too soon so she didn’t see the layered line. You made a great adjustment in the 2nd rep – great job setting the line to get the layering! You were connected and moving forward for longer so she had no questions.
3rd rep – nice timing on the left tunnel cues, you can run away even sooner on that and it will help drive her into the tunnel even more.
She did really well with the threadle-switch on the last 2 reps! You were a little late with the switch on the 4th rep, she was almost all the way to you. You were much earlier and converged in with pressure on the 5th rep, and she was great!!! She missed the last jump at 1:01 – you can turn your upper body to face her more on the out jump to the last jump – your arm was up and shoulder turned away so she followed the line of your shoulder. That is why I often use an outside arm with the ‘out’ moments, to shift the dog back out to the line by turning my shoulders towards it, without accidentally turning my shoulders away from it.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>A few reps from yesterday and today.
The reps on the video are looking good – from the handling perspective, you can move the serp arm back sooner: you were moving itward (parallel to your shoulder) when she was exiting the tunnel, then swinging it back. You can have it swung back when she exits so she can see it sooner and so you don’t have to worry about timing.
>> Yesterday I was able to leave the toy on the ground. This morning it made her head explode. The 3 from yesterday I had the jumps pretty much in the normal position. Today I did the little sequence and I had to dial it way back and angle the jumps. By the last rep, I had straightened them a tiny bit.
I know I need to work through the toy on the ground (she used to be able to ignore it, but lately she has been scoping for it – like tunnel to the toy with no attempt at any of the in between). Which is also making jump grids difficult.>>This is probably a combination of normal adolescent brain development (where they “know” something one day and it is completely gone the next day LOL!) and maybe a bit of rushing/arousal – but 100% yes to working through it!
One thing to do is just have a toy out there on the ground somewhere all the time… so it is not the main focal point of the session. You can have a toy in your hand to reward with as well – and sometimes you send her down the line to the toy on the ground, with the appropriate marker. And other times you reward from your hand (also with the appropriate marker).
So for example, with the sequence you did recently that had the 2 jumps straight after the tunnel and you did the Go, the FC wrap, the RC and the backside: the toy can be out there in Go position the whole time, but only gets used when you cue the Go and a ‘get it’. And you balance by doing a wrap and a reward in your hand with the ‘toy in hand’ marker.
Now, it will be challenging for sure but will also help solve the issue of focusing only on the toy on the ground – break things way down to show her that the toy on the ground is marked a certain way versus the toy in your hand. She has the markers, so it will be easy enough for her.
Also, make sure that when she is skipping things like the jump after the tunnel or jumps in a grid that she is not avoiding something that is too challenging (height, distance, motion, etc can make all of it too challenging). With some dogs, the challenge being too much is obvious because they sniff or leave But with others, the challenge being too much is less obvious because the questions/stress present as higher arousal behavior or “naughty” behavior of going directly to the toy. The dogs are not naughty at all, they just have questions that are being presented differently. Dial back the level of challenge in those moments to see if that is the cause.
>>At her class last night, I was the only one there, so we did a little serp work in a different place and in a short sequence and she was amazing – showed her a little angle for a couple of reps, then she was fine with the jumps straight.
AWESOME!!! I love it!
>>We also did a little of the tunnel exit game last night – go from tunnel to another tunnel straight ahead and then a couple with turns out of the tunnel. If I had know I’d be the only one there, I would have brought my tripod!>>
I bet she really enjoyed having 2 tunnels! Very fun that she had the class all to herself LOL!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
You have been busy!! Good to see you back here 🙂
>>When do I raise the bar in the accordion? Last time, she was out 20′.>>
If her form is good, you can be raising it (she is 19.5 months, approx, right?) What is the current height on the last bar?
>> She did really great I feel except the jump going to me, to the left. I put a 2 of them>>
Those reps looked like she was not comfortable jumping into the pressure of you standing still (that is pretty normal, many dogs share that opinion at first) so she was offering the next jump. You can revisit the strike-a-pose game with the target, and have her come over the jump, touch the target in your hand, and a get a big reward 🙂
She is doing well with the serpentines! As you keep working on them, 2 suggestions:
– spread the jumps out more, so she has room to land, take a stride or two, then takeoff. They are really close right now which makes then much harder, especially with then are flat like at :55. You can have the wings of the jumps 10 feet apart at least, so there is plenty of room between them.– help her less with the arms moving in and out, so that the ‘open’ serpentine arm/shoulder and running line is the cue, rather than your shoulders moving in and out. If she is relying on your hand cues, then you run the risk of being late which is what happened on the last rep at 1:05 – she was past the 2nd jump before you moved your arm to indicate she should come in. So, spreading the jumps out and also keeping them more angled will help – don’t flatten out the serp line until she is really happy to find the angled jumps without you needing to do arm cues to help her.
>>Tonight she was really tugging and fast 😀 unfortunately she was getting a little too aroused (talked to Jennifer) but so happy with her speed.
Tugging and fast is GREAT! When she was too aroused, what was she doing?
On the bang game:
She did well with getting on the board right at the end! Try to start her very close to it, and facing downwards to the target, so she knows which way to go. I like to gently hold the dog’s collar til they are lined up and I am ready.The board was not moving at all on the bang game, but it had a lot of ‘whip’ when you did the mountain climbers, meaning both ends of the board were moving up and down, and rebounding a lot. That worried her so by the 3rd rep, she was concerned. To get rid of the whip, you can tape weights to the underside of both ends of the board, so they don’t flap as much, if that makes sense. Then she will like it more because it will be more predictable in terms of movement and sound. And having weight on the bottom of the board so there is no rebound to it will also help the bang game, if she was concerned about the movement of the board on that one too.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>On the video it looks like I’m quite far past the middle of the jump when I cue him to go, but I don’t think I was quite as far over as it looks, but maybe I still should have cued more when I was closer to the middle?<< Serps are definitely hard because the dogs all naturally prefer to run parallel to us and not into us. I don't think his questions had anything to do with your position, that all looked good - it was purely a dog training moment, not a handling moment :) >> Also I think I’m using my off arm in here when I shouldn’t – do you think so?
Because we use connection better, we don’t need to use the off arm for serps anymore – we can just do dog-side arm back, connection, and run 🙂 Because he is small, you can drop your dog-side arm, dipping the shoulder a bit, so he can see the serp cue a little better.
To help him understand the serps while you are moving, I think angling the jumps will be the best way to go. You were helping him by dialin back the motion, which was great! So now we can add back the motion (he likes motion :)) and make the line clearer:
Using this setup, the wing further from him on the first jump can move towards the house, and the wing at the exit of the 2nd jump can move towards the field. that should allow him to see both bars, mostly, from his start position, so then all you would need to do is run along, release him, and keep your upper body in serp position. You can see these angles in the more advacned sequences, starting at 3:07 on the demo video. And if he is fine with the 2 jump sequences with the jumps angled, you can go to the sequences that add the tunnel 🙂Nice work! Let me know if the angled jump idea makes sense.
TracyHi!
Terrific job on the lazy game! What will your final end position be: a down on the board? You can shape your way there with this game – you were great about marking that initial weight shift! You can let him hop on the board and instead of putting the target in for hopping on… wait til he starts to shift into the down 🙂 And eventually you can have him jump into the down to get the target in. You can release him more frequently from the position (with a thrown cookie off to the side) so that he can hop back on 🙂
He did so well with his backing up!! That board doesn’t seem high until we see how it is above his hocks – he really had to ‘find’ the board by stepping up pretty high for it. What a good boy! He is so thoughtful about his body, you’ve really done a great job with him about it.
I don’t want to add more height to the teeter for this game for him, so you can see if he can now back up into the 4on position.
Great job on these!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>But, I do need to work on the wrap cues not being shouted.
That is why I switched to front-of-mouth noises for my wrap cues (tststs, choochoo, and digdigdig) – it was simply the only way to stop myself from shouting them because they are basically un-shout-able LOL!
>.We tried the serp drills. I’m not sure I did them right as rental time was running out and I didn’t have wi if to watch the video again. We go back Friday so 8 can pick up the missing two then.>>
This was a great session! I am super happy with how she is reading her serps. She had a lead leg question on the first jump after the tunnel but she sorted it out very quickly.
In the middle of the session, you did a FC on the tunnel exit putting you on the takeoff side of the 1st jump, so it wasn’t really a serp line unless you can get further ahead to serp the 2nd jump 🙂 But it was still a great line!
Then at :37 you put yourself on landing side of the jump after the tunnel and the serps also looked great. It looks like the jump angles got harder as the session went along, which is great. And you kept your upper body connection open through the serp lines, so she found the 2nd jump perfectly and did not end up on any backsides.
So yes, in the next session, try the other sequences. And you can also be one step closer to the serp jumps, just at arm’s length away, to tighten the line even more.
And if you want to really add spice: you can use your left/right directionals on the serps too. But only add those if you are feel super comfy with the connection (which looked fabulous here)
Great job!! Looking forward to the Friday session!
TracyHi!
This was a fun set of sessions to watch! I love watching dogs process verbals LOL!He did well with the ‘mat as obstacle’ session at the beginning! There is not a lot of ‘action’ associated with the mat on the agility field (usually it is the ‘chill’ location) so it is good to build up the value for it to use it as a contact replacer for now. I am a big fan of finding the “thing” based on the verbal cue (as we are doing in CAMP too :)) so the mat is yet another fun thing to add to the mix.
When working the discriminations: when lined up between your feet, he wants to move on the first moment of the verbal cue, which is great and eventually it is what we want. But moving instantly means he might not have processed the cue, so he had some errors and creative answers 🙂 He did better when you added some handling and he did GREAT when you held him for a heartbeat so he could hear the verbals a couple of times and THEN move. That really increased the rate of success, so keep going with the gentle holding for now, especially at the start of each session.
Then you can fade the hold at the start, but as you do that, you can move the start position further away so he has more yardage to process the verbal as he is moving (15 feet away would be great, if he is going to move as soon as he hears a word). He was definitely processing the verbals and it was so cool to see sometimes he would catch himself and change lines to the correct obstacle. A little more distance will smooth all that out too.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Family time and a training break is always good – I figure between the crazy summer heat and busy schedules, we can take the time pressure off and just extend the class 🙂
>>I was going to do the ladder game but then I thought maybe we should do this one from lesson 2 first.>>
Good choice! This game will help the ladder game because it is all countermotion.
This is a hard game and he did a great job!! I saw much steam coming out of his ears at first, and he seemed nicely balanced turning to his left and to his right.
Your neighbor has great timing, to drive up at the 2-minute mark in the session LOL!! So it was fine to stop there.
>>Do you think we should try two wings in a row? I thought we could do some of the games with countermotion and then go back to straight line or circle.>>
I think in the next session, you can add more of the motion and excitement of the next steps to it. You were already adding motion, so now you can add more motion and sending him past you to the next wing, and rotating away early. And the advanced level of this game has a bunch of racetracks around the outside, which keeps things moving along and exciting 🙂
And also yes – revisit the straight line stuff sooner rather than later, to keep those skills sharp too. He looks great!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>New verbal: “Kenme” meaning soft turn, used for both L or R. Continue using Left and Right for the sharper turn, and “zip/taap” for the wraps to the L and R.>>
So Kenme is a general “take a jump and turn a little” cue and the left and right are the L shaped turns?
Also – apologies for being such a pain about it… but kenme and tunnel sound a lot alike during the runs, especially the 2nd course. You can make them sound different by keeping kenme the way you were saying it, and repeating tunnel more: tunneltunneltunneltunnel or something like that.
>>I may also add a new verbal for the wrap out of the tunnel (not as common, I think).
I agree, wraps on tunnel exits are not common at all, at the moment.
>>Are you coming to the UKI NE Cup at Barto, PA?
Nope, it is really far and Barto gets really hot at that time of year.
On the video:
Great job on the 1st jumpers course! Really lovely!!!
I can hear you differentiating the verbals more, in terms of how they sound. Yay! The one thing to add is a louder CORRE CORRE for the GO sections – you re delivering it as a suggestion (softer, higher in pitch), but you can deliver it as more of a demand (longer, drawn out, lower in pich) 🙂 Let me know if that makes sense 🙂The blind 2-3 and the tunnel send and the blind after the tunnel all looked great!
I think you can send to the tunnel backside and leave even sooner at :17, I don’t think he needed the serp arm there.
Nice job running past he backside exit wing for the German turn!On the jump before the weaves: that mght be your only late cue on this run (:23). You said ‘right’ but he had already made a takeoff decision, so he was a bit wide on the way to the weaves. You can start the right cue as he exits the german turn.
After the weaves, trust him more on the jump after it so you can be on the takeof side as he is taking off- lots of countermotion will set up a nice tight turn 🙂
On the ending line – you said corre for the 2nd to last tunnel so he was a little wide heading to the last tunnel. You can try his name or the kenme if it applies to tunnels too, so he exits slightly turned.
On the 2nd course, I can totally see the horse distraction was making your brain hurt a little – that is a big distraction! Grizzly did really well with the horses right there.
At the start of the 2nd rep, it sounds like you were using your kenme and corre interchangeably, so be sure to plan which one to use (in this case, it would all be kenme, yes?) so you don’t mix them up.
On the 6-7 line – I think that would be a left verbal for him, it is the L shaped turn to the left. But more importantly, you can support it more with handling – on the first time through, you said the verbal but kept moving through so he went to the tunnel.
On the 2nd time, you called his name and rotated – at 1:34 and 2:14 you called his name (and that is when he responded).
So – we can add some handing help to get collection before takeoff to 6 on that line, so you can say the verbals and leave without calling his name 🙂 The one thing I would add to that section is a brake arm (outside arm). When he is landed from 5 and you are cuing 6, bring up your left arm and press both hands downwards, just abouve your hips, as an additional collection cue. It would look like this:
I can find more video of the big dogs doing it, there is a lot of Papillon on this video LOL!
The entire middle section looked great! And the ending was really strong too – I think doing a spin at 16 will work better- you deceled and started to spin (your feet were rotated) then opened up for a post turn, and he hesitated a bit at 1:48. On the 2nd run, I really liked the way you handle 15-16-17: you had the spin rotation and were in a great position to threadle! Stick a little closer to the exit wing at 2:33 for that blind, and his line will be perfect (you went past the exit wing a bit so he slices the jump rather than wrapped it).
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
These sequences all looked really strong!
Seq 1 and 2 looked really strong! You can start closer to the #1 jump as you wrap it, so you can move up the line on the other side of the tunnel – you were a little ahead so ended up decelerating. You can add challenge for him by starting close to 1 and accelerating the whole time.
Seq 3 looked great, you did a lovely job moving up the line on the other side of the tunnel. Yay!
Seq 4 – this is a hard one for the dogs, they are NOT expecting the tunnel cue after all the layering! The trick to it is that as he exits that #1 wrap, you are cuing the left turn on the next jump so he lands facing the tunnel. You were a little delayed in that cue (he was in the air or landing when you started it) so he missed the tunnel on the first rep and was a little wider on the others. You can also be moving away up the line as you did it, so you don’t need to decelerate near the tunnel entry – that will keep you ahead and in good position on course 🙂
Seq 5:
>>Some of #5 was embarrassing to watch>>Nothing embarrassing here, I think you did a great job breaking it down for him and he got it beautifully at the end! The #4 jump being a backside makes it much easier – wrapping the front of 4 is much harder. On the first rep, you wrap cue was a little late plus he had just worked a whole bunch of extension lines, so he was surprised that collection while layering was a possibility LOL! You were correct to work it as an ‘out’ because he did have to push away from you and then he was perfect 🙂 Yay!
Great job on these! I am looking forward to #6!
Tracy
Hi! Look at both videos here: shaping is NOT your nemesis at all, you got really great behavior here and she was fully engaged. She is getting the idea here for sure! One suggestion to make it easier to get her taking that first step around you:
She didn’t love the pressure and leaning over at first, so you can throw the cookie behind you to get her to go behind you and then show her the cookie hand on the new side – it is a total lure to et her moving back behind you 🙂 but it helps for dogs that don’t love the pressure and leaning over at first. So you can have her face you, show her the cookie hand you on the side you want her to go around – then throw the cookie behind you. That throwing motion becomes the cue too!
She was getting the idea here on the 1st session and also in the second session. She definitely liked it all better when you were standing upright more about halfway through the 2nd session! She had a harder time when you were leaning more in session 3 – so definitely stay upright as you try the tossing behind you to get her started.
I think all of these had her moving to her left, so be sure to work in her starting on your right and turning to her right.
Great job!! Let me know if the cookie toss idea makes sense 🙂
TracyHi!
This looked great, she seems to remember it all!
When starting her from a stay, you can start moving and showing the hand cue before you release her with the verbal. It won’t make a huge difference on just the wing, but when coming in with a bar and more speed, the earlier cues and more motion will help build it up. You can add in the wing wrap before it now, for more speed and to work the timing as well! Great job!
Tracy
