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Hi!
>For the wrap exercise, when we move to standing, can we toss a cookie, or should we still use the dish?>
For now, still use the dish – that way when you add the big change of you standing, she still has the visual aid of the bowl. We will fade it out soon 🙂
The stealth self-control game went well! Using the recall with the food and tug was great (it doesn’t have to be too elaborate) and it should look like she doesn’t even notice the novel-neutral object because we know her brain is processing its presence 🙂 She did great here and seemed to have a fun time too! You can repeat this concept with different little games, or using different novel neutral objects.
Great job!
Tracy
Hi!
>I had started playing with front feet on a small piece of rubber mat that I was going to use for his fitness. Would that be ok? Or should I stick with something more random. I can look for a box.>
Because the pups are going to running around and smacking the target, using the the fitness mat would probably make learning the fitness stuff harder LOL!! So a box or anything random would be good 🙂 Even a folded up towel or something similar can work well.
I love your basement training area! I agree, things went really well! And he recovered really well from the random noise distraction: tugging totally helps.
Driving ahead video:
Great job getting the toy back and lining him up with the treat! That was a beautiful transition into the game and he nailed it. His forward focus looked awesome and he seemed to have no questions when you started moving. So when you revisit this, you can run sooner – as soon as he starts to move, you can move too!The drive to handler looked great too! Your hand was nice and low, and you moved just slow enough during the pivot that he was able to stay on your side really well. And throwing the reward to start the next rep was a great way to transition to it! Super!
Two bowl game:
>this was 1st time doing in the basement so I started with earlier steps.>
That was smart! It sets him up for success which is really important for a baby dog. He did really well here – your cookie drops were pretty quick, so in the next session you can slow them down and see if he can go back and forth before you drop it in. I think that will be easy for him – he was starting to do it at the very end. Then you can add the cone back in too!
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
Bandit did GREAT with his sends! Yay! That was a big distance for a tiny pup but he did it with zest! Nice work adding the ready dance for each rep, it really helped to get him pumped up and to help him shift from handler focus to obstacle focus.
He was sometimes stopping just before the prop to look at your hand, so you can keep him looking forward to it by sending with the empty hand like you did here – and tossing the reward to the prop with the other hand. That can help keep him focused directly to the prop and not looking at your hands.
Driving ahead also looked great! He had no questions about looking ahead when you threw the toy, and he drove all the way to it with a ton of speed.
I love how he tried to bring it back but sometimes it was just so heavy LOL!! Good boy 🙂 So fun!
Since he is brilliant with this, you can start adding more of your motion too. With these long distances, you can add walking at first. And if it is easy, go to jogging then running. It is also a good game to take to different locations – are you in a part of the country where you are able to do this outdoors? When you take it to new places, you can shorten the distance to help him ’see’ the toy more easily and remember the game.
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi!
Wow, as soon as he recognized the setup, he really flew through the wing wrap foundation game. Well done!!! Yay!! You can switch to a bigger barrel now, like a pop up laundry basket or something similar.
For the prop game:
>I still felt that to him, it was all about the food, not about the prop.>
Yes, he does love the food but he was moving brilliantly to the prop to get the food! The shaping warm up at the beginning was easy for him and looked great.
The sending was a bit harder because he had to go past your cookie hands – that was hard for sure!! To help him look forward to the prop and not at your hands as much, sending him with an empty hand helps and you can toss a treat to the prop (after he hits it) wit your other hand. That will help build value for looking ahead and not at your hands. And I bet he sleeps on it and knows it really well in the next session 🙂
And a BIG click/treat to you for doing the ready dance to get him engaged with you before each send. Most people forget to do it and you did it every time! Yay!!!!
Great job here!
Tracy
Hi! Sounds like he is doing great with the toy transitions!!
Looking at the videos:
He is definitely doing great with the wrapping games. Since you have worked up to standing up, you can move. The dishes a bit further back to behind your heels. Then set the game aside for a bit – there is only so much of this we want to do at this age, and in a few weeks we will be building it up into the next steps.But in the meantime: repeat the process with 2 toys instead of 2 bowls! That will be a slightly different challenge because you can work the toy skills (markers and ‘outs’), plus there will be a little more arousal which is a good thing.
Looking at the goat games:
>I hadn’t reviewed the game in MP before this so was just trying to tire him out before bed.>
Ha! This is very relatable, as I watch my 7 year old dog wrestle with the puppy, in hope of tiring him out LOL!
He was a super good boy to get up on all the different planks and stuff here! He is such a quick learner, that the buckets are giving pivot thoughts after 1 session! And hopping on the wiggle board in between was hilarious!! Then trying to climb on the ball – he is so brave, I love it!
Since he is brave, we can fast forward you to the Shpile game (also known as the Sh*t Pile because we take a bunch of our conditioning sh*t and pile it up, then work walking around on it in arousal). The goal is to ‘install’ proprioception with an eye towards state-dependent learning so the body awareness we need is being taught in arousal – so it exists in arousal, like when he is running or very excited. Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h85KzgrB8yc
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Hi!
Prop sends are looking fabulous! She is basically perfect on the sends that cue a right turn (forwards, sideways, backwards, all sending from your left. You can incorporate a toy into those for more excitement.The left turns are a bit harder – she is not as easily coordinated and on some of them, she turned herself around to turn right. Clever! So on the left turns, you can stick with food for now and stay a little closer to the prop.
>We are struggling with two toy game. Dot wants what she wants and does not redirect well. >
That is definitely an independent breed trait, and I think Aussies fall into that category 🙂
>If she’s trying to bite her bed and I try to get her in a toy she either won’t leave the bed biting or comes to the toy and immediately goes back to biting her bed.>
Separate from the toys, we can look at why she is biting the bed. It might lead you to taking beds out of the picture for a bit (almost all of my adolescent dogs lose beds at some point 😆)
For the toys – I see what you mean! In this case, it was also when she had to move to her left to get to the other side. It might be relevant or coincidence, but we will keep an eye on it.
You can try inserting a treat into the game to make the high excitement toy less of a focal point: tug with toy 1, make it stationary then toss a treat when she releases it. Then when she comes back towards you, have the first toy a little hidden and the 2nd toy really active and alive and moving. Let’s see what she thinks of that!
The two bowl game looked great with the treats, so you can start to put the cone in for her to go around.Nice work!!!
Tracy
Good morning! I love the title card on the video!!! It was giving gold vibes to match a gold ingot with maybe a bit of Life Of A Showgirl sparkle too. Lots of fast & fun sessions here 🙂
Forward focus – this is looking brilliant!! I loved her little squeak on the last rep. Great job connecting with her to see where she was looking! And she had no questions about driving ahead even when you were running.
One suggestion: rather than hold her collar while tugging as you go back to the starting point, I think she will be perfect if you tug back to the starting point without holding her. Then you can tug her into a position next to you, then take her collar and get the toy, then throw it. You can also trade the toy for a cookie and use the cookie to help line her up before throwing the toy.
Since this went so well and you added your running, you can add more distance on throws so she can drive ahead even more. You might need a heavier toy to throw because it is hard to throw the light ones.
Drive to handler – she did really well here too! Nice job with the tug breaks too, so she stayed excited! Because she is little, you can keep your hand close to your leg and just below your knee. That will keep her chin parallel to the ground or pointing slightly downwards, which helps setup the best turns. You can see it when you added the pivots (like at 2:03 and 3:13) – she was able to get nice and tight to your leg and turn beautifully.
Since this went really well too, you can add more distance to give you more room to let her see you moving fast then making a big deceleration: throw the start cookie further away. Then as she is going to it, you can start to jog away. As soon as she eats it and turns to you, let her see you slow down to a slow walk or stop. That will give her plenty of time to decelerate as she drives to you.
The prop sends are going well too! I love the Croc as a prop LOL!!
She had a little question at 3:43, and I think it was because she was reading a variety of things happening: one hand sending with the opposite leg and one hand in the cookie pocket. She stopped to double check the info. Then she sorted it out really well and was driving nicely. Super!
To help her out as you add the advanced level (and you should definitely add the advanced level now) – if it is a forward send, you can send with the arm and leg next to her (in this video, you were sending with the right arm so you can also step forward with the right leg). When you get to the sideways and backwards sends, you can send with the arm/leg closer to the prop. You can also add in a bit of the ready dance before each send – that puts her in handler focus as she engages with you, and then the send challenge increases as you cue her to have ‘obstacle’ (croc :)) focus.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Hi!
Very nice first sessions here!On the 1st video, you might have started off too quickly with the cookie drops, because he was chewing and missed some of the cookie drops. That is why he didn’t quite get into the pattern quickly on the first video. Do you have smaller loud treats that don’t require chewing? LOL! As he gets more experienced, you can got to softer treats that don’t need chewing 🙂
On the 2nd video, you moved more slowly so he was more aware of the treats drops – and that got things going really well! Yay!
He probably needs a few more reps before you go to stealthily dropping the treats or waiting for him to offer. He did best when he could still see and hear the treats heading to the bowls 🙂
I think one more session where you are letting him see and hear the treats will help establish the pattern, and then you can fade out letting him see you place it in the bowl by just moving more and more slowly as you do it. Then it will be easy to put the upright in the middle for him to wrap.
Great job here!!
Tracy
Hi! Your prop sending is going great!!!
Video 1, with the toy: He did well here, leaving the toy and driving to the prop! You can add in more of the engagement and handler focus of the ready dance before each send. You did it a bit at :54 – no need to hold the collar, you can let him bop around like he did at 1:28 🙂
You were a little too far from the prop on the 2nd and 3rd reps – very nice adjustment to get just a little closer to help him out after that. Super!
The sideways sending went well and so did the backwards sending! He had to think about it and he figured it out really well. It is hard for the pups because when we are rotated like that, it is hard to go past us but he nailed it. Yay!
Video 2: treats: the beginning was a bit of shaping reminder with the treats, which was a really nice warm up. Interestingly, when treats were involved, he wanted to stay out at the prop so having the reward near you helped him hit it and drive back. It is possible that he was in ‘shaping mode’ because of the first couple of treats, but he moved out of that pretty quickly when you added more engagement and had him driving back to you for the reward.
As with the toy, he was easily able to send when you were 3 or 4 feet away or so, but the longer distances were a little harder. So for now, stay a little closer and you’ll see that it will get easier to add more distance.
He was great with the sends (fast and snappy!) when you did the ready dance before them, so remember to include it before each send. The sideways and backwards sends were both lovely here too! They seemed easier for him here – maybe it was because it was easier to leave the food, or maybe it was because the toy session happened first? Either way, he did great!
You can revisit this here and there, adding a tiny bit more distance away from the prop at the start of each rep.
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
The wrap session looked really strong! You’ve already got a great start on this game 🙂 And yes, I am sure there are many good variations on how it is played now that is it very popular!
>Halfway through I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to mark her food dish.>
You can (and you were) – and now you can mark it later. You were generally marking when she began her movement or arrived at the upright. You can delay it now until she has completed the wrap.
Since she did so well here, you can add more and more distance between you and the upright (or cone, using it is still good :)) And then you can bring the upright back in near you and change your position to standing. If she does well with you standing, then we can start moving the upright back out away from you. Moving it in towards you when you change to standing is so that we are increasing the challenge on only one thing at a time in the session.
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>Outdoors might work with the toy on a long line. The hackberries are mostly gone now!>
Hooray for those hackberries being gone!!!
This session went really well 🙂
>I’m moving before my find it cue. I’ll try to tighten that up.>
Yes – the hardest part about the find it cues/markers is that ideally we say it *then* move… so hard! The dogs figure it out, thankfully, even when we are not perfectly clean. But yes, try to say it then move 🙂
>I was putting Dot on the cot while I reloaded to change sides.>
I agree! She did great!! The only thing to add is a bit of toy play before and between reps, and I think she is ready for you to reward the pivots with a toy. That might be easier outside when you both have more room. You can take the cot outside and see if she can hang out on it between reps there too.
On the decels straight to your side: she did great! My only suggestion is to lower your cookie hand so her chin is either parallel to the ground or pointing slightly downwards – that will produce better decel mechanics when we add more speed.
The pivots are also looking really strong! One the first couple and last few, you were moving slowly and your hand was just below your knee – perfect! When your hand was getting a bit too high or you were moving too fast, you can see her swinging wide because the momentum was pushing her bum out 🙂 And example would be at 1:00 and you can see she doesn’t turn quite as well on that rep.
Great job here! The next step for this game too would be to take it outside 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! You mentioned that he looked like a lurcher and I could really see it here! I had to scroll back to make sure he was not actually a lurcher LOL!!
Look at that great tugging and toy killing at the start! Yay! He is really fun 🙂 The toy shredding that he was doing towards the beginning is usually a sign of arousal regulation – repeated mouth movements like that are associated with the brain trying to center and balance arousal… and that is GREAT!! It is an expensive habit because the toys won’t last long, so you can also direct him to self-regulate by scattering treats for him to sniff.
But I love love love that he is already beginning to self-regulate. YAY!!!!
Nice transition into the shaping and he got lots of good foot smacks going! Well done! And he got right back onto the toy the end.
Since he had a number of very definite foot hits to the object, I think he is ready for the first prop game.
On the hand touch video:
It was interesting that he wanted every part of that toy except the cool thing at the end. Maybe it was fur and gave him an ick? Good to know about his preferences – he didn’t do that with the toy in the other video. It looked like every time he went to grab the end of the toy, he changed his mind and went back to the ‘boring’ part of it 🙂Great job getting him going with the hand target here – big improvements for sure!! He was a little locked onto the food hand at first (poor starving pup haha!) and you rewarded lots of small approximations to get him going to the target. Yay! He was fabulous when it was in your left hand in the second part of the video – he might be telling us that he has more reward history of interacting with your left side, so keep building value for working on your right side.
We won’t need this hand target game for several weeks, so you can put it on the shelf for now and play some other games. We will pull it back out when we are getting ready to use it.
Great job here :)
Tracy
Hi!
I had to watch this a couple of times because I kept getting distracted by his cuteness LOL! The session went great 🙂 He was cracking me up when he was playing with the tiny string end of the toy and not the fancy fur part LOL!
Fantastic job engaging with him and keeping the toy enticing both during the play, and then after you placed it out ahead. And nice connection, looking at him to see where he was looking. Super!
He is slippery when you are holding him, so adding a harness or collar will help the transition into the forward focus – that way you can add duration without him cleverly trying to start without you LOL!
Since this session went so well, you can add more distance on the toy throws bit by bit – he is so tiny so adding distance will be pretty gradual. And with this game too, we can add getting you off the ground so you can start adding motion soon. You can try this with you standing (apologies to your back because there will be bending over to hold him as you throw the toy). And if he is happy with that, you can add a bit of motion by walking forward as he is running to the toy (then moving the other way to encourage him to bring it back :))
>Trying really had to include a thinking, a motion, and a thinking in his sessions. Or a motion, a thinking, a motion.>
Perfect! That brings a nice balance to his foundation. Depending on what he tells us as we work through the games, you might find times where we tip the balance into more motion or more thinking. At this point, his balance of thoughtful/wild party games looks lovely 🙂
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning! Great job with the wrap foundation game here – the training you’ve already done definitely showed and he was a superstar 🙂
You had a lot of hand movement at the beginning (getting treats, moving the little mats, etc) so he was smoother when your hands got quiet 🙂He did a lovely job going around the cone!! Super!!
Since this went really well, we can add a few more things to it:
– you can try the game using 2 toys instead of treats
– you can add in tug breaks before/during the session to challenge him to be able to offer this lovely behavior even when he is a little more excited 🙂
-you can switch out which objects you use, so he learns to go around all.the.things at this stage 🙂I am sure he will be pretty perfect, so the next step after that is start getting you off the ground – do you have something low you can sit on? It can be something like an inflatable donut.
Great job!!
Tracy
