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>>I remembered, I need to practice toys/tugging, just playing without training. She was tugging great, would run off with the toy and not quite bring it back but we were playing in the yard.
Great idea to just play a lot, and be done before she is done with the toy. Bringing it back almost all the way is good, you can trade for the next toy when she does that 🙂 Does she like frisbees?
T
Hi!
>.Regarding the 1st session -she was just running around so she was panting/not fresh before we started. We just need to set this training…which helped better this morning. I’m having trouble with toys so i can do the lotus on a tug.>>
Ah yes, then have her wait in a crate or on leash so she doesn’t tire herself out 🙂 Plus, we want to boost the joy of the agilities, which is harder to do if she just had a big party-of-one running around the yard LOL!!!
>>I do short sessions but love the suggestion of treating when she did something fast.
yes – we reward all correct behavior but also if you are in the middle of a rep and you see a burst of speed, you can reinforce that moment rather than continuing. And the more the reinforcement moves, the faster she will go – so the lotus-on-a-leash will be a big help.
>>Very excited for Saturday. Rain in the afternoon, but the morning looks cool and dry 😀 I beg you not to have me go in the beginning of the order
Me too! We will put you in the middle of the run order 🙂 The games are fun!
T
Hi!
Hooray for the disc fun – I love getting young agility dogs out and about in disc!>>The food remains tough. She does not really have any favorites.>>
I think we need to take a different approach – rather than continuing to search for food she might really love, because there is no food she currently loves (which is the same as searching for the perfect toy for a dog that doesn’t love toys), you can approach it by building the love for food, all types of food. Basically, train it!
It is the same as training the teeter or weaves… if the dog doesn’t naturally love it, we are not going to keep looking for a type of teeter or weave set that she naturally loves. We are going to train with with reinforcement. So by putting food into a loop where she gets reinforced for eating with something that is high value, then you will see the value of the food increase AND the latency decrease: meaning, she will eat faster.
It is a slightly different mentality for the session: taking something she really likes that already has positive associations and responses, such as the training environment (doing planks, running through tunnels or wrapping wings) – the agility behavior is the antecedent which cues the behavior we are training (eating) and the frisbee is the reinforcement. The tunnel or plank is not the behavior we are trying to build, it is the eating behavior we are building. And… it works like a charm. Use relatively high value food that is interesting and quick to swallow (cheese, Zukes, etc) and build it as a trained behavior. And trained behaviors become a high value reinforcement down the road at which point we flip it and use the trained behavior as a reinforcement. I’ve done this repeatedly with my dogs over the years and student dogs, totally works! And most recently, I’ve done it with ball retrieves for flyball to build the value of the ball – also totally worked.
>>Would I still throw the cookie or hand it to her and then throw a toy?>>
Either – that doesn’t really matter as long as it is easy for her to get the food. You can also do it with a tunnel instead of a plank.
Let me know how it goes!
Tracy
Hi!
>>Ok tried taking her on leash and waiting while I’m getting ready. Upped the treats. This looked a little better. I learnt I need to move the tunnel over. The opening in back right, between the yards is where the deer come so she kept stopping to look so I started on the otherside and she did better. Her #1 job is to keep all animals out of her yard
Totally agree, this definitely had more excitement and speed! Upping the treats totally helped, and you were moving more – and also talking more which I think she likes too, so keep on talking!
One suggestion: reward more frequently. If she does one loop and she is hustling? Reward! Yay! No need to keep going. That way you can totally get rewards in fast and furiously while she is running and before she thinks about deer or squirrels.
And since animals are a distraction – definitely up the value of reinforcement and keep sessions short! I would also limit the amount of time she can spend on her own chasing animals, as that builds a LOT of value of deer-chasing without balancing the value of playing with you.
Teeter value is definitely looking good! I love how she drives right up to the end.
>>Watching the video she is still coming at an angle..should give more distance or just moved the wing each time over?.
As you add more lateral distance, start closer to the wing with her so you can set the straight line to the teeter before moving away – as she exits the wing wrap, take a step or two directly to the teeter. When she is going straight to the teeter, you can then start to move away laterally. You did this on the first rep and later at :22 and :28 when you ran past the teeter. Setting the straight line from the wing exit will get her the straight entry to the board – when you were further from the teeter and moving away laterally, she was not sure if she should take the teeter at :10 and :16 and she ended up getting on sideways. On the very last rep you gave her the step to line up, and she was much straighter!
>. I’m posting to line a bunch of different teeters this summer>>
I saw the post – I am excited that she will get to go on tour 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
On the first video, she seemed to do well finding the cheese balls and coming right back! And she was perfectly happy on the plank here – this game will really only get trotting from the dogs, because we want them to be organized and coordinated. Young dogs trying to go fast tend to NOT be organized and coordinated LOL! So with that in mind, I am happy with what she did here 🙂 And your cheese ball throws were fine LOL! The Manners Minder is great for the running a-frame, for example, but your tosses were perfect for this game.One step sends –
>>We had a deer on one side, squirrel on the other 🤦♀️ and a too big area to for run. She gets panting before starting. She runs the yard so fast, she has speed but not so much doing the drills.
Was she running around before the session, or was she finding it hard to stay focused because of the possibility of chasing deer/squirrels in the yard? She seemed pretty engaged and focused in the video!
On the one step sends here, she is still sorting out the sends and driving away without you running a lot, which is why sometimes she is not moving that fast. But, when you move faster, she starts to run (like when you run towards the tunnel, or at :44 when you were running more when she exited the tunnel so she ran to the wing). Also, she runs more when she is on your left and trots more when she is on your right – good to know, because that tells us she is a little less comfy turning to her left than to her right for now.
As the skills sets expand and you add more motion, she will immediately pick up more speed. And also, the more you add play and excitement to the reward, the more you will see speed 🙂 The tossed lotus ball tends to stop the dogs (plus she doesn’t want to drive past it) so you can use a tug toy, or tie the lotus ball to a leash so you can throw it, drag it, get her to chase it, etc – all of that will make things very exciting 🙂 I see you have another session posted, I will go look at that one now 🙂 Nice work here!
TracyGood morning!
She is totally getting the sending commitment really nicely, so now we can play around with how she is reading the cues:
I think what was happening was that you were decelerating while she was in the tunnel then sending to the 1st wing – then sidestepping to the 2nd wing which was causing you to rotate too much/too soon. It worked on the 1st and 2nd rep (when she exited the tunnel on your left) because I think the wings were closer together, but on the 2nd rep at :08 she definitely asked if she should go to the wing or come through the gap because of how much you were decelerated and rotated.On the other side, with the wings a bit further apart – she came through the gap at :15 because you were decelerated and rotated, never really giving a commitment cue to the middle wing (good girl!) :22 was better but she still had a question
Ideally, the one-step send here is for the middle wing, starting when she is exiting the first wing – and that means you don’t need to do the one-step send to the first wing… which means you can keep moving forward as she exits the tunnel rather than decel/send and then end up rotated/sidestepping.
So keep moving as she is in the tunnel and exits on the way to the wing (no sending, just connecting and moving) and as she is approaching wing 1, you can decel and send her to wing 2 – then start the FC back to the tunnel. The reps at :29 and :34 were more like this and were definitely better because you showed the commitment cue to the middle wing (facing it a bit more, not sideways) – :34 was a bit late but probably because you were being more careful not to pull her off 🙂
Teeter – she is definitely liking the frisbee as a placed reward (and gold star to her for holding her stay :)) She seemed very happy to play this game. Before we do more teeter work, I think we need to look at reinforcement strategies a bit because we need a LOT of reinforcement strategies for teeter training… and we are locked into just a few. What I mean by that is: we can’t just do frisbee LOL!! We need higher food value and also we ideally would also have something like a big hollee roller that she can scoop up – the frisbee was very high value for her here, but she couldn’t really grab it properly so ended up with her butt flipping around and the looking at you, neither of which is helpful as we build up the teeter behavior.
So, separately from the teeter – what does she like to eat? Cream cheese? Meatballs? Meals? Vienna sausage? Bagel with cream cheese and lox? (Not really joking about that one, I have used that and have also used gefilte fish!) Find the crazy high value food that we can use for the end of the teeter, even if it is only one or two reps. And you can build food value by doing the ‘eat-the-food then I throw-the-friz’ routine which is how I turned Voodoo and Contraband from non-eaters into ultra-piggies 🙂
Increasing the value of food and finding food that we can use will make teaching the independence of the teeter soooooo much easier. And also finding a big toy that she can decelerate to as she grabs will also help – hollee roller, big wubba, jolly ball, etc.
We want BOTH food and toys in our bag of tricks for future teeter training 🙂
Speaking of reinforcement strategies… the elevated plank is going just fine, she seems perfectly happy and confident to do it 🙂 She is also fine with turning around, a little better turning to her right but that might be because she needed a bit more room to turn to her left (towards you).
>>The space is pretty small, so I can see why she’s not running – nowhere to go. >>
I think the lack of running was more about her feelings of “meh” about the food LOL!!! If you were tossing a friz or a ball, she would find a way to run even in a small space. So this is a great opportunity to build food value, using this very easy game for her. You can create a bit of a loop: plank, cookie, friz! The plank is mainly the antecedent to eating the cookie (which is the behavior we are actually training haha!) followed by the reinforcement of the friz throw. Now is a great time to build the food love because it is sooooo useful for contact (and weave) training!
Great job here – let me know what you think about the reinforcement ideas!
Tracy
Hi!
You are not way behind at all, you are right on track 🙂 Hope the limping issue is resolved, was it from the shoulder injury? Was she sore after this session at all? She seemed to move very well here and was very happy to be training!!! She is so fun!She did well here on these videos – I think video 4 was the same as video 2 though? She was figuring out the parameters of this game (or remembering it from class :)) Since finding that middle jump is definitely harder for shorter dogs – they have more strides to take. Since we want to minimize your motion into the gap, you can start each session with a bit of a refresher with that jump in pretty close – and when she lands from #1 and looks at #2, toss the treat past 2 before she can look back at you (it will be before she jumps the middle jump, but that is fine – when she is looking at it, she is committing to it and that is very rewardable :)) And, toss the treat far so she jumps nice and long.
You can inch that middle jump further away after every 2 reps or so if she is successful – and you can also start her further back from #1 so she has more momentum into the little pinwheel. Starting her further back with both of you moving forward can make a big difference – she was taking jump 1 in collection here to whip around and look at you (and your treats haha) so starting further back can get more extension, which in turn gets that #2 jump to be more visible to her.
>>Moved jumps to a bigger distance and also trying to move less myself. Too much at once imo!
Yes, I agree, good job catching that changing BOTH things was too much and making it easier after that. Changing on variable is good for each session (distance or motion).
Great job here! Let me know if you have the #4 video to post, or if I is indeed different and I just need more coffee 🙂
TracyHi!
This board looked more stable, so definitely leave it propped like this! She seemed happy to run off the end of the board for the ball here, you can alternate the ball and the treats – as long as she doesn’t get tooooooo excited for the ball 🙂 We want her to be coordinated like she was here.Great job on all of these! This game is something to revisit, maybe once a week, as she matures an as she learns more about contacts.
Have fun!
TracyHi!
This is a good height for the board! Now that it is a bit elevated, let her proceed at her own pace for a bit – try not to speed her up til she speeds herself up 🙂 As you are working the turns, stop her in the middle of the plank… then turn her. That wil\ll let her set up her balance before turning, rather than just trying to go fast (that is when she thinks too much about her front end only, or her back feet slip of)
>>Then elevated Board that had a little spring to it:>>
It might have a little too much spring/whip for this stage – the bouncing was unpredictable and she was not as confident (hopped off a bit more than we would like). If possible, prop the middle of the board so it doesn’t bounce around as much.
T
Good morning!
Entries to plank: This is looking good! She was really strong about getting herself onto the plank in a coordinated manner, and that is all we really want at this level of the game – she probably thought these were the easiest cookies EVER lol!!>>After watching the Mtn Climbers video, I realized that Changtse really needs to be super confident on the plnak!!!! I don’t want to repeat Nuptse’s teeter hesitency!!>>
Yes – we want to progress very slowly to get complete confidence. Since she is only 8 months old, I figure it will take at least 6 months or more to thoroughly train a confident teeter performance – slow and steady and smart training 🙂 We can’t really start the heavy duty stuff with it because her joints/muscles/brain is not ready for that yet.
Poor Sprite! Hopefully she is feeling perfect again soon. For board height, just a few inches is great for now. We don’t need a lot of height for this.
Thanks!
TracyHi!
I think you both have this down pat 🙂
On the wingin’ int game with the tunnel and the wings, she is committing beautifully so now we can push the boundaries of it all 🙂 You might want to move the wings a little further away from the tunnel, maybe one more meter away. And, after the send to the wing from the tunnel exit, you can turn sooner: you were generally waiting til she got to the wing to turn, so now you add more challenge by turning when she is a stride before the wing! Can she still commit while you are already turning and leaving? I bet she can! And you can also do that on the FC on the 2 wings – when she is approaching the 2nd wing and one stride away, do the FC and let’s see if she can stay committed.Pinwheeling looks great! You can run less for this game for now – start her further back and as she is approaching jump 1, you decelerate and send her to jump 2 (it will bring in similarities to the wingin’ it game!) . And you can then move that middle jump even further away, to keep building up the commitment at a distance.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
I agree, her first day of school went really well!!!!She caught onto the lazy game really fast! I liked how she was looking forward to the jumps for the most part, and not up at you as she went around the pinwheel. My only suggestion is that she needs a better line up to catch jump 1 when you are starting the next rep (she was not really seeing it and starting with the middle jump). You can throw the cookie for jump 3 further away, so when she eats it and turns around, she is on a straight line back to the first jump. I think she is ready for you to spread this out the next time you play with it – jump 2 and move further and further away (and you get to remain lazy like you were here LOL!)
Wingin’ It also looks really strong! Her commitment is *solid* and that is exactly what we want. My only suggestions involve handling LOL! You might have to move a little faster to get to the tunnel exit before her to show the send, she was going FAST! And add a tiny bit more connection to her eyes as she exits, especially when she is on your right side (she wants to curl into you a tiny bit before the sending). When you did 2 wings and the FC, you can challenge her by trying to turn sooner on the FC – this might mean she is ready for you to spread this one out more too 🙂
For the Wingin’ It games, you can totally use tug toys! She does love her treats and lotus ball, but she also loves her tuggies and this is a good game for those.
The plank game looks good too – she started off a bit excited with legs going everywhere but then she started thinking about her feet AND was able to be balanced while going fast. You can add more angles on the cookie tosses (tossing them more towards or away from you), so she comes back to the board on harder angles as well to practice getting on from all sorts of approaches.
Turning around was harder for sure – you will probably need to use a lot of treats to convince her to slow down and take her time with that, it is the only spot we need her to slow down and think about all her feet LOL!!Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Wingin’ It – the one step sends at the beginning looked great, and she was balanced on both sides in terms of commitment and turning!When you added the 2nd wing (at :12, :18, :24, :33) – I think she actually needs less help than you were giving her here 🙂 You were using a send step to the wing after the tunnel and then moving over to meet her on the exit side of the middle wing, so you had a lot of arm movement and also you were not finished rotating as she got to the 2nd wing. So, because she keeps getting faster and faster, you don’t need to send to the wing after the tunnel when doing the 2 wing variation. Instead, you can move up the line (she should ick up the wing based on your motion and connection) then when she exits the first one, do a one-step-send-then-FC for the second wing. The goal is that you are turned fully and on the way back to the tunnel before she arrives at that 2nd wing (with connection of course :))That will be harder for her in terms of commitment but she is ready for that 🙂
I like the modified mountain climbers with her! She was very confident, almost to the point of looking judgey when you were not ahead of her LOL! That is great! Question – will she drive to a stationary frizzer on the end of the board? Or a hollee roller? I would like her to drive up to a reinforcement without looking at you, but we need to make sure she likes the reinforcement 🙂 What about her entire meal, in a bowl? We want her to think less about driving up the board and where you are, and just run to her reinforcement.
>> I think having the table the remakes so much more sense for her than the plank to nowhere. >>
Eventually we will change what is propping the teeter to begin to incorporate the plank-to-nowhere element (because she needs to know!) but the other games (the downhill games) can also help with that. There are about 3 zillion teeter games, and she will still have a fabulous teeter if you only play 2 zillion of them 🙂
>>There’s a tiny bit of give on the plank – I had to find props that were the correct size and brace the yoga mats under the one end.>>
I think it was fine, she seemed perfectly happy with it.
>> I know she just wanted to blast around and do the 3 jumps and was looking at me like why are you not running? You always run.>>
Ha! And that is the point of the lazy game: dog runs fast! Human doesn’t always have to 🙂
>> I was not sure if you were looking for a slower type of movement.
Slow from you, not from her – she can go as fast as she likes. I think she did really well, only judgey right at the beginning then she realized that *she* didn’t have to meander. Ha! Perfect! You got the middle jump further away and she was strong with that too. You can start her further away from jump one, so she drives into the whole little pinwheel without you.
>> I was saying “toss” (hard to hear) which is her marker that means I’m throwing the toy/friz right to you at close range.
Great! The only adjustment to make is to say it and deliver before she looks back at you. That will generally mean you will want to watch her landing spots: if she lands and looks at the next jump, mark & toss. If you are wanting to toss for the 3rd jump, you can toss when she takes a stride towards it.
>. And for Dellin, this is about as much enthusiasm for cookies as you will ever get. It looked pretty normal.
She looked great! Happy hoppy for the food and pretty fast too! She was faster on your right than on your left for some reason, probably just more room getting back on the board when she was on your right. When you take the plank outside, you can do this with 2 frisbees 🙂
>>Tradeoff was the bouncing on the mats.
I think the bouncing added to the fun 🙂
>>I realize I was quiet – I was not sure what to say, so just shut up and let her chase the cookies.
You can use your ‘get the cookie’ marker (I say get it).
You can elevate this plank a tiny bit more so it is a few inches off the ground. And you can also add in turning around on it, in the middle from a standstill.
Great job on these!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
She did a great job with the lazy game! I love how she was zipping around the little pinwheel and you didn’t have t work hard at all to convince her. She is stronger turning to her right (moving faster, looking at you less) so when she is turning to her left (starting on your right side) – throw the rewards sooner and more frequently. She might need a reward after each jump on her left turns for now, and might not need it nearly as often on the right turns.That middle jump got really far away and she committed, without you needing to go much past jump 1! NICE! This is exactly what we want. If you have room, you can start her further back from jump 1 (you can start by the fencing!) and see if she will continue to propel through the pinwheel with you not working hard to convince her 🙂
She totally does not think you are a loser at treat throwing LOL! She was happy to find anything you tossed LOL!
She looked super confident to move along the plank! The back and forth was easy for her – you can even toss the treat a little sooner so she drives through the exit and doesn’t look at you.
Nice job adding the sibtle angles of entry and exit with your treat tosses – she also had no questions about that and did well with getting herself on and off smoothly.
Turning around is definitely a little harder – I think she was at her best with that towards the end, when your hand was a little lower and not quite right on her nose – that slightly lower hand and having it further from her nose helped her move more fluidly through the turn (like at 2:10). When the cookie hand was higher and closer to her nose like at 2:02, the raised head position made it harder to move smoothly through the turn. So keep going with the low hand and having it a little further away on the turns.And yes, she totally appreciated the treat refill haha!
You can repeat this on an elevated plank, if you have something stable to raise it a couple of inches – bricks or something similar.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
