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Hi!
With one working spot, you can alternate videos – Bandit get videos for one game, Copper gets videos for a different game, etc 🙂T
Good morning!
I have been secretly hoping that you would start training Lew in agility 🙂 I am glad that your hubby saw his brilliance and agreed to a career in sports 🙂
>We haven’t done much by way of puppy-puppy foundations for sport-life up to now but he really gets excited to train.>
Letting a tiny pup grow up a bit before training is perfect!
>He is quick to talk back if he is frustrated and that is a first for me.>
I like that he is an effective communicator 🙂
>He has finally decided that he likes food, so that changes the game for me!>
Perfect! That does make life so much easier in training.
>Same pajamas, different puppy! >
Classic!!!! We should do a compilation of the pajamas over the years LOL!!! Mine are also the same haha
The pregames are going great! He is definitely engaged and happy to offer! And I see what you mean about him communicating his anger when the treats are not coming fast enough LOL!
He is SUPER quick in his movements – he moves towards the prop then smacks you with his foot LOL!! So you can reward him for moving towards it/looking at it, getting the click/reward in early and before he smacks you. Then you will start getting more of the foot smacks you were getting at the end of the session.
The next step here is to begin working your way up to standing: I think a good intermediate step is having you in a chair and if he is fine with that, you can go to standing in the same session.
Nose touch video:
Look at his toy drive! Wow!!! Super!! And he dove on the toy at the end even after all those cookies. Yay!The nose touches went really well!
Bearing in mind that he doesn’t have a long nose at all, you can read a lot of moving towards the target. It looks like he was touching it nicely here but as we add more speed in upcoming games, he might not want his eyes that close to the target is it fine to reward just before he gets to it.Great job here! He looks awesome!
Tracy
Good morning and welcome!!!! Bandit is so tiny compared to Copper! But they are both adorable 🙂
Bandit has lovely toy drive! You might want to tie a couple of toys together so he can tug with one end of the toy on the ground while you are tugging and eventually standing. He might still try to come up a little higher on the toy which is perfectly fine, but at least we are giving him option to get low and pull back on the toy. And it will save your back from bending over a lot while you tug 🙂 The toy in the 2nd video was longer and it looked easier to tug on when you were standing.
The nose target went well! Was it a post it note? I approve LOL!!!!
Part of this session was about sorting out how to structure the session – keeping the toy hidden for now really helped him focus on the target. And you did a great job of moving the treats slowly so he could lock onto the rewards and where you were placing them – brilliant! He won’t need that for long, but he is only 9 weeks old so the shaping sessions will include a lot of teaching him where to look for the rewards for a bit.
I LOVE his happy exhuberance in the forward focus driving to the toy session! SO CUTE!!! He was brilliant about looking at the toy, and seemed very happy to let you line him up and hold his collar (side note: Papillons and Pap mixes sometimes do NOT like the collar hold, so we make it super fun really early in training).
Since he was brilliant here, you can add a bit of duration: throwing the toy and letting him stare at it for another second or two before letting him go. And you can also add distance by throwing it further.
He is not running away with it, so after he gets the toy you can help him come back by enticing him back to you or even showing him a 2nd toy: we will be working on retrieves in this class and it starts with ‘don’t run away with the toy’ LOL
When you’ve got a bit more distance, we will also get you standing up for this game because it leads into adding handler motion.
The foot target video also looked strong! He got thoughtful about interacting with the object which is good! You can add in a tug break after every 3 or 4 cookies to keep his excitement high and to continue building the skill of going from food to toys to food.
For this game, he probably needs one more session to really get the foot snack going 🙂 then you can dive into the first ‘prop game’ posted today.
Great job!
TracyGood morning to you and Josie!!!! I am excited to see her!
The body of the intro here was blank – let me know if you posted something and it disappeared?
Have fun!
Tracy
Yes! That is right! I should have recognized the name!! She is so fun!
She did great with the Focus Forward here. Super!!! It was a really fun, high energy session – and short & sweet too. Super!
Since she had no trouble with it, you can start to add a bit more: after you toss the toy, wait a few seconds before releasing her to it, to get more duration on the forward focus. Try to be quiet when you are getting more duration because if you are talking, she might look at you.
You can also throw it further for her to run to even more. You can take the game outside to give yourself more room to run 🙂 Outside is harder for more pups, so you can start with what you did here and then add more distance on the throw.
Great job :)
TracyGood morning and welcome to class! Rusty is SO CUTE!!!!! And a terrific worker too!
>but food is his thing to the point of over-arousal.>
No worries! Part of what we do here is balance the rewards out so he knows exactly how to earn them and won’t be over-aroused when the food is present.
>I learned a lot about Rusty from these two shaping exercises.>
That is fantastic – these pre-games are not really about getting the behavior, they are more about figuring out how each pup works and how to best shape them. Good for you for noticing that the original setup was too hard and switching back to one where he can be successful!
He did really well with the toy play! In both sessions to get even more toy play, you can be standing up so he has more room to grab the toy – and to maintain the squiggling around and moving the toy around like you did here, you can tie two long toys together so you can be chasing the toy to play with it, and you won’t need to be on the ground or bending over.
This will also help when you go back to the toy after the treats: you can get him chasing it by standing up (nd picking up the target) and dragging the long toy away from him to chat and tug on.
He offered foot targeting brilliantly here! You did a great job shifting from rewarding at the target to using your ‘get it’ market (click/treat to you for using it consistently!!)
Since he is a foodie, you can start teaching him to ignore the food in order to get it by having a few treats in your hand. That will make the rewards quicker while also helping him tune out the treats in order to smack the target 🙂
The nose touch target also went great: he offered the behavior immediately! Good pup!!!! You can have 4 or 5 treats in your hand here too – that will help him not look up at you while you get the treat out (and builds in a bit of impulse control to ignore the food :))
He was in food mode at the end of the nose target session, so this is where you can get the toy play going but moving away from where you had the food (and all the food smells :)) and let him chase the toy you are dragging 🙂
As these games get more and more action -for the kitchen, you can put a cheap rubber backed rug down so he can move fast without slipping.
Great job here!!!
Tracy
Good morning (or afternoon!) and welcome! Ziv is VERY cute!!!
He did a great job sorting out the foot target! He was very clever about it: when the rewards were all coming at the target, he decided to stay at the target and not move. This included sitting on it LOL! Smart! I think it was not so much that he was unsure, and more about him thinking the behavior you wanted was to stand there.
So you can change your reward placement now: When he touches the target, toss a treat off to the side so he moves off of the target to get it then runs back to the target (and you can mark that and toss the treat to the other side.
Great job! I am excited to see more!
Tracy
Hello and welcome! Great to have you and Macklynn here! I am looking forward to learning more about her 🙂
Your 2nd post (the reply) here was blank – let me know if you had posted something and the website ate it? I want to make sure I don’t miss anything.
Have fun!
Tracy
Good morning!
Welcome!!
Vibe is so cute and tiny! I got to see Koolies for the first time when I was in New Zealand and they were amazing! There was one blue merle that I tried to take home LOL!! They are super fun and fantastic working dogs too! And Vibe is definitely looking super fun and super clever 🙂>He is a bit similar to Ripley – a concept dog, loves logic, loves training puzzles, likes a bit of consistency and routine to be able to settle well when we are on “down” time. This pup (like Ripley) would probably train 24 hours a day if I allowed that.>
I am sure that is because you are clear with your markers, timing, etc. Pups picked things up very quickly when the human has great training mechanics, which you definitely have.
>So far food wins out over toys during training but he does like playing with toys and tugging. We’ll keep building fluency with switching back and forth as we go.>
I thought he did really well in the videos here, especially because the toy play was right over where all the cookies were thrown so there were probably food smells. He really liked when you were dragging the long toy around!
>He’s doing great out and about in the world and is just as focused during training when we go to new locations (like ringside at an agility show) as he is at home – so far.>
OMG he is a perfect unicorn! Yay!
The pre-game videos look great.
The puppy raincoat is a fun prop for the foot targeting 🙂Nice transition from the tugging to the shaping!! And Vibe is already great at offering, clearly you’ve taught him the jobs of offering things. This went great with absolutely brilliant foot smacks and then getting him back onto the toy. Lovely!
Since you are already standing and he is already moving away to the prop, you can head right into the first game where we add sends when cued (handler focus with the ready dance then the send).
Nose targeting also looks great – he is driving in HARD to it and being brilliant 🙂 He was starting to look up at you (touch and look almost all on one motion) so you mark/reward a shade earlier: sometimes just before he hits the target.
Great job changing sides – he was in the zone for the other side and was surprised that the target was in the other hand, but found it really easily. Yay!
My only suggestion for this game is to break it off more frequently for tugging. Otherwise, you can set it aside in favor of the other games and we will pick this one up again in a few weeks.
Great job!!
TracyHello and welcome back! He is getting so big and grown up looking!
His MaxPup 1 video looks great – we are going to be able to hit on the advanced levels of the games this time around then he will be the perfect age for MaPup 2!
Have fun 🙂
Tracy
Good morning and welcome!!
Sunnie sounds terrific!!! There is another 10 week old chocolate baby pup here, who also likes toys over food – are they related? The other pup is Rye with Lori.
I am looking forward to learning more about Sunnie! Have fun!
Tracy
