[Tracy Sklenar]

Thanks, I had missed it. He is doing really well!!!! He was basically perfect when you were stationary – it was definitely impressive when you were at the center of the bar!
He had a little more trouble when you added motion, so just move a little more slowly for now.
You can warm him up in the next session without any movement, then add very slow walking… barely walking haha! When he is just about 90-100% with that, then add “normal” walking. 🙂
This will be very useful on course when you are behind him, or need to turn him away from a distance!
Nice work 🙂
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
I am super happy with this session – it did blow his mind a little to see this ON A COURSE IN THE GO FAST PLACE hahahaha but by the middle of the session and all the way through to the end, he was producing the turns we want to see on course!

I think starting with a wrap for the next session will be a better start, because it is the exact opposite of the Go. The soft left might have been a bit too much in the middle?
And you can have all of the bars at full height except the turn jump bar (keep it lower for now, it will get to full height soon).

What I think your next move should be to identify areas in training courses where you think he might struggle with a turn. If he is in a class, or you are training at home – throw in the ‘helper’ jump and run the course. Then the turn becomes no different than maintaining criteria on contacts or weaves, right? For example, at the beginning of this session, it was REALLY easy to see if he was maintaining criteria on his left turns or not (he was not hahaha). Same on a course! he will get used to making the nice turns just like he did here!

One more gold star goes to him finding the jump AFTER the wrap. It is not exactly on his line and you didn’t have to help him get it. That is a BIG happy-making moment! YEAH!!!!

Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Really nice work here! She did really well!

She did really well with the independent verbals, this is a really hard game!! One blooper but overall really nice! You can start to fade out the little bit of help you were giving her (tiny bit of motion help with feet turning) – delay that slight turn of you feet while you walk directly forward to the jump bar sayin the verbal – then as she is nearing the bar, you can turn your feet a little. She will let you know if she needs more help than that, by getting it wrong 🙂 You can start her a little further back from the jump so you have time to show her all of this and so she has time to process it.

>>Independent wraps were good unless there was a distraction jump too close. I started out with the same set up for both excercises and realized right away that was too confusing with the distraction jump. Thinking I might try it in the future unless you think that’s unreasonable (?)

I agree that the start wing and distraction jump are too much for the criteria of also turning away… for now 🙂 Eventually you can go to that distraction jump setup but you might not need to.

Raising the height:

>>Nice to review some wrap and soft turn stuff at different jump hts. Felt like she was doing well with that
Yes! She was SUPER! That bar looks so tall compared to her LOL! She did really well!
One general thing to remember is to try to be in motion the whole time, no standing still 🙂 You wee sending and standing still on a lot of them – but she was excellent when you were in motion, so keep moving.
Positionally, you can stay outside the wing of the jump for the wraps and soft turns – when you were moving to the center of the bar, you are pushing her off her line a bit, like when she thought you wanted the backside at 5:02 and 9:26.
You added more moving forward at 5:33 and she had an error on that rep, but then she was great with the motion after it like at 6:52 – she made the correct decision while you were moving with no handling help! Yay! And same with 7:10 – you were moving forward, not really helping -and she nailed it.
Also, when you were not moving, she tended to pull the bars more than when you were moving 🙂 She was really good with her jumping when you stayed in motion.

So for the next session on both of these, I think the main theme is: add more motion 🙂 She is doing really well, so you can add more and more motion to challenge her. Great job!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! This is a VERY hard game and you both did really well!

Great job breaking that accidental vortex 🙂 You can help her by getting closer to the start wing so she is not chasing your motion as much, or by running faster for the GO like at 1:24, 1:50, 1:58

When she was successful, you were a little slower on the serp reps and definitely faster on the GO reps – see if you can be medium speed (same speed) on both then if she is happy with that – go fast on both. Wheeee!

>>I struggled with my words too. I had so much to spit out at the end I ended up omitting the second directional verbal of the serpentine frequently or my reward marker sometimes.>>

Take a moment to plan before each rep: for example, it can be “left – right – get it!” or “GO GO GO get it”. I try to always take a moment to plan, and also to remember which dog I am running LOL!

>>I also had no trouble with spitting out the taboo “YES”, which left me little time for the correct words lol!!!

HA! that is because we have practiced the YES so many times, it is second nature (25 years of it for me LOL!)

>>One is about my reward placement on her line. I felt like I was rewarding on the incorrect line sometimes. I did find when I was actually successful with the second directional I was more likely to reward on the correct line. Hopefully I was anyway lol!

I was happy with your placement. If you do not say the 2nd directional, than a general toss past the jump was fine, because the placement matched the first directional. And you were also good at throwing it on the serp line. All of your GO rewards looked good!

>>How important is the second directional to say at the beginning? is this something i should really concentrate on?

The second directional is what matches the turn on the jump, so definitely try to get it going 🙂 Switch to it as soon as she arrives at the start wnig.

>>I had to really add my motion(Handling) with this game to get out of the vortex. Was this ok to do or does it just ruin the purpose of this game? Instead should I have gone back to the previous serpentine exercise and attempt this one when that one is solid with me running?>>

It is fine as a vortex-breaker 🙂 and then you fade it back out. Or, change sides like you did, or start closer to the start wing so there is a different picture to help break the vortex.

>>I do think things really started to click for her at the end of this game.

Heck yeah! You both looked awesome!! Well done!
let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! I am glad you were able to play outside today!!

A general idea to make the line a little easier is to have the start wing more on line to the center of the bar of the first jump, so that you can just walk forward for the go versus the left or right. You were getting caught behind the jump on some of the reps and that was confusing the line a little.

For Keltie –
I think showing her the food toy is totally NOT cheating :), it is more about teaching her the concept of “seeing the MM out there does not mean going to the MM all the time” LOL! So you had to start that way in order to get her ‘unlocked’ from the MM (the MM is a very powerful visual). On your next session, warm her up with that reminder to not just run to the MM before you add much of your motion. Then when she remembers that, you can add the turns versus go.

She was starting to get the idea for sure and I am glad you added a go rep – maybe just add one go rep before going back to the soft turns so it is not too hard for her, she LOVES that MM LOL! And you can also add a little more motion, moving forward faster/

Also, and you might have been doing this – have boring dullsville cookies in the MM, and really delicious ones in the toy you are throwing. That can help balance the value of the Go to the MM versus the soft turn.

And same idea with Buccleigh – he needed to learn that the MM is NOT the almighty cookie robot, so it was good to show him the other reinforcement option 🙂 he caught on pretty quickly though! He knocked the bar a lot on the early soft turn reps, but I think that was more about him learning to ignore the MM and follow the toy throws – the bar dropping went away as he got more confident with the skill.
For Buccleigh, you can totally mix in the GO a little sooner 🙂 so he doesn’t get locked into the soft turns.

>>then I had trouble getting the go again. My attempt to make it easier was to move closer to the bar. Would it have been better to trigger the MM before I let them go? The motor makes a noise which they recognize and it would have changed their focus.>>

One thing to remember is that ‘go’ does not necessarily mean take jumps – it means stay on a straight line. So if he is on an angle over 1, he will not take 2 if it is not on the straight line, which is what happened a few times here. So the line up from the wing is important and so is your line of motion to make sure he sees jump 2 on the line.
When he was taking 1 straight on, he got the go lines pretty consistently. When he was coming to 1 on an angle, he would stay on a straight line and not take 2, but it was not necessarily wrong in that situation. So be sure to line him up to approach jump 1 straight. And at this point – don’t trigger the MM before you let go, I don’t think that will help them process the verbal. Trigger it as soon as you see him moving straight!

He did really well after his break!! Really lovely job on these!!

>>I would like to try the wrap exercises again. Is is OK to mix them up? Maybe on different days? Or, should I stay with the soft turns until we have it a little better?

Yes, you can mix them up so no one gets bored. You can do the exit line criteria combo game, or even the fast lines game! All of those use the wraps and soft turns, but in different fun ways 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

>>Got a brag for you!!! We have a weekly Wednesday class with Lo Baker. Yesterday’s setup had LOTS of big, fast Go lines mixed in with lots of tight Wraps and Sly was freaking amazing!!! Per Lo “He really knows his Wrap/Wrap verbal” 🙂 Wish I had videoed! He/we (I’m including me is this as I was SO much better about getting the cue out in plenty of time) executed them all just about perfectly 🙂 Happy Dance…..cheeseburgers and Shamrock shakes on the way home!>>

What a fabulous update!!!! Happy dancing and cheeseburgers FOR SURE! I have never had a shamrock shake but now I want one LOL

>.’ve got a 1/2 dozen reps of him doing just about everything possible with the jump trying to figure out what I mean. Once I got my mechanics right he was like – Thank You, Mom!!!>>

Yep, mechanics are the make or break for some of these skills! And the ‘out’ is not a very intuitive movement for a lot of dogs and definitely requires training. He did really well with the non-out reps and needed a bit of convincing for the out reps here. The ‘out’ arm can be bigger, much bigger, almost urgent – I think of it as pointing to the exit wing of the jump with a fully extended arm. It is a USEFUL verbal nowadays, I used it a lot last weekend!

>> I’ve got just the one verbal for a backside, Back and am relying on my handling to let him know whether it’s a wrap or a slice. Figure that I can always add a new cue for one of them down the road if I need/want to.

Yes, you can always add a new one. For now, you can use a compound cue for the circle wraps: back then the wrap verbal. So back plus nothing else is the slice, and back plus wrap is the circle wrap – you would switch to the wrap verbal when he is just about arriving at the backside wing.

He is doing REALLY well on these, especially the back versus the right – one oopsie but otherwise perfect with no real handling differentiation. He seemed to be truly processing the verbals. YAY!!!

These were all position 1, so start your next session with a couple of position 1 reps. Then move the wing over to position 2!

>> Hardest part about both of these games – remembering not to say Yes and to cue Get It for the reward!!! 30 years of Yes are going to take awhile to change!!!!>>

I feel this!!! So much!!!! I am getting better with the baby dogs, but it is still YAY or YES for the older dogs LOL!

Great job here!!! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
Great job here on the week 4 games – they are difficult!!!

On the fast line game – nice job here! Great connection and timing of the verbals!!! She did really well. I think the left turns went well for her on all of the reps. The right turns were harder, probably because they are harder in general and because the turf is a little slippery for her right turns. But her last soft right turn was terrific! Keep up the great cnnection and timing – you were looking at her the whole time, and your verbals were happening pretty much while she was still engaged with the previous obstacle, making them nice and early!!

Game 2 (serp versus go) -She did well on both side here! I think that one thing tat will help her is if you change the volume of the left and right cues. When they are loud, they start to sound like the GO and are the same length. So she got some correctly, but had a miss a couple of times, one on each side. So you can change the volume and stretch the left/right verbals. GO is loud and short, and left/right can be softer and longer. It is easy to be loud when running, so I have to remind myself to say my left and right verbals more softly and not yell LOL! I think that will bring her success rate up to 100% 🙂

The turn aways are probably the hardest game of week 4!! She nailed it right at the beginning, it was amazing! Then she got into a turn-right-vortex where everything was a right turn. When that happens – do something really easy to ‘break’ the vortex, like a shoulder turn and a hand cue to help. She was guessing without when you were facing forward, so you can totally help her out! You started to add some foot rotation, and that broke the vortex and then she started to get it 🙂
So for your next session:

Try starting you both further away from the jump – that will give you both more time: more time for you to give the cue and show her a little handling help, and then more time for her to process it. I think 12-15 feet away will be a good distance to help her out.

Great job on the jumpers course – it is a hard one!!!
Your wrap on 2 and backside on 5 looked good – nice handling, nice verbals! Woohoo!!!

There are a couple of spots on this course where I can see that she reads lines very literally: when she landed from 6 at :08, she stayed on her line which took her right past the wingless jump (and it is harder to see a wingless jump). A left verbal on 6 can help her out! I think I used a GO there but it was set a little differently.

A verbal 9-10 will help and you blocked her line a little
A name call 12-13 at :20 should help her find the blue wing jump before the tunnel

The in in as a forced front cross had a little too much propulsion for her at :26 but your in in at :40 where you did it as a threadle was PERFECT!

The zip zip for the wrap cue happened after takeoff to the yellow jump at :45, so try to start it when she is in the air over the purple jump before it (:43)- it is similar to the timing you used in the fast lines game

FC-ing to the end makes the last turn a left at :50, not a go – – you said go, so she ran straight on the line she was on – she was totally correct (and very literal LOL)

So look for those soft left or right turns instead of GO moments, that should really help!

>> I’m going to try it again today and do what you suggested last night and add the small jump behind on some of the collection jumps and see if that helps her.

I think a good spot for it is at the yellow wrap jump, 3rd obstacle from the end. Start from the tunnel and work that line – lots of speed to a tight turn!

Great job on all of these! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hope you are having fun!!!!

>>She tends to target high in general.

Yes, she was a little higher than the toy on the ground – but it was still a good had position for the jumping skills!

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
He did really well here – it is a hard game! The hitting of the wing on the very first rep is an indicator of how hard it is!

>>he LOVES “fisbee”- he can’t say Rs,

HA! That is so funny!

He did really well for both of you. You can totally move the wing in closer for the next session (and add more motion – see below).

One thing to play around with is making the verbals sound very different from each other:
Mike’s verbals in the beginning sounded a little too similar – Karena’s verbals started to sound pretty different and Mike’s verbals in the second part of the session sounded more different too, which is good! So try to keep the wrap verbals quiet and chattered – and the tunnel verbals can be long and LOUD 🙂

For the next session, you can move the wing in closer and try it without motion. But also, you can add motion to it by sending him into the tunnel, then meeting him closer to the tunnel exit then walking forward to the wing (while cuing the wrap or the tunnel). The motion might cause him to want to just take the tunnel even with the wrap verbal happening.
If he is fine with it with you walking, then you can build up the motion up to jogging and then running!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Welcome to class – she is adorable!!!

Really nice session here with the set point. She has a great sit-stay! And the cookie tosses provided some big entertainment LOL! You can totally throw a toy back to her instead of a cookie 🙂
Her jumping form is looking good – I think we can add 2 elements to teach her to power even more:

– How far apart were the 2 jumps? Move them in maybe 6 inches closer or a foot closer, to see if we can get her to land more in the middle of the 2 bumps.
– You can move the cookie bowl further away by maybe 6 feet so she can extend for another stride after landing. She was moving into collection here pretty quickly in order to be ale to stop.

When you add the moving target (from the Pre-Games) game to this, you won’t have to worry about where the food bowl is 🙂

Wrap to jump – this is also looking good! Try to position your line of motion to be outside the wing of the jump, so you are not standing still – you should be able to walk past the wing and that will challenge her to commit or follow you. If she can find the jump with you moving past it, you can add more speed 🙂 And also start closer to the wing so she drives ahead a bit!

Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

>>I agree that he makes decisions very early!

Yes, based on what I see here and what I saw at the trial, you will probably start giving him the info no later than when he is taking off for the previous jump. He is very fast with a lot of power!

>>I think he had a decent port or starboard turn because I was throwing the toy too early.

That is fine for the first couple of sessions! Then we can delay the reward.

>> I think will help (although ONE of my weaknesses is recognizing commitment – it all happens so quickly!).

Part of it is that we really have to trust them, which is SUPER hard to do when they are young! And also, the more connected you stay, the more they commit. (plus the verbals :))

>> my biggest take away here is no handling. Let him make the decision on the verbal and reward when correct!>>

Yes – for training purposes, we take out the handling and reward his good decisions. That way, on course, he will see both the handling and hear the verbal, and it will all be much easier 🙂

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Good work on all of these!

The jump height session with the soft turns was really interesting:
She really had trouble with the left soft turns for a while: she would miss on the first attempt (and take the 2nd jump) every single time and then get it right on the next attempt. I was about to make some suggestions to help her but she had a lightbulb moment, figured it out, and then was perfect. CooL!!! I think on the left turns, she just needs you to move more slowly for now, so she can be successful on the first rep of the next session, then you can add back more motion.
She was pretty darned perfect on her soft right turns! And she was amazing with the wraps!!! Nice!

In the back-front combos:

>> I’m not sure how much I was helping her with my feet.

You were totally helping 🙂 When your feet were facing the center of the bar she thought it was the cue for the left soft turn, even when it was not – so you adjusted and pointed your feet to the backside when you wanted one of the backside cues. That was fine for this session, as it is still challenging! So for the next session, I think you can concentrate on your feet pointing forward to the bar and not the backside wing – first in position 1 and then position 2. You don’t need to do as much of the backside wraps, I think the backside slice versus the front side soft turn will be good to contrast for her as you work on keeping your feet pointing forward.

She did really well on the serp versus threadle game! Usually dogs have trouble alternating the two behaviors and she really did not – I never saw anything that I would consider a “vortex” 🙂 The left turns were definitely easier for her to come in for the threadle side. You had a subtle dangle of the toy and that helped her come in, which is fine because that can then become a hand cue. She did a great job alternating – she hit the wing a couple of times but I think it was more about watching the toy, so you can throw sooner. So on that side, you can add more motion!

When you switched sides, she needed a moment to remember to come in tight on tie right turn – you helped her a little with handling and then added the threadle – then she nailed it 🙂 On this side, start your next session with a reminder to come in and threadle, without a lot of motion – then gradually add in more motion if she is successful.

On the threadle – you can also add in an arm cue that you would normally use for threadles – I couldn’t see if you had i going here but she can definitely see it now.

Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Hope you are off doing something fun and relaxing!!!

The pre-games look good!

I am happy with what she did with the flirt stick toy – it immediately lowered her head. She was always looking way up at your face as you did the lead out, but the toy got her head down really well. On some reps, she looked forward and down to it and you released in that moment: perfection! She didn’t offer the focus forward before the release on all of them and that is fine – she focused forward on the toy after the release on all of them 🙂 And, in super happy news, she was not a crazy beast going for the toy – fast, head down, but organized and not wild.
I also see her targeting a little higher on the toy – her head is still low, but if you have someone who can do a little hollee roller arts and crafts, we can try that. Do I remember correctly that she also likes a jolly ball? Those are great for this too!

When you get back, you can add this in to the set point.

The wraps look good too! She was starting before the verbal at the beginning of the session, so ideally you either hold her so she can’t start without you, or she waits til she hears the verbal as the release (which is what she was doing towards the end). I just hold the dog, so they don’t anticipate and start before the verbal 🙂

She is ready for the next games when you get back. Have a blast!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

She is doing really well here and plus it gives us the chance to sort out what she needs from us humans 🙂

I see what you mean when you say the wrap is not as strong without the rotation. She seemed to have the most trouble with the wrap versus the go when you were leaning over and pumping your arms (which is what a Go cue would look like) so we can add motion differently:
Try to just move forward upright, not bent over or pumping arms really fast, more like what you did with the soft turns – jut walking forward. Then it can be jogging forward and we can add real running later 🙂 At trials, we are generally behind (and perhaps late with the cue :)) so getting her to do the wraps with you just moving forward will really help!

The left and right soft turns are looking good!!! So now, just walk forward on those too, don’t turn and move laterally as much.

She had some trouble with the Go verbal but I think it was the line up and not the verbal or understanding. At 1:09, you were moving on the line to the center of the bar so she couldn’t get on it, and she almost considered a backside. She did get the front side there but that takes the 2nd jump off the Go line so she didn’t take it. At 1:12 she did take the backside, because you were blocking the front side line and also stepped to the backside, so off she went to the backside.
At 1:28 you were not on her line and she was lovely there 🙂 Yay!

When you switch to the soft right turns – you were bending and pumping your arms there at first like you did with the wraps, so that propelled her away – moving forward and upright will help her here, too.

When you did the exit line game – this was a good example of moving but not handling 🙂 You were basically just moving forward and not tipping her off with handling before the turn wing. Super!!! You did help her find the jump after the soft turn a tiny bit but that is fine, especially if this is one of her first tries at this crazy game 🙂

One thing that I think can help her:
Make left and dig sound more different – extend the left so it is more like lehhhhhft lehhhhft and not letletletlet, because the dogs seem to process rhythm and tone as much as they do the specific word.

At 2:31 and 2:41, the rhythm and speed of the verbals sounded the same and she looked up at you.
Compare that to 2:48 and 2:57, when the dig and the right sounded pretty different and she drove away to the wing nicely there! So same thing with the right verbal – keep it longer like “riiiight riiiiiight” so you can make it very different sounding than the wrap cues.

Great job on these – they are hard games and she is doing really well!!! You can totally play some of the other games as well – the serp games help with the left/right, for example. That way she is learning them in different contexts and not just the same games.

Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>> But suffice to say, that after watching your threadle videos, the question is solved. The sequence was basically a threadle! Subtle, but there it is. Above our pay grade, for now. Glad we worked toy drop. Will get better with a proper set up into it.>>

This same topic came up in the chat last night! Threadles are hard lines to communicate to the dog – based on the what needs to happen on the jump before the threadle jump, I choose the turn verbal that seems closest to what I want the dog to do to set up a good approach to the threadle jump. No verbal usually means the dog lands really wide and then the threadle is much harder. A soft turn or wrap will work, based on what I know the dog can do on the takeoff side and how much collection is needed.

>>>The confusion I had went like this…Diana works left/right verbals on M.P. both toward and away…then tries to progress to a single bar doing turns toward and away, but using wrap verbals (for tight turns) shouldn’t Diana try to use soft turns (same type of v.c. as from M.P. before advancing to wrap cues)?>>

Ah yes – it can be easier mentally if you it one type of turn. They are two different approaches to teaching it, but less for the dog to have to process if it is only one type of turn (and less for me to have to remember, especially if I am coffee-deprived haha)

>>I still say that awesome verbal skills from behind are like cheating! 😁😉 great success for your speedstakes run! >>

Ha! Then my goal is that everyone is a bunch of cheaters with great verbal skills 🙂

Tracy

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