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Hi Mary and Karen!
Yes, Karen can’t do tomorrow’s class – if you want to buy her spot, that is great! Let me know!
TracyHi Karen and welcome! I am excited to see you here!!!! See below to answer your question about the live classes:
T
Hello and welcome!!! I have had a talk with both the weather gods and the internet gods, they assure me that everything will work perfectly 🙂 Yay! See ya soon!
TracyHello and welcome! Hoping for an early spring for you, so we can play lots of games! See ya soon!
TracyYIKES! How did she do that? What was the surface?
No worries about this class, we have plenty of time before class is officially over.
>>Trying not to freak because this coming weekend is our last show before NAC
I would skip the show – the pads will still be soft and she could get sore from compensating. You do NOT need that show to be ready for NAC! You are ready 🙂
T
Hi! This was great fun to see!!
The point of this game is to get BOTH nice collections AND the line after the turn. When he is “hot” he doesn’t always find the line after the turn, which is why this game is SO important for him (because he is always going to be hot hahahaha). The jumps after the turns very consistently here! And he was able to do it while you were running fast and he maintained really nice collections too. YAY>>He actually got angry a couple times with the wraps and I think it made him wrap tighter (knocked a bar once) and run out of the wrap faster (yikes!)>>
The barking/growling was great, it means we had him in a state of arousal that he will experience in the trial setting. Can you still get it right, Stark? YES! Woohoo!! He was wide after the bar knock but I think that was more of an ‘ouch’ moment and not a lack of criteria moment.
>>He had one right turn when he ran around the wing, not sure why but he didn’t do it anymore.
Hard to tell why he did that, maybe he saw the toy hand starting to move? No biggie 🙂
>>and then one left wrap where he did a soft turn instead.
Yes, just an error – nice reset cookie! And then the wrap on the next rep was perhaps the tightest wrap in the session! YAY! It is also a great demo of how reset cookies can help us get the correct behavior without accidentally repeating the incorrect behavior. YES!
We will revisit this one shortly. For now, though – take a look at the gam where we raise the jump heights (posted today). I think the next order of festivities should be:
Raising the bar on the wraps and soft turns
Revisiting the fast lines game with a taller bar
Then, we will look at the real world course work game (also added today).Great job! Have fun!
TracyHi!
Yes, you can throw a toy in UKI and you can have helpers in the ring in UKI 🙂 When I am planning to throw a toy, I always bring several toys in: one to throw, and one to get the first one back as soon as possible 🙂So you can lead out, throw a toy, call her, get the toy back while you tug, go to the next jump, do another stay, etc.
At first, the toys should be visible so she understands it is training (it sets her up for more success, you really don’t want her to fail then be told she is wrong, etc). If she can be successful multiple times, you can go to a hidden toy. I get teased a lot because I have toys stuffed down my pants, in my bra, etc. LOL!
You can also do a stay & lead out, release, tug. Set her up in front of the next jump or tunnel, do a stay, lead out, release, tug. You can have a helper in the ring to hold your other toy, etc. Or you can use tennis balls – throw one, lure her back with the other – helper picks up the first one, etc.
Let me know if that makes sense 🙂
TracyHi!
She did really well on both games here – these are the two hardest games that we play in this class and she was pretty great! Yay!!!
On the serp versus Go:
One of the courses at the trial this weekend had this game basically embedded in it – the jumps were not touching, but it was the same exact concept! I didn’t run it (only ran the youngsters in the baby classes) but it was great to see that this game will be very helpful and not just another crazy game LOL!
She definitely was giving you the side eye on the Go reps at the beginning! Too funny! But good girlie, she was really strong with processing the difference with a lot of speed and a high degree of accuracy.
She has trouble going back to the GO after the serp rep sometimes (and vice versa), so you can help her on the first rep by giving the verbal then after she hears it two or three times, give her the physical cue. The timing of that will help her predict what the verbal is asking for, and create an even higher rate of success. YAY!
The other two little details here are:
– you can start the GO verbal sooner – as she is arriving at the start wing, you can already be saying GO GOGO and don’t give a left/right verbal on the start wing on the go reps.
– try to stay very close to the serp jump, don’t pull away from it, we don’t want her to to wait to see you pull away before coming in.On the wrap game with the turning away versus turning towards – she did VERY well here!!! Yay! I think the arm cues were basically faded by the end of it, so the next thing is to make sure that you are not using any motion cues by pressuring the rear cross line. So for the next session – all of your motion should be directly towards where the wing meets the bar, just moving forward, not towards the RC line. You might want to add back the hand signal help at first, because lack of motion help is pretty hard. Then you can fade the hand cues out again.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi there!
>>Ps. Lots of sheep and dog noises for everyone to enjoy on this one
Yay! I love the farm sounds 🙂
>>Had lots of practice on courses this weekend for soft turn and tight wraps at warp speed. Your class has helped a lot, those went really well. I did encounter an interesting problem: it was really noisy at the venue and my soft turn cue wasn’t really loud enough as a shh shh noise. Going to migrate the verbal over to the ever popular check, check. Seems easier to yell it 🙂>>
That is really interesting and good to know! After watching the video, I have 2 ideas for you! (see below) In flyball, where it is a tiny bit noisy hahaha, we use high pitched ‘squeaky’ sounds sometimes because those always cut through.
>>FYI I’m signed up for a working spot in AU041 with Katy’s niece, Fritzi. I’ve been auditing AU036 for the past couple months as a foundation. Really looking forward to getting started. Yay ! Can you suggest any prerequisites I should be working on concurrently ?>>
Yay! I am excited!!!!! I can’t wait to see Fritzi! I think the most useful things for now are to have a pretty strong stay behavior (for the baby jumping foundation stuff) and good wing/barrel wraps. Everything else can be built up 🙂
On the video –
We saw a TON of challenges that looked just like this setup on courses this weekend at a trial! One of the courses looked exactly like this setup but with a tunnel in there too 🙂 I didn’t run them because I only entered my youngsters in the baby dog level, but it is good to know that this game will be immediately useful!Katy did a great job! Nice job adding a little bit of handling help to start with both the Go and the soft turns, then fading it out so the reps became basically verbal-only while you ran (which is exactly what was needed on course.
The first half was all dog-on-right, she was perfect and the environment was pretty quiet (some sheep but nothing too much LOL!) The second half was dog-on-left and that was noisier – there was a plane overhead and a dog barking – yep, the soft turn verbal was definitely harder to hear and she had an error during that time. So, 2 ideas for you with the soft turn verbal:
– you can change the sound of it so it cuts through more: instead of a long “shhhhhhhhh” which can get lost, maybe try a Shh Shh Shh which will slice through better. You can also switch to check check checkbecause the ‘ch’ is a good sound for cutting through noise in the environment.
– you can give a ‘heads up’ cue in the form of a name call: “Katy shhhhhh”. That can help her zero in on the next cue especially when the next cue is subtle: kind of like “pay attention, something important is coming!”.The Go was easy! That really cuts through and she was pretty perfect on it!!
When you decide about about which verbal cue you want, you can add more running to this 🙂 If you are going to use a completely new soft turn verbal, add it right before you say the current shhhhh cue so she can learn it, then you can fade the shhhh cue out pretty quickly.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Since the out is newer for him, you can break it down a bit to help him out:For the ‘don’t take the jump’, try him starting further away from the jump and be sure his feet are not lined up facing it at all. Since that jump is the only thing out there, especially when he was on your right, I think he was reading the “OK” release to mean “take the jump you see even if it is not perfectly on your line”. On a couple of reps you did have a little motion towards it, (like at :35) but it was also happening when he was on your right.
So having him a bit further away will help, and you can also play with calling him to you with his name rather than the OK, to avoid the confusion.And for the get out, he can be a little closer but I think less motion for now will help – just walking totally straight and letting the verbal and upper body do. The work. When you added more speed, you were also moving towards the jump so he was probably reading motion more than the verbal and upper body. You can use a jump bar to Dra a line in the sand so your line of motion stays straight 🙂
You can use rest cookies on this one too – if he is incorrect, call back and use the reset cookie to line him up straight again. That will help work through the challenges and keep a high overall rate of reinforcement 🙂
Nice work! Let know what you think!
TracyUgh! My reply from the 5th got eaten by the country internet gods. Sorry! Here it is again:
On there serp versus Go game:
Lots of good stuff here, it is a HARD game!The GO at the beginning looks good – you can throw the reward sooner so he sees it ahead of him before he lands.
About the soft turn verbals – this session made a very good case for saying them sooner and repeating them 🙂
When you switched to the left at :19 (and also at :36)- there was one quiet left and it was a late so he didn’t really process it. What I mean by late is – the left in this setup is for the left turn on the wing, so you should be saying it a few times as you send him to the wing and then when he is at the wing, you would be switching to right right right because that is what he needs to do on the jump. The single left happened as he got to the wing, so he was not really sure what it applied to.He is indeed listening for the verbals, though! At :52 you said left every times but you were in threadle position, so he kept turning left… and threadled. Good boy!
You started using more repeated verbals and a slightly different tone, and it totally helped – just be sure to give him the right verbal for the jump. He is listening! At :58 – all the verbals were left, and there was no right so he kept turning left… he doesn’t turn right til after you throw the reward 🙂
At 1:24 on the other side – right was single and quiet and late so he missed it. When you gave it a couple of times, he was able to get it (and the same thoughts on the timing: right on the way to the wing then switch to left left left for the jump). The dogs have so much to process while they are running that it is easy to miss the single quiet verbal on a setup with a lot of visual distractions.
Turn aways are going well too! He is using the motion/feet as the helping info, so now you can add in a small hand cue to that, so we can fade the foot/motion cue and then fade the hand cue 🙂
The main thing here to add in is a clean start for each rep. All of the errors here were handling errors due to starts that were off kilter. So always have him start next to you, lined up, so you can be facing the correct part of the jump, saying the verbal and walking forward and then doing the helper cue. When he was lined up pretty cleanly, he did well! On the reps with errors, the starts were messier so he didn’t have a clear line to the front.
At :42 you were facing each other and you were blocking the line to the front – motion and verbal happened fast and simultaneously, so he ended up on the backside and then got an ‘uh oh’ followed by a “whoa what happened there” but he would have had to cut in front of you to get to the front side of the jump which we really don’t want – so just call back, reset cookie, clean start, try again
Same at :50 and 1:02 – you are lining him up to the backside and helping motion and verbal are all happening together , so he ended up moving to the backside – and got called back.
So rather than stop him, let him finish his line, call him back, reset cookie, try again. We don’t want him to get tentative about moving forward to the jump, so emphasizing the reset cookie and the clean line ups will really help!
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi there!
>>I think I did it again, years of saying “yes” is hard to undo. I promise I’m trying.
I feel this totally! I am pretty good with the baby dogs but then with Voodoo, every single marker is YAY! Ha! Thankfully he has me all figured out LOL
The serps went really well on this video! So now…RUN! HA! You can add more mod your motion so that you are past the serp jump as she is making the decision to take it or not. Verbal says to take it, and the handling will make it challenging! And if she is fine with you running, then you can go to the Serps Part 2 game!
>>All of this week 3 stuff went really well until I started changing things up and she really had to listen. She gets patterned. It MUST be the backside right?
I think it was a patterning issue because of mechanics. After the first one or two reps of backside rewards, she totally thought it was a backside session. One of the reasons she didn’t process the change was the mechanics of the start: you were moving and saying the verbal all a the same time, so she was defaulting to the backside because it had been reinforced already (and when you didn’t reward that rep, she changed behavior for the next rep – SMART hahaha!).
On some of the reps, you were holding her but she was facing you and your were facing her, so your feet were facing the backside and the first motion sent her there.
So, if you have a cleaner start, I think she will be able to process better:
– line her up at your side, facing straight, with your holding the collar. Make sure all of your feet are facing straight to the jump.
– while still holding her, say the verbals a few (at least 3 or 4) times THEN let go. That extra moment between the verbals and letting go really helps with processing because she is not going with the first cue she gets (motion) if the word and movement come together.As a side note, I think getting her to line up at your side and have a moment of patience will help her start stay!
>>Sometimes I reset, did a cookie, sometimes I just resent. Resetting definitely helps.
In this situation, I think the reset at your side so you can set up the clean mechanics will be better than resending – the resend will rely on handling and the clean start mechanics will get the verbal overriding the handling.
>>How do I transition though to just listen to me the first time which is what I need in a trial, LOL!!>>
Super clean mechanics in training so the verbals override helps! And having just finished running 3 dogs t a 3 day trial… the training totally helps because you are also handling, and everything is further apart 🙂
>>Speaking of trialing, I’m doing UKI this Saturday. Lots of training opportunities. I think we need to work on our “SIT” verbal the most though. She’s pushing it and I’m not giving in darn it.>>
You can totally work stays in UKI! I do a lot of that if you need any ideas 🙂
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Yes, the turn aways take a WHILE for the dogs to get. Dogs that are a little “hotter” (like Watson and Hot Sauce and Voodoo) take longer to get the skill, so stick with the easy stuff for a while 🙂 and he will get it.
Thanks for the picture! Part of deciding the left and right will depend on the dog but I try to reserve it for turns that have a decent amount of collection heading towards the “C” jump on your picture. I use left for the turn to C and perhaps a little wider – but no much wider. If the turn is towards the place where you wrote “Area btw B-C” and the B jump i would use a name call for some dogs and lately I just say “jump” to my youngsters, which means “take the jump on this slight arc. If there is a discrimination, I would say the name to get attention but the general “jump” verbal usually works well. That way ‘left’ or ‘right’ have a big impact when I do say it.
Let me know if that makes sense!
Tracy
