[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi there!

>>I have no clue why youtube didn’t put a preview up

yeah, something has changed in the software update and I need to ask the tech person how to smooth it out.

>>And yes I’ve slipped into posting random behavior shapping lessons…but good for me to film and look at the session 🙂

Actually it is great because we can look at how the reinforcement procedures get installed into training! And yes, it is always good to film!

>>I liked that I had a plan and carried it out (get her on the board at beginning of session, do downs next to it to warm up behavior, and then try to intersperse a down on the board).

Yes! I think you can separate these elements more so she was more sure of what to offer in each step. Things really got rolling when you started working the downs. She had a little trouble with the down on the plank, but I think it might have just been that the plank was a little too narrow for her to offer the down comfortably. When she doing it on the flat, she rolls a little on her side – so the narrowness of the plank might have inhibited the down a little. You can try 2 planks pushed together so she has a wider playing field.

Looking at the markers/verbals:

>>I didn’t like my excess talking (good job, excellent).

I don’t mind this at all, but try to keep the markers for reinforcement he most salient element of it and clean – you can chat her up between reps or during cookie reloads 🙂 The catch markers were useful here too! You can also use cookie-in-hard markers to help get the down on the board:
when she gets on the board, you can mark that with with your cookie hand already on the board and the marker to get the treat from the hand (which might help elicit the down). Or, you can have your cookie at her nose level and when she gets on the board, use the follow-moving-cookie reward marker so she follows it downward into the down.

I think offered downs will be easiest to reward, so the bigger planks will help get that, or you can even had a dog bed that she does the down on next to the plank, then move it onto the plank 🙂

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! He did well here – it was really hard with the reinforcement right there facing him, but he was able to figure it out! Yay!
A couple of ideas for you:
Because having the reinforcement directly in front of him as he jumped towards it, you can also reinforce him for NOT going to it by marking the turn away from it with a reward marker that indicates a toy in your hand. That will build value for ignoring the intended remote reinforcement ahead until you mark that he can have it.
Then the next step is to move it gradually further and further away, til it is off to the side then out of the ring. He should still know where it is, but the further away it gets (eventually) the more like a trial it will be 🙂 He seems ready for you to be moving it further away now.

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! She is doing really well!

Toy races – driving ahead looks great! She is smoking you, yay!!! Take this game on the road, it is a fun way to get engagement in new places!

I see she is wearing her leash and on that first rep in particular, she doesn’t appear to love it when you reached for her collar. So for the purposes of this game, hold the leash closer to her so you can still get a restraint – but if she is on leash, be sure that it is far from you feet so you don’t get tangled up at all as you are running so you don’t fall or accidentally step on the leash as she reaches the end.

Separately, you can work on collar grabs so she learns to love them – I would use this game, with treats, for that: reach for her, drop a treat, she can get it. Touch the collar, drop a treat, she can get it. Finger under the collar, drop the treat, she can get it. Work up to being able to reach for and hold the collar – pretty soon she wil be putting it in your hand and you can fade the leash 🙂

Any toy game – lucky pup, she has a lot of FUN toys! You can structure this with a hierachy – the toy pile can kind of be hidden behind you or in a bag or something. Then pull out a less interesting one, get engagement – then pull out one of the ones she REALLY likes to help build value of the ones that are less exciting (for now) because the exciting ones will reinforce playing with the less exciting ones. It might be hard to know which ones are favorites and which are not yet, but this game will totally help everything be equal in terms of balance. And I love that you did it in a small space. She had trouble with the other dogs barking – will she chase the toy if you throw it when they are barking? You can see if making the toy ‘fly’ when they are bakring helps her ignore the barking.

Wing wraps with the upright: Looking great too!

>>my fault I did not bring enough treats with me

ha! I am sure she would like a million treats LOL! I agree – she was totally getting the rhythm here! Yay! Next step (other than bring the whole bag of treats LOL!) is to delay the cookie drops til she is almost back to the bowl. Let her offer more behavior (look at how she offered when you were getting more treats out!). Then you can move the bowls a little closer to you. When she can do it with more delay between cookies/more offering, we will then get you sitting in a chair while she does it, then work our way to you standing.

The decel/handler focus game also looks really good. You can decel sooner so she can also decel sooner, to set up a tighter turn (on the early reps where you were moving), Later on you tossed the treat further (like :37) and were stationary, and that set up a good turn! So now do a little of both – keep throwing the treat further, but also add a little moving with early decel. The FCs at the end looked great!

Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>But I’m never quite sure when to move on to the next game…still on Week One!!

You are actually past week 1, it all blends together LOL!! I know when to move on when I am at 90% or higher rate of success for 2 sessions in a row – you have that here. Plus I am happy to tell you when to move forward LOL! (Spoiler alert: you can move forward on both of these :))

Prop sends – she is doing well! The only thing I suggest is that you insert that little ready dance moment before each send. She starts in front of you, you do a bit of “ready, ready”… then send. That ready dance helps her be ready for the send so we get much crisper behavior, plus it builds in teaching the pups to go from handler focus to line focus. Doing it as more of a loop without the ready dance (she gets the cookie and then a send as she is heading back to you) tends to get sloppier behavior because the timing gets harder and the pups are not always prepared for the send.

Plus the ready dance is just fun, silly engagement that actually goes a long way to be able to get engagement without food or toys 🙂

So for the sends to the props – you can now add in the countermotion – starting with the sideways sends, start to move away just before she arrives at the prop. You might need to toss the reward to the prop to keep the value high, and that is fine 🙂

Adding height to the hydrant was clever!!!!!! Love it!!!! She was great and you are standing and as far from it as we need you to be (for offering) so onwards to Turn And Burn! Wheeee! Question: how stable if this setup? She might touch it during turn and burn, and we don’t want it to fall over or startle her. If the lower hydrant is more stable, that is perfect 🙂

Great job here! Onwards to all of the next things 🙂 Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi there! You got in lots of good training here!

The Lap turns on the flat looked pretty perfect on the early reps to your right hand, you waited til just the right spot (when he was super close to your hand) and turned him beautifully. One suggestion on all of them (both sides) is to extend your hand towards him more, locking your elbow so your hand is as far away from your torso as possible to really draw him in (making it super visible).
Your left side reps were not as comfy at first, you moved a little early at :18 so he ended up not setting his rear as well. But you got smoother and smoother as you practiced on that side and then both sides ended up looking pretty equal.

Tandem turns are going well too! Question: how do you normally do a tandem turn or a rear on the flat with your other dogs, in terms of which hands? You were using the outside arm here which is fine (some people use both hands) so for the sake of sanity 🙂 you can do whatever you would do with your other dogs. One suggestion here is to show your outside arm/turn arm for longer before turning him away. Think of it as taking a moment to catch his attention for a longer heartbeat before you turn him away – your arm cue and turn away were almost simultaneous here, so he was wider from you which makes the turn a little harder. The arm cue will draw him in a bit, making the turn easier and tighter when it happens a couple of heartbeats later 🙂

Adding prop in the next section: really nice!!! Keep extending the cookie hand towards him to make it even more obvious. Great job getting the turn and then he was really good about hitting the prop! You can move forward with this: the cookie hand movement can move a little faster (not sooner, but a little faster when he gets to you). And then if he is happy to go faster (it doesn’t have to go very fast, just a little faster) then you can fade the cookie in the hand cue, and reward him for turning then hitting the prop.

The leg bumps with cookies looked really good! He was trotting on the bends with cookies, which is fine because it is good for balance to do that, like curved cavalettis. He did bounce across your knees for the cookies – you can toss the cookies further away so he can bounce back through with even more speed 🙂
He did really wll when you did the bending for the toy – he was bouncing on those bends, which is really lovely for balance and body awareness too! Yay!

For the cavalettis – these were really easy for him so we can raise the height of the cavalettis (wrist height would be a good challenge!). And then you can get a few offered steps before dropping the cookie in so you don’t have to lead him through as much. You can also put empty bowls out at either end as a focal point (and cookie delivery location lol) to help get straighter trotting through.

>>Do you think we need to work up to a toy or is a treat or manners minder sufficient (for the ladder)?

Yes, but not necessarily now (and for conditioning purposes in the future, cavalettis can always be done for food). When he understands it more independently and the rungs are taller – you can add in the toy gradually by having it present as you use treats, either in your pocket or off to the side. Then eventually in your hand (while you still reward with treats) and eventually it can be the main reward – his success will guide you as to how quickly you can add it in. We are going to want him to be able to maintain good form even when stimulated, so this is a great place to start.

Start line – this is going well! You can fade the clicker now, and just use your catch marker or your release word (depending on where you want to deliver the reinforcement). As you add duration and moving away, you can still use the clicker if you want but you will want to click when you are ready to end the stay (not when he moves into the sit) – so it would be sit, you move away, then click, catch, toss the treat. Or, you can fade the clicker so there is one less thing to worry about 🙂
Sometimes he needs an extra heartbeat to be able to process the sit cue – he is still chewing or something and you say it – so he doesn’t always process it on the first rep. So, you can get engagement (eye contact) to be sure he is ready, then cue the sit – then wait and see so you don’t end up saying it a couple of times. If he forgets for a moment, you can move him to a new spot and ask again 🙂 Same thing for when you are using a hand cue to line him up – try to use the hand motion then the sit cue, just once – to give him a moment to process, Young dogs need a moment LOL! For example at 1:23, you moved the hand fast and said sit a couple of times, so he didn’t quite sit as precisely as possible.

With the catch tosses – I think it is fine for him to move as soon as you say the catch marker – it is also a release. He doesn’t have to hold position til the food arrives, he can move as soon as you say ‘catch’ because it means reinforcement is available near him 🙂

You can also use a toy for this! I like to add stimulation to stays by playing this game with toys too!

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! You don’t need to use a ladder or build/buy one, I think cavalettis will work! Cavaletti spacing will vary as he gets older, and based on the goals. For now, we are teaching balance and body awareness, so you will want the cavalettis super low (wrist height) and probably less that 12″ inches apart for now. He is little so we don’t want the distances to cause too much extension in his trot, for now 🙂

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>I’m a little confused as I thought you wanted the sit offered. Her verbal sit and down are honestly not that strong. I’ll play with this more as it’s raining for a few days. Maybe the heavier toy is easier to be accurate versus the Charlee Bear.>

Sorry! I wasn’t that clear with my idea about cuing it, it was a severe lack of caffeine day! There are a couple of different approaches we can take, all will work beautifully as long as we keep her at a high rate of success. Yes, you can wait for an offer – if she might offer something that is not a sit, you can go with whatever she offers 🙂 since there was no specific cue, just the international posture of “offer me something” we can accept any offered position as a way to start the game.
Or, if you are wanting to isolate the sit, you can use cues that elicit it: this can be your verbal or your hand signal or even something that elicits it like a cato board or something that is already associated with a sit.
Either path will work well, eventually you can cue whichever one you want – offering positions works great or using cues that she already has positive associations with are helpful too, and then the concepts transfer easily into a start line routine. And the other element here is that whatever the pups offer naturally might also end up being the best/easiest choice for start line position! The sit, down, stand, etc are all valid start positions 🙂

Handling combos look great, she is going FAST and turning tight even in a small space! Her cone wrap is looking really strong here:

>>Plus, she’ll pull off if I move away quickly o I’ll review that lecture as well.>>

Pull off the cone? She was good on the reps you had here, so if you had reps where you were moving away sooner and she didn’t commit you can revisit the turn and burn game which has more countermotion, and move your start position a little further away. Plus, turn and burn doesn’t require a lot of space because you don’t have to add a lot of distance or run fast – you can increase challenge by leaving sooner and sooner, by walking.

One tiny detail – while she is still behind you, stay connected even as you give her the bowl marker – try not to point forward to the bowl, leave your hand back to her instead. Pointing forward might end up disconnecting her when you have bigger distances involved or she might read it as a blind cross and end up changing sides.

I agree, it was hard to get the blinds in because she was moving fast, but you did get 2 pretty good ones in at the end!! The smaller space requires you to be very quick, and you rose to the challenge. YAY!!!

Decel and Pivots are also going well – you seem more comfy on your right (with her turning to her left). The first pivot at :38 was utter perfection in terms of your timing, connection, hand placement, speed of pivot! Click/treat for you both! She turned beautifully there too.

You were not as early at :44, plus I think you called her “Gemma” so she looked at you and then went past you LOL! :48 was a little late too but you got her and then she did turn really nicely (to her right). Both of those were on your left side – at :54, you were perfect again (she was on your right) So when you are doing this on your left, you can try to start super early and that can help you get the mechanics feeling more comfy.

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>I asked him and so we ended up doing the full little sequence of 12 tunnels. He has done single tunnels in our training but I don’t have them set up sequenced tunnel to tunnel, so it was a little mind blowing for him but he did pretty amazing.>>

Awwww good boy!! So fun!!!!

That Puppy Garten is pretty incredible, so fun that they had that! Wobble boards in a new place, planks in a new place, ladders, low teeter all the things!… he seemed very happy!

I love that you added in turning around on the dog walk plank – It was too tall for hopping off it but turning around and balance is so useful!

Perfect tunnel boy with the people and dogs walking around!!! And stays looked great too. Doing it front of the tunnel seemed to be pretty easy for him.

The tunnel run was such a great baby dog opportunity – what a rockstar that he found ALL of those tunnels!!! And stayed focus in a pretty busy environment – it looked like he had a grand time and that will go a long way to transitioning to trials when he is old enough, SO FUN!!!!!!

I love this PuppyGarten concept, totally going to steal it for trials 🙂 Great job with making this such a fun and successful event for your baby dog!!!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! These all look great, she is very fun 🙂

The Drive ahead games looks great, she has a TON of toy drive! One suggestion is to release her very quickly before she looks back at you. You don’t need to ask for duration yet on the focus forward – on that last rep, she was so cute: she focused forward but then you didn’t let go, so she looked up at you – adorable! You can let go of her pretty quickly on these.
She was definitely ready for you to add the toy races, so I am glad to see them here in the next video!

The first toy was a little interesting but you might have held her for too long because she was looking up at you. I agree that the 2nd toy was VERY exciting! Good choice for this game! She was great about letting you add a lot of motion – no problem at all and she is happy to leave you in the dust LOL! So keep adding distance and also take this on the road (using shorter distances) to as many places as you can take it! It is a fun game to get engagement in a new places.

Decel to handler – this is also looking good! This MaxPup class has a lot of little dogs, so I have some ideas for how to make this easier with the littles 🙂 We want her to see your hand and see connection and NOT bounce up… but we don’t want you to have to bend over the whole time because your back might get angry 🙂 So feel free to replace your magic cookie hand with a long spoon or dowel with a little dab of cream cheese on it – that way she has a focal point down at her nose level, especially for the pivots, and you don’t have to be bent over the whole time. You are totally welcome to do it bent over to get your hand down to her nose level, but we don’t want to make your back angry LOL!

A couple of other small details – the reps where you had clear connection worked a lot better for her to know where to be. For example, at :26 she didnt’ know which side to be on (she didn’t see enough connection after the cookie toss), so you can just reward and reset with more conneciton on the next rep. Your connection at :40 was much clearer (and also on the reps after it) and she was terrific!

She is also a speedy little pup, so you can add more distance here – start with yourself as closer to the camera as you can and toss teh cookie as far away as possible, just to give you an extra heartbeat before your little speedster gets back to you LOL!

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! We have been lucky with the weather! Hope you are also having a good weekend!

Leo was quite the brilliant boy here!!!! He was cracking me up – did you notice how sometimes he would “stick the landing” by lifting both back feet together and smacking them down at the same time on the thing? So funny! “MOM I DID IT!”
Haha!
Now, we would prefer the pups *don’t* stick the landing because it puts all the weight on their shoulders (a lot of them are offering it here) so you can do 2 things to help him keep his rear feet isolated:
– Start closer to the thing so he just has to step back to it
– When you add distance, reward sooner while he is still backing up with independent back feet (before he gets to the thing).

I am saying ‘thing’ because he was great about finding whatever you asked him to back up to – he seemed perfectly confident the moving stuff to! Yay!

One more thing to consider: Marker words for the rewards. You were using “yes” and “good” but I think he is ready for markers that both tell him he is correct, and tell him where the cookie is: that would be something like “get it” if you are dropping it, or I use “snacks” if I want the dog to come to my hand. Leo and his classmates are progressing really quickly, so this week I will add more discussions about markers and stuff!

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! This was an interesting video, thank you for posting it!

I think there are a lot of good things here – the biggest thing I see if that the area by the people and noisy dog was worrisome, so we can approach things differently:

All of the handling/sequencing where you want to work on sequencing should be done moving away from the people, towards her comfort zone.

And, on the part of the course that moves towards the sights/sounds she is not comfortable with, the focus shifts to easy agility (lower bars there, simple skills) and TONS of reinforcement for going past them – like doing the tunnel towards them, then chasing you away from them and reward. Then tunnel to the jump, turn to you, reward. You were doing a lot of that which was great! My suggestion is to do even shorter bursts and lower bars so she can go super fast and doesn’t have to think about it 🙂

>>She did disconnect to check out the cat hole on the far door, but reconnected when I used our nibble-walking treat.>>

That was no worry, you were disconnected a little by talking to the instructor about what to do, so she took a moment to explore 🙂

Will she play frisbee or chase balls at all there? If so, I would definitely incorporate that in the ‘ignore the people’ sections 🙂 Or, save the the higher value food for that.

It looks like you were then the demo for one of the CU pattern games, and that is great! What went wrong here was that Keiko was being asked to learn the game while also approaching the trigger – so she was over threshold and tapped out after the 2nd rep. The magic in the pattern games is that we teach them without the triggers first, then very very gradually add the triggers in – definitely work the game, but do it much further from anything worrisome for now 🙂

>> this row twice, and Keiko seemed quite comfortable with it. Then we had our third turn – and Keiko had really had enough. When I see that she’s had enough, should I even try to do something successfully before we leave or should I just maybe ask for a sit or a spin and leave on that note?>>

If she says she has had enough, the first thing to do is move away from the trigger or whatever the difficulty is. So in this instance, you can put space between you and the dog in the covered crate, maybe 20 feet. And then see what she says – if she offers engagement, cool! You can cookie that or ask for a trick. If she doesn’t want to offer engagement – also cool, you can be finished.

There is nothing in the science of dog training that says we need to leave a session by finishing with a success – and in fact that can do more harm than good. So if you end a session where she says ‘no thanks’ you can go for a walk, give her a break, then plan the next session so she can be super successful.

Let me know what you think! There is so much good here that you and Keiko are really on the cusp of feeling confident in the ring!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

I thought this was a really good session. I didn’t really see much distraction in the in-between moments, just kinda a “what’s next” relaxed expression.

The only thing I would change is where you dropped the leash. Throwing the leash near the wing was a discrimination, too hard at this point because it is right on his line and the differences in the cues might not be clear enough. So, throw it away off to the side and then it will be clearer. He was really good about ignoring it and the pattern of
‘Leash on strike throw’ was super fun 🙂

He had a little error due to a little disconnection on the 1st run,
and kept going like a champ. He was happy on the 2nd run with the wings too! And this was one of the longer sessions he has done, which is a big win too!
I like how you did easier stuff later in the session, smart! It looks like that was happy-making too 🙂

>>I’m really starting to miss sequencing with him. It’s been several weeks and I’ve just been working to keep all this clean. These last few weeks have been rough for me with staying encouraged and motivated>>

You don’t need to abandon sequencing, you just need to plan it 🙂 the wing stuff is just a microcosm of sequencing, so plan your reinforcement on sequences, then go for it! The reinforcement should not be only remote reinforcement, it can be stuff like a bite for a tight turn, or throwing a reward on a big line. Or a catch thrown back behind you to him for committing to a backside bar. So you can do all of this but just plan each session for a high rate of success 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Congrats on the leash being a Top 5 now!!! He was a tugging fiend!

The session looks really good, so many small pieces coming together to the bigger picture.
One thing to consider is leash off THEN line up cue. That reduces the finagling of the leash off, then getting rid of it, then moving away… there is a lot of disconnected moments during that and that is when he wants to move his feet. So you can noodle around with that – leash off, get rid of it, line up cues then immediately lead out – that makes for a really smooth transition, especially at trials. I am at a trial this weekend and that is what I am playing with: enter ring, leash off on the way to the start line, verbal engagement, get rid of the leash, line up, giddy up!
Everything else looks great, I also really loved how he was able to turn away from the leash when you asked – brilliant!!!
Great job, let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!
Mmmm tortellini, great idea!! Or little bits of cold cheese. Sounds yummy!!
I train with raw, using a spoon 🙂 It takes some extra mechanics but totally worth it!

>> Question: will I always need to bend low to cue this or is it just in training for the prop touch and will transition later (I’m always getting told to stand up and quit bending over, 🤦‍♀️).

When he understands the in and out, we start fading the touch to the target and get you moving so no – you will get to stand up and move freely 🙂

>>Going to take the week to work mechanics and train, will see Suzie Wednesday too. I was going to shoot a bunch of videos there, may not and just work mechanics for a couple of weeks?>>

Totally take videos! Videos are great for looking at mechanics and getting feedback from the dog 🙂

Have fun!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi again!
This is looking really good! The beginning with the toy and food balance went really well (more on that below). You can decelerate a little sooner, almost immediately after the blind, so she can collect sooner. Otherwise, you are looking really good and she is responding nicely!!!
For the food versus toy – I think as the session went along, the food value came up and the toy value dropped. Then when you won the toy, she was fine with you winning LOL! I don’t think the session itself was too long, so you can do just the first 2 or 3 reps for a toy, then just do food for the rest. That way, you can switch away from the toy before she says “no thanks” 🙂 You can also put the toy on a longer line or tie it to a longer toy, so you can swing it around to get her into full chase da toy mode!
And one last thought – you can use more boring food for this 🙂 When tossing the treat, you can put out a big bowl or towel so she can see the treat land on or in it (boring treats are often hard to see!). Or, you can go to the handling combos which start with a barrel wrap, so you don’t need to toss food on the ground (you can use a bowl or plate at the end so you don’t need to toss treats on the ground).

>> And actually while I was away, I did a TON of “any toy any time!”>>

Perfect! Now, mix in some boring food if you have not done so already 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

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