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These are all really good, and all on the agenda in some form that is either specifically what you mentioned here, or can easily be tweaked to it! Reinforcement is a massive topic so we are going to look at how to creatively apply these procedures to all sorts of different things đ
Keep the ideas coming!
TracyHi! Since that happens with her with enough frequency that we note it, I suggest skipping sequencing for now and just working on establishing reinforcement procedures. She is doing fabulously well with sequencing and she is really young – so we can help get rid of the over-arousal moments with reinforcement procedures đ And if you try to train something and canât get her into a more relaxed state, you can totally stop the session, go in the house, then try again later đ
T
And the remote reinforcement with the toy: she was definitely more excited LOL! With the food, she almost heeled with you. With the toy, there was more bop to her step, higher respiration rate, more circling. All good! You were saying get it here which is fine – and probably good for self-control. I guess it is a little different than with the food, where she is probably more likely to want to grab the toy or leave you for it? And letâs go can mean to get the treats when you hand them to her from the bowl. The extra markers are fine but also it is one less thing to have to remember.
Great job on these! We will be building on them soon :)âš
TracyHi again!
I like how you dramatically dropped the food in the bowl at the beginning LOL!!!
She was great here – you donât need to say snack because the letâs go implies that you will be handing her the reward. She was excellent about leaving the food, and going back to it (but not throwing herself into the bowl haha!)Onwards to the toys!
T
Hi!
Cool to see her start to search on the verbal before you even tossed the treat at the start! She is really beginning to understand the differences. She was also really good about staying where she was for catch, waiting in front of you for snack, etc. I liked this session, it showed some really nice understanding! And you were really focusing on being precise with your mechanics. So now the next step is to begin planning to use these in your other training sessions, to transfer the concepts and get consistent use of your markers.Great job!
TracyHi! I think this is going really well!!!
I suggest introducing the cookie trading sooner, right at the beginning – it looks like he was stimulated and not releasing about a minute into the session so that is when you went to the cookie trade. You can install the trade as part of the process from the start, so have the cookie already in your hand as you start, so he doesnât lock onto your hand reaching for your pocket as the cue to out the toy (dogs are brilliant like that LOL!)
He is doing really well with releasing like at 1:20 and afterwards. For now, since the behavior is lured, you can skip using the verbal cue – just stop tugging, present the cookie. When we know we have the behavior, you can insert the verbal back in – to strengthen the verbal we are only going to use it when we know it will work đ It wonât take long to get the verbal back on because you will see him anticipating the drop as soon as your hands relax. But be 10000% certain you either have the cookie ready or you do not reach for your pocket, or reaching for the pocket will become the cue (I have done that by accident :))
You can insert this procedure into any time you play tug with him! It will start to generalize the tug and out into all of your play and training.
Great job!
TracyGood morning! Lots of great stuff here!
Because she is so young, I think we are in the âsorting out mechanics and reinforcementâ phase more than concerned about the behaviors themselves. The behaviors will be easy when we have the mechanics and rewards sorted out.Driving ahead:
>> Going to say I hate working with a toy on a leash â so awkward. A couple of times she seemed to be more interested looking at the leash part, but things got better as the toy get farther away. I need to start teaching her a retrieve but have to decide on the how. With Rayven it was such a struggle with the bring back part.>>
What does she naturally do with the toy? You might not need the toy on a leash, maybe just a really long toy, or work in a smaller enclosed space like a long hallway so she doesnât have far to go đ
On this game, you can drop the toy to the ground sooner after you get it back, almost immediately – holding it in the air is not exciting and she is not likely to focus on it but dropping it is very exciting and will draw her focus to it. For this game, I would have you sit down so you are not bending over. And as soon as she drives to it, you can get in and get it moving (you donât need to wait for her to grab it – she is really young and needs the toy to be moving for now). She was getting really good at driving to it!!!
She appears to not want to run away with the toy and is doing a great job focusing on her line and going to the toy đ She was really doing well!
I do think this session was too long though – at 1:40 she was checking out with the toy (also a little distracted by the other dog whining) so you need to be cognizant of the time of the session and end before that happens. Set a timer for 45 seconds then be done – be in mind that this game is a high energy game for the dog at this stage, but not for us humans đ so she is likely to tire easily.Drive to handler – on this video, we can look at your verbals too! You had a lot of tug tug tug then growling at her, then calling her name a bunch of times at the beginning đ I like chatter and all but you can pick and choose when to use it (especially her name) so that it adds value and doesnât fade into the background. I think you were calling her name to keep her attention – you can make the transition faster by having the treats in your pocket so that it is almost immediate – she was losing attention a bit because the transition from tugging to the start of the game was taking a while, and she is still learning about transitions.
You had really good cookie tosses and your reward delivery was nice and low! Have your hand a little closer to your leg and slow down sooner to put your hand in the picture a little sooner too, so she decels sooner – you were moving til she got to you on a lot of reps, and we want her to see an early transition into deceleration and lack of motion so she has time to process it and slow her butt down – that way she can keep her butt in line and it wonât swing out.
As you add the pivots, pivot more slowly so she can really noodle around your leg for now. She also did really well with the FXs! And the food was super fun for her here too! She does indeed like moving cookies đ Wheee!Wing wraps – nice shirt!
>> I am definitely not sure how to properly apply the toys to this one for moving to the next step where they should turn back to the other side on their own without the toy banging.>>
At the start when she was not going to the banging toy: You can cover the other toy a little more with your hand, and make the new toy that you are banging more visible. It was hidden behind you so she was ignoring the noise because she didnât see the toy moving. So move the toy forward so she sees it.
Also, you were way too quick to get the next toy banging LOL! I know it is hard to know when to go fast and when to go slow with puppies LOL! She had barely gotten her mouth on the toy when the other one was already banging – be less quick so she can engage with the toy for a couple of seconds. Count to 3 in your head before banging the other toy đ
I think the quickness of the toy banging and the lack of being able to see it was why she lost interest at about 1:05 and also why she was not going back to the other toy as well – she didnât have a chance to get into the back and forth rhythm, so she checked out. It was not boring… it was unclear. So to clarify it, get her on one toy, really let her engage with you – then count to 3 slowly in your head. Let that toy go quiet… then start the other toy up in a place where she can see it – and repeat the process. Youâll see her getting more reinforcement and also youâll see her understanding the pattern, at which point she will be able to start offering the pattern.
With the cookies – do less IYC on food bowls đ And donât use food bowls for this game, then – switching to plates a smart idea but she definitely has too much self-control happening: see a cookie that is not moving, donât go near it. I would say, for now – zero emphasis on self-control with food. We need her to be a bit wilder for food đ I think the IYC on the food bowls is generalizing to stationary cookies, which might be why some of the shaping games are harder. To help break her out of all of that self-control, you can toss/take the cookie with your get it cue to get her moving, and then the game will get easier. Yes, we will fade the get it cue but it is fine for now (it is a reward marker and that is good to use, as long as we donât overdo the self-control). It is easy enough to teach a BC self-control with food, so feel free to let her be a complete piggie nut for now LOL!
BTW – I have done exactly zero of the traditional IYC games with my 3 youngest dogs and they have the best self-control on food and toys of any dogs that I have ever had đGreat job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHello and welcome! I think you will find that this class is dramatically different than when we did it with Edward đ I am so excited to see ViktoR!!!!!
Tracy
Good morning!
These all look great, so we can move to ânext stepsâ on all of them đ>> Drive ahead and focus forward with the flirt pole. He really likes chasing the toy on the flirt pole, but he doesnât tug it much. Anyway, Iâm not sure if this is what you had in mind for use to try for using a toy? We didnât do any with food today for this game.
If I am remembering correctly, he likes the tugging but he does NOT like when the toy is dead on the ground. So with the flirt toy, engaging him then letting him grab it was great and then that transferred really nicely to the driving ahead game! He didnât lose interest when the toy was not moving and your timing of moving the toy again was great!
So, I know it will be easy to build the driving ahead so before adding distance, letâs keep adding value to the stationary toy. Do everything exactly the same as you did here, with one change: let the toy be stationary a little longer before you release him (then get it moving again when he gets to it).
And if that goes well – do everything the same and do one more tweak: donât move the toy until after he puts his mouth on it – then let the toy come alive đAt that point, you will be able to transition to a regular tuggie so you can throw it further, which allows you to add more distance.
>>Decel and turn game. We tried the first two reps with a stay, but I didnât want to push it and did the rest with a cookie toss. I saw when I watched the video that I was dropping my hand down again early, instead of waiting till he was up to me. I will work on that for next time.>
It was smart dog training to do only 2 sits and then switch to the cookie toss. Did you see him look at himself in the mirror? Ha! Too cute.
I donât think you were too early, I think you can lower it to his nose level as he is getting to you (the hand was in there but high up, so he didnât really see it đ that might be why it felt early). He is decelerating and pivoting beautifully and a lower hand will get him even tighter.
>>Goat tricks. Dice tends to just jump in and on things like youâll see. I tried three different things to see if he would react differently with any of them but he didnât really slow down much on any. I didnât feel like I was really doing any shaping, but I figured Iâd better show you what we have so you can tell me where to go with this.>>
He is a supremely confident little goat! I love it! You were not necessarily shaping anything new, it was more like you were reinforcing the offering of getting on/in things (and that is perfect!) Two suggestions on this:
– keep reinforcing all of this getting on and in things, adding in things that move a little like a balance disc if you have one. The things that move should only move a tiny tiny bit because we want him to continue to love this game.
– try to get toys going here too – tug a bit, then put a thing in and give a boring cookie when he interacts… then back to a tug toy. This is more about being able to go back and forth between food and toys and we are inserting a reinforcing behavior in the middle of it (being a goat LOL!). If he struggles, you can move the toy play further away from the item he is offering on, or use the flirt pole.Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyAwwww so thankful for you too!!!! And I can’t wait to meet Steel in person.
And yes – we can train the behaviors we want while maintaining the joy and definitely no hurting of the dogs đ
THi!
It sounds like Kaladin has some good times coming up – he is right on track. I need to get those contacts finished up too lol!!!! And hooray for no 5:15am course building!!!!!!Yes, I agree that Min might be in alternate area for WAO too, but it is a really difficult selection process. If she is not selected, then she is really close to it!!! You and Min had a great showing at the Open!
TracyHi Ann! Steel sounds wonderful â€
I like that he is very social! For now, keep working on the “get it” procedures and toy play. In the next couple of weeks, we will be installing the “focus on me, ignore the peoples” behavior into the existing procedures. That will really help him learn how to ignore people đ Stay tuned for all of that coming soon đ
TracyHi!
>>No longet sure how much the issue is lack of food motivation or possibly motion of the reward.
Could be! But that is a value issue, and we need her to find value in food that is not moving because that is how we shape precision behavior. The pairing with tug will get that.
>>Question about posting videos â Do you want us to post a video and wait for your response before posting another? Or can we post several separate ones in the same post if we do a few of the games and edit/upload a few videos?>>
You can totally post several videos! If it is the same game, it is usually better to wait for a response unless it is all peachy keen and you are comfy moving on đ
T
Hi! These look great!!!
He was quite fast on these and also retained his tight turns- things are really coming together!!!!!!!!!! And yes, he totally nailed the tunnel threadles! When you drove into the first pinwheel, you decelerated a little too much so he slowed down there (correctly) so you can drive in and drive away, seeing how much speed into the tunnel discrimination he can tolerate.
I think he will be fine with the added speed – at :28 you were moving fast and running right to the tunnel, and he was perfect. Super!!!!
>>My wing for the get out was really close to the tunnel due to running into the fence so that didnât go so well the first time.
Yes, he didn’t quite see it the first time but then was fine after that đ
And he was great about reading the subtle soft turn cues. On those, you can cue then accelerate away (as long as you stay connected) – when you remain in decel, he remains in collection Good boy!
These all went really well, he nailed all.the.things – I guess he wants to go to Florida next year LOL! What is coming up on his calendar in terms of trials and stuff? He is looking great! I am excited for you!!!
TracyHi!
>>Sorry for the 3-part video post. I hope it makes sense & can totally clip and edit it all into one video next time for ease of posting, etc.
Posting like this was great! And I loved the title “Wing Wrap Foundations: A Series” LOL!!!
This two-toy game is a great foundation game to work on separately. He was cracking me up: holding the dead toy but watching the live toy: “how do I grab that one while holding this one?” Ha!
The delay was not that long. It might have felt long in the moment, but he actually did a SUPER job here! I think you can totally keep playing this with two toys on the flat (or a pile of toys – whichever one you pick up and smack on the floor is the one you want him to play with) and you can do the back and forth with the cone here too.2nd video:
>>Using food made all the things Risk had to think about and the mechanics much cleaner.>>
Yes, it can be easier and cleaner with food for sure!
He was great here with the bowls. I wonder if the conditioned response to a bowl got the food more engaging. Plus the food was moving and perhaps he was hungry too đ He got the rhythm here nicely! You can add more delay in between cookies to see if he will go another step or two back to the other bowl.3rd video:
>>So I do think I was too quick to add in the cone for the wrap foundation⊠what do you think?
Yes and no đ You were very fast about getting the reinforcement in, so he had a super high rate of success and a super positive experience with the cone. Perfect! But he was not yet offering wrapping to the next bowl on his own, he was waiting for the cookie drop – so to start the next session, use just the bowls and after you establish the back and forth, start to delay the cookies more to get him offering to go to the other bowl before you plop the next cookie in it. When he can go back and forth between the bowls like that, you will be able to slide th cone back in and he will offer going back and forth around it too.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
