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Hi all! We have had working spot become available, if anyone wants to register for a last minute 2-night spot! Respond here or to the email I sent 🙂
Thanks!
TracyDo you mean when you are working on the Go lines at the tunnel exits? Throw the toy VERY early so it lands before he exits the tunnel, and race him to it 🙂
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Hi again!
This was a good session for sorting out her timing and where you could lead out to. Her stay looked great, which is super helpful!In the first part of the video, you were a little too close to jump 2: for the FCs and BCs, you were getting between the uprights of 2 when you can be moving closer to 3 to show the line better. On the FC, you can lead out and stand there but on the BC, you want to run into it, on a lateral line, so she commits to 2 while you head to 3.
You had a Goldilocks moment on the blinds in the middle of the video, and it was great to sort out the timing:
too early at :40, too late at :44 – just right at :50! On all of those, move the whole time, so you are releasing in motion – that motion will commit to 2 so you will find the BC easier to handle.On the FCs in the later part of the session, you led out to 3 and that was really strong position. At :55 and 1:03, I don’t think you need that big step to 2 because 2 is on her line, so you can face your next direction more and release her to see if she will find the line 1-2 independently.
At the end you did a couple of the lead out push openings – you are a little too early with closing your shoulder towards 3 at 1:11 but you were great about keeping it open to her at 1:20 and she read it perfectly on that last rep. Yay!
Great job on these! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
All 3 teeter games look good! Little details to add to each:On the bang game:
>I’m supposed to be sideways not facing the teeter.
It was hard to tell where your starting position was because the edits were so quick. but I think you were in a good position (you were generally facing forward, to the wing, as if that was the next obstacle after hte teeter). She seemed happy with the game! The next step is to begin by holding her harness or collar, gently pulling back to get her more excited… then say your target verbal and let go, so she leaps into position with more giddy up 🙂 That will hallenge her balance a bit more, which is important as she gets faster and faster on the teeter.
On the mountain climber and angled entry – both looked good! Yes, she was a little more tentative as you added more tip, so stay at this level. The other thing to add is having the reward placed on the target at the top, so she can rac to it and not think about the tip or where you are 🙂 It looks like you were coming back to give it to her, but we want it on the target (a smear of cheese or something) for her to grab when she arrives. This is different than the bang game, where you do not put it on the target because we are waiting for her to put all 4 feet on the board, then you can deliver the reward.
Nice work! Onwards to sequences!
TracyHi!
This is looking really strong! He saw lots of early (timely) rotations and was almost perfect on his commitments, and he easily transitioned to the race tracks. Yeah! He had one question, at :28 – just a blooper. You didn’t do anything weird or different, and he was able to get that turn later in the video.So now, the mission, if you choose to accept it: run faster on all of it, really push him 🙂 You can use the spacing here, it is perfect! How fast can you go and how early can you rotate and run away, while maintaining the connection and verbals and timing of the decel into the rotations, before sending him behind you to the wraps? And for the race tracks, you can use your arms in sprinter position and just run run run (while connecting and yelling verbals too, of course). This makes it harder for you to maintain all the handling precision (simulates what will happen on course) so if he has questions, you can dial it back. This is a great way to get him (and you haha) processing at higher speed, before we add bars in. That way he can sort out all of the running and coordination without having to jump – which makes the jumping easier to coordinate when we add it back in.
Great job! Let me know how it goes when you run faster 🙂
TracyHi!
>>irst, serpentine training is going well since our last check-in on that. No video to review there, but we are making good progress.
Terrific! Thanks for the update!
>.First, I realized that “kennel” and “tunnel” verbals probably sound too much he same for this exercise.
Yes – kennel and tunnel sound too much the same, I was typng it as you said it LOL!
>>He kind of knows “crate” verbal a little so I tried it out with not the best results.
When you changed it to crate, it was definitely different in sound but was that a word he has heard before? But he definitely knew it was NOT the tunnel and it was much better!
Keep repeating the verbal, you were saying crate once then getting quiet, so he had questions. But this is a good start! And definitely mix in some tunnel cues too.
One other thing –
The 2 obstacles were too close together, as were the tunnel and the jump later in the video. Have them 3 feet apart and see how it goes.About that jump tunnel discrimination – the good news is that the Masters dogs in the CAMP class are having the same struggles LOL! I think the next step will be the same as theirs: just have the jump there, no tunnel, and have him go to the jump without the motion, juts on the verbal. It is possible that “jump” doesn’t mean much yet, so we can build it up.
>>Some of the things not on video may having you spitting out your coffee in wonderment of just what the heck we were doing!!🤣
>>That was the saddest “go pro, stop recording :(” I have ever heard LOL!!!!!
Sometimes a good laugh is best when things go wrong LOL! It was not that bad of a session LOL!! You had good progress with the crate versus tunnel, and we have a plan for the tunnel versus jump – and he ate lots of cookies 🙂 Yay! Let me know what you think! The next session will goa lot more smoothly, I promise 🙂
Tracy
Hi!
>> I need to find more time to do the ESCs before trying to run the courses!!!
Yes, that is ideal but if you can’t – you can do the walk through on the big courses and video it – the walk through will provide a TON of info! And if you run it and there are errors to fix – walk it again before you run it again 🙂
>> hoping to get out for the standard course Friday morning.>>
If you do those before the ESCs of the week… do the walk throughs fully and videotape 🙂
Course 1: This ran well overall, for both girls! Yay!
Great job with the first half of it with Artie! The opening looked really strong til :23 when you got quiet at the tunnel 10 so she followed you line and didn’t see 11. That is definitely something to make sure you practice before you run her: tunnel cues so she knows how to exit the tunnel. That 10-11 line is an ‘out’ which means she needs to move away from you, so lots of cues needed there.
She had some trouble with the 15-16 line – getting there as early as possibly with the blind helped, and the layering you did with Maewyn looked great too! Getting there early and rotating sooner helped – try not to move backwards as you are cuing it for now, the backwards motion was reading as forward motion to her, and overriding the rotation and threadle cues. Another approach to it is to, as she exits the 14 tunnel, cue a turn (a wrap) on the 15 jump so she collects, then cue the in in threadle after you see the collection on the takeoff side of 15.
Course 2:
For Artie – that first jump is a big trend nowadays, so we can totally help her sort it out! The first thing to do is to move her position over so she is on a slice line (set up near the wing closer to the 13/15 jump), facing the center of the bar and the landing spot and you are one step ahead of her and facing the wing you want her to wrap around. Then, while she is in the stay, point your right arm and leg to the exit wing, make connection and release her without the big step. That can help show her what you want on 1. With both of you facing the center of the bar, it does look like a backside push and that is something that goes wrong a lot on these openings.For Artie, a stronger left verbal plus a little more handling needed at 4-5 – the spin slows you down a lot and takes you off the line, so try a brake arm (opposite arm, used low as a WHOA! moment) as that can get the turn and keep you moving up the line nicely.
Her weaves looked great here! Yay! A name call needed at 3:25 after 7, it looks like the teeter was visibly on her line there so she had a slight detour. You got the threadle wrap nicely at 9, so remember to connect to her (arm back, eyes on her eyes) at 3:34 to show 10 smoothly.
Speaking of connection… Maewyn’s questions at 5 were all about connection (or lack of it :))
Was she having any trouble taking the off course 9 jump? It not, you didn’t need as much handling as you were doing, as it was pulling her off. Mainly, she needed your arm back and eyes on her eyes. Most of the moments where she ran past it (4:10, 4:43, 4:50, 5:05, 5:30 and 6:05) were just that your arm was pointing ahead of her, which turns your shoulders past the jump so she went with the line you were showing.
At 4:26 you added more handling (more name call and a thigh tap) and that pulled her off more.
>>So there are many attempts on those two sections
Here, and on jump 1 with Artie: embrace the 2 failure rule more. Fail once? Try again to fix it. Fail twice? Break it down, help the dog (usually by adding more connection, or isolating the skill or placing a toy on the line, or all of the above :)), or if you don’t know why it is going wrong: watch the video. If you still don’t know? Move on to something else and post the video. We don’t want to go past 2 or 3 errors, because that gets frustrating for everyone and then you both overheat.
The only other little detail for Mae is to push in to the backside of 15 at 5:48 sooner, so she can find that line more easily.
Nice work on these! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
I think these tight blinds are going really well and you just need one little handling tweak to get them feeling much smoother:
>> I remember from the live class it should have been earlier, but even when I’m thinking I am cuing the turn faster, I’m wasn’t. I did try really hard to be more conscious of my arms to try to keep them from flying out so much>>
Your timing was definitely improved! And your arms were low – wings in! Yay! So what will help is the a slightly different style of connection on the exit of the blinds: showing the reward across your body, which pushes the dog-side shoulder back and opens up very clear connection:
You were generally trying to connect with the new dog-side arm, so he was not seeing the connection (dogs respond to seeing our eyes & shoulders on blind cross exits, and not to the new hand). On the first part of the video when you were coming towards the camera, you can see that he didn’t know which side of you to drive to when you were trying to connect with your left arm after the blind: he stayed out on a wider line til you opened up your shoulder a bit more and then, because he could see your eyes and center of chest, he came right in.
There is also a good comparison on the double blind at 2:12 – on the first one at 2:12, you tried t oconnect with him with your right arm, and he was a bit wide because he could not see the connection. But then at 2:13 when you did the 2nd blind and connected with the right arm acorss your body? BOOM! Super tight fast blind! Watch it in slow motion, it is really great 🙂
So after all blinds, add in the arm-across-the-body reward and I bet you see these get tight instantly.
The only other handling detail here was on the rights at 1:13 and after that where he was missing the wing – keep your shoulder more open and run more directly to the wing to get commitment. You were breakig connection curling away at the very last moment, so he was pulling in – you were clearer at 1:46 and 1:58 and 2:12 and he committed beautifully!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>I’m just generally confused about foot work as one live instructor always has an arm extended out perpendicular to keep the dog out and starts with the dog side foot forward rather than back. Another follows OMD.>>
I think it will come down to choosing a style that best fits you and Sprite! Arm extended perpendicular breaks connection for her and that is when she has questions, so I vote against that (do I get a vote? LOL!) The dog side foot forward is fine if you can move through the FC fast and don’t need to step to takeoff on simple lines – and also most of those simple line leadouts are better off as blinds or lead out push 🙂
And OMD has plenty of good options but I also vote for the evolved version of it: with all the verbals and less rotation (fewer spins, less arm-across-the-body as part of the cue, for example). Course design has evolved a LOT in the past few years, so hopefully OMD has evolved with it. I admit to not knowing what the latest OMD suggestions are because all of the folks who did OMD on the East Coast are now doing all the verbals, simple handling, big connections, distance, etc (Jessica Ajoux and Perry DeWitt are two of my favorite examples of evolved OMD folks). I knew a lot about OMD in its prime but never fully handled in that style because it was too much rotation and not enough verbals for my footspeed compared to the footspeed of my dogs.
>> I’ll have to think about leadouts as I will have one with Sprite and I don’t with Gemma so it just doesn’t come up how I should stand or what I should do. I’m starting behind and usually rear crossing with her.>>
Yes – a whole new world now that you have a lead out! Fun! The goal should be: as simple as possible. So if the FC feels over-complicated? The handling of choice there should probably not be a front cross 🙂 If you have to really think about footwork? Try a blind or lead out push, where you don’t really need to think about footwork at all.
Looking at the video: her stays look so good! yay! And the handling looked great too. I think this session makes the argument that the simpler BC and lead out push handling for this type of opening works GREAT and hopefully it felt as smooth & easy as it looked.
The BCs at :18 and :29 – lovely!
You did the FCs at 1:02 and 1:39 – they were good but the rotation delays you fro gettnig up the next line. And the FC at 1:14 caused you to hit the wing.
Compare those FCs to the lead out push (which is basically a lead out serp) handling at 1:25 and 2:00 – perfect! And her striding looked great on those too 🙂 YAY!
The FC opening works best as the partial FC to the throwback that you did at the very end, that also looked lovely.
Great job on these – let me know how these different handling ‘moves’ felt in the moment and if the suggestions make sense. Were these 12″ bars? This went well so we can start changing the heights – the turn bar (#2) is the hardest, so leave that at 12 and maybe move 3 to 14? If you have a lot of room, you can put #1 at 14″ too but only if she has enough room to sit at least 12-15 feet from it.
Tracy
Sounds like they will figure it out, then! Same with my Papillons – they learn really quickly to stay away from my big feet LOL!
Hi!
Lots of good work here! She is finding the lines really well and she is a really terrific turner too. A couple of ideas for you below and 2 general ideas are to:– keep your arms lower on the sending 🙂 If you get your arm up high and send, it turns your shoulders to a different line and she ends up someplace you didn’t want
– turn her towards the next line on the wraps, which often means a rear cross 🙂 You were sometimes doing that and it was GREAT! And sometimes you were wrapping her away from the next line, which made it harder for you both because she couldn’t immediately see the new line, and you had to stay in position and help her get to it. Turning her towards the next line really makes it easier for you both.Sequence 1
:18 is a spot to keep your arm down for sending into the rear and keep moving forward, so you can send her into the RC and add layering.On this sequence, definitely try to do the RC on the blue jump near the a-frame each time, like at :14, :52 and 1:00 because then you can leave sooner to set the lines. By turning her to her right and doing a FC, you had to wait for her to get on the line to the tunnel before you moved up the line to the next section.
Getting up that line sooner will definitely help set the RCs! At :44, after the tunnel, it was hard to know if you wanted towards or away from you. Compare it to :55 with the earlier, clearer cues: it was definitely a clear RC ! Very nice!
Watching this section: The ri ri ri and lelele might sound too similar for those wrap cues? They are both higher in pitch and delivered rapidly so she might have trouble processing the difference at high speed. You can make them sound a little different by maybe leaving one as a higher pitch cue, and bringing the other into more of a conversational voice range.
You got brave and way ahead, and the BC after the tunnel at 1:04 looked great! You had plenty of time for that and it looked great.
And when you asked her to layer, she did a great job too!
In the middle of the video, you practiced the jump versus tunnel discrimination – she did well looking at the different obstacles based on the handling and verbals! Very nice!
On the sequence – I think you had her going to the wrong side of 3 (should be a front side to her left the first time). 2nd time – good rear cross at 2:39 into the layering! she didn’t see the backside jump, she probably needs wings on it and a serp arm/more connection – the ending looked good!
Running the opening as a FC 1-2 at 3:34 turns her to her right on the tunnel exit and makes it harder to find 3, so the RC between the tunnel and 3 works better (and then the layering – being able to layer with her will be a very useful skill!)
Really good connection and cues to get the backside at 3:43 but then she didn’t get the next backside at 3:44. To get that, you can use the outside arm like you did but point it more to the entry wing of the backside, and also do it before she takes off to be one step earlier. This is more like what you did at 4:20 and she got it nicely! Yay! On that rep at 4:20, try not to step back at all, keep moving forward and it will be even easier.
3:54 – This was a moment where your send arm got too high and she took the tunnel rather than the jump. The high arm turns your shoulders so she didn’t know where to be. so she followed the line of your shoulders (good girl!)
Overall, I think you were making very strong connections and that really helps! If something goes wrong, you can reward her with a cookie as you stop & reset, so she doesn’t feel the need to bite you (There was a moment or two of that happening :))
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>Oh, my, but the humidity is now matching the heat>>
Yes, it has been GROSS here too! The humidity is so hard. I was out on the field at sunrise today to get demo videos done – my dogs all earned BIG PRIZES for getting things right on the first run LOL!! Glad you enjoyed the live classes!
On your walk through: the 2nd time you walked it, you had really good connection, especially on the 6-7-8 part. I think you were looking ahead a bit too much on the 3-4-5 part, it is possible that the dogs would pull off the line unless they were really solid with the layering skill. (Spoiler alert: both girls were very strong with the layering skill and even though you were a little more connected, they didn’t need a lot of connection there at all. YAY!)
>> On her first run, she did something she’s started doing – going to the back of a jump when I want her to go “over” from the front>>
The way the sequence is designed, the tunnel exit points directly to the backside of 3, so an ‘over’ cue is likely to keep her on that line. The name call worked like a charm at 1:33! So when you walk courses, be sure to look and see if the tunnel exit or the line of jumps pushes her line to a natural backside or not, so you can plan your cues & verbals. Yuki comes out of tunnels looking for you, so you don’t need to do anything to get the correct side of 3, so I think it is just a matter of remembering that Keiko is more ‘forward’ and needs turn cues differently in those instances.
Her 2nd run, the full run, looked fabulous! She gets a double gold start for the backside at 8, with that yummy tunnel right there. Your handling looked really good – very connected and clear!
Yuki did really well too! The whole opening looked great, and it was much easier to get 3 because she naturally turns to find you after the tunnel here.
>> I literally gave her my backside, so she decided to do something else>>
Your description made me laugh out loud hahahaha! Yes, you broke connection, pointed forward, and you were moving a little sideways so yes, she was correct to go take 9. It was hard to see where you were relative to the wing at 8, too, so you might have been blocking it the first time?
The handling is subtly different (to us) but not to her: compare your arm position and connection when she lands from 7 at 2:11 versus 2:29 – at 2:11, you were facing more forward, with more motion turning forward. at 2:29, you were more connected and more patient to let her find the line before pointing forward. And your best connection at landing of 7 was at 1:43 with Keiko, really connected! Probably because she is less experienced so you don’t trust her as much LOL! But that was great connection and she nailed it. YAY!!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! I love watching the walk through versus the run, we get so much great info!
Course 1:
Definitely can hear differences in the verbals here on the walk through!! This is good! And I could “see” the invisible dog for most of the walk through.
On the 8-9-10 section, you can consider pushing to the outside of the 9 backside then slice to the tunnel, and compare it to the threadle wrap to the inside – my guess us that the slice will be faster even if the threadle wrap is a little less yardage.
And with the threadle wrap at 9 – you rotated to face him like a lap turn, which worked – but you can also face forward and do it more like a threadle wrap/ flick move, which has less handler rotation. And less handler rotation means you are faster on course because your feet are facing the next direction sooner. In this case, it would have ypur feet facing forward with Griz on your left and then when he is committing to the jump, you can do a blind as you run away to get him on your right to the tunnel.
I thought the run was really strong! You were pretty prepared from the walk through, having done a fast running walk through. The 2 differences I noticed was that he is faster on the jumping lines than you expect: you were slower running in the walk through than you were in the actual run. So plan for him to be very fast! It is better to be faster than your invisible dog than slower than your invisible dog. Yes, you were a little faster than he was in the weaves but that is fine 🙂
Th other thing I noticed (and I think this is linked to you having to run faster in the real run): Your verbals get more urgent when you are running ‘for real’. They are louder and more forceful for the most part. This is a good thing! If your verbals are too relaxed in the walk through, you are probably not running fast enough 🙂
It was interesting that he did not read the 15-16 threadle At.All. Didn’t even look at you. It was hard to see what happened from the camera angle, so my guess is that your position was showing front side, and your motion was also showing it (you were backing up, which the dogs also read as forward motion). You also handled it differently on the run than you did on the walk. On the walk through, you were moving forward and not rotated, so that might be a better cue for him?
Course 2:
yes, this one is a little more complex 🙂 and has a lot more skill work! The walk through you posted was good but not quite ready for the full run – you were still sorting out the moves and verbals and timing. and not working the hard turns enough (in terms of connection, verbals, arms) like 2-3, 4-5, 14.15 and those turned out to be trouble spots. Your pace was close to what he needed and that is good! Add in more specific handling cues for the turns and I think it will be perfect 1On the run – the trouble spots in the opening were training moments more than anything else – he needed to work the section 2-3, and work the section 4-5. Be sure that the handling really supports the verbal. For example, the verbal timing of the turn cue at 2 was good but the physical cue didn’t support it so he went straight on the first run.
You got it the 2nd time but then you said ‘yes’ when you should have been handling the left – the physical and verbal left cue happened at 1:00 as he was lifting off, so he turned right because that is what he saw before takeoff (good boy!) The left was MUCH sooner at 1:11 and he got it. Yay!
Same thoughts on the 4-5 line, which is REALLY hard because he has to collect a lot for 4 to not end up at 9 – it is possible that left is the better verbal here than kenme? It went better when you gave really strong handling cues, working that line, to support the verbals.
A similar thing happened at the other part he had questions about: 13-14-15-16. At 1:52 n the first run, you had a good verbal, but the handling did not support which line you wanted (which is exactly how you walked it) – you need to do a push through like you did at 2:46 which clearly indicated the line and he was great.
So – on your next set of walk throughs, keep doing the verbals like you did, but also identify the really hard turn moments for him and then add in more clear handling cues to support the verbals on those too.
The walk/run video is fun to see! Your pace was good – and the spots where you were not supporting the verbals as well were all in the walk through, versus what you had to do to cue the line in the run. So definitely keep that in mind for the next runs.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Great job on class last night! And nice work here, this is a hard skill! I think she did well in both directions, and yes – a little stronger to her right 🙂
The hand jumping is probably a little bit of insight into how hard the behavior is: she naturally wants to turn towards you or take the front of the jump, and this game is all about ignore the front of the jump and then turn away from you.
On thing I noticed was that your verbal style of delivery changed even if the word was the same – you started with a higher pitch and an ascending tone, then later on switched to a lower sound and more of a conversational tone. I really like the higher pitched tone, it is really different from the Go Go Go and from the other verbals – and she was almost 100% accurate when you did it that way: for example, compare the sound at 2:43 (go) versus 2:59 (zip zip). Totally different! And that is great, because it really helps her differentiate between the cues (word plus pitch plus style is much easier to process than just word).
As you play with this skill, keep building motion like you did here. You can get yourself further past the wing of the threadle jump and also start moving faster: when you make it harder like that, you can also throw a reward back to the landing side so she maintains her commitment.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
