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Good morning!
I figured you didn’t post the video on purpose, kind of a cliffhanger. LOL!I love the flowers on the harder card on your video LOL!
He did great and now I think he can see the ‘big picture’ of where all this is going! We add the tunnel to the wings in the next class to basically teach the youngsters how to run big courses LOL!
He was great – speed, focus, and also nice tight turns when asked. I loved the courses you made up – so fun!! You both had really lovely connection throughout and you were working nicely early timing.
Be sure to add your verbals even more consistently – I think you had a ‘push’ verbal going but it matched a variety of different turns, so you can add different ones such as wrapping to the left versus wrapping to the right.And you can add more of the racetracks, where he just gets to run run 🙂 His collections on the FCs and spins looked great, you both had good timing too! And when you threw in a turn and burn here and there, he nailed it. Very cool to see!
On the harder setup in the 2nd half of the video – it was more of a racetrack setup but don’t say go 🙂 because go is fun on extension and there are turns in the racetrack. You can run more, pumping arms, rather than decelerating and sending – that will keep him on his line even better. If you want to say something, these racetrack turns fit the left/right verbals (I always feel the need to say something LOL)
2 other details to consider:
Try to only use reward markers like ‘bite’ or ‘strike’ with the toy – if you have ‘yes’ as the marker, it gets confusing when you say ‘yes’ in the sequence as praise for a job well done because he will (correctly) think it is time for the toy. This is what happened at 1:24 when he came to you even though you were still moving. I learned this the hard way with my dogs, so I have tried to eliminate “yes” as a reward marker so they don’t get confused and stay on their lines, even if I say “yeah!” for a great collection or something mid-course. If “yes” means “come get the toy”, he might start coming off his line.
And, now that he is all “game on!!!” and speeding through the tunnel – stretch it out and add more tunnel bags so it doesn’t move. We want him to feel the power of it but we don’t want him to slip or wrench a foot as it is moving.
Great job here!! He looked great and had fun, so keep adding on the crazy courses to this setup 🙂
TracyGood morning! Racetracks are a fun way to feel the wind in your hair after a busy day 🙂
She did really well here! Nice commitments from a long way away. For the racetracks, you actually can run all the way to the wings, just running the inside line compared to her outside line. You can run and pump your arms as if running a course. Decelerating to send was fine to, but it might feel more comfortable if you just ran. She seemed happy either way and was committing nicely.
>>She was a bit wide here I think. What do we do when that happens?>>
I don’t worry about it too much with baby dogs and she is doing well. Young dogs use these games to figure out how to go fast and turn 🙂
Her lines on the racetracks were perfect – they should be a little wider so she can maximize speed while still turning.
On the rotations where you felt she was wide, it was mainly because you were late with the rotation. So, if you see her wide on the FCs and the spins, you can decelerate and start the rotation sooner.
:40, for example, was timely (you were rotated before she passed you) so she was tight turning to her right there. COmpare it to the spin right after it (:44) where the rotation started later so the spin was later – so she stayed a little wider until she saw the next line.
And, tonight we add a decel game so the dogs can read the decel that comes before the rotation and be better prepared for the rotation, and therefore collect better.
She only had 2 little commitment questions, both were due to the same small handler mechanics oopsie of pointing forward and looking forward before she passed you, which caused her to see your shoulders change lines so she pulled into you.
It is a little harder to see at :18 because your back is to the camera. When she didn’t commit, you can either reward or resend rather than stop and pull the toy away . It does not appear that she was coming for the toy, it looked like she was following your hand/shoulders.It is a little easier to see at :40 -:51 where you did a decel-to-handler-moment (she was SUPER!) but then she had a hard time going back to the cone. You looked forward and pointed forward as you sent, which turned your shoulders to the other side of the cone so she came in. After the decel moment, you can connect more on the exit of that to get her back on the line.
In both of those moments, you can totally use your arm to give her a gentle swoosh forward, but keep the arm low and let your arm move just ahead of her nose, while you look at her eyes the whole time (as much as possible). Resist temptation to look for the cone or look at the cone, because that is what causes the line of your shoulders to turn and pulls her off.
These commitment sends get a lot less tricky as the dogs begin to understand the game fully 🙂 So for now, exaggerate the connection and low arm, and in the future when she is competing it won’t be as important 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyEasy answer… the demo dogs were not in a stay so no release is needed 🙂 same as when we did the ready dance and then the send to the prop. My dogs only need to stay if there has been a cue to stay, otherwise they get too sticky. You can also use your verbal directional because that also gives permission to start moving.
TracyI am sure the 3 barn cats provide some good training opportunities LOL! And hooray for flyball! It is really so fun.
Hi!
Lots of good work here!!!Rocking horses –
I see what you mean by the checking out. I don’t think you were uninteresting, I think the checking out was more about arousal and value. I think getting some toy play involved would really help, mainly so you can toss the rewards and not always reward from your hands. The beginning of the session went really well but rewarding with you stopping and giving cookies reduced excitement and also shifted value to your hands/being next to you and away from leaving you for the barrel. We don’t want to just toss cookies on the floor all he time all the time, so toy play would be a great option here: it will get her more excited and also you can throw the toys as rewards to the other side of the barrel, to build value for moving away from you.Minny Pinny video 1 – this was a very engaged session, she was very zippy and happy… toy play made a big difference! Yay! So definitely add the toy to the rocking horses. She was super on the minny pinny, committing in both directions and driving to the toy. My only suggestion is to line her up straight at your side before each rep – it was a little awkward for her to start facing you a bit so you can use a hand touch to line her up, or tug her into position. Eventually you will be able to use a cookie line up but I am not sure she would go back to the toy right away, and right now the toy play is more important here 🙂
The 2nd minny pinny video also looked good! She did really well finding the middle jump with it further away. You can move it out a little more now too (it doesn’t need to be much further away, maybe just another 6 inches. Her only oopsie was because of the line up, I think – at 1:07 she was not quite lined up and you sent her in, so she had the error there. Compare it to your next rep at 1:24 where you convinced her to line up 🙂 That gave you a clearer send and she was successful! So keep working to convince her to line up at your side – she seemed happy to let you tug her into position 🙂
Retrieve:
I think these bathroom play sessions are great for giving you two some one-on-one time to play with the toy being thrown. She was really good at driving to the toy, and she was basically retrieving it to you, generally 🙂 It is so much improved from the first video in the bathroom!!! I am not sure if it is a formal retrieve yet but that is fine – she is bringing it to a point where you can easily engage with her, so it is indeed a retrieve.>>Not sure where to go from here, do I just keep working this, maybe in a different room? Do I go on to the next level? I would not call here really trying to get it to me, but sometimes she came in my direction.>>
You can try several different games. Keep doing this type of play for some one-on-one time. You can also move this to different rooms. And you can incorporate toy throws into some of the games. If you think she is going to take off and run away, have the toy on a long line so you can throw it and hold the other end of the line, giving you control as you convince her to bring it towards you.
And, separately, you can shape the retrieve on other objcxt with a clicker, that is a fun shaping game!
Lap turns was went well, she definitely has the idea of turning away from you. Keep your hands nice and low, especially on the right turns. These will be even easier if you start with distance between you and her. You can leave her in a stay about 6 feet away so you can set up the lap turn and then release her. And I think she is ready for the next step, which is calling her past the prop then after the lap turn, she hits the prop going in the new direction.
Barrel wraps – I think you were wanting to do a 360 on these? You mostly had it going really well – her commitment is looking great! My only suggestion is that you move sooner: as soon as she is past you moving to and around the barrel, you can tuck in behind her and move up the line to complete the 360. You were tending to wait until she was halfway around before you moved forward, so you were a little in her way (which might be why it felt weird :))
Also, on these 360s and the rocking horses, you can totally add your verbal directionals! Her commitment is looking good, so adding the verbals will help build the understanding of those too.
Tunnels – She is showing lovely value here too! On each rep – be sure to start with a clean start: line her up, get her ready, then send. On the first rep, she was not ready, you two were just arriving near the tunnel when you said the cue and she didn’t take it. You were clearer with the start of the rep on the 2nd rep and she was great! After each rep, take the heartbeat to line her up, connect with her, then send. It was much nicer when you took her collar for a moment – that got both of you in the zone for the next rep.
And, because she seems to really love the tunnel now: you can be consistent with calling her back to your hand and reward with a cookie, to line up for the next rep -when you did that, she was great! And calling her back to you hand for a cookie will convince her to not try to go throug the tunnel on the way back.
I think she is ready for you to try the threadle side entries and add the threadle word too!
You did some barrels at the end – and she is very focused on your hands for those. So, try to send around the barrel and toss a toy to the other side when she goes around it. She learns a lot through reward placement. For example, her tunnel sends are really strong, because reward has consistently been placed out away from you, on the other end of the tunnel. I think we need ti mirror that for the barrels: tossing the reward out to the other side of them, to convince her that leaving you is the best thing on the barrels 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>> I don’t think she has a reward marker for taking food from my hand because it’s never been much of a thing.
Today is the day! Yay!
>> I guess it’s time for Dellin to get some additional markers now that food is more of a thing that looks like a reward.
Yes LOL even if it is not a better paycheck than a toy, we can mark it specifically because that can help build it up too!
On the video: these are looking really good!!
>> I had changed to the very highly prized frisbees then and found that I needed to back off a little on the difficulty.
Ah yes, frisbeeeee is LIFE! Plus, frisbee elicits a behavior that is neither serpy or threadley, it tends to elicit run outs LOL! I am sure you can add the frisbee back soon though.
2 little details about mechanics:
For the threadles, try to have your threadle arm up for a second or two before you start the verbal. that is mainly because she will be releasing on motion of the arm if the two come together and not learning the verbal, specifically. Same with the serp arm. Having the arm in position separately from the release will make it easier to add more motion, as you start to mov emore and more around the jump.
Also, hold your threadle arm and upper body position til she arrives at the toy, so there is no shoulder rotation getting built into the default jump commitment – you were releasing your shoulders and turning forward for some, and using your hand as a ‘check mark’ on other reps. The hand as ‘check mark’ is less obvious than shoulder rotation, but we don’t want to build in her waiting for your hand to move in order to go commit to the jump – basically, when she hears the threadle verbal and see your arm come up, we want her to shove you out of the way and go do the threadle LOL! You were great about leaving your serpentine arm up and shoulders in serp position the whole time, so it is the same idea but with the threadle arm.
>.And at the end I tried putting in the beginnings of motion. Then we did a few serps at the end of the session.
>>She previously had some trouble going back and forth in the same session with these 2 different concepts (threadle and serp), so I was happy with this.>>
She was great! It is really normal for dogs to have trouble going back and forth, but she was great! And she really has the in-and-out action of the serpentine looking great!
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! I am glad he is feeling good!
He definitely looked excited to be doing this! He was smart though – he actually seemed to ‘catch’ himself rushing (especially when the toy was involved), slipping a little – and he thought through the footwork to get the balance back without having to reduce the speed. THAT is a cool thing to see with a baby dog! And he did really well with the middle jump moving out. That is about as far as the middle jump needs to go for this setup (any further and we need o change the verbal for the entry bump) so you can increase the challenge a bit by moving the middle jump back in a little and angling the 2 outer bumps towards it so you have a shorter distance center-to-center on the bumps. We are looking for a bounce and less reaching with his front end, so maybe 5 feet center-to-center is the sweet spot? If not, 4 feet (or 4.5 feet). That distance might change as he matures, so we can adjust things as he develops even more power 🙂
Great job! See you tomorrow night!!
TracyGood morning! I am having much jealousy that your snow melted! I live in the warm, sunny south and we have 2 inches of snow and ice on the ground. Ewwww!
Great job with the concept transfer here: Dice was fabulous, of course. Hooray! He is on FIRE for that toy!
On the one rep where he didn’t commit, it might be that you never stepped forward with your dog-side leg? When you switched sides after that, you stepped forward perfectly with the dog side leg (right leg on that side) and he had zero questions even though you were leaving super early (and early is good!)
He only seemed to have only one other question – on the very last rep, he jumped up at your arm as you sent him. It might be that you were blocking the wing a little (hard to see from this angle) but also it might be that you were too quick to send and that broke connection (jumping up at the handler’s arm is a classic response to disconnection). So after the line up to reset, take a heartbeat to look at his eyes, then send. You did a great job with the resets here – resetting to line up is HARD when the pup is on fire for the toy, but you nailed them and I think this last one just needed a heartbeat of connection before the send.Since this went so well, you can add more distance between you and the wing. You can also transfer the wing to other games: the handling combos and the rocking horses! FUN!!!!
Great job here!!!! Fingers crossed for now more snow so you can keep working these skills outdoors!
Tracy
Good morning!
Very nice session here!!Yes, starting stationary was a good refresher then the slooooooow walking on the 3rd rep was perfect. Clicks/treat for you for being able to have the self-control to move that slowly and smoothly, it is harder than it looks!!! After that got established, the session was smooth sailing that you repeated on the new side. The new side (left turns) seemed harder for her on the first couple of reps but then she was great with those too. Super nice!
You can move onwards to adding more speed on the serps – I liked how the ‘warm up’ of you being stationary helped her, so definitely warm up again like that again and start off moving really slowly, then add in a tiny bit more movement. (And keep tossing in a few ‘catch’ rewards too 🙂 ) As you do add more motion, keep your shoulders/upper body frozen in serp position until after she has arrived at the MM so you don’t relax your upper body after the click. We don’t want to build the habit of the upper body turning forward at all, as that will pull her off the next serp line when she is on jumps.
You can definitely play with adding the threadles in too, but when you add the threadles be sure to use your wings – at least a wing on the entry side if not on both sides. That wing will be a big, helpful visual and I don’t think she will ever see a threadle on a wingless on a real course (or, at least not on a course that any of us would actually run!) The big visual of a wing will help her set up the turns needed for the threadle. I like to use wings on serps too, but I think we also see serps on wingless jumps sometimes so she will get used to seeing both wings and wingless on serps.
Great job here!!! Have fun adding the threadles!
Tracy
Good morning! You ladies have been busy!!!
I know you’ve been doing obedience and agility foundations along with DON’T BITE THE MOMMA 🙂 …. tell me more about flyball!! It is a hoot 🙂 One of my flyball peeps is starting an amazing foundation class online that you should take. Even if you never want to actually play flyball, the foundations and proofing are AMAZING in how they apply to all other sports. (And then of course we will get you playing flyball because it really is so much fun and after the pattern is learned, requires much less training than the other sports.)
Backing up is looking good! You can start her on her little platform/destination so she remembers it right off the bat. I think you can also add some arousal at this point, to help her remember her coordination when she is a little more excited – will she tug go back and forth between for and toys? A little bit of tugging between reps (with food rewards for backing up) can help her stay balanced and coordinated even when she is ramped up 🙂 You might have to shorten the distance for backing up if she might forget how to use all her legs when she is excited 🙂 but she looked ready for this!
Countermotion: the singing is cracking me up LOL!
This is not a double fail, I could see the prop and you were not tooooo bad about eating early LOL
And yes, if you are far from the prop, don’t leave as early for now, especially on the right turns (see below). Or, if you want to leave early, be closer so she only has one variable to deal with (distance OR motion, not both).Interestingly, as things got harder, she went to turning to her left (is she a lefty in flyball?) when she should have been turning to her right based on your position. At 1:13 she turned right but had a question. At 1:20 and 1:25, you were moving a little faster so she turned left. It is correct to reward those anyway, but you will also want to tweak your setup so that she turns to her right there rather than left. More room will help (it is possible that the space was small on the right turn side so there was ‘pressure’ to turn left) so you can move the prop further away from you laterally so it is more spacious on the right turn side. If she continues to turn to her left, get closer to the prop and move slowly so you can make right turns much easier. My Contraband was a very strong lefty when he was the same age as Chata, so I broke down the right turns a lot of help him feel to joy of turning right. He is still a strong lefty in flyball but pretty balanced in agility.
Do you have a reward marker for “cookie in hand”? Rather than ‘yes’, you can now switch to that – skip ahead to Week 7 and look at the “Let’s Talk About Reinforcement” discussion so you can see what I mean. The more we add reward markers, the easier it is for the pups to learn the skills 🙂 She is definitely ready for that too.
Excellent work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>think there was too much time between when I read your feedback and when I recorded these videos because I did forget a couple of the points, but not a big deal>>
Totally relatable!! There is a lot to remember in terms of the mechanics and words and all the things! I write down 2 or 3 things that I need to remember and then text them to myself, so I read them right before I train the dog 🙂 That, plus the proper amount of coffee in the morning, really helps me remember 🙂
Turn and burn – oh yes, I think he liked this AND the excitement drew in a visitor at the beginning LOL!!! He did a great job – that was some serious distance between you and him, and you were leaving really early and he was able to get it! Hooray!
The only hard part were resets for the next rep. You can use a boring cookie to line him up for the reset at your side (I think he will still play with the toy after getting a boring cookie in this scenario). It is hard to start with him facing sideways or facing you LOL! But I do like his “game on” approach to it 🙂He was quite good about maintaining commitment to the exit of the wing as you were leaving earlier and earlier. You can also add in sometimes throwing the toy to the exit wing, to help affirm that yes, he should continue around it as you are running away the other direction. I mix that in a lot, particularly for my small dogs because the smallz have to take sooooo many more strides. My big dogs can do this game in 2 strides but it is more like 6 or 7 for the littles!
Threadles/serpy stuff:
I agree that serps tend to be a LOT easier for us and the dogs – maybe because the concept is easier in terms of ‘take the jump’. Threadles are “don’t take the jump even though my motion shows you the jump.”And I also like the cross arm threadle cue, it is really obvious to the dogs!
The reps on this video looked great! I am always impressed when young dogs can go back and forth from serps to threadles to serps as easily as he did here, Great job with being in the right position for the releases!!! Really nice session.
As you noted – Your position relative to the jump is an important detail to remember especially on the serps, so text yourself to always reach out and touch the wing with a bent elbow on each rep 🙂 Being too far from the wing causes him to turn after landing on the serps when we need him to turn before takeoff.
He was very strong on his serpentines and starting to drive like mad to the ‘bar’ here, so you can add more motion! Go to a fast walk on the serps, then a jog. You might be able to build up to a run pretty soon!
Position on the wing is also important for threadles because it helps get him to take the jump after coming in – at :28 he came to the threadle side perfectly but you were really far away, so he didn’t take the jump. I would still reward that, at least with s cookie from hand as you reset – it was a good effort and the error was in your position. He changed his behavior on the next rep because there was no reward for coming in. Then you got closer and he got it nicely on the reps after that.
He was really starting to nail those threadles with motion too!!!! I think you can move to a faster walk on these – but not toooooo fast, not yet. I want to protect his success and adding too much speed, too soon is a threadle-killer LOL!!
You can also start to repeat the close cue because on course you will likely be saying close close close and not just close. Might as well get him used to that here. You don’t need to repeat the “ok” for the serps, because on course you will be saying left or right depending on the angle (or his name, for softer angles).
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
You won’t see the value transfer here instantly add speed to the wing or the eating. We know we’ve got speed on the wing when we use a toy with her, so we are using that to raise the food love. And I think it is actually great that you had to wait for her to swallow before the toy comes out. Hopefully that means you are rewarding *swallowing* the treat and not just putting it in her mouth. I am sure you have met BCs who are masterful at putting treats in their mouths but not swallowing them LOL!
I think she was great here in terms of the speed level you want in this setup: speedy enough for a small space and happy, and expectant (meaning, yay for the cookie and now where is the toy, mom?)
Only two little details on this game:
Use your reward markers particularly for the food – rather than yes, use your cookie-in-hand marker because this game will build value for that too!Also, because the food was a little high in placement, she was coming around the wing with her head up, almost in heel position chin-up posture. So, easy enough to change: drop the treat on the ground with your ‘get it ‘ marker so she move through to get it, then when she swallows: toy time. I don’t think she will be looking up when you add movement to it, but I don’t want to accidentally build in looking up anywhere when wings are involved, especially with food rewards 🙂
Great job here!!!! What is on her training schedule for today or tomorrow?
Tracy
Good morning!
Mike, you were a good dog dad to work through this really systematically tp be sure he was successful! Ronan transferred the concept instantly so on the first few reps he was totally like “why are you still standing here” LOL!!!! He was perfect when you added motion and sending too and started leaving earlier. And he was perfect when Karena took over too. This means we can go to the next steps: feel free to now add your wrap verbals along with the send to get him started. You can start further back so you can rotate and leave even sooner too! If you power up the speed and timing and see him rushing, dial back the speed. By rushing, you’ll see him either not commit or he will push the wing.
My only other suggestion is to use a ‘get the toy in my hand’ marker – he was fine with getting in on the praise here when you presented it because you made the context very clear, but we are going to expand the use of the wing into all sorts of scenarios when you have a toy in your hand, so adding the toy marker will help keep him looking at the wing and not at the toy.Great job here!!! I am looking forward to seeing him use the wings on the crosses!!
Tracy
Good morning!
It was fine to start with big distances so she could learn the concept without having to also learn the coordination of the bending and leads. I think she looked great here! I like that she is actually looking at where she is going, down into the minny pinny and not up at you – that seems like such a small detail but it is actually a HUGE detail which translates to strong jumping form. And she was really quite balanced in both directions. Maybe a little stronger to the left but it is almost imperceptible.I see what you mean about not wanting to swallow the reset cookie LOL!! What type of treat was it? It might help to use a really soft bit of cheese or something… or it might not help at all (or you might have already been using it LOL!) It looks like you were waiting for a second or two before releasing her into the game, that seemed effective. The only thing that will take away the concern about using reset cookies is to use a toy 🙂 I think she is ready for it and it increases the coordination challenge! So using this set up, try a tug toy – it can be the reward for great behavior and also you can tug her into reset position.
Separately from the toy – you can move the middle wing and bump a little further away (I think they were all close here). That might change the distances between bumps which could mean you need to angle the 2 outer bumps away from the middle one to get this nice 4 foot distance.
You are right in that she has done a lot of controlled stride work recently – and also now that the minny pinny is tight, it is in effect a jump grid which means training on it once or twice a week and not daily. So, for fun giddy up extension go fast stuff, you can take the racetracks outside (you’ll both be running!) See how far apart you can get the barrels! I also revisit those handler combos games all the time – where I have a toy or MM or something 20 feet from a barrel, wrap a barrel, then accelerate with the GO GO GO to the reward target.
Great job here! Have fun going fast!
Tracy
Good morning!
>>We are a bit behind this week so glad there aren’t that many week 11 assignments! >>
I figure there is a lot to do with puppy training and sometimes it is just fine to NOT add a whole lot more to the load 🙂 And you are doing great!!!
On the serps & threadles video:
>.We gave the Adding motion to serps and threadles a go today and it mostly went well. Ronan had some issues moving past the jump directly to the MM. In some reps it seemed to be our position or timing. Other times perhaps the handler’s feet weren’t pointing enough towards the direction of travel. Maybe Karena’s arm was too high? There were a few reps with too much handler speed too.>>
There were moments of each where maybe it was a foot in the wrong place or a hand too high or a shoulder not open enough… but overall I think it was too much motion – you were moving too fast 🙂
Bearing in mind that BCs are wired to stay out and parallel a lot more than they are wired to drive in hard to us, you can dial the speed waaaaaay back so you are walking so slowly you can practically feel the earth turning under your feet LOL!!! Motion is a stimulator, so we dial it back to the least amount possible as you build the love for these behaviors that are counterintuitive to BCs (Aussies or Corgis, by contrast, are happy to drive into us on these but it is hard to turn them away from us for the 2nd part of the behavior)
I think 2:07 might be the best example of how slowly you need to move for now – creeping along. The other thing that will help is if, as you slowly creep along, you have your serp or threadle upper body cue in position for a few steps before you give the verbal cue to start his movement. On the threadles in particular, the upper body cue and the release were happening at about the same time. So 3 or 4 steps of him seeing your arm cue as you ever so slowly move towards the wing will help – and I will often shake that hand too, to add motion in a way that helps up 🙂
You can also go to a slightly more boring reward target – maybe a perch to put his feet on, or an empty food bowl? Reducing the motion and the distraction of the reward value can help too! As soon as he has a lot of reinforcement for driving into you on these, it will be easier to add more and more motion 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
