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Good morning!
>>I used both extended/closest to the dog arm, and also tried using the outside/across the body arm, mostly as a reminder to me to ask this: at 2:55 in your demo video you say to ask for more specifics about the time and place for using one arm versus the other, so, OK, I’ll bite! What’s the time and place>>
Which arm(s) to use will end up becoming personal preference as you stylize your handling. There are a lot of opinions out there about threadle arms 🙂 With big dogs, there are a couple of ways to think about it and decide which works best.
Option A: The dog learns both arm uses along with the verbal. The dog-side arm can be used to swing back a little when the handler is in great position and the threadle is not that hard (some threadles are harder than others, in terms of entry lines). The outside/across the body arm can be used when the handler is not in great position (falling behind, for example) or on the really difficult threadles.
Option B: only use the dog-side arm for all threadles
Option C: Only use the outside/cross arm for all threadles.
I personally used to do Option A, but I am now in the Option C camp because me dogs (of all sizes) just see the cross arm better. I had success with Option A with my bigger dog but the littles didn’t see it as well. And I am also rarely in “great position” 🙂
It is super easy to teach both to the dog and then decide what you like, as you add motion. The key is that your feet keep moving forward and don’t rotate.
The session on the video went well!
>You’ll see in the video that after some early errors I bring back the target in my hand to help him out, so I gather we need to work on fading the target?>>
I think those were self-control errors more than threadle or target errors 🙂 He dove on the toy (self-control error) rather than took the wrong side of the bar (threadle error).
Bringing the target back definitely helped, because it gave him something of value to look at when he was closer to the toy (he didn’t have too much trouble with the toy til he was relatively close to it :))
You can work the self-control 2 ways:
– continue with the target like you did, but keep him on easier angles for now and gradually work back to the harder angles. Then take the target out of the hand but on the very easy position 1 angles. And separately from the jump, you can work the strike a pose with a fun to on the ground and just hand touches before the toy marker.– work it without a target, but with a less exciting reinforcement (like an empty food bowl) so it is easier to ignore the reward target in favor of coming in for the threadle.
2 other details to add:
Add in a cone or wing of barrel on the jump here, so he has a more obvious picture and your position. On the wingless with a 4 foot bar, it is harder to show position onthe wing (which is an important part o early threadle training) and you end up a little between the uprights (which is more of a serp position). A wing or barrel or cone should help that a lot.
Now that he was really beginning to get the idea of coming in to the correct side for the threadle, you can work on the 2nd part of the behavior – the go-out-to-the-jump part. You can get that by, after he comes in to the target hand, waiting for him to turn his head to the bar (or reward target) then say your get it marker. That will isolate the decision to turn to the bar, which builds the go-out-to-the-jump behavior. He might think you are nuts at first 🙂 but then what will happen is he will start to offer the entire in-then-out behavior. At that point, he is likely to stop touching the hand and that is PERFECT 🙂
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Great job transferring the barrel commitment to the minny pinny here 🙂 She’s got it! Easy peasy!! And she is bending nicely. So now for next steps 🙂
In your next session:
You can ask for even more independence by turning your shoulders less. You can let her do the whole thing without movement from you, other than maybe a step to get her started. That will help get it on a verbal cue and less about your motion.
Speaking of verbals… you can add your left and right verbals here 🙂 Since she is doing the behavior, you can go ahead and add the verbals.
One more detail: to really solidify the behavior, change the placement of reinforcement at the end:
reward from your hand (food or toys) and reward by pulling her in front of you like you did at :27 and :36 on the 2nd video – that way she exits on the left or right turn so yo ucan get multiple reps of the behavior with the verbal.Great job here!!!
TracyHi! These look great with both of you!
The FCs look really good – you can start rotating even sooner on those. Push your luck: send and then see how early you can start the FC. Can you start it while he is 6 feet from the barrel? Probably 🙂 that will really make the spins feel more comfy, because the FC element of it will give you more time to get to the BC element.
Mike in particular mentioned that he felt late picking him up after the spin and that was mainly because the FC rotation can start sooner on those. I think that you were starting them as he arrived at the barrel, which makes it harder to get the BC in on time. His commitment looks strong and you can start the rotation well before he arrives at the barrel.
That way the BC can start as soon as he arrives at the barrel, so you’ll feel like you have plenty of time.And rotating earlier will also make the TNBs feel better – you were a little ahead ,which is fine: you can rotate and leave as soon as he passes you which will be super early 🙂
At 1:20 it totally felt weird because you did a normal blind there, not a spin 🙂
He looked so strong here that you can totally add more distance between the barrels, which should also help you be able to send and rotate sooner without feeling like you are getting too one to the barrels.
About reinforcement- Karena noted that she rewarded from the wrong hand on one rep (rewarded across the body). I personally prefer rewarding across the body like that on the exit of crosses because it opens up amazing connection and the dogs turn really tight! Most folks reward with the dog side arm, but I have found that the dogs tend to drift out more when we do that. The argument against rewarding across the body is that people are afraid the dogs will cut in front of them – but that won’t happen if you consistently keep moving (which you did there).
And with all the rewards, let him run and chase you, rather than dropping the toy – that will also get more speed and he won’t jam himself to a stop getting the toy 🙂
Great job here! You can totally add in the race tracks too!
TracyHi!
>>I re-watched the video and I had sound, so not sure what happened. And I was so proud that I was using my words!I figure it is my bad country internet playing tricks on me lol
>>We did a little of the minny pinny (or maybe I’ll start calling it “The Didi” :)) this morning with a toy – totally different dog – much more enthusiastic. We did the steps as you outlined above. I’ll try another short session later and get some video.>>
Awesome!!!! I bet she was great!
>>I went back to my outtakes from last night on the rocking horse spin. Let me know if these are correct. If so, I guess it seemed too easy, so I had to put in an extra move>>
These looked good! No extra dance moves here haha! I bet you can use even less motion of that send arm ad you rotate and send her for the spin, but that might just he centrifugal force lifting your arms. Think of that send cue as pointing downwards to the takeoff spot.
But all that gets stylized when she gets onto courses, so for now it is mainly about getting her to commit which she is doing brilliantly. Yay!!!!
TracyGood morning!
The last day for video submission is on March 1 🙂This session went super well!! He was a very good boy and gets a double gold star for doing it with all of the distractions in the street!!!
I am glad you went to the toy on the ground! It was the next step and he was ready for it. With the toy on the ground now, 2 details:
– when he is getting the toy after coming over the bump. Don’t move your shoulders until he arrives at the toy (to help you rehearse the shoulder position and to help him understand the serp cue element of going back out without a shoulder cue from you). You were moving your shoulders when he was going to his right, but you were much better about stationary shoulders when he was going to his left towards the end of the session. Super nice!– now that he is really understanding this setup, you can move yourself closer to the jump so that he can make the turn on the takeoff side of it and not on landing. This makes it harder and he need to slow down at first to sort it out, but that is fine 🙂 Ideally you are close enough to touch the wing of the jump with a bent, relaxed arm.
He was understanding the behavior really well so he was fading out the target touches – good boy! That is what we want, so if he does everything correct but doesn’t perfectly touch the target (or doesn’t touch it at all), keep rewarding like you did here. He was really fast here so you might not have time to say “yes” then get it, so yo can just mark with get it.
Great job!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! I am glad to hear the backsides and threadles are going well!!!
The speed on the reverse retrieve might have to wait until you have more room – she has so much speed everywhere else that I don’t see the need to practice slow behavior 🙂On the videos:
I bet Didi was honored that we named a game after her LOL!!! Dellin immediately understood it of course, hooray! Either my video player is on the fritz or there was no sound on this video? My only suggestion is to not move your shoulders as much: send her into the minny pinny and literally just stand there and let her do her thing LOL The verbals will support her line and the presence of the wing will help cue the behavior as well. I agree – it was a good stopping point because it gets a little repetitive especially with food. So for the next session, start with the wings close together for one rep in each direction to refresh her memory. Then put the bumps in. And when she is perfectly fine with the bumps (wings still close together) which will probably take 4 seconds: add the left/right verbals. I also recommend going to a toy right away – you can still maintain the good reward placement with a toy, and I think she will like it a whole lot better 🙂
On the rocking horse video:
The FCs look great! Wheeee! On the spin – you aren’t doing anything wrong, necessarily, you are just doing extra 🙂 When you are doing the spin, yo can indicate with the dog side arm, rotate… and when you are fairly sure she is going to pass you and commit, just go to the blind without having to use the middle arm at all (by middle arm, I mean indicating from your right to your left to your right. You can just go right to right).
Look at the spin at :10 for example – you sent to the cone with your right arm (perfect) and also rotated as she was passing you (also perfect, especially in a smaller space). Then watch your left arm become a true overachiever by indicating the cone and drawing and entire circle around it, so as she exited the cone you were still connecting to her over your left shoulder when you should be connected over your right shoulder (finished with the blind). :15 was better, less left-arm involvement.
When you switched sides, your right arm because the overachiever on the spin. Look at :20 where you send with your left (perfect), rotate (also perfect) then use your right arm to show the next cone and also to change the toy from hand to hand behind your back. It was a little less helpy at :26 and:30, but you did have the right and left hand being very swooshy on the last reps too.
In these smaller spaces, it will feel more comfy to eliminate the extra swoosh of the middle arm. And in bigger spaces at a full run – eliminating the big indication of the middle arm will help you move away a lot faster and stay further ahead too!
her commitment looks really strong, so you can experiment with how early you can leave on these 🙂
As for the toy placement – plan it before you start the rep, then let it live in that hand the whole time 🙂 That might have been distracting mid-stream on these. And if it ends up in the ‘wrong’ hand, no worries, because there really is no wrong hand for the rewards. I often reward with the hand across the body to get great connection and a lot of drive in to the new side.Great job here!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
She did really well here! I love how confident she is on the wobble board!!!
On the wobble board, she was happy to hop on it and move it: perfect! You can toss the reward off to the side of it, so she has to leap off then run back onto it 🙂 and you can take it to different surfaces so she gets experience with different slam noises too!
She had a little trouble tugging so close to the board, probably because it is associated with food. You can try running to the corner of the ring and throwing the toy to see if that helps engage her (changing location by a bigger distance can help get her away from the food scent :))She was also a good girl on the balance discs – I thought at first she was avoiding putting her back feet on the big disc, but then she sorted it out brilliantly. Yay!!!! So with these, you can do the same as with the wobble board: toss the treat off to the side so she has to go get it then run back on and get her feet (back feet, especially) onto the discs.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! She was awesome with her threadles here!!! Yay!!!
I think there were only 2 hard parts for her, neither of which had anything to do with the threadle behavior 🙂
She is definitely obsessed with the MM now LOL!!! That’s great news, but also made it harder to line her up for the next rep. She was hilarious and utterly brilliant when she went and offered a backside threadle by herself to try to get the MM to work at approx 1:36. The MM love made the lime up and sit harder, so you can reward that behavior to keep things balanced: line her up and reward with a cookie, do the threadle, click the MM, line her up with a cookie, and so on. The thrown cookies definitely helped reset her too!And I think she might have been anticipating the release from the stay as being part of the hand movement, so that plus the vast MM love was making those line ups to reset the next rep hard. For the stays, you can go to position showing the threadle arm, take a breath, then release – that should help her understand that the verbal releases her, not the arm going into position.
The threadle looked great and she seemed super fast and happy to do it!!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Here is the info for the live sessions:
Tuesdays at 7:00pm EST: March 8, March 22, March 29, April 12, April 26
Great job last night!!! He looked great ESPECIALLY the toy session!!!!!
Good morning!
I agree – really ineresting and we did see it early on with his boot. Then it went away for a while when cones/barrels/wings got added. The cones/barrels/wings provided context and I don’t recall him having any questions.This was a good session to help sort out what he is reading/deciding about the turns! Lots of success!! The reverse retrieves have less context so he is offering more of the right turns – it seems like it happens on the reps where you didn’t move at all, like at :29 and :47. On the reps with similar angles, you had a little movement in the form of either arms/clapping or motion away. So two ideas for you:
– you can try moving sooner on those angles – move away as soon as you cue him to get it– you can provide context for this game in the form of a wing (or barrel). Because the goal is to make countermotion very happy-making for him, we can use the wing to provide the turn context. Let me see if I can explain it (3 cups of coffee are on board, fingers crossed haha):
Everything is the same but now we embed the wing into the game for context. Set a wing or barrel into the picture that you had going here. He is in his sit, facing the wing. You drop the toy on the far side of the wing (putting the wing between you and the toy). It should be visible for him, and on the line you want him to take. You cue him to get the toy and move away. His ‘job’ is to grab the toy and continue around the wing, bringing the toy to you. It is incredibly unlikely that he would turn to his right, away from the wing. You can show him the context by mirroring it so he turns right first.Let me know if that makes sense. My 2 youngest dogs are both very strong left turners so this cleared it up for them very quickly. If you need a visual 0 when the temps heat up, I can catch it on video in the building (we are socked in under 6 inches of snow and ice here boohooo!!!!!)
Have fun!
Hi!
The barrel wraps are looking really strong, she is really developing such strong commitment!
Some details for you: With the wrap verbals, you can totally repeat them rather than say them once – repeating them mirrors the collection (short words = short steps :)) and also repeated cues support the commitment as you start to leave sooner and sooner. And, with a verbal for each direction, plan each rep – I think you started with them meaning one direction then they were flipped on the last rep? I always take a moment to remember which word means which direction 🙂Her decel and the handler focus looked great! When you add the GO after that, you can give hera visual destination like an empty food bowl (which is also a nice distraction for the decel/handler focus.
Backing up:
>>Here I tried to add the extra step in the back – was I not patient enough? She seamed to reset instead of backing the extra step.>>
I don’t think you did anything wrong, you were patient! The first rep was great but then she was like “oh wow this is HARD” so she was like, it is easier to reset! I like that you made it easier to help her out, then made it harder again – it was a great way to refresh the behavior while keeping the rate of success high. So on the next session, start really easy as a warm up then make it harder and harder (throwing in some easy ones to :))
Strike a pose:
>>Do I not have enough value for the target?
Actually, she was quite brilliant about the chain we are creating and she caught on to the new placement of reinforcement immediately. We are going to want her to not really hit the target any more, but instead to come towards it (and your hand) and turn to line up to face the exit. As soon as she saw the change in placement to get that turn away: Boom! She had it. Smart! LOL!!! So, no worries, if she slides past the target without quite touching it: reward her.
And, I think you can move her to next steps for the next session:
first, on the flat here but with a empty food bowl on the ground so you can drop the cookie into it rather than reward from your hand. If that goes well, you can then move her to the jump setup for the next session after that to transfer the concept:Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>. Hope I earn extra points for wiping down my 10′ training tunnel and bringing it into our living room.
Holy wow, total gold star!!!! The things we do for our dogs and agility LOL!!!!
She is SO SPICY when you don’t let go fast enough LOL!!! She wascracking me up with her head tossing and some grunting.
For the right turns, since they are harder, you can change the reward placement a bit and put the reward iside the tunnel entry (she can see you put the cookie or toy in there, but hold her tight LOL!) to help emphasie the turn away and to reward it immediately. I think she was really nailing it by the end of the video, though. The left side also looked great, and youwere able to add motion. Hooray!
So, since you were able to add motion: we can move to the next steps (added last week, so it skips her ahead but since the tunnel is in your training room we might as well do it… LOL! )
– what threadle verbal do you want to use? I think you said “come” a couple of times? So now you can use that threadle verbal each time you cue it – no need to say tunnel, because tunnel is for the ‘on your line’ entry and your threadle verbal is for the threadle side.
– And with that, you don’t need to turn your arm or feet to flip her into the entry – you can keep walking forward and let her turn herself away. So using the left turns first because they are easier, she would be on the inside and you would be walking towards the fireplace, slowly -using the verbal and arm and moving forward til she turns herself away into the tunnel – then you can reward (or even have the reward pre-placed inside the tunnel for her right turns.
Great job here!!! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
