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Good morning!
Darn meetings getting in the way of your training! But this went really well – he was really good about continuing on to the toy and retrieving it. He was doing his hoppy gait on the way to the toy, which seems to be Ripley-speak for “are you sure this is correct, human?” LOL!!! But this game will help answer that question with a “yes, you go do that thing while I run the other way”. You can shorten the distance between you, him and the toy so get him driving to it more but I also think that more play like this will get him really comfy with all the countermotion.Great job!
TracyHi!
“” I was having trouble getting him to give the toy at one point. lol I’ll go back and work on the two toy games again and build back in more value for release as well as the tug. 🙂 Can’t say I’m sad to have this as an issue, I’m thrilled to see him engaged with the toy this much.”””
Right! It is a wonderful problem LOL!!! And you can continue to “fight” him for it as that actually builds a LOT of tug drive. That is why I didn’t make any suggestions about getting the toy back – I think that you can keep letting him be a bit “naughty” with it, to continue to build up the tug drive 🙂
T
Good morning!
Wow, no snow! That is great! His toy play is looking really strong, I think you were even having trouble getting him to let go of it a bit LOL!On the toy races – I see what you mean about him looking at you, he does check in a little bit when you are moving: right at the beginning on the first one, then halfway through on the second one. But he is still driving to the toy and that is great. He was perfect about driving to thedead toy when you were NOT moving (middle rep in that session). To help get rid of those little check-ins, you can try2 small tweaks: don’t throw the toy quite as far, and after getting pumped up like you did here – let go of him so he gets a head start and is a well on the way to the toy before you start moving too.
So you can hold him, throw the toy maybe 10 feet, then let him go and when he is halfway to the toy – then you can start moving. That might help him *not* look at you because he is already committed to driving ahead which is our ultimate goal.Now, because motion is distracting, this might have the opposite effect – he might look back at you when you start moving. If you see that happen, we can tak ea different approach: do what you did here but walk forward when you let go of him rather than run. We will only do that if he needs has trouble with the first suggestion.
Reverse retrieve looks great, he is both getting it AND bringing it all the way back (GOOD BOY!!) H ewas basically perfect on the ‘normal’ reverse retrieves and he did have the question on the fancy ones at the end (where he followed ou on the 2nd to last rep rather than went to the toy). You made a terrific adjustment by using less running on the next rep (staying in motion but running less) and he got it! So that is where I would start on the next session: with the fancy reverse retrieves and you walking. Then I bet you will be able to build it up quickly to jogging then running with no problem.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! I think this is going well – he is both pivoting to get into position facing you, and offering it more when he is on the perch. Yay!
The lower feeding seemed effective in keeping his head down, he didn’t have to look up as much. You can place yourself one or two steps closer to the perch, so he doesn’t reach forward to get the food. He seemed to understand to keep his front feet on it, but was reaching forward so he was at the edge and ended up a bit roached on some of the reps. So if you are close enough to hand him the reward without reaching forward, he should keep his feet in the center of the perch, smooth topline, and even more hind end motion (I know – finding the exact perfect spot for the mechanics is the hardest part here! LOL!)
Tossing the treat away was definitely getting him to offer pivoting as he got back on – be sure to toss it away on both sides so he pivots both directions. Your left hand did most of the feeding and tossing, so you can get the right hand doing 50% of that too to keep things balanced.
Based on how well he offers it when he gets back on the perch, I bet you can get even more pivoting by moving a little – he is pivoting to come to center and face you, so you can move the center position a bit. So when you toss with your left and he gets back on, you can move a little towards you left so he keeps pivoting to find the center. And vice versa, when starting on your right 🙂 The motion can help us get the behavior and then you can fade the motion – but there is no real need to fade it for agility 🙂 because we can add in the bumps with you moving a bit. Plus, the PT people and rehab vets all say this is a GREAT warm up and psoas strengthening behavior, and he is on the right track with it for sure!Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>sometimes I happy click, but I thought I got the head turn.
It is also possible that Youtube messed with the sound, that happens more than seems possible!
The reverse retrieve video looks great – she had commit to the toy even as you were running the other way. This will really help with the countermotion skills we need nowadays! She has really come up in toy drive, great job building it up so it is playful and fun for her!!!!
My only suggestion is to of course close the crate door so you don’t break yourself LOL! I knew it was coming and I still about had a heart attack when you did it (and al of my dogs started barking too LOL!)
This level can go outside when you have a dry yard – but indoors you can also do the more advanced level where she is in a sit on one end of the room and you are on the other end – you drop the toy, tell her to get it – and you move towards where she was sitting. The demo video has almost all of that except for the great retrieve because my Matrix was too busy shaking dirt off the toy LOL!
Great job here! Have fun!
TracyGood morning!
>> “Beep Beep” is fun, cute and nice to say.
And it can be said repeatedly beepbeepbeepbeep which I personally like for my collection cues. I save longer words for behaviors that require longer strides. Scientifically-based? No LOL but it helps me decelerate better so I go with it 🙂
>>It’s like naming a baby, you want to get it right.
TRUTH!!!
>>Anyway, thank god the dogs are so smart and basically figure out what the hell we want.
Also, TRUTH!!! Ha!
>>I’ve always laughed thinking thank god we, the humans, aren’t the ones running full speed and expected to listen and respond to verbal cues and positional cues and do the thing, all without decreasing speed, dropping bars, missing criteria and while also ignoring all of the distractions. It would NOT be a sport>>
We sometimes have played human agility where one human is the dog, and gets hidden in the another place while the handler walks the course. The human ‘dog’ can provide accurate feedback to the handler – I have found this to be a great game to get people to stop blaming the dogs for errors LOL!!!!
T
Hi!
Totally understandable!!! It think that if you add them early, you will rehearse them so much with him in these baby games that they will feel like second nature when you need them on course.
T
Hi!
>> I don’t yet have a cue for this and really need to come up with one pretty quick here I think. I’ve got “Dig, Dig” and “Check, Check” for left and right normal wing wraps. I’ve got left and right for take the jump and make a softer turn.
>> I really like verbals with a short vowel sound and some sharp consonant sounds in there since they seem to come out quicker and crisper for me.What about push and back as the backside verbals? Or beep? I think your backside slice verbal is ‘pushpushpush’ so perhaps back or beep would work. I am a nutjob and practice the sound production while running around my field (without the dogs of course haha) and I have found that the placement of push and back or beep are different enough that it should be easy for the dogs to process.
>> I’m open to suggestions and will also keep mulling it over (and will add it quickly to my Ripley Glossary once I come up with it – we are at 74 cues/LSMs/obstacle names so far 😝).>>
SO MANY WORDS lol! Remember the good days where we only had a release word and were so proud that we could run a whole course silently? I mean, I am sure our dogs were confused a lot more but we had less to remember LOL!
On the video:
The backside wraps look great – he is really bending through them which is what we want. Only little ideas for you, besides choosing the verbal:
you were blocking the barrel a little which widens his line to it, so be sure that he can see the full barrel (and eventually the full wing when he is on a jump).
And, you can say your ‘bite’ mark later, when he is fully finished with the wrap. I suggest this because he was SUPER clean with not touching the barrel at all – until you said bite then he pushed it to get to the toy. So, to keep the clean rehearsal of not touching the barrel (and eventually not touching the wing), let him be finished before you present the reward so he doesn’t rehearse touching the wing.My only other suggestion is to now add more speed 🙂 Try it jogging, then running! When you both start pretty far back, he will be ahead so you can be in motion the whole time. If you are ahead of him, you can decel and hang out for a heartbeat at the barrel til he is passing you, then move forward again.
>>The Swissy is talking a bit here once things got exciting but Ripley is okay with that.
The Swissy was hilarious and got all of my dogs barking too LOL!
>> I did have to put the 13 year old Border Collie away in a bedroom where she couldn’t see us as she could not stand the excitement of us tugging and she DOES distract Ripley when we are training – we’re working on that (on his end, more than hers since she’s earned some leeway and he’ll have to get used to dogs being excited in the real world) – baby steps.>>
Perfect, it is like having a mini trial at home and you can work through the distractions of excited BCs!
>> but full disclosure I haven’t watched the new lecture yet, just remembered doing some of this with him a few months ago in your Reinforcement class so did what we left off with (and what we do when we go to new locations to help him enjoy the new places).
He did well on that, he has always loved to retrieve! What you did here was similar to the baby level that I recommend where the pups start near us. You can now add in the more advanced level where he starts in a stay, facing you and pretty far away – the toy is in your hand. You drop it, cue him to get it, and run towards his starting point (ok, walk towards it at first, if the countermotion is really hard for him):
Her retrieve was not that great on this video because she spent quality time shaking the dirt off the toy LOL but you can see how to start the rep.
>>Also did a little of pivot over a jump bump for hind end awareness and core strength and worked just a bit on him keeping his head lover (mostly just using hand position and treat delivery vs totally retraining his pivot since I still want the head up and focus on me one when we are out and about for moving through crowds and his lineups – not for “real” obedience so much).>>
This was a good merging of the low head for hind end movement and getting to your side, where you can feed him low near the perch then high again for attention after getting into position. You can start him on different angles so he pivots more getting into position, and you can move a little as he is arriving into position for even more hind end movement – which will also add more of the high head when he is at your side.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
She is definitely getting the idea and leading with her head more! Yay! One thing that will make it feel even easier: the little hand flip you used at :16 and :26 (for example, those were two of my favorite moments on this clip) will be even easier if she is already wrapping the upright, so that hand flip will cue the 2nd wrap. I think you were doing these as the first wrap, which might be why they felt a little awkward still. So, send her to the upright as a normal wrap first, then as she is finishing that normal wrap, you can use that hand flip to turn her away to the upright for a 2nd wrap in a row. Using the angle you had here: start her on your right side, and send her towards to her left the teeter as a normal send. Then use your right hand to get her attention and flip her away around the upright to the left (towards the teeter again) like you did at :16.
The more she gets practice like this with reinforcement for turning her head as she approaches the turn, the more comfy she will be with tight, fast turns so keep noodling around with it. I think it feels weird for us humans for a while but I can totally see her getting the idea 🙂
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>>>>I was thinking of it more in the situation where you are well behind the dog heading to the jump and they need to know if they should go around the right or left side of the jump to get to the backside. Sounds like you would essentially rely on the side of you that they started on to indicate the side of the jump they should go around?>>
The line that the dog is on helps dictate it and our relative position to us. For any backside ‘push’ verbal, if I was really out of the picture in terms of motion and position, I would have to use a verbal to put the dog on the correct line so she could see which jump I was indicating. And once on that line, the backside push verbals indicate going to the far side of the jump to take the backside, and threadle verbals would indicate coming in to take the other side of the jump – and then the bar dictates if the exit is left or right.
For example, if I was 40 feet behind the dog on a straight tunnel exit to a backside, then I would need to cue the dog how to exit the tunnel in order to set her up to know which jump I wanted for a backside verbal.
>>I assume the issue was primarily one of having patterned the serp enough and without necessarily having to physically touch the target to have her thinking we were doing the same thing.>>
Looking at the threadle videos, it looks like her struggle is a value issue: the jump and reward on the ground has more value then the hand target and the in-then-out behavior. That doesn’t mean she has to touch the target, it is more about raising the value and understanding of the behavior in te face of something more valuable.
She had the hardest time when the reward was on the ground and she was almost in position 2 and could see the reward and the bar.So, when the pup is asking questions, the first thing to do is remember the 2 failure rule: If she fails twice (twice in a row or twice in the session), change something (or a couple of things) that makes it much easier for her to be successful.
I suggest changing 2 things: her position and your position to start.
Change your position to be further outside the wing – most of your body is between the uprights (which is very similar to the serps) and only the wrist and hand is showing threadle outside the upright – move your position over so at least half of your body is showing outside the upright to help her see it better.
Also, change her start position to put her on a line facing the upright so that it is very very easy to get to the threadle side and very very hard to be wrong and go to the front of the jump. Her start position can be more in line with the 2 uprights, so she can see more of the threadle side and less of the front side, making the ‘in’ part of the in-then-out behavior easier and more successful.
An alternate way of doing this is to angle the jump: move the wing you are near closer to her, an dthe exit wing clsoer to you, so it is easier to come to the threadle side (but still move your position so she sees more of you outside the uprights and not between them).
If she still has questions, go to an empty food bowl on the ground. I think changing the positions will help a lot, though.
>>When we get to trying the advanced work on this we do both the threadle and the serp but I am also wondering if generally, it would be a good idea to either always do that or if I do a serp only session do the next session as a threadle session so she doesn’t pattern too heavily to one or the other? At least until the understanding of it is more in place?>>
I think this question is more about considering when to move to the harder levels. When you get 2 sessions in a row at 90% success or better with the threadle (including from various start positions), and the verbal has been added, you can move to the advanced level. At that point, the threadle and serp get shown in the same sessions. That is because the discrimination is an impotrant element of threadles – they are basically jump discriminations. If you do a lot of threadle-only sessions or serp-only sessions, I don’t think she will learn the discrimination that quickly – the dogs just pattern whatever the session is after the first couple of reps. So once the verbal is added and she is very successfulo nthe threadles from several angles…the serp gets added into the same sessions rather than keeping it separate.
Let me know how the next sessions go!
Tracy
Good morning!
This is going really well! You were really focusing on mechanics which is why she figured it out so quickly. Note how she was beginning to make the bend in the new direction, coming towards you on a perpendicular line then turning and ending up parallel to your legs.
And because your placement of reinforcement was consistently good, she was already figuring out that it was an in-then-out behavior because on the last rep at 1:13, she hit the target and immediately turned to the new line. YAY!!!!
So the next step now is to get the reinforcement to the ground. You can use an empty treat bowl or Manners Minder out past where your reward hand is, so she can come in and hit the target hand then turn to get the reward without looking at you. If you use a Manners Minder, you an just click the remote in your empty hand. If you are using an empty food bowl, you can use the cookie hand to drop the treat into the bowl after she comes into the hand target.
I think you can also add this onto a jump to transfer the concept! If she has seen a bit of the parallel path game on the jump and it has some value, then you will easily be able to transfer the concept.
Great job here!! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Good job sorting out all the different ways to try to get this behavior rolling! I thought for a moment that you were going to roll the ottoman around. And the look on his face when you were on you knees scooting around was so funny!!! He was judging you for sure LOL!!! But then he figured it out really nicely and BOOM – hind end movement. Yay! Definitely keep going this way as long as your knees don’t get angry about it. There might have been too much other stuff around when he didn’t quite understand what you wanted – and you noted that in the video too. So yes – clear the area next time and I bet it is even easier. And as you scoot around to help him move, you can reward even a tiny bit of the movement, like a little head turn or leaning the correct direction. That will also help keep him from investigating anything in the area if he doesn’t know what you want.Now that you have figured out the setup, I bet he will be doing more and more hind end movement in the next couple of sessions, and you will be able to add a low ‘bump’ for him to step over soon too.
Great job!
TracyHi! It was an odd night for the software – but it should all be posted correctly now 🙂 All PDFs and videos are showing properly for me, let me know if you are still seeing any weirdness 🙂
Tracy
Hi! I can see where he did really well here and where he had some questions 🙂 A few ideas for you:
A general idea is to reward lower and to keep your cookie-holder hands lower, so his chin is parallel to the ground or tipped slightly down. That way he has a little more weight in his front end and less weight in his rear, so the rear will move freely. If he is looking up, he will shift more weight to his rear and won’t move as much. On this perch, you can probably keep your cookie hansd near your mid-thigh and deliver the rewards tohim with a hand just above your knee to get the right head position.
About getting the behavior consistently:
he seemed to do the most offering of the independent hing end motion as soon as he got on – he would run to the perch and pivot around it nicely! That is one tried and true way to get the behavior, so you can click that, reward with a low head- then release to a tossed cooked so he can get back on and do it all again 🙂The slow human pressure of you moving worked well too, and he was more deliberate in his movement when you did that and deliberate movement is a good thing for this. So, you can also try this approach more and then we can fade your movement down to just one foot reaching out to cue the movement. Bearing in mind this is for agility, we don’t need him to end up at your side 🙂 we just need him to isolate his rear and pivot around.
Towards the end when you turned his head, I think he was turning in a circle and there was back foot movement but it was more incidental than deliberate (because he was also moving his front end and falling off the perch LOL!)
So I think the first two options here will ultimately result in better perch movement and then you can add in the jump bump for him to step over 🙂 Waiting for him to offer it didn’t work too well yet, prbably because he is a bit rust if it is has been a while since he did this. But I bet with a bit of practice, he will remember and then offer it when you wait for offering 🙂Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
I think this was perfect bowl position! That helped create the turn away element of the serp really nicely. And you can leave it there for threadles too: if you are center of the bar serping towards the red feet of the upright, you can leave the bowl there and move to the upright with the yellow feet and do the threadle from there (she would squeeze in between you and the yellow feet and exit over the bar to the bowl).
She seemed happy to serp on all of the various angles! When you can get outside, we will be able to add your motion to this by having you release her and then oh-so-slowly start to move parallel to the bar, towards the bowl.She is looking very bendy on the head turn game! Nice mechanics with your hands and reward placement! I think the click is early – it sounds like you are clicking when her head is facing you and she is arriving at the turn hand, before she turns away. Ideally, you would wait to click when she is looking away from you and maybe even taken one step away. I say “I think” you are early because sometimes YouTube messes up the sound 🙂
Great job here! Round 2 is going to be FUN and stay tuned for more young dog stand-alone seminars coming up!
Tracy
