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Good morning!
The backsides are looking good with the added motion! Position 1 was no problem at all for him.
The next step is to drop the reinforcement rather than having him come to your hand for it. When dropping it, try to get it to land on the landing side of the ‘bar’ near the barrel, so he is looking for that and not for you. That allows us to develop the default behavior of jumping the jump regardless of your handling moves (there are only a zillion handling moves to be done on the backside LOL!!!) and it improves backside jumping because he will be used to having his head down looking for the bar. That way he won’t wait for any additional cue to jump the bar – he will automatically jump it as part of the backside cue and you will have more handling freedom. So keep doing the handling (you had crosses and the more advanced serpentine) but always drop the toy or food rather than reward from your hands.
Position 2 and taking the front were both easy for him, good boy! Now that position 2 is really easy, you can add more of the serp position that you did a bit of from position 1. The serping across the bar is where it gets really critical for reward to be dropped on the landing side (and not near you :)) so he takes the jump and doesn’t run parallel to your line of motion. This will be super useful when he learns the ultra fancy backside moves 🙂Threadle – great job Mike being completely frozen til he got to the MM! It was a little hard to see your position relative to the jump open the first couple of reps (it looked like you might have been too centered on the bar?) but you were in the perfect position at 2:08 – your threadle arm/shoulder was visible outside the wing, and your feet were pointing towards the reward. He did exactly what we want: slide in between you and the wing and set up his own turn, doing the entire behavior independently of you. YES! Same on the last rep – in and out, without any help from you other than the verbal to get started. SUPER!
Using those last 2 reps as a good visual, you can show him the balance: you can set up the threadle exactly as you did here (your position with your left arm out as the threadle cue, his position, MM all the same, so he is in position 3 for the threadles). Then, leaving him and the MM in the same spot, and you mostly in the same location relative to that wing: switch hands so your right hand is between t he uprights, showing threadle (feet pointing to the other direction, towards your right hand, and a reward ready in your right hand). And you release him in that position, he should serpentine and NOT threadle. We would basically be showing him the difference between the 2 cues. Many dogs get super ‘threadle-happy’ when they learn to threadle, and all they offer are threadles LOL! So, I like to balance in a lot of serpentines using the same setup so the pups have to read cues and not offer the same behavior.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
This is off to a good start, it is a pretty complex behavior and you are already getting big pieces of it! The complexity is why I wait pretty long to start it 🙂You might want to do a session or two of rapid rewards for getting on the perch so she jumps up on it and is ready for more. She was kind of like “what am I doing up here” in this clip LOL! That will make it even easier for the back feet to start moving when you move – she won’t be looking around, and she will probably swallow her treats rather than take so long to chew them LOL! And I think you were verbally encouraging her more than you needed to (especially at the beginning) because she wasn’t entirely sure of getting on the perch. So you can do 2 or 3 quick sessions of front feet on the perch, reward reward reward reward release tug. Those 2 or 3 sessions can be under the umbrella of one longer session, just to get her saying “oh yeah, I get my front feet on this thing, hooray!”
Your feeding position was good. Because she is still pretty small, I think the cork yoga block was a bit high and she had more weight in her rear than we want for this game. It might be just an inch too tall. Do you have anything shorter? And the bigger block would be fine if it is shorter – it won’t tip and her weight will be more on her front for this, and it is a good training challenge to teach her it is front feet only and not all 4 🙂
Nice work here! I bet she gets this one pretty quickly then we can add more to it.
Tracy
Good morning!
He looks great here! And it is really cool to see how quickly the dogs have transferred this concept to the threadles – they are a bunch of superstars! He had a pretty easy time going from position 1 all the way over to position 3, practically next to the MM. NICE!!!One little detail: don’t move at all til he reaches the MM. You were relaxing your target hand and you will want ot keep everything frozen in position as he turns away. The reason for this is that the position is both the cue to come in and the cue to turn away to the bar, and we don’t want to accidentally build in any motion as a cue (dogs build motion in as a cue too easily).
He had a little trouble with the stay as soon as he figured out the set up, so you can mix in a ton of rewards thrown back to him when yo get ot position. This is a popular lead out position in course design lately (either as a threadle on jump 2 or as a serp on jump 1 or 2) so we need to pay him a whole lot to stay in position til you are set and ready to release. 🙂 You can also use some cookie tosses too, to set up position, so it is not all about stays.
As you keep playing with this, the next step would be to delay the click of the MM – delay it til he looks at it, then click it. That is exactly what happened at 1:57 and also at 2:29 – he almost hit the target then immediately went to the MM. You did click it and that was the perfect next step 🙂
When he has an error like at 2:05 when he went over the jump then hit the target rather than doing the threadle, you can immediately reset him with a cookie toss towards the position he started in. That keeps the engagement high (because of the cookie toss reward :)) and gives an immediate reset so he can fix the error. Try not to mark it as an oopsie… he knew from lack of MM that it was incorrect.
You can get a little closer as you mentioned, but you don’t need to – it is a little different than the serps because with a threadle, we teach the dogs to find the bar and make the turn, so your position closer to the jump is helpful but not critical. On serpentines, your position is what dictates exactly what the turn is, so you need to be pretty close on those.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
This behavior is already looking good! She has the general idea so we can move it along to expand it even more. A couple of ideas for you:For agility purposes, we want her head down so there is a little more weight in her front (and therefore, in theory, less weight in her rear so more movement is available). I think feeding her in neutral position (or slightly below, chinned tipped a little down) will help but that opens the question of how to do that without having her crane her head up then look down to eat LOL! A slight change in mechanics should do it: have the clicker in one hand and the cookies in the other (so you can feed immediately and not have to reach over, take a cookie then feed, which lifts her head). And both hands should be at the front front of your thighs (as low on your quads as you can get them, arms fully extended) and not moving. That will both allow you to feed fast with a lowered head, and give her a focal point (your hands rather than your face).
I think you can also start fading your movement and letting her offer the movement – it looks like she was starting to do that towards the second half of the video – yay! And if you are not moving, then your hands can move to feed: same low position but at the side of your thighs rather than in front.You don’t have to have her come all the way around to a set up or heel position, as that makes it really hard to keep her head low. If you plan on usinng this for an eventual heel position, you can reward low til she gets into heel position, then reward high to get the heel head position that people like. I don’t do any obedience so I never reward with the high head, I only use this for body awareness, conditioning (it is a GREAT psoas game) and warm up.
She was great with the little things she stepped over, no problem! And like you mentioned, she is pretty balanced on both sides which is wonderful. You can switch to using a ‘half round’ type of thing, like a jump bump or a mailing tube cut in half so the bottom is stable and won’t roll. I use bars and stuff outdoors in dirt and I duct tape them to the floor if I am using them indoors (not sure if you want to duct tape things to your carpet LOL!!!)
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
I can tell from the live class that you are up to date – she is looking great!
One little suggestion to make this feel more comfy: You are doing 2 turn aways in a row, and it is one send and one turn away to get the 2 wraps in a row. So start with her at your side (and after each click/treat, set her up at your side) – the first approach to the upright is a straight send, not a turn away. If you start her on your left, send her so she wraps to her right. Then use your send hand left hand if she is starting on your left) to ‘grab’ her attention and turn her away to the wing (then click treat).
Your turn away mechanics looked good – I think what felt weird was that yo were doing a turn away on the first approach, rather than letting her go around it ‘normally’ and doing the turn away to isolate the head turn on the 2nd wrap. Let me know if that makes sense!
TracyHi!
This is a really good set of sessions, both sides looked strong. Yes, you were really good about getting into position then releasing or rewarding the stay. I like how this is almost 50% stay rewards – yes a couple of stay errors but overall really strong! No worries about when you said OK and she moved then you tossed the treat – she is allowed to move forward on the OK and she got a reward, so I am sure she was happy 🙂
I only saw one question from her about the serps – At 1:48 On the first video, when she is basically in position 3 and didn’t go over the bump, you can immediately reset by tossing a treat away and giving her a chance to get it right from the same position (you don’t have to go back and put her in a sit). That can get the immediate reset and also keeps the overall rate of success high because while she didn’t get a treat fo a serp, she gets one for the reset 🙂She basically has the concept here – she is coming in and bending to the reward line (where the next obstacle would be) 100% in positions 1 and 2. She has to think about the skill from position 3, but that is normal and she will continue to get faster with that.
So the next step is to have the reward on the ground so you don’t need to drop it in – she can go directly to it either on a marker (if you put a toy on the ground) or with the MM beep. You can also put the cookie in the food bowl before the release, that is a good challenge too! If you do that, put it in the bowl *then* set her up in the stay then go to position. If you set her up in position then go to your position THEN put the cookie in the bowl, she might have a harder time because the cookie is the last thing she sees 🙂 Whichever you choose, having the reward already on the ground is the next step. If she is successful with that like she was here, then we can add your motion! Yay!
Great job 🙂
TracyHi!
Sounds like you had fun!!
>> Suzie helped me a lot, but we had a question. Until he understands to come in on the threadle, should I sound the MM right after the nose touch so he understands to complete the task?>>
Yes – begin by clicking the MM when he hits the Manners Minder for a bunch of reps. When he gets the hang of it, you can then delay the click and see if he turns to it on his own! Before doing that, though, be sure you have a lot of value on the jump bump with the parallel path games and serpentine, so he knows to go over it 🙂
>>He first had to run around and make sure there were no cookies on the floor, I had to get him engaged by running him through the tunnel and then I took off with the long tug toy for him to chase. He thought this was fun and actually tugged a little but when he “caught” it. He did this for about three times through the tunnel and then wasn’t interested in tugging anymore . . . But hey, it was a good start. I will continue with this as a routine to start out practice/lesson and see if we can build even more value. >>
it is both a good start and a good indicator of why we should get more toy play going (he associates the barn with food!). Try to just add toy play into more of your daily life – keep doing the morning play, but add in a minute or two, here and there, so he can play with toys randomly – it doesn’t have to be formal training, it can be just a short party time with you! Save his toy play energy for play with you, rather than ‘spending’ it on play with the other dogs. Because he had a little trouble with it today, we will try to develop it into a really fun time with just you 🙂
Tracy
Hi!
The threadles looked great! He was already saying “got it!” And giving you the in-then-out move on his own, especially when turning to his left. He was hitting the target then going back out more on the right turns, but still really awesome and he knew what side to come to (and also had no trouble when you did the serp balance at the end of that section). The toy placement was the only hard part bu you worked it out – the placement at :22 was perfect. You can also stand a little closer to the jump, which gives him a little less room to go past it.
You both did an admirable job of being stationary til he got to the reward – that is the hardest part of the humans! Karena, remember to leave your target hand out til he gets there (we don’t want any movement getting associated with the default behavior of taking the jump).
The lead with the head game looks great, he is like a spaghetti noodle LOL! Your mechanics looks good for both of you but you can both be more patient with the clicks – be slow in your little turn away hand movement then click that moment where he makes the big head turn. I think you were both a bit early on the clicks, tending to click more as you were cuing the head turn and not when he was doing it as much. Let him go slow through this one, when he was going faster he was hitting the upright, so let him be a slow noodle for now as he gets the habit of leading with his head.
The backside work looked great too! These were sends, and he was great each time. Super! Nice job with the reward placement too! So, you can now add motion, with you moving up the line (position 1) and he finds the backside, then we move you further and further across while staying in motion. You’ll need to be outside for this, so fingers crossed for some good weather!!
And, when you are in motion, you will be able to add serpentine exits where you move parallel to the jump ‘bar’ – but continue to reward as you did here: nice and early and across the bar, regardless of your position.
Great job on these!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHa! The goat games are named after Export, so he is honored that you thought he was a goat LOL!
For the pivots… yes, it is a little too obediencey LOL! This does get the game going but when she is at your side and moving, she is not thinking about her hind end, she is more front end focused (keeping her shoulder next to you and head up high. That works for the obedience stuff but it will make it harder to get the jump bumps in for her to step over (the high head position mshifts her weight back too much for that, we need her weight more on her front for this. So, using what she knows – think of the perch as the center of a clock dial. You are at 12. Recall her so she gets on it at 6 (you were doing some of this already). And stand still – let her pivot around to you. That will get her head lower. You can also see if she will pivot all the way around with you moving at all, which will also keep her head lower and straighter 🙂
She did well finding the backside here!! And I am glad she likes the MM now 🙂 Very helpful!!!! For this game, I don’t start with the MM because of the reward placement – that is what was getting the wider turns (she might be a lefty, but the turns here were all based on the MM placement). So for now – you can drop all of the reinforcement where the barrel meets the bump. That will over exaggerate the turn, but it really gets commitment as you move away regardless of your position. The MM position here required you to turn to it – with a dropped reward, you can keep moving through like a serp and she will take the bump.
The threadle game looks great! And this is a good one for the MM 🙂 Change the MM placement on this one a little – have it closer to the exit wing so she exits on more fo a slice. She was QUITE brilliant at finding the threadle even from position 2 and 3!! NICE!
And, part of this game is that the handler is not allowed to move *at all* until the dog arrives at the MM. You were moving as soon as she got to the threadle side of the jump. The reason we want you to be completely frozen in your pose is that we don’t want her to wait for you to move, in order for her to go to the jump. The threadle cue means come-in-go-out, so if you move when she comes in, she will wait for the movement as the cue to go out (she was starting to do that here). So as strange as it feels: strike your pose and hold it til she arrives at the MM. The timing of the click can remain the same as it was here, but don’t move anything except the finger that pushes the button LOL!!!One other little detail is to point your feet to the exit line (towards the MM) and not towards the entry line – to simulate where you line of motion will be when you start adding motion.
Head turn game is also looking good. I think what you were seeing with her not wanting to come all the way through for the turn away was that one some reps, she had to come in very tight to you and that is a lot of pressure – so this helps her want to come in really tight! One a couple of reps yo were not giving her enough room to come all the way through (like at :02 and :41) but for the most part, you were really good!
She is doing well with this on both sides, so I think you can start fading some of the turn away hand motion – still pull her through like you did, but then try to indicate the head turn with just a little wrist flick and c/t if she can do that (if not, you can continue to help her with the bigger hand motion).Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Yes, this seems easier than it actually is but you did a GREAT job! It didn’t even look like you needed a 3rd arm LOL!A couple of little suggestions:
You can line her up more at your side to start, rather than tossing the cookie away, so she comes in straight which also will give you the opportunity to reward the first turn of the head as she gets used to the game.Remember to be Patient and slow on the mechanics – you were spot on for most of them, but when you tried to go fast like at :38, she had a harder time. You were great on the rep after that (:49) and she nailed it.
My only other suggestion is to click a little later – some of the clicks were coming as your hand was turning her away, which is a little early so she hadn’t quite turned her head yet. At 1:41 and 2:01 and 2:24, you were really good about clicking the head turn away, and that will really help isolate the head turn behavior.
Great job on these! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
This is going well! Be a couple of steps ahead is perfect – when you started her in a sit, you were able to get up the line nicely and she got it right each time. Super!!! Doing it from a cookie toss was a little harder for the timing, but she figured it out nicely on those too! You can reward the stays when you ar moving bu throwing a reward back, so she doesn’t anticipate motion as the release.
You can do any sort of exit you like on these – you were doing the serpy exit on a lot of them, like at 2:41 and 4:19 (those were my favorites) where you slid parallel to the bump with your shoulders open like a serp. That was perfect!!! And it is a picture she would see on backsides. Staying in motion is ideal – you can do a serpy exit like you did, or a FC and go the other way – they are all good and all stuff she will see, as long as you continue to drop the reward on the ‘landing’ side of the bump.
When you switched sides, you might have hard your arm a little too far back? It looked like you were over-rotating a bit but she didn’t seem to have any trouble reading that. Yay! You were able to get nice distance away from her on the parallel path on both sides here! You can add more motion now, moving up the line a little faster! She is doing a great job!
Nice work 🙂
TracyHi!
>> Great class last night (as always).
Glad you are enjoying it; you and Ripley look GREAT and it is an especially terrific group of people and dogs 🙂
>> I switched to one of the cute little kid’s balance “tree stumps” I got off Amazon (they come in a nested set of 3 of different sizes if anyone else needs something like this).
The tree stump is really cool! I need to get some 🙂
He did well here and he has retained a lot of the close & side work! Yay! Since the basics are in place, I think the next step is to get him to do it with you standing still so it is less of a ‘find side’ game and more of a ‘back feet’ game. I suggest this because he is changing his head position when he is in the close or side position – high and a little to the side to see you. He can do his perch work like that pretty well… until you add the bump. Then the head position made things much harder on the bump! A more narrow bump will help but I think the head position will make all the difference: if he can center his gaze lower and forward and moving around, the bumps will be easier. So you will be at 12 on a clock, he can start at 6 and then move around with your stationary. I bet if you recall him to it with you already in position, he figures it out immediately. Then it will be easy to add more bumps. He will end up in close or side position, but will keep his head more forward and straight as he moves to it. Let me know if that makes sense!
Great job here 🙂
TracyPerfect! Little sessions spread out through the day will make for great progress. Keep me posted!
TracyGood morning! Great seeing you in class last night 🙂 I see you signed up for the live class in the next session – yay! That one starts in March so we have time to get your internet sorted out (and you might even be able to do some outside!
TONS of great stuff here on your videos!
She is doing a great job with the tunnnels! Her offering back and forth looks great so now as you add the angles, add the verbal: start with her next to you, holding her collar and say the verbal a few times while still holding her. Then when she can barely contain herself… let her go to rip through the tunnel. She is ready for that and also ready for harder angles too!
Wing wraps with the toy – love the energy that you started with here! Fun! She did a great job offering the wrap (ignoring the toy) and then getting back on the toy. Nice! You can start the front cross a little earlier now, leaving to do it as she is arriving at the bucket (just leave slowly and quietly for now :)). Also, try to transfer the concept to something that is closer to a wing – a barrel or laundry basket or giant cone. That is the step before getting the game onto an actual wing.
Goat tricks with all the pods – also looking great! There is definitely more movement under her in this setup! She is keeping one back leg on the ground, probably to stay balanced and anchored. It is a flexible setup: you can have them all squished together here and you can also do some sessions where they are more spread out so she extends even more. And with the more spread out setup, you can isolate the back feet so that you can reward getting both back feet on the moving things, not just one. Have you shown her wobble boards yet? That can also build confidence with stuff moving under her.
Backing up:
Nice! It took her a moment to get it started then she was very precise with her deliberate back foot movement. If is definitely hard to get both feet up on the thing walking backwards, so you can widen the playing field and add a second one of those platforms, so it is easier to fit both back feet? Now, she might still creatively go around it but at least we are giving her easier options LOL!
Using this back up target, you can now add in getting her to step off a tiny bit further, so she can go back a tiny bit more, gradually building it up more and more.
The other thing you can to (which will complement the goat games too!) is use several relatively deflated balance discs as he back foot target. And do exactly what you did here, with one little step off then rewarding for getting her feet back on them. That can help her understand to put both back feet on something that moves 🙂Prop sends – looking strong too! She definitely does better when you give her a little ‘ready’ moment before the send. The time you didn’t do it (:13) she didn’t send.
One more thing as you add distance and move to the barrel: when you send sideways and backwards, be sure to use your leg too! The leg and arm move together. When you did that (like on th backwards send at :31) – she was perfect! But on the sideways sends, your leg movement was not as crisp. so she was not as certain.
You can move this game off the prop and onto a barrel! She is ready for more 🙂
Baby retrieves – this is going well! You’ve been patient with the retrieves and you are seeing the results now! Yay!! She is interacting with the toy nicely and definitely not running away with it 🙂 The squeaker was a real delight for her – so maybe you can use a squeakless toy for a retrieve moment, then squeak and throw a squeaky toy for her as the reward? The squeak is alsmot like a clicker!
And click/treat for you for ending the session on that really high note, when she retrieved the toy. It is tempting to keep going but you quit while you were ahead. SUPER!!!!
Keep going like this, we can really see the toy play and retrieving starting to develop!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
