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Good morning and Happy New Year!
Strike a pose is going well! On the first couple of reps, I think the visible remote was confusing as to which hand to target at first, then bending was hard with the MM so he went behind you – all normal stuff and he sorted it out so it was not an issue anymore.
A couple of ideas for you to build to the next steps:
You can fade out the actual touch of the target now – as long as he is coming towards it, if he wants to be bending towards the MM without hitting it – perfectly fine. That will also help you not have to bend down so much.
And, you can get closer to the jump now – we want him bending on the’takeoff’ side and not on the landing side for the next steps. You should be close enough to touch the jump upright with a relaxed arm/bent elbow. If he has a question, change his position to an easier starting point but don’t change your position relative to the jump.
It is goodtp oractice the get it marker! The MM doesn’t need a get it because the beep is the marker, but it is definitely good rehearsal to practice the markers. The MM does misbehave sometimes LOL!!!
If you are starting from a cookie toss, you don’t need an “ok” release because he is already in motion and we don’t want him to stop and wait for one.
When the angle was too hard and he didn’t take the jmp (went directly to the MM) – I think it might help him to start from a stay, so he has a moment to see the setup before you release him into it. That way you don’t need to change your position to help him out there.When he can do this with you closer to the jump and with the actual hit of the target faded, we will be able to add your motion in too!
Out Video:
>> I do wish I had moved in closer immediately upon getting a failure rep. I did practice another round after this (not on video) and I did so exactly that, although there was only one failure. >>
You were probably a little too far from the prop on these but there were a couple of other things that might have been contributing to his questi. The two things I see are:
– be sure you basically the whole time, but particularly before he turns back to you – after getting the cookie, if he turns back and see you standing still, he will make the decision to come to you. This happened a few times, because the stationary position was the first cue and by the time you did the out, it was too late, he was already committed to coming to you.
>>>> At 1:23 can you see why he didn’t get this one? Was I moving too fast do you think?
This is an example of you being stationary for too long. You were not too fast in your motion, you were not moving soon enough. . He had already made the decision to come to you because you were stationary for a little too long. Same thing happeend at 2:13. You might need to use cookies that he can just swallow rather than needing to chew if the timing of the chewing is throwing off the timing of when you can move again.
– the mechanics of the cookie toss rewards were throwing him off a bit too.
>> in this video, at about 1:01 I *think* he was going out and came back in as I reached with my cueing arm for the treat in my other hand – do you agree?>>
Yes, totally agree that caused his question there. Have the reward ready in the throwing hand because when you reached across to toss it (your right hand going to you left hand to get the cookie) – the movement of the hand changes the cue and distracts him. When you tossed the cookie from the hand it was already in – he was great! When you reached over to pick it up, that pulled him off the line at 1:01. I would reward that anyway – don’t withdraw reinforcement that you were about to deliver. If you didn’t love the behavior you just rewarded, take a moment to plan mechanics before the next rep to see if yo ucan get cleaner behavior. Plus if you don’t reward some of those (1:01) and do reward others (1:10) then he is going to get confused. At 2:26, you tossed with the hand the cookie was in (left hand) rather than trying to get it with your right hand and he did MUCH better!
And one last idea:
You can drop the ‘yes’ marker for this one too, and just say “get it” so he keeps looking forward.
>>I have a random question also. How do you train a toy release? I want to do that in a way that still retains super high value for toy but is a relatively prompt release.
It depends on the individual dog, of course, but I start it like this ( month old Hot Sauce here):
My marker to get the toy again has changed to “bite” but it is the general idea.
>>we also did a few super quick rounds of Rocking Horse with high success. He did really great keeping it easy and I think his confidence was high. I worked on not switching the toy in my hand and that confused him a few times, but didn’t seem to deter him too much from understanding. We’ll keep going with the simple rocking horse a few more times.>>
Perfect! The game advances quickly when the dogs understand the commitment, so keep working to get the commitment.
Great job!
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>Next time I work him I will just try to use toys. I haven’t done that with him because I want him excited to work (that has taken work) and he is so food motivated.>>
Just add in some toy play, separately from doing anything with food – to bring toys into the training environment. I recommend doing this before you do anything with food, so he is at his most excited and doesn’t have cookies on his mind yet.
Fingers crossed for great weather! Happy New Year!
Tracy
Hi!
She was too funny with the food bowl!!!!>>. She gets angry with bowls ( outside of training) when they run out of food. She whacks them expecting more so there was some of that happening which is why I was laughing at her.>>
Then this game is great for her – not just for the wrapping foundation, but for working through frustration! It sounds like she comes at things with her teeth or feet when she is stimulated or frustrated, and that might be why she is biting or smacking things 🙂 So when she smacks the bowls here – don’t help, be perfectly silent (no chuckling no matter how cute she is), let her work through it all. She did well here! She was only whacking the bowl when the next turn was a left turn, so it is possible that she is more of a righty than a lefty. Either way, this provides us with a great platform for training her to maintain her composure LOL!
You can add in more stimulation by breaking the session up with tugging – then do it with toys only.
The wrapping of the upright was really good, so after you add more stimulation and use toys, you can move it further away and, separately, start to get more upright by kneeling or sitting in a chair.Great job here! Happy New Year!
TracyHi!
>>We are off to baby obedience seminar tomorrow. She has to learn early to switch back and forth!
I am certain that she will be perfect 🙂
>> I’m not much of a “trick trainer” so I didn’t have many things to string together!
You can use things like hand touches or spins! Those count as tricks 🙂
Have fun and Happy New Year!
TracyGood morning!
>> put Dora’s food bowl down and she understands to move way with me and then I ask her to line up by my side and i release her and give my cue “dish”. Is this ok?
Yes! That is totally great and I am glad you’ve already started it 🙂
>> What else should we be doing?
Mix in all the things LOL! Because we will want her to be able to do all sorts of dog sports without reinforcement in your hands, you can mix things up such as putting the food bowl up on a table (or a bag of treats, or a handful or treats). And instead of a line up, you can move away and see if she offers engagement (I think she is already doing this). And you can ask for any tricks she might know, or any easy, fun behaviors. I like to put all of the behaviors into the remote reinforcement routines, eventually (my pups are now about 2 years old, and they are now practicing full runs with the reinforcement on a table behind them, to prep for competition).
Thinking about marker words: “dish” might be specific to the dish (the ‘zen bowl’ games that a lot of folks play) so you will want to have a different marker for when you are going to treats on a table, or toys – something you might say at the end of an agility run, for example.
>> I have not practiced this with toys yet.
She is probably ready for this! The toy should be up on something high so she can see it but it is not something she can grab or something too distracting. And then start it with just a little engagement, and then go to what you’ve already been doing with the dish (but with a different word – I use “toy toy” for something like this – very fancy marker LOL!)
>> Also, when you start adding more behaviors, like spins and hand touches and back up, what if they get one of the behaviors wrong? How do I react to that?
Great question! We do our best to only ask for behaviors we are very sure they can do… but of course, sometimes they can’t do it LOL!!! So if I ask for a hand touch and she can’t do it, I will happily move her further away and ask for another one, then reward. If she still can’t do it, I might ask for something else? If she *still* can’t do it, then I have made the setup too hard and will go back to a lower value reinforcement and working more engagement, and making sure that the behaviors that I ask for are things that are things she can do really easily in other situations.
I don’t add in behaviors til I am really happy with the dog’s engagement as we move away from the reinforcement, and happy with the dog’s understanding of the remote reinforcement marker. What I am looking for is that the pup immediately walks away from it, offers engagement, and it is not gazing longingly at it or moving slowly or tentatively. When you’ve got great happy engagement, then the dog is highly likely to be able to respond to simple cues.
Let me know what you think! Have a happy New Year!
TracyHi! That sounds like awesome progress and a lot of fun!
You can ping pong things so she doesn’t have to work too hard to get it to you – sometimes, yes, run the other way. But also mix in reinforcement for just bringing it towards you or close to you, by rewarding her by tossing a second toy or a treat. Chasing you new directions or getting it close enough for you to grab is harder so we want to mix in lots of easy reps. And you can totally add it to the parallel path stuff in the basement!Keep me posted 🙂
TracyGood morning! I hope each day brings less back pain!
Wraps with verbals and bowls went really well! Since we don’t want you to run or twist, a little bit of a game to help add more challenge to this without you needing to move:
Using the exact same setup, you can move her position over to get her to respond to the verbals even when she has the option of going the other way.
Ultimately, she will start been your knees and be able to respond to the verbal cue and go the correct way around the TV table. That will take a while to get to (it is VERY hard!) but you can begin it here while your back improves:
– rather than letting her offer, line her up at your side with you hand on her collar. Then begin the wrap verbal and when she looks the correct direction, let go – she wraps then gets rewarded.
So for example, she can start on your left side, gentle hand on collar. You give your right-wrap verbal – she looks at the line you want, you let go, she wraps, you plop a cookie in the bowl.
That will probably be SUPER easy 🙂
So after a couple of successful reps, move her over so she is in front of your left knee (approx) and not at your side. Repeat the process (you might need to move the tv table further away so she has more room to line up).
Then move her to between your knees and repeat the process.Generally, the dogs do best (highest rate of reinforcement) when we only work one side for a bunch of reps, then take a break, then switch sides. I do that for a couple of sessions til the dog can start between my knees for both directionals.
Then, when I have a couple of sessions on each side at 90% rate of reinforcement or higher… I will slowly mix the two directionals together in each session, started off with easy set up angles (in front of your knee on each side). Eventually? Yep, she starts between your knees and can find the correct wrap directional on the verbal alone.
Depending how verbal she is naturally and if she has a side preference or not, this can happen within a couple of sessions (my Contraband is very verbal and learned it pretty quickly) or a couple of weeks/months (Hot Sauce is NOT very verbal, she needed me to take it slowly and it took a long time but that is fine :)) Sprite might be more like Contraband and Gemma might be more like Hot Sauce 🙂
Let me know if that makes sense! It jumps you ahead but it can give you both a good mental workout while saving your back.
Have fun and let me know what you think!
TracyHi! She is so fun (and so cute, it is distracting LOL!!!)
Plank games: nice toy play to start, and I agree: really lovely engagement! I will bug you about doing too much too soon though: Has she seen the plank on the ground? She is a baby baby dog, don’t skip steps 🙂 We want to establish the “what to do” with the plank at the easiest possible level so when you raise it up, she can immediately go to her toolbox of skills and offer behavior. This is indeed a bit too high so she had questions. Lowering it helped but try to teach the concepts of hop on, hop off, turn around on the plank on the floor so she doesn’t have any height to deal with too many variables to get started with 🙂 Don’t let her brilliance cause you to move along too quickly LOL!!!>> What you didn’t see was the first time I came out she launched her teeth in it like it was a giant chew bone. >>
Ha! What a nut! You can try starting her from a crate and bringing her out on leash, so you can do some tugging or cookie tricks before she can go taste the plank LOL!
Blind cross recalls – Nice!!!! I love her toy play!!!! You can add in starting to run before calling her, that will make it even more fun! She might be anticipating the blind (or has a side preference): on these, you started the recall on your right side but she immediately switched to your left side before you did the blind. So mix in some straight recalls so she goes to whichever side you are connecting to her with, and when yo duo add blinds – do them late so you know that she is committing to the side you indicate and not anticipating (smartie pants LOL!)
At the very end, she squirted away from the holder a little – As you hand her to the holder, have the holder give her a cookie then let go of her, so she doesn’t squirt away. She might not love the restraint yet so you can pair it with a lot of cookies 🙂 Great job here! Let me know what you think and have a happy New Year!
TracyRotated sends – fabulous, fabulous session.
First of all: YAY toy play! I love that you did this whole session with the toy and no food. She didn’t really want to give the toy back that quickly on some of the reps, and I don’t want to trade her for food because I think we will lose the toy play. So, you can reward her for releasing the toy by giving her the toy again 🙂 Basically, when she lets go of the toy, you can cue her to tug on it again. That will reward the ‘out’ of the toy and make it easier, without needing to use food.She looked super with the forward sending to the barrel – fast and bendy. And no problem when you turned to do the backwards sending. Commitment looks GREAT and she is also turning out to be a great combo of fast and bendy. Happy dance!
Ignoring the toy on the backwards sending was hard at first but she sorted it out 🙂 Super!
You started to leave a bit earlier and she was great there too , her commitment is looking lovely. One suggestion is to try to be quiet til she finishes wrapping – the excitement of the praise and seeing the toy come out was causing her to rush and push the barrel a bit. She heard the yes but didn’t see the toy on the very last rep til she was around the barrel and she didn’t touch it at all – PERFECT! So maybe quiet praise but no visible toy til she has finished the wrap. And you can add your wrap cues too!Since you’ve got great commitment and countermotion going so nicely here, the next games would be turn and burn with you starting the FC earlier and earlier til you can rotate and do the FC before she even arrives at the barrel. And you can also turn your focus to the rocking horse game,s we build that up into wild handling in coming weeks!
Great job here! Have a happy New Years!
TracyHi again!
The concept transfers look great! Both videos were really strong. Great job clicking early and throwing so she did not look at you. Also, really lovely job of keeping your left arm in “agility” position (down and back, swinging a bit) and not in heeling position – we don’t want to confuse the two cues. Not sure if you did that on purposely but it was great. Since this is going so well, we can add two things:
– getting her to find it with you way ahead. You can do that after you toss a cookie by not going down to the cookie with her – instead, you can turn around and walk past the jump so you are ahead of it when she returns her focus after getting the cookie. Then you can reward her for finding the jump with you ahead (it is harder than it sounds because most young dogs rush to get to us and skip jumps in that situation).
– when she can find it with you way ahead and walking like you did here, you can add more motion to all of the elements of this. Jog past the jump and if she is fine with that, build to running! Yay!Good morning!
Nice work here!
Yes, have the rewards broken up and ready to go so she doesn’t make her own fun in the ring. WIth baby dogs in particular, we want going into the ring to mean “getting right to work” and not having a moment to explore. I like having the big training bag up there, you can use that as a location for the remote reinforcement as well!She did really well moving away from the cheese, even after gazing longingly at it LOL! Be sure to say your ‘let’s go’ marker before you start moving back to the cheese (you were moving back to it then saying the marker). She was sniffing a bit at the end of the first video, which is an indicator of how hard this game is.
2nd video added behaviors – be sure to not pair in ‘yes’ with let’s go, because then ‘yes’ becomes the marker. You did some obedience cues towards the end of this 2nd video – to keep the behaviors sharp and quick, start the remote reinforcement with simple stuff that doesn’t need to be precise at first. Then, when you add in the obedience stuff that does need to be precise – ask for just one thing then use the let’s go to reward her. When she did a couple in a row, you could see it was HARD! So to maintain the precision of the obedience stuff, break it down into tiny bits so she can be as precise as she is when the rewards on with you.
Great job!
TracyHi! These look really good!
For strike a pose, you can use jump wings – but introduce the value for them first with the parallel path game, so he knows what they are and there is value for finding the ‘bar’ (rolled up towels lol) between them.
Your position here looked really good! You can be one step closer to the upright, so he makes the turn on approach to the jump and not on the landing side.
Yes, remember to use the cookie in hand marker now but I think we can also move to the next step – rather than reward from your hand, you can have an empty food bowl out where your feet are pointing too (just past the reward hand) and then you can drop the cookie in the bowl. That way he will be looking at the line and not up at you.Rocking horses – yes, the key is to actually not be too fast (that is the hardest part for me, I am pretty twitchy LOL!) This session was really strong – you were the picture of patience and you held the send til he was able to really commit to his barrels. NICE! He had a super high rate of success here and we can keep building on that. If you can get another short session or two like this with 90% success or better… then you can start to leave a little earlier (like as he is passing the first part of the barrel). My only suggestion is that you don’t switch the toy to the other hand – think about which hand you want to have it in when you reward, and leave it there the whole time. Changing hands causes him to look up at you and it also delays the next cue. Rewarding with the opposite arm is great but I think it ranks lower on the scale of important right now – the patience of letting him commit is the main thing.
>> and I feel that connection is harder with him so far away and those super cute but totally in the way eyebrows like blinders! >>
I totally believe you are correct: connection with the littles is harder than connection with the bigs. I mean, it is MUCH easier to see the eyes of my 20” jumping dogs than it is to see my 8” jumping dogs. You can play with what allows you to make the best connection: arm waaaaay back? Dipping your shoulder? And we also basically double up the commitment training for the littles because they have to take 3 times as many strides as the bigs on the same distance. My Papillons have MUCH better commitment than my BC mixes LOL! And it will be the same for all the littles here – extra commitment training because we can’t rely on being able to see them all that well.
The other thing to keep in mind is that connection is more about what the dog sees than what we see – so as long as he still sees your shoulders turned to the correct line, then you will get great commitment 🙂Great job here! Have a happy new year!!
TracyGood morning!
>> I will practice with lots of cookies in my hand. I tried, but was dropping more than rewarding, lol.
You don’t need lots of cookies – just maybe 3 or 4 small ones, or however many are easy to hold without dropping any. And it is also a great way to manage the length of the session and keep arousal high because when your hand is empty, you break it off, reset, play, get more cookies out and plan the next reps. That way you will have better reps, more play, better mechanics, etc. If you keep going with cookies, the sessions get too long and you don’t take a moment to reset the mechanics or plan the next reps.
Also, how is the toy play coming? Next time you are at Suzie’s, try to bring some toys or balls and see if he will chase them before the food comes out. Try not to only focus on skills for food, because he will associate all agility with tossed treats and it will be harder to convince him to play with toys.
He has a ton of value of the box, which is great! Because the MM is involved, definitely set a timer on the session so you can break it off, play, and plan the next reps in terms of what you are going to do and what you are looking to reinforce.
At this point, because value is in place, shift your focus to reinforcing when back feet are in the box (look at the box more than look at him).
I could hear the MM beep, and it sounds like you were nailing approach to the box or front feet in it. Now try to beep for back feet getting into the box. Try not to do multiple clicks with the MM when he is standing there, because it can confuse him as to whether he should stay there and wait for more, or if he should turn around and come back.
I couldn’t hear the marker or timing of the cookie toss when he went the other direction, but those looked to be early (especially at 1:28 and 2:40 when he was not yet in the box) so focus on marking for when his back feet get into the box for those too.
Since we are changing the criteria now (back feet in box to earn the click), dial back your motion so he can focus on the box. And you can also stand still at one end and send him back and forth, so he can go independently of your motion.
Nice work here!! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! I hope the weather is clear for you, there are crazy weather things happening!
This session looked good, and he did have a lot more success than misses. All of the misses were really good effort to hit the prop, he was just moving fast so he didn’t quite get his feet on it. There was only one where he wasn’t really near it (:52) and that is a definite no reward. Because the prop is a stand-in for a jump and designed to teach him to go ‘find a thing on a parallel line’ 🙂 then you can reward those near-misses when his path carries him over it, like a jump bar. But – we don’t need to do much more of the prop for this concept because I’d say he has the concept now 🙂 So you can take this game to the concept transfer and play it with the jump! And the timing of the reinforcement for that is when he makes the decision to commit to the jump (with a jump bump or pool noodle or rolled up towel as a ‘bar’ so he can see you throw the reinforcement before he arrives at the jump.
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Happy New Year (almost)!
This is looking really good! She looks super confident to get on anything, move stuff, and offer behavior on pretty much anything you put in front of her. YAY!!! And the music offered a very dramatic soundtrack LOL
Your mechanics generally look good – you are very quick with your reinforcement and her rate of success was very high, even as you added challenge or different things to offer behavior on. Click/treat for you!
Getting on the moving boards all look super confident, hr turns on the plank look good (you were smart to see if she could also turn to her left after she offered turning to her right :)). She was happy to get on the Klimb (don’t make the release too exciting because she wants to explode off and then she slips, so you can be a little more boring then reward after she gets to the ground 🙂
She was also happy on the 2 fitbones – I noticed that she had her weight mainly on her front end on those – maybe it was more comfy, maybe it put her closer to the treats 🙂 – so you can reward closer to her chest so she shifts back a little and balances with more weight in her rear.
Since you mentioned mechanics 🙂 I have 2 ideas for you:
You can add challenge to your mechanics (and to her toy play) and see if you can pull the cookies out while you are tugging, or have them already out, so you don’t reach into the pocket as she offers the behavior or after it. Reaching into the pocket causes her to watch your cookie hand and your pocket, and delays reinforcement a bit. It is harder for her to tug with cookies in the other hand, but it is a great self-control game and I bet she can do it 🙂And, when she is tugging on the moving things or unstable surfaces, get lower with your tugging. Your hands were high so she was tugging and shifting forward. If you get lower (either bending or sitting) you can get her head lower and encourage her to shift her weight into her rear, which is ideal for moving surfaces. If she will tug but doesn’t weight shift, you can add some gentle patting or stroking of her neck/ribs while she is tugging because that might help get her to shift back.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
