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Hi!
He did well with the ladder grid! He was consistent and balanced, which is exactly what we are looking for. Since this went well, you can add more challenge:
With the jump straight like this, add the moving target (dragging the toy). With the stationary toy, he is moving nicely in relative collection, but the moving target will simulate what his body needs to do on course work. This adds a nice challenge for him to remain balanced when he is going faster and has more power.
Then you can angle the jumps – his line will still be straight, but the visual of the angled jumps definitely adds challenge! Start the angled jumps with the stationary reward so he can process it, then you can go to the moving target reward on this one too 🙂
>I’m only using my turn towards me verbal at the moment and also helped him out a little with my body and at the end a toy. >
He did well here! The only thing to tweak is to add the verbal (I think you were saying “turn”) sooner. Start it so he can hear it a few times while you are still holding him… then let him go and keep saying it. That can build more understanding into the verbal (turn predicting turning towards you) and then the same will hold for when you add the turning away. Letting him hear it before he moves will strengthen the verbal and help him process it.
>He hasn’t quite got the idea of jumping through the bend grid yet but he’s getting there. Would you change the spacing to try and encourage a jump or it doesn’t matter at this stage?>
He was definitely working out his striding here and didn’t have it really consistent yet – sometimes bouncing, sometimes adding a collection on the 2nd gap on the left turns. On the right turns, it looks like he trotted the first one but then bounced the next rep. Since he is sorting it out, no need to change anything. He will probably get more comfy bouncing it in another session or two. I do like that he understands he is turning and he is not trying to jump straight!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>However once she went in, my cue for a left turn was too soft and too late so she flew out of the tunnel and over the off course jump.>
I love a big off course in a small dog! I also love a small dog that drives hard out of a tunnel. So that was a great moment! Yes, more info before she entered the tunnel helps – you gave her a name call and that is what ultimately got her attention there (the directional worked great when you revisited it later). It is tricky because the tunnel commitment there is tricky and we don’t want to call her off it, so I will take the off course LOL!!!
On that opening: you can add in more reward for taking jump 1 without you and with you behind her. She was SUPER fast chasing you up the next line, but not as fast heading to jump 1. So you can send and someone else throw a reward for her. With a big enough distance on that lead out, I bet you get the blind cross before the tunnel so you don’t have to rear cross 🙂
>I got a backside 2nd jump from the end instead of a wrap to the left but I think I had my shoulders opened up to past that wing. (of course these things always happen at the other end of the ring where it’s hard to see in the video>
Yes, looks like the accidental backside at 1:05 due to you being a bit on her line then leaning in with arm/shoulders, which she read as a backside cue. Good girl!
The BC at 1:38 was a good option too – as you are doing the BC, be sure to open up to the threadle slice and run a parallel line to the wing. The arm cue was a bit hidden and you pushed back towards the jump, so she took the backside, good girl! You got a little disconnected trying to send to the next jump at 1:42 (possibly from laughing LOL!) so she had some questions there but she didn’t get mad 🙂
That was a hard line and definitely a good one to set up again!
On the 2nd sequence:
Be careful to not drop your arm back (looks a little like a threadle cue) then push the backside at :30. You can stay connected and run the parallel line to the backside. Dropping the arm back pulled her in a bit and we don’t want her to think backside pushes are next after the arm drops back. That will also make it easy to get the cross on the landing side
Double blind looks great!
>It’s been a while since I’ve done much with threadle slices so clearly that needs to go back on the list.>
Threadles are HARD for sure!
Part of it is the early timing, part of it is line of motion paired with the upper body cues being very visible. On these reps and on the previous video, the
cross arm threadle cue was more obvious when you were not running. But on this sequence and the previous sequence, the cross arm was not as visible when you were in motion so she was reading motion. You can try swinging the dog-side arm back more too, to show more upper body movement on the threadle? It will look a little like the arm swinging back before the backside cue at the beginning of this sequence – we don’t want the arm movement there but it should work like a charm on the threadles!At :57 she took the line to the side of the jump she saw instead of the threadle – reward that 🙂 You walked away to restart which reads as an indication she was wrong (even though your praised her, it was not the praise of “you rocked it!”)
And she gave you an earful there LOL! She was correct: you didn’t start giving turn info til as she was exiting the tunnel and it was mostly her name (which could mean stay-on-your-line-and-be-ready-to-turn). The threadle arm and verbal came when she was passing the halfway point between the tunnel exit and the jump… too late, decision made 🙂At 1:15 she was coming into the threadle side until you stepped towards the jump, which pushed her back out to the backside.
Nice job breaking it down! You can see when she got it at 1:40, your dog-side shoulder was very open – that is something she will want to se as you are running too, so swinging the dog-side arm back can help a lot.
Great job here!
TracyMy dogs agree: frizzers are MAGICAL!!! I just finished attaching a frisbee to a bungee, so a friend can run one of my dogs this weekend LOL!!! Yes, try a frizz! And in USDAA and UKI, you can actually throw it too!
TYes! I do 🙂 I made this for people who train at UDog turf:
If it is easier, you can cut the power flex strips before starting the wrapping – probably an 8″ length. It might make it quicker. You can wrap starting from just above her stopper pad and go down to cover the big pad on her foot (stopping before reaching her knuckles). It should be pretty tight so it doesn’t slip around. For most dogs, I un-wrap after each session and don’t leave them unattended with wrap on (in case they want to eat it)
T
Yay for the great session!
Make sure you don’t change your motion – steady motion is part of the serp cue, so don’t slow down to bring her in. Video all the things!
T
Hi! Let’s de-bain the serps LOL!!
The #1 thing here is to live by the 2 failure rule. If you get 2 failures on the skill? Change something significantly enough that you then get multitudes of success before making it harder again.
The reason behind that is to keep the rate of success very high, close to 90% or so. We don’t want perfection, but we do want a high rate of success. The rate of success for the skill here was about 54%, definitely too low – and the successful reps had you stopping your motion (ideally we want you to be in steady motion with no decel or stopping).So for the serps, if you get the 2 failures: keep the start barrel the same, and your line of motion the same, and the reward target the same: but angle the jump so the bar is very visible to her as she exits the start barrel (pushing the wing of the jump next to the reward target away from your line). Angle as much as needed til she can take the jump very consistently and then after a session or two of high success, you can start angling it back to the ‘flat’ position you had here. And as you add more motion to build up to running, keep the jump angled so it is easier for her to come in on the line.
As you are building that up, we will want to keep your serp shoulders open to the line. So if the reward is not already placed on the target, you can keep your serp shoulder open by dropping the reward in with the non-dog-side hand (left hand in this case) so you don’t close your shoulders. Dropping with the serp arm was causing you to stop your motion and also closed shoulders will change the rest of the serp line.
Nice work here! Let me know how the de-baining goes 🙂
Tracy
Hi!
> I’m still trying to figure out the best tunnel stakes to use for my new bags. The ones I used in this video keep pulling part way out of the ground. I also have at least a couple more bags I can add.>
I have found that fully stretching the tunnel out helps a lot, and also heavy sandbags are the answer. They are a PAIN but totally worth it 🙂
Looking at the video:
1) Serp – looked good! You can reward more on the serp line by holding your position more instead of turning to the tunnel, so she turns to her right (towards the tunnel entry she was facing)
2) Tunnel – layering is hard, the motion helped! She did well finding the tunnel!
3) Serp – also good, you can reward on the serp line here too.
4) Tunnel – Really good! She is getting the idea!
5) Threadle – This was our best threadle. I think I didn’t ever teach her the “In In” cue though.This a clear moment between moving to position and showing her the cross arm cue – then the release. She had tie to see and process the cue. You had motion towards the jump to get her to take it. You also had good position near the entry wing.
6) Wanted a threadle, but got the tunnel. Not sure why.On this rep, there was not enough time between stopping your motion and the release – it was very quick /almost simultaneous, and so she went based on what the motion said and didn’t really process the arm or verbal.
7) One arm threadle. Tried something different. Ellie came in, but didn’t take the jump/tunnel. I’m not sure how to cue the lead change to take the jump.
There was more time between stopping your motion/showing the arm cue, and the release. She came in nicely! The way to get the lead change is to be closer to the jump (close enough to reach for it and touch it without fully extending your arm) and then maintain a frozen upper body. The frozen upper body (strike a pose!) and proximity to the jump cue her to go back out to it.
When you close your shoulders to point forward, you cue her to go past the jump like she did at :51.
8) Threadle. Started with a cookie toss to see if motion would help with the jump, but she still didn’t take it.She got it when you stopped moving, but she had some questions there.
9) Threadle. Finally got the jump/tunnel, but it was awkward and she had to make a big turn to go over the jump.She did go over it last minute at 1:08 when you pointed at it, but keeping the threadle shoulders open until she turns to take the jump (not turning or pointing to the jump) will cue her to take it sooner and more independently.
>It’s possible the jump surprised her the first time and she may not have wanted to deal with it again. Sometimes she will avoid jumps if she isn’t confident about her footwork.>
I don’t think it was a confidence question from her – I think the shoulder position cued her to go past it so she did 🙂 Holding the upper body in threadle position will point your shoulders to the jump, so she should take it 🙂
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Good morning!
This was great! I think this game in general is more stimulating, so you saw him having bigger victory laps with the toy. It is a form of regulation and he stayed in a really good arousal zone here, so it is all good! And he was able to give the toy back really well, especially considering the excitement of the running 🙂 Using the food seems to be helpful in terms of those transitions for sure.
Nice job with your connection as he exited the wing! You can throw the toy sooner: as soon as he looks at the jump, toss it so he never looks back at you 🙂
Since he did so well here, you can add your motion: definitely jogging and work it up to running. In the past, how has he done with you running hard? That is very stimulating but he did really well here so I think he is ready 🙂 You can add a GO verbal and also a bar on the jump!
Super job!
Tracy
Hi!
Look at how happy he is to leap on the teeter!! Good boy! I am not surprised because he has always been confident but it is great to see it transfer.After the first rep where he was looking up at you a lot, I was going to suggest putting his reward out ahead to keep his head low and straight… but you already did it 🙂 It was hard at first but then he sorted it out really well. SUPER!!! When using the toy or a food bowl of MM out ahead, release to the reward more than feeing him from your hand (he will start to ignore the placed reward and look at you).
Have you started adding motion yet, walking past the end of the board while he is getting into position? I bet he is ready for that!
Great job :)
TracyGood morning!
Excellent job emphasizing that it is the foot target you want here, and not looking up at you for the turn info. He got better and better on each rep with specifically targeting the pad and looking at it (and not at you). YAY!!! It is also hilarious seeing him sitting in the tunnel looking behind him at the manners minder LOL!!
>Round two at right turn out of tunnel. >
I think the video here was all left turns (or YouTube inverted it or I am taking too much cold medicine :)) But yes, get the lefts and rights both going 🙂
>I think l will add a normal tunnel for the next session.>
You can take a two-pronged approach to this:
– normal tunnel setting him up at the end and eventually back chaining (and balance with other exits so he is not producing great turns only because he figured out it is the only behavior in the session 🙂 Throw in a couple of straight exits.– using the baby tunnel you can back chain to the entry more quickly and even add a wing or jump before it. And when you are ready to fade the foot target (eventually), you can use the baby tunnel because you’ll get faster reps and a more efficient session.
Great job!
TracyHi!
Nice work with the rear crosses!!
On the first couple of reps, you can get onto the RC line sooner. For example, if you watch the section from :10 – :13, you took a few steps towards the straight line (left turn) side so he was preparing to turn to his left at :12 as he approached the jump then ended up turning the other way and fixing it when he landed.You made an excellent adjustment and after that, showed the RC info almost immediately as he exited the start wing:
Check out the section from :16 – :19 where you got on the RC line a LOT sooner and he turned correctly. Same with the next rep – very nice RC! He was checking in a tiny bit to sort out the cue, but that will go away with more experience.Great job here and nice job adding the balance rep of the GO at the end 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! He did great here!!!! Terrific stay so you could do a long lead out, and he responded beautifully to your cues Super!!!
Yes, you can give earlier/quicker cues. But I think the next step for this is to move the wings closer together (6 feet apart, approx) so he has change his movements quicker and that will also let you be quicker too!
> I need to be quicker, but I’m used to running slow terriers so it is a learning curve for me.>
Because he is so speedy and we cannot out run him, we are going to focus on sending him and a lot of obstacle independence (so you can get where you want to be on course and stay ahead). And also rear crosses for when you need them too.
Great job here!
Tracy
Good morning!
>Last night in class we moved the trainer from the end of the sequence to where a judge would stand. The toy is now my responsibility. I have to hide it and I can’t reach for it until after the last obstacle or she’ll look for the toy. At the end she gets verbal praise first, then I pull out the toy for tugging after the praise. This made a HUGE difference for Ellie!>
This is awesome! She is doing really well!! As you add in more complex skills in terms of handling and obstacle execution, you can have a 2 toy approach: you keep one like you did here, but the instructor can have another one to throw or place on lines when you want to isolate and reward a specific skill. That will also add a bit of a ‘surprise’ factor which is great for building behavior and motivation!
Looking at the video:
>had to stop to refresh Ellie’s memory about blind crosses. >
On those reps, it is entirely possible you were late or not connected enough (or both 😂🤣). Leave those in the video, so we can analyze what happened!
On the video – she is doing great in terms of reading the lines and trying to sort out the side changes! Plus she wants to go really fast – so fun!!
2 suggestions to make the handling cues sooner and more visible:
– the exit line connection is going to make the big difference on the BCs. Reach that toy across to your opposite hip exiting the blind, and she will totally read it even if you are a little late.
The timing of starting the first blind on the first rep was good, but the connection on the new side was a little late so she was a little wide. She turned immediately when she saw the new connection. The 2nd blind was a bit late too – when doing 2 in a row, you can have a toy in each hand to help develop the mechanics of the exit line connection (the toy is more for us humans than it is for the dogs :))
At :13, you are re-connecting on the dog side arm as she exits the wing: she was wide because she could not see the connection. When you increased the connection, she made the side change immediately.
So as you move through the blinds, keep your arms in tight and use the exit line connection across the body to get the very tight turns.
– >although I noticed that I have helicopter arms.> Yes, as you noticed, your arms got a bit high 🙂 You can run without using your arms up high and pointing to the wings. The high arms will slow you down, plus they block her video of the connection. So low arms (hand pointing to her nose) will work, or you can bend your elbows and run with your arms pumping like a sprinter 🙂
>We also had a big zig zag before the last tunnel and I couldn’t tell why that happened.>
This was at :45 where you wanted her to go straight to the tunnel, but your arm was up high which turned your shoulders/feet to the other end of the tunnel. So she had to check in with you before figuring out where to go, creating a zig zag line.
One more suggestion: Try to stretch your tunnel and add more bags – she stumbled and got caught in the curve where the tunnel was a big scrunched up at :18, and we don’t want her to hurt herself.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>A bit from our session yesterday,some remote reward sequencing. He was starting to get a bit flat here, so I used treat tosses for some volume dial work. Did have some objects scattered about on the floor.>
He was a little flat at the beginning, hard to know why exactly but it was good to get him ramped up (and a good reminder from him to do it even if the environment seems easy). Another approach to the volume dial is to ask him to do hand touches or jumping up or tricks that engage him directly with you. The tossed treats get him moving which helps, but the tricks direct his engagement to you even more (plus those are things you can use even when food is not around).
For the remote reinforcement – make sure there is truly nothing in your pocket 🙂 If you have treats in you pocket, he knows the difference (the nose knows 🤣) because he can smell them pretty easily.
And the random objects were good! I don’t know if the weird thing contributed to him being a little flat at the beginning, but I was certainly distracted by it (I spent a long time wondering what it was LOL!!)
On the first video and also on the 2nd video, remember that you can lead out with a lot of connection and do a bit of the ‘cartoon’ release to help with volume dial too: something as simple as eye contact, breathing in, and saying ‘ready….’ before the release can really help build up engagement and focus in the run!
He released from the start line like a rocket in class (yay!) on the first run, but more connection will help on the 2nd run where he got up and sniffed when your back was too him. The connection when you re-set him at 1:16 was great! Think about the run starting when you cue his sit, and the connection should start then (instead of when you release the stay).
He dropped the bar on the jump near the ring crew person – coincidence, or distraction? Hard to know, but interesting to note. He rarely hits bars but he did a great job ignoring that person otherwise. But hitting the bar seemed to rattle him a little and he had a distraction moment. Dogs that never hit bars can definitely be rattled when they do hit it! Two of my young dogs act like the bar has attacked them in the rare moments where they touch a bar.
2nd time through the section with the ring crew person – he didn’t hit the bar and had no loss of focus, even with the instructor (and his lotus ball :)) standing right there 🙂 and a very loud teeter bang from the other ring! He even did a hard threadle in that spot 3rd time through – really nice!!!!
>I’m now starting to think I need to simplify things for him here. Nos ense in trying to execute courses with 5 backsides while I’m trying to teach him to ignore what’s going on around him. I can pick out a simple course and run him thru that for success – yes?>
Yes! You can kind of do the best of both worlds: you can start a run with a very simple sequence and bigger distractions, and work on rewarding that. Then you can work on rewarding crazy backsides/threadles, with the reward right there. There were some bloopers (at 1:28 and towards the end) but it looks like he as getting rewarded for this so he seemed happy! And also, you can ask the instructor to throw the reward for a certain hard skill in those moments. And in other moments, or maybe one of the full turns in class, you can ask to just do a simple course (make something up, you are good at that!) but with much harder distractions. He doesn’t need to work the big distractions with the really crazy handling, so you can keep them separate and still have success 🙂
I just thought of a fun game you can do with him (must be the cold meds helping me remember things :)) Does he like being held by other people, like for a restrained recall? One of the things we can do to help him ignore people/dogs/weird things is a series of fast and fun recalls! Some ideas for this:
– basic recall where someone holds him, you call him (can be over a jump) and reward him.
– same recall except this time the person holding him has a handful of food (can even be feeding him!!)
– same basic recall… but along with the holder having food, you put people walking around or sitting in chairs that he runs past to get to you
– same basic recall… but along with everything else you add the people walking around holding food, talking, wiggling toys :). You can even eventually add other dogs walking around!
– when he is really good with this… you can add remote reinforcement and you can even do it from a stay (the person who would have held him is now the leash runner distraction)This won’t all happen in one session of course 🙂 But it is one of the things I do with dogs to help them ignore the chaos of the people/etc in the ring environment. And it is pretty fun, with no ‘bang’ on their body from obstacles or running courses, so you can do LOTS of fun reps to build success. Let me know if that makes sense!
>I also need to work on my own thinking. I’m finding that I’m starting to anticipate when the wheels will come off the bus which is leading to me managing him instead of running him, going to work on changing that.>
Yes, this is totally relatable! We want so much to help and to avoid any struggles… that we over-help or manage and that can create struggles. I try to use my ‘intellectual’ inside voice to remind myself that I can’t control what the dog does and as long as it is safe, it is good information and learning. That helps override the moments when I get nervous about what the dog will do, and it suppresses the inner voice that tell me to over-manage 🙂
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
