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Hi!
Great job with turn and burn! The longer toy was perfect in terms of being long to keep his head down, and you did a great job presenting it so he drove to it with a nice low head. YAY!!! For now, yes – start closer to the barrel. I suggest this to get hi going to the barrel faster. By starting a little further away, he is not as fast driving to the barrel as he is driving out of that, So to keep the balance of speed going to the barrel and well as chasing you out of it, start closer so he can explode to the barrel then chase you out of it 🙂 Then we will gradually back you up to add more distance.
Rear crosses – These look GREAT!!! The parallel path warm up looked good and then Was really happy to see that he was reading the RCs both directions when you were early enough (which you were on all but the first rep) – very cool! And also unusual, it normally doesn’t go this well LOL!!!! he was indeed a little calm here, but that is fine so he can process it – when you take it outside or have more room, you can get him more jazzed up and tat will challenge him to process the cues with more speed.
And you can alance with NOT rear crossing by moving in some parallel path and some of the sending more frequently – you did this at the end but you can totally mix it in sooner so you can keep him reading the cues each time.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHello! I am glad you are having fun and hope Mike feels better soon!!!
>> I also was finding it difficult to just send him around and WALK at a 90° angle away from him :).
I feel this pain. Welcome to Team Fake Chill where we pretend we are calm LOL!!! With calmness early in training, we are able to be NOT calm later on and the dogs still commit 🙂
>>WALK at a 90° angle away from him :).
You can run as soon as he gets to the spot you want but be chill until then.
One thing that might be pulling him off a little on some of the reps is when connection is not perfect, so try to look at his eyes a bit bit more even as you send forward. Also, since we don’t want to rely on perfect connection, you can start closer to the cone so it is easer for him to go to even if you are not fully connected.
You can also draw lines in the sand, where you hold position til he reaches that line, maybe halfway around (like at 1:49) so you don’t twitch til he is committed. He did well with all of the commitments where you held position til he was halfway around, and also when he was 1/4 of the way around – super!!! When you tried to leave as he arrived at the cone, he pulled off – no worries, he will be able to maintain commitment more and more in each session. That is the one place where you should walk – when you are ding the FC as he arrives at the cue, walk out of it til he completes the wrap, the run – that will help him maintain commitment while you move.
>> Earlier before we took this class we did some operant work with him where he was offering going around a cone and that is why he occasionally does that in the video clips. I grabbed some cookies to bring him back to me so he wouldn’t keep doing that. >>
I see what you mean, like at :48 – then he got frustrated and nipped. So, have a reset cookie ready and if he offers, call him back and use the reset cookie so he doesn’t get frustrated by the ‘rule change’ of no longer being rewarded for offering. You did that at 1:10 and it was GREAT!
The collection sandwich is looking good! There is a lot that happens in a short amount of time LOL!! He is reading the blinds really well and is going to handler focus on the pivot then to line focus with the going REALLY nicely! My only suggestion is that after the blind, you decelerate before the pivot, so he is more prepared to the turn turn on the pivot. Giving yourself more of a head start will help this (longer cookie toss to start or a stay or Mike can hold :))
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>We have for a toy and treat toss “get it”. Should we have different words for toy versus treat? For taking a treat from my hand I say “be dainty” because he was grabbing so much initially that it just turned into every time he takes a treat I say it. When I want to reward with a toy from my hand I just say tug because usually I am tugging with a tug toy or a holee roller ball. Do you have any verbal suggestions?>>
Those are good! I have variations on all of those, plus a marker that means “chase the moving to” (it is just a sound, I say shhhhhhhhhhhh).
So far, I haven’t found that the dogs need a different marker for get it toy or get it treats, because they read the context so well and I never throw both 🙂 It is fine to have 2 separate words, but with all of the verbal directionals, I am happy to NOT have additional marker words if the dogs are fine without them 🙂
Tracy
Hi! I am really glad to hear you do NOT have covid! Yay! That must be a huge relief 🙂 You have plenty of time to catch up plus it will be easier now that the live puppy class is ending. And also, with puppies, it always feels like there are a zillion things to do LOL! So as you are recovering, pick stuff that requires minimal movement so you can get stuff done – how is he doing with backing up onto something? You can totally do that from a chair 🙂
You can also try the Turn And Burn game with you walking: you can build up a to of commitment without running, and that will get you on track without being too hard if you are still not feeling great.
Keep me posted!
TracyHi!
>>you mentioned that you might have a list of cues people have used that we might find helpful? If you do have that, I would love to see it!
I do have a big list! I will post it when I get home from teaching this weekend and feel free to remind me on Monday 🙂
The collection sandwich looks really good!!! And I love how he goes back and forth from cookies to the toy!!
This game has a lot of mechanics but you are doing the really well!!! You can decelerate sooner after the blind, so he is more ready for the pivot – you might need to run more after the cookie toss so that he see you do the blind then slow down, because the decelerate will out him into collection for the pivot.
He is driving off of you nicely after the pivot when you throw the toy! He got a little cookie focused towards the end, so I love how you “won” the race on the go cue, teased him, then di one more get it to get him back on the toy. Yay! It was a great way t say “dude, you need to get the toy” in a really fun playful way.Grat job!
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
She definitely has good toy drive! So let her engage with it more and pull back on it, like she was doing at the end of this clip. You can use a longer toy and let her grab it before it moves and then let her tug and pull and win it 🙂 If you let her have the toy without you holding it, will she run off with it? She might like “winning” the toy too!Tracy
Good morning!
Looking at the 2 wrapping sessions, things are moving along really nicely!
First video: she seems to have that back and forth rhythm now so you can fade out the early placement and let her offer before you put the cookie in. You can place the cookie when she is halfway or 2/3rds of the way around.Second session:
>>I had the treats between my knees but not hidden enough even after the tug session in the middle so she kept looking at them.>>
This is a perfect setup to let her learn that looking at the cookies does not get the cookies. So hooray that she is liking the cookies… but don’t hide them. Better to teach her to ignore them at this stage and let her offer behavior then to hide them because you’ll have to teach this skill at some point in the future anyway, might as well do it now 🙂 And I think she did really well!
As with the single pole – delay the cookie going to the target until after she offers going to and most of the way around the barrel, rather than putting it out there early for now. She is doing well, generalized quite nicely to the hamper!
>>Question – the description talks about working to standing up – what do we do for treat placement at that point? I couldn’t find a reference for that – probably missed it.
Start by sitting in a chair, then standing… you can leave your little targets in and get the treats down to them either with a quick bend and drop, or drop from the heavens 🙂 We fade the, out soon, but we don’t want to change more than one variable at a time so the variable we change here is your position.
She is doing well with the plank – the next steps would be a longer plank, and different planks!
I agree that you don’t want her flinging herself off for a toy or treat but you can use this setup to work the release: say your release and when she steps off, deliver the treat or the toy. That is a little less flingy LOL! Do this on the lowest plank – once it gets higher, then yes, we don’t want repetitive jumping off of the plank.Try to have her turn around in plank, slowly, rather than walk back and forth to turn around. That is more challenging for balance because she needs to engage her body and not use momentum to keep the balance.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Backing up is going well, she seems to understand what to do with her back feet and is moving them really nicely (and independently!) To maximize her form – we need to her head down, which means getting the reinforcement in lower and faster: the goal is to feed her with her chin pointing downwards and below her topline. She was reaching up here for most of the reps because you were clicking then taking the cookie out of your hand, then delivering it high. Som have the cookie ready to go in the reward hand, so you can get it in faster and lower – you might need to sit down to do this because it will make the mechanics faster. That will allow your hands to be lower the whole time, and sitting is much easier than bending over 🙂 Getting her head down will get the best use of her body as well as make it easier to add distance to the skill. Your last rep at about :29 was the best placement of the cookie in terms of speedy timing and low placement (a few inches lower would be even better).
Turn and burn is going really well! I like how she is really noodling her body through the turn on the cones! Looking at the mechanics: yes, you can start to leave sooner, that will be easier when you take it outside. You don’t need the clicker for this anymore because the clicks generally get the dogs looking at us (everything between the click and the reward gets built in to the behavior) and since the reinforcement comes significantly after the click in this case… we can just take the clicker out 🙂 This is more of a ‘fruit salad’ behavior so we don’t need the scalpel of a clicker 🙂
But, for reinforcement – you are placing the cookie with great connection, nice!!!! I think this will be even better with a dragged toy for her to chase, in our quest to get the pups to get their heads down and not look at us or at our hands. So with that in mind, do the next session with a long toy that has a tempting part that can drag on the ground – and because you can do it outside, you can run 🙂 Indoors, there was no place to run but outdoors, you can be ‘calm’ 🙂 til she commits then you can run run run dragging the toy (building up to being able to run the whole time, eventually). The dragging toy will get the ‘burn’ part of the game (she already has the turn!) and will also get her head lower and off of your hands.Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Lots of good work here!
Turn and burn is looking really good – she has excellent commitment! And her speed to it matches her speed out of it, which is perfect. And you were able to start leaving for the FC pretty early! Yay!!!! A couple of details: make sure you are not blocking her line to the barrel, so move yourself over so she has a straight line to it (you were on her straight line a couple of times, especially when she was on your right, so she had to go wide around you to find it).I notice that she is jumping up on the toy to get the part closer to your hand, and you are rotating pretty far back to present the toy. We don’t want the rehearsal of jumping up so we need to see what she will grab down low – you can try tying a really big hollee roller to an otherwise boring toy, so the HR drags on the ground and the rest of the toy is not as enticing. And, we already know you can run out of the turns: so in order to get her to not jump up, try it walking and when she grabs the correct part of the toy (down low!) then you can go wild with running to help build up value for the lower part of the toy 🙂
And time to start deciding verbals! I vote for a separate verbal for leftward and rightwrap, regardless of your position.
BC to pivot – the mechanics are looking strong but there is one detail to add: you need a longer lead out LOL! She is close enough to you that you don’t have time to do the blind , decel, pivot – so the blind and pivot are happening but the decel is not: so she is leaping up to stop other than weight shift, which makes the pivot a little further from your leg. So – simple solution: she seems to have a really strong stay, so lead out at least 20 feet so you can blind nice and early like you did here, then decelerate, then pivot. You will see her have time to get organized tp really bend around your leg 🙂
Rear crosses: I am glad you rewarded all of these, she was a good girl here! Another simple answer – you need to be much much sooner 🙂 You were moving straight for most of the rep then the rear cross info was happening within a foot or two of the prop, but she had already made her choices about how she was going to hit it (which lead, head position etc) and the rear cross info was too late for her to adjust. It would be the same on a jump – if it was a jump, she would have already reached her takeoff spot.
So, give yourself some more room, at least 15 feet between the starting point and the prop. Do a warm up to get her driving to the prop again – then when she is driving ahead on that parallel path you can stat to cut in behind her for the RC when she is still at least 6 feet (ideally more like 8 or 10 feet) from the prop, so she sees it before she makes a decision on how to hit it, and makes the adjustment. At first, reward the correct turn decision even if she doesn’t hit the prop – then you can raise the criteria to add the prop back in, he might be better one way or the other, but I think she will figure it out if she sees it sooner.The outdoor parallel path session was interesting!
>>She did the first one correctly, but after she got the HR the first time, she lost the ability to do anything. >
I think a couple of things were happening here – there is probably a conditioned response to the HR outdoors which is “YOU THROW I CHASE” or something like that LOL! So you were seeing a bit of that for sure. And, the prop is less salient in the busier outdoor environment, especially in the face of the conditioned response.
Knowing that the environment increases the difficulty, you can totally reinforce successive approximations of the behavior: she didn’t lose the ability to do things, she actually offered a LOT of behavior involving the prop! You can totally reward the small bits of that (like going towards it) as well as reducing the challenge of adding more distance when the environment presents challenges. Reinforcing successive approximations will bring the behavior back really nicely! So you can reinforce for going towards it and then work back up to hitting it really nicely. And since she had a low rate of success here, going back to just hit it was probably too late in the session because lack of success increased arousal, and causes precision behaviors to disappear, if that makes. So next time she is out in the yard doing this, you can reinforce approximations and also raise up the prop, put it on something bigger so it is more obvious.Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
This was a good session! He seemed very confident getting on and off on the longer plank here.
The next steps involve turning around in place – rather than do a few steps and turn, see if you can get him to stand still in the center of the plank and turn around without walking back and forth. First it will just be facing the new direction then do a complete 360. You started to do a bit of the 360s – do them slowly, so it is not a spin but just a turn in one place (you did it as more of a turn at approximately 1:45 and that worked well!)
Having him be stationary to turn is actually more challenging for balance 🙂
Nice work here!!!! If he is still really confident with the turns, you can raise the plank a little more 🙂
TracyCouldn’t hear the markers that well so I will assume they were perfect (try to say the turn back cue before you move your arm, to help fade the arm movement eventually.
I can see his reasoning for going to the wings – he was in a control position, you were facing them, you released… good boy!
>> I mark yes and he drops and comes in for a whoosh. Did I handle that appropriately? I feel like in hindsight I should have had him get more excited about the placed toy. >>
Simple answer: stop saying “yes” 🙂 I know, easier to suggest than to actually do! Yes is a marker we all use and most of us have accidentally trained it to mean “stop what you are doing and come to me for reward”. Oops! That is what happened at 2:30 – really exuberant YESSSSS and there was a presentation of the other frisbee so he was correct. Yes, you totally handled it correctly by just throwing the frisbee 🙂
And if you do say “yes”, reward say it quietly. And if you get excited and say it loudly and he stops what he is doing and comes to you, just reward 🙂 I have been in the same boat and have been actively working to retrain myself to NOT say yes in a way that is anything except quiet, so the dogs don’t pair it with anything.I think this is looking really good! Watching this, I think the fastest route to fully engaged agility should just be an installation of disc – frizgility on a grand scale. It starts and ends with throwing the disc, and you build up the amount of agility behavior in between. It will take some remote reinforcement because you can’t always throw the frisbee before a run, but that can come later as you work the engagement games using frizzers!! Food is interesting to him… but frizzy is LIFE!
Nice work here! Let me know what think!
TracyHi!
She did really well with her driving ahead game!>> First with a toy (not so much interest?!)
I think she was interested in the toy, but the mechanics made it harder perhaps – by holding the end of it, there was a little pressure with you leaning forward and then just as she got her mouth on it, you were moving it up and away. So she interacted but never got really into it. You can toss the toy further and let her grab it on her own – and if you feel she will grab it and take off with it, you can tie it to something longer so it can be further but she can’t go anywhere ) And also, when she gets it, leave it lower for a while longer, til she has a really good grip on it.
>> and then with a cookie. It’s a larger piece of cheese that’s not easy to see in video, but she can see it just fine.
She was definitely happy to drive ahead for the cheese – easy and delicious! You can totally add distance to this too.
>>I cut out the “play tuggy with toy” but it was there before & between reps.
Perfect! Was it the same toy as you used earlier in the video? And if so, was she happy to tug on it?
Great job here! Let e know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>I didn’t process it when you pointed out changing the treats from being in the hand closest to Dice. I’m sorry, i wasn’t consciously ignoring you. Lol. I don’t know why it didn’t click at the time, but I am making it a point to change that this week. It is such a hard habit to change after 20 years.No worries! Zoom makes it harder because we re all talking to computer screens LOL!
Prop games:
His front foot pounce is hilarious!! And adorable!
The deflated ball is a great prop! The easiest way to get faster with the treat and get him to not look at you is to not say yes – just say get it. Get it is a marker that says “you are correct, the treat is out ahead”. Saying yes says “you are correct” but doesn’t say anything about placement, so the dogs default to looking at us and then get rewarded for that when we say get it and throw the treat.
He is definitely happy to do t he parallel path game so you can keep adding distance and also the rear crosses 🙂He is doing well with the countermotion! I think he is a little better on your left side, but that might be because he worked through the idea on your right side first. This is going well, so you can add moving away sooner: start but stepping away when he is one inch form the pro, then 2 inches, then 3 inches, and so on. You’ll soon be able to step forward as soon as he leaves you to hit the prop.
Turn And Burn – I feel the pain of other dogs getting mad when they hear training happening LOL! Turn And Burn is going well! It looks like you were consistently taking off for the front cross when he was about halfway around the milk jug. Yay! And your mechanics looked really good! S for the next session, warm up like you did here – then start leaving earlier 🙂 On the very last rep, it looks like you did the FC and ran away when he was at the milk jug, maybe 25% of the way around. Nice!! Keep doing that, then make it even harder – start to run through the FC just before he even arrives at the milk jug. You might have to back up a step or two so you have more time to see it happening.
I think Dice did well on BOTH sides! YAY!!! They looked pretty equal here.
Have you thought abut what you want to use for your wrap verbals? We can start adding them!Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
It was interesting to see him enter a room where he has had a lot of experience and training – I think we can tweak the pattern game to get engagement faster and faster each time (which will transfer to the other similar distractions on the list 🙂
Two things to add would be:
– motion right away, rather than starting from a stationary position. Motion is more stimulating so the moving version of this game where you are walking back and forth might really help! He did better here when you were moving, but that was also later in the session so it is hard to know if it was the motion or the previous reinforcement. So – enter the room, throw the first “get it” cookie, and start moving back and forth with enough briskness that he has to trot.– you can also move to really high value treats for this, especially in the first instant: entering a new place means an immediate pairing with steak or cheese! That will be a head-exploding in a good way, making a powerful paired response and more likely to get engagement right away. Eventually entering a new place will be a cue to engage 🙂
For the startle stuff – I tend to not do engagement work for surprises that are startling, I just go to pairing. Loud noise? Cheese shower? Weird thing in the environment? Steak on the ground! Wheee! Or a favorite toy of course. Startle responses often override choices to engage, so the pairing will help get rid of the startle element, which makes it easier to offer engagement 🙂
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
