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Hi!
>>I did do some any toy anywhere at the training center today. He did switch back and forth a little, but he is loosing molars and so it was very light play. It went well considering his teething issues.
That is perfect!! Yay!!! Just random play, any way he likes it, in new places. Fabulous!!!
>>As for the wrapping, I have great success with the object close to me but anytime I put some space between myself and the object he just went back and forth just to the dishes. So building distance from the object may take time.
One thing I have done to help it just used a leg or arm to help “block” the space between me and the cone, as the cone moves further away – it limits options and sets the pup up for success, then it is really easy to fade the help. So if he is on your left, you can reach out and touch the cone with your left arm so it is harder to go back and forth to the dishes and easier to go around the cone (I mean, he could jump over your arm, so have it just high enough that he is not likely to jump it LOL!) The other option is to fade the bowls (we are fading them soon anyway) and just use naked cookies on the ground or from your hand 🙂 That might make the cone more salient because the distraction of the bowl is gone.
Tracy
Hi!
Goat games:
Ah! That makes sense. He has much better balance here, and obvious improvement in core strength and balance. Very cool! I am not a fitness expert, but I do recommend that we all get an assessment with a veterinary fitness expert so they can design fitness programs for our dogs at each stage of life (the fitness needs of my 3 young dogs are pretty different!) He is about ready for that if you haven’t already done so, based on his confidence on these 🙂>>So on the baby teeter thing…earlier today I was down in the basement doing something else (not paying attention to the dogs) and Ronin started running around on that teeter tippy thing all on his own without me. Sooo, I thought maybe I would just keep it the same (not easier with towels, etc.) but add your suggestion of trying the back and forth reward pattern. I think it worked great!>>
Ha! Sounds like he had some latent learning and figured it out on his own. Perfect! The back and forth pattern was great – you can toss the food even further away as long as he doesn’t scramble around or get too wild chasing it 🙂 You can also do 2 tug toys for it too! He seemed perfectly happy with it today, gotta love latent learning!
Great job 🙂
TracyGood morning!
> Sprite wants to meet everyone. I got a little tug far away from the ring which is huge for her. Tried a little closer and she couldn’t tug. But, I could use food pattern games. Toys are turning on, but not so exciting for her like they are for Gemma.>>
I like that she is social! It helps build confidence really quickly. Hooray for food pattern games! Have you done any pattern games with toys where she chases them back and forth a bit? That is a good one to jumpstart toy play in different places. And the toy play will increase as she gets experienced in more places.
On the video:
>>I tried to ottoman as a go around prop. You’ll notice she backs up on one side. Not sure what to make of that. But, consistent with the side. It might be pressure from the coffee table. I have a plunger and cone, but it sounded like you wanted a bigger object?>>She is doing really well but definitely needs more room the errors were lack of space issues lol – she had a really good grasp of what to offer, but not always the room to get turned around to do it 🙂 I am not worried about the backing up, that was probably the reinforcement location and the coffee table limiting her space there. She also goes around behind you a couple of times, probably for the same reason (not enough room to turn around) – don’t mark it as wrong and you can still reinforce her when she gets back to the correct side, she is juts being clever and efficient LOL! That will all go away when we have more room and also when we move from shaping to cuing.
>> I have a plunger and cone, but it sounded like you wanted a bigger object?
Cone! Is it relatively tall? A cone is a good next-step for her 🙂 And also you can take it outside more easily than the ottoman 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! Because she already has a really nice balance of toys and food in her reinforcement hierarchies, she probably thought this was the EASIEST THING EVER hahaha!
Food generally doesn’t achieve a high level for Border Collies, so it might always seem like she is in a slightly lower state of arousal than with toys. And that is fine 🙂 She is going back and forth really nicely and seems to have high value for both!
This game was really more about concept, so now you can start to think of other things to build value for. Are there things in her world that she doesn’t love, that you would like her to love? We can figure out how to build value using this same concept.
Great job here!! Let me know what you think.
TracyHi there!
Great question, and good observation on your part (and you already answered it too haha):
>>I have a question on this one regarding timing of the reward. I used “search” and was trying to not move my hands before I throw the reward. However, the delay caused her to look at me each time versus focusing forward on the jump. I was wondering if I should say search sooner and throw the reward sooner before she looks at me?>>
If the goal of the session was to increase jump commitment, then yes – say it sooner and throw it sooner (and further). That would mark the decision to head towards the jump (commit to the jump) and will also build in looking straight because the reward arrives out ahead before she looks at you. In this setup, there is nothing else to look at besides you when she arrives at the jump, so she is looking at you 🙂 Throwing sooner will definitely help that! When you are in a bigger area and there are other obstacles out ahead, I don’t think the early timing will be as important but on one jump here, it is definitely important.
Nice work!
TracyHi!
This also went well, and doing it on new things is always great!
The search toss looked good in terms of mechanics. Be careful of using it on a bosu ball or any unstable surface – she is not thinking about her body when she is dismounting, so her back legs are going every which way and she is twisting herself into a pretzel to get the cookie. Eek! I guess that cookie is super high value enough that the chase is very exciting LOL!!!Great job here!
TracyHi!
This was challenging but went really well, she was able to literally run right over the ball and still completed her behavior. Good girl! Both directions looked good too. And she seemed perfectly fine with the new verbal attached! She is probably reading the context as well, and that is great 🙂 So lets think about other ways to use it:
Are there other places you want to use this placed reinforcement? Independent weaves? Independent backsides? You can place the reinforcement where you want it in training or on a course, to help have really great in-the-moment reinforcement!T
Good morning!
Catch:
She did really well waiting for her catch marker and reward! Lovely! This is definitely something that you can bring into UKI (and USDAA too I think) NFC runs because they are happy to allow thrown reinforcement.
One suggestion: don’t proof the stay by waving the toy around or doing odd things with it LOL! Just cue the behavior and reward. The environment provides the proofing at a trial. Dogs are on edge enough on the start line, we don’t need to add possible failure by distracting them. It can add distraction & stress by using the reinforcement in weird ways – it is distracting because the dog (and I) both forget what we should be thinking about (the stay and the course) and start wondering why you are hitting yourself with the toy LOL! And so the dog and I are both now thinking, “wait, what is going on here??” in a moment when we want the dog to be thinking “I know exactly what will happen next”. LOL!
TGood morning!
Lots of good stuff here.
The backing up does look a lot better! Take a peek a StrykR and Kirstie’s threade, she is using a chair and having the pup come pretty far under it, which makes the backing up even easier to produce 🙂
This is going really well – I still think you should aim the toss between her front feet rather than putting it in past her shoulder because it causes her to turn around – your right hand tosses were past her and I think you left hand did a better job of getting the cookies under her. So work for dropping the cookies in under her chest, even if the hand comes in from the side.
Now – let it percolate. This should not be trained every day but rather every couple of days at most, to allow for some cementing and latent learning (no puppy exercise should be done every ay, except maybe recalls).
Wrap foundation is looking good, she definitely has better food value without the food needing to move much! Perfect! One more step before adding the upright – you can do the stealth placement of the food by quickly and quietly putting the treat down while she is eating the previous one, so she is not relying on your hand movement – so you can encourage her to offer going back and forth on her own. She is seeing/waiting for hand movement so we want to be sure she is doing this on her own before you add the upright. So one cookie goes to the lid and while she is moving to it and eating it, the other cookie goes to the other lid and ideally she does not see that happening. And if she looks at you: do not move your hands. Let her make a decision to offer going to the next lid, then reward with the treat.
Driving ahead – she is looking great with her driving ahead and you did a great job by getting there and engaging. Yay!
> I am pretty sure she is going to be a runner if she gets the toy before I can get there>
Yup. So…. this game goes on the shelf for now in a big space. The get it on toys game now moves to the smallest possible space (bathroom with the door closed or a big closet) so you can sit on the floor and play with her bringing the toy to you and not running off. Short get it toss will start the game, then when she grabs it and *does not try to move away* (or move away too far) you can reward that by having her tug with something in your hand, then let her have that toy, and repeat. She doesn’t have to bring it to you yet, she just needs to not try to leave with it (being in a tiny space will help that :))
Wobble board:
>>. I think this is what you are thinking for use her. We did some tugging both on and off the board.>>Yes, she seemed happy to play on it and was offering getting on it really nicely. I don’t see any signs of over-stimulation. Great! Just playing with a toy on a floor that happens to move a little.
>> It struck me that she was shifting off the board on some of the tugging but not all? Not quite enough room on the board or a bit worried?>>
Neither – she is a baby pup and it makes sense that she would want to sort out how to weight shift in tug on a stable surface rather than a moving surface. She did well! At this stage, there is no need for her to have to stay on the board to weight shift, that all gets added in later when the pup is more experienced and more developed.
Blinds – It was hard to see your upper body on this one, and it is an upper body cue – my guess is that she could not really see the new connection so if we make that clearer, the side change will be easier.
I think your timing is generally fine (yes a little late at :56 but also your were a little over-rotated on that one) – try making more eye contact down to her, or dip your shoulder down to make that eye contact, rather than presenting the toy. She might not see the eye contact enough so she is following your feet. The recall element of it looks great so now we need to show her the side change element 🙂Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>> It never occurred to me to incorporate the leash in here until you mentioned it in the zoom call and here. It’s for sure a skill I need to work.
The leash is a big thing for sport dogs! I think almost all of the demo videos this week have the dog on leash at some point. It really helps them transition to trials.
>>We just had a lovely remote reinforcer session. He is sprinting back to the chair when I say let’s go. >>
Super!!!!!!
>>I tend to use go go go on course to cue extension in a straight line. Should i change the remote reinforcer cue? I thought that initially but really couldn’t face thinking of another word 🤣 I have noticed you say “go” paired with an obstacle so I’m hoping it’s okay>>
I have not found the dog to be confused by ‘lets go’ at the end with the GO GO GO GO on a jump line. I think they are really only processing the ‘let’s’ part and we are not proofing it, so there are a LOT of contextual and physical cues built in too. I would not worry about having more words for it.
>>Secondly, he’s sprinting back to the chair and wanting to grab his stuff. He’s showing self restraint. Since he’s already predicting, should I introduce varying what the toy is on or just keep building on the success we are having?>>
Good boy! Build on success. And if you have a chair or something that you bring to trials, or a trial bag – use that. Build on success! It is easy to generalize what the toy is on.
>>I put him on a station while I moved a jump and then whooshed him back for the frizz. He was a huge fan. I had done a good bit of station work initially but have put it on the shelf for some reason.
Yay! He likes clarity. Clarity prevents ubering. You like uber prevention… which means you must provide as much clarity as possible, it is happy-making for you both! Sounds like you nailed it here!!!! YAY!
Keep me posted!
TracyGood morning!
>> I spent so much time with clicker training and trying to catch the behavior and click (and sometimes cue) simultaneously that I’m having to teach myself to pause between verbal and reward on these exercises. I’m trying to cue the verbal, say “one” to myself, then toss the reward. I think I did better on the video I’m posting here.
Yes, the keeping the mechanics clean is difficult especially when we add in running!!!
She did really well here. And you were super clean with the mechanics (when you were in the frame – we will assume it was the same when we couldn’t see you :)) She is getting the idea of the catch! And is literally catching too LOL!
On the start line, she was perfectly happy to NOT move and wait for the reinforcement. This is a great one to use in classes or trials where there are people behind her – it helps make staying at the start line a better place to be even if the distractions are challening!Using this on the contacts is great too. Is her dog walk position a 2o2o or a 4on? The catch came for the 4on but her a-frame is a 2o2o, so I was not sure if the DW was different or the same. I think you used it really well – just be sure on all stopped positions that she is actually stopped and maintaining the stop – check her hind end before you say the catch then throw. On the last a-frame rep, you used the ‘carch ebfore she had really stopped in position, so she ended up all the way off the board. You can wait that extra heartbeat to be sure that sheis fully stopped before saying ‘catch’ and throwing.
>> Keiko has been doing so well with all the indoor sessions, so I decided to try to do the food and toys combo exercise outdoors. Oops! When we’re in our agility field, she is very willing to work with me for food, goes through exercises well, etc. If I have a sequence set up, and we’ve done a bit, I can substitute toys here and there, and it keeps her “up”. When I brought out the toys to try the reinforcement combo, she just wanted to chase, catch, and keep on going – and going and going. ;). I was able to get her to bring the disc or tennis ball within about 3 or 4 feet. She’d drop it, and then come to me for a cookie, but the toy didn’t make it all the way. When I tried starting with the disc and told her to “take it” for tugging, she just looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “No, mama, we chase and catch the disc outside, we don’t tug.” So, any ideas about a clever way to help her want to tug her disc outside, or should I just look for a different outdoor tug toy? We do have quite a history of chase and catch established.>>
This is actually a discussion we are having over the in puppy class too! Ideally, all types of toys are used in all types of procedures. So for example, a frisbee can be a get it, a catch, a bite – not just a thrown toy. If the dogs do something like drop the toy and back up waiting for the next throw when we are asking them to tug with it… then that toy has veen used too much in one type of procedure.
So, that means the toys need to get installed in all the procedures – the flying squirrel can be attached to a toy for tugging, for example. That is a good one to backtrack on with the foundation procedures! And, when training a skill, choose a reinforcement that will fit the moment, for now. So if you are wanting to train something that will work best with tugging reward, don’t use a frisbee 🙂 Use something with a tug history on it, as you build up tug history on the frizbee separately (by pairing tugging on it with then getting it thrown, in a bit of a loop: tug, out, throw, retrieve, tug, out, throw, retrieve, and so on)I might have video somewhere but one of my frisbee crazy dogs started her flyball career running for a frisbee that I punched a hole in the middle of and tied it to a toy. If I can’t find a video, I will take a photo of it – I have it somewhere around here LOL!
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
The Plank wok is going really well! You can add a little plyometric challenge to it: see if she will get on from a standstill at the side rather than walk across it, and turn around in place rather than walk in and out of turning around – that is much harder and on the full 360s, she lost a little bit of balance in her back feet when she had to stay in position. Then, have her hop right off of that position like you did at :55. It shouldn’t be too hard for her with the plank setup you had here, so then you can raise the plank a little more 🙂
And using the toy rally jazzed her up, which presents additional body awareness challenge! So definitely keep mixing that in.
The Toy races look good – what are you saying to her on these? You can be using your ‘get it’ marker or adding a “go” verbal if you want. You ight be saying something but I couldn’t hear it 🙂 This can also balance with driving to you as you decelerate for pivots at your side in the same session.
>>I do have 2 different words – “chase” means I’m throwing the toy and “strike” means she should grab it and we will tug.
Great! The goal is that either cue can apply to *any* toy. For example, The frisbee can be a chase or a strike. If it is only ever one or the other, we start to see undesired behaviors get associated with the toy and that might be happening with some of the toys (where she getting stalky or backing up or won’t tug because she wants it thrown)
>> I am working toward inserting some chase into this game. When she chases toys, she is good about coming back to me and dropping the toy,
Great – chase is good to add in plus it helps build patience and reduce anticipation.
>>but she has a hard time delivering a toy to my hand (I’ve been working on it for a long time and I don’t know if I care anymore if she ever returns it to my hand).
Deliver to hand is a separate concept, that can be built separately. It does not have to be chained in at this point, I am happy when a puppy brings it close enough and we can add bringing it to hand later on. For dogs that don’t do it naturally, I teach it as a targeting thing with some shaping:
Then the target gets replaced by my hand as target, playing with the toy, etc.>>Right now, she is not used to striking the HR and I don’t mind tugging on it, but it’s harder to use than some other toys. I did get her tugging on the bigger round HR.
Attach it to a bungee so it is a longer toy. I don’t want my fingers laced into a toy at the same time I cue the dog to strike it – OUCH!
>> I played around with mixing in the tugging with the chasing the HR again this afternoon and once I throw it, it is definitely harder to get her back to tugging on it. Maybe I should try the game I described above with the HR (and I may need to buy some large HR, lol) to get more reps of striking it with really short bursts of tugging…>>
Yes – I think this might be a case of a certain toy being used with a certain marker… so the association develops and then we can’t get other behavior. So yes to the idea of using all the toys for all of the different presentations, like the double strike game you described,
>I never knew playing with toys could be so hard until I got this dog.
Ha! Also, I think you are seeing a massive shift in emphasis to clean mechanics and toy play getting put into that category too 🙂
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>.I had no idea you could use a target plate for contacts in UKI! That will be seriously helpful for UKI NFC runs!
Yes – you can place things on the ground but not on the actual obstacle. You can have a helper/friend run out and put it down as you go to the line for your NFC run. Be sure to tell the judge 🙂
The target can then be faded by just making it smaller and smaller. He did really well on the teeter here in this session – he got better and better about realizing the catch meant the toy was coming to him, so he was thinking about staying near the target position more!
I see the error you mentioned, at :40 – I think he just lost his balance a little there, the teeter kind of bounced him off the side so it was probably not your acceleration as a distraction. He was great with all of your other accelerations!
He did well on the weaves too! On 6 poles, you can add in trying to be anywhere except parallel to him now – the get it placement remains the same, but you can add in being ahead or behind – lateral seems fine. Accelerating or decelerating are good too 🙂 And of course, you can do this on 12 poles too 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
Awww he had a big weekend! And so did you! Sounds like fun. He did look a little tired when he tried to jump on the board the first time LOL!
But even tired, he was really good with his body awareness on those 360 degree turns – it looks like he never ‘lost’ his back feet in either direction. Super! And hopping off was no trouble for him at all. We stick with this level on the raised plank for a little while, just revisiting it here and there as he continues to muscle up and develop. These skills will come in handy when DW training starts for real!
Great job here!
Tracy
