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Good morning!
>>First, I find it funny jumping between sports how definitions change 🙂 While I agree the last one could have been divided up better so I could plan better…it wasn’t a long obedience lesson 🙂 🙂 🙂 LOL>>
yes, it is totally true that the various sports end up with wildly different lengths in the finished product: in agility, 35 seconds is a long time. And in flyball, 4 seconds is speedy but not amazing. LOL!! But she is only about 9 months old, so we still want to keep things short and sweet as her brain & body mature.
>> I realize I do a lot of remote training with my dogs, just no cue, because I’m lazy 🙂 🙂
Ha! Not lazy – just forward thinking. 🙂 Putting stuff up on the bed as a normal part of training is great!
She did really well in this session!
Nice engagement to start!
I think the grabbing of the toy off the bed had to do with the length of the transition from the tugging into the game – she was engaged, then the transition took a while (in dog years) and had some disconnection, so it is possible she thought the training was done. A quicker transition will help, so the session starts as soon as the engagement ends and you don’t need to get the treats out, etc – they are already there. Or, you can ask her to stay on a bed or platform or something during the transition, so there is a clearer “we are still doing a thing” built in. Transitions serve to be cues to the dogs in a lot of ways, so I think a clean fast transition will really help her know where to look, what to do, and to not grab the toy 🙂That toy is very high value so you can also put it down, give her a treat pretty quickly for NOT reaching for it, then build up from there. She was catching on really nicely! And so the next step would be to see if she can offer engagement and moving away with you, without the cues (name or let’s go) and then giving the jackpot marker.
And the step after that – no cookies in the other hand 🙂
>>I did try and focus on my out and not cuing it too much with physical cues from the other treat hand. I caught myself doing it, and then the out was harder when I held that hand still.>>
I thought you were much cleaner with your ‘please’! That toy is really high value, so she was not releasing it quickly – it might be that the value of the toy is higher than the treats, so you can reward with an instant “catch” or cue to re-grip it, rather than a cookie – getting that toy back might make it worth her while to let go of it quickly 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>> I would really like to build on How great would it be to have the reward in the ring at a trial. Would love to figure this one out. Maybe keep working on building it’s value as high as possible while training in the hopes that it will override his trial brain? Any thoughts?
I agree about the leash! It has come naturally for a lot of dogs but for others, we need to train it. And it is on my list for my dogs to train too, so I have just put it on the list to train this week and post next Monday. It is a value transfer application, so we can get the dogs liking it! It will vary for each dog, so I will train all of my youngsters with it and that should help us get some ideas for Cody too. For now, definitely keep building the value of it in training as a tug toy.
He looed great in the ring rental!
One suggestion: Be careful of your left hand going to the cookie pocket as you lead out – that might indicate where reward is available and since you are not likely to do that at trials, it might change his focus and arousal state.It looks like he was tugging REALLY well here in the practice setting – he does not do that in trials? will he tug on the leash before his run at trials? Or not at all, at trials?
The mat game REALLY cracks me up. Will he tug with it like that at the end of a trial run too, or only the beginning?
Hmmm percolating an idea… can you teach him to lie down on his leash like a mat, and then see if he will tug on it like he tugs on the mat? Transferring the concept might help!
Either way – as we develop this leash idea – you will need the tug leash to just be a tug toy for now, maybe even not use it as a leash in training, just as a toy,
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>> Spot boy is getting amped at trials. I have a lot more dog there than at home with practice. So much fun!!
Yay! So fun!!!!!!!
>>So, on the threadles I have a question…imagine that, huh?
Ha! Good questions!
>> When you switch to a straight 180 degree set up, I get the wrap verbal to get more collection, but what do you call the balance rep? It’s not really a back side – it’s the obvious side the dog would take to just do the 180.>>
Depending on how the dog is trained, I use my soft turn verbal there (left or right).
>>Is there any time when you’d find it helpful to have a ‘hey you – collect please’ word instead of using your wrap cue? >>
I don’t have an easy cue like that – it is too vague in terms of exactly how much collection I am asking for, plus I don’t want to add another collection verbal 🙂
>> I”m still hung up on the gray area between a full 180 degree wrap and the turn that is more than 90 but less that 180. I wonder a bit if I might be watering down the tight wrap by using it when I want less than the full tight wrap.
Because of the wide variety of turns in agility, there will always be a bit of grey area (or we have to have more verbal cues – ewww!) I will only use the wrap verbal on the threadle when the threadle line requires the dog to come back across the plane of the turn jump pretty soon after they took it, within a coupe of feet of the wing. If the threadle is 30 feet apart, then it is more of a left or right because they don’t need to collect as much. Figuring out how much collection you need in that specific case will help you decide which verbals fit closest, otherwise you’ll drive yourself nuts trying to have a verbal for all occasions. A similar example: on backside pushes, I use “back” for all of them, even if they are not full slices, except for the full 360 degree circle wraps which require a lot more collection (I use dig in that case, it is the only time I use it).
>> It probably isn’t a thing here, but I use that verbal for a wrap out of a straight tunnel as well as jumps and I see myself getting screwed by a jump placed more than a 90 degree turn that I don’t want when I ask for a tight wrap back to me if I’m still behind and not able to be there to use physical cues to help. Does that make any sense?>>
If I am understanding this correctly, it would depend on the timing of the cues – what happens after the collection cue tells the dog what to do next. So if I wanted the full wrap, I would call or cue the next jump or something depending on the context. And if I wanted the threadle – as soon as the dog collects for the wrap, I would cue the threadle so he knew where to go next. This happens before he takes off for the turn jump.
On the videos:
>>I was at 1 day of a UKI trial yesterday and everything we’ve worked on was in the courses. I was sending you lots of ‘Thank You Tracy’s as I ran the courses.>>
I am glad to hear you had the challenges at the trial! They are showing up in USDAA and UKI and CPE too!
He is doing really well with the switches from the weaves to the tunnel here and you did a good jo rewarding the switch before he even got ot the tunnel! Yes, he is looking at you a little but I think part of that is timing: you can start the cue as he is still weaving, so he can turn immediately 🙂 It will require some trust of the weave skills but it will also tighten the line to the tunnel.
Backsides – lots of good stuff here too, but definitely too many reps (33 or so, there was definite physical/mental fatigue by the end which could have contributed to the errors).
He did best on the backside verbals when you started saying them before he even finished the wrap, so that is good to remember – you can start them early and say them often 🙂
He is doing a really good job on the harder angles where you are not parallel and need to take a little step to push him to the backside like at :39 – he is reading those REALLY well and not needing too much step to the backside at all.
One thing here is he has a threshold for how far away across the jump you can be for he pushes: if you are moving to where the exit wing meets the bar – he is basically 100% at this point. Yay! If you are past the exit wing (parallel so there is daylight between you and the wing) – he fails (like at :42 an :47 and 1:22 and 1:27). So be careful of your position – over the course of upcoming training sessions, inch your way over to the exit wing and past it, so he can be successful and then you will be able to be further across.
>> then had some issues with front vs back side of jump so my session went long, but I wanted to end on a couple of good reps where he seemed to understand what I wanted and we finally got there. Not sure what I did to not get the front side toward the end.>>
I think the front versus back was just fatigue – he was starting to show some fatigue by 1:45 and by 2:30 he was walking to the wing wrap. So he might have just gone on autopilot and was guessing that it was a backside because he had just done literally 2 dozen backsides 🙂 So – do 10 reps or less then be done with it. And you don’t need to finish in a good note, if things have gone south you can just be done 🙂 This is an easy setup for us to not realize how many reps we have done, because we are walking and the dog is running and doing backside slices which are pretty physically demanding.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
She is doing well with her threadles, responding really well on all of them! Bear in mind that dogs get very threadle-happy in training so they keep offering a zillion threadles and the regular lines go away (especially herding dogs, I have never seen a terrier get threadle-happy). So when you are doing a session – start with the regular 180 line for a couple of reps, then do the threadle then when you want the regular line again, make it clearer by getting in closer to her line in the gap. When she was threadling, you were raising your arm high and moving away really fast, breaking connection, so she was guessing and went for the higher value thing at the moment (the threadle). You stayed gap at :57 and that really helped her see the difference. She did better with her balance when she was on your right and then at the end on the left, you stayed in the gap more to support the line so she did better there too! Nice! So being patient and staying in the gap really helped.
Speaking of being patient… on the course work video, that is the main thing: be patient, run the lines more… don’t rush to the next line as much. In the first video, you were tending to want to fling her an run away (I totally relate to feeling the need to hurry to the next place on course!) That is why she was coming off lines – the rushing caused your line of motion to change and pull her in (or added an extra jump on the blind after the tunnel after the weaves). For example, the backside in the opening – you were using the verbal, but you had a super high arm and you were turning your line of motion and running to the tunnel, so she took the front side. Staying on a parallel line (across the jump, but patiently on a parallel line) will make it easier for her to commit to and you will be able to get way up the line for the blind too. When you were more patient, working each line to make sure she had it (like at 2:15) – it was lovely!
She had big weaves questions – you can keep training her to drive away into ‘nothingness’ as you hang back (lots of thrown rewards) and also you can keep her on your left there and do a switch away to the tunnel – that allows you to layer the weaves and get where you want to be for the next section more easily.
The full run on the 2nd video was MUCH more patient and worked so much better! You dud a great job of working each line. And you still got everywhere you wanted to be really nicely! The ending line got a little behind, you can get the side change there before the tunnel but the rest was really strong 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think (and stay warm!)
TracyHi! Are those dog food tubs? Clever way to prop up the board! And it is fine in terms of height, she was challenged a little but definitely not over-faced.
Hopping on? Easy! Hopping off? Easy! Turning around? Almost easy 🙂 Just cue it slowly so that she balances in her hind end a little more – the hand to cue it was moving fast enough that she was not thinking about her back feet as much. You can also try slowly turning her away so that she does a full 360 circle!>> No issue backing up to a target. That’s how I knew to teach it. Took a class and instructor wanted it shaped. Took her awhile t get it, but she did. We can easily add the target back in. Just adding fluency with different ways to get the behavior.>>
Perfect! Playing with different mechanics and shaping is always good! I think shaping the backing up without a target is actually pretty difficult, and you are doing a great job!
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>> Regarding wing wrap-I do need to step towards and point like the pregame when we get further with distractions…is that OK? I’m training in between runs.>>
For now, stay really close so she offers it without pointing. We will add the cuing in soon but the offering it will make that much easier when we add it.
>>I can’t get the alternate arm thing, reaching around. I did much better just doing the blinds with the side hand, I wanted her on. Like I do with chaz. I had her squeaky ball and she was coming to the ball hand. I was stopping do need to keep running.>>
That is all good! As long as you make eye contact AND keep moving after the blind (I know, I am a pain haha) then you can have the ball in the dog side hand so you don’t feel too twisted up 🙂
˘>I really need to work on confidence with noises and moving things. She does recover great, except with table/wicket fear.>>
This is good to know! The most important things to remember are:
Proceed very very very slowly, try to make it so easy that she barely notices noises and movement
Use incredibly high value food or toys – stuff that only comes out when you are working on noise or movement 🙂>>her sire is Finnegan with Jennifer Goldberg. She’s a thinker like him.>>
Small world! I love Finnegan and Jennifer!!!!!!
T
Keep me posted! We want the backing up behavior so HOW we get it is not as important as just actually getting it LOL! Export was trained with shaping it… but Nacho didn’t understand that, so he learned it with the between the legs thing. Contraband didn’t understand the shaping or the between the legs, so I did the backing up to a bed thing. And Hot Sauce didn’t understand any of it so I just lured it with a cookie on her nose for a few reps – now she is great. LOL!!! So we don’t need to lock into any single method, we can find a way that makes sense to her and to you 🙂
THi!
All of these looked good! And I figured the hockey analogy would make sense LOL!On the videos:
For the first goat game video here, I think he has all the confidence in the world which is great! The big wobbly peanut was just so tall that he couldn’t easily get up on it. So if there is something you can pile up a little so there is a middle step to help him climb up more easily, I think it will help. When he is a little bigger he can just6 jump up there, but he is small and young so doesn’t quite have the size and strength yet.
He definitely was thinking about the contact trainer baby teeter setup! You made it easy for him but I think you can make it even easier by putting some towels under it for now. Puppies have a bit of a pendulum with their confidence on these moving/noisy things, so dampen the noise and tip for now til he is back to normal confidence on it. The other thing you can do is feed him less in the middle – he might have been confusing it with standing in the middle of the plank, so was offering staying there. So when he gets on, yu can toss the reward off the end so he runs through it, then just kind of develop a back and forth pattern of running through it and slamming it around for tossed treats (or toys!) That will all help him think less about it all 🙂
I think a little step up onto it will also help here – maybe it was hard to jump up onto AND have it move, so having a something between the floor and the board can help him feel really happy to get in it.On the plankrobatics – I know you said you felt awkward, but this went well! You can have 4 or 5 cookies ready in your hand for quick rewards rather than reaching into your pocket for them. And you can also toss them when he gets on to help make it fun to leap off. For the turns – use your cookie lure like you did, but do it slowly so he doesn’t lose his feet in the haste to follow the treat (because he is SO HUNGRY hahaha)
Wing wraps – this is progressing very quickly, actually, he is doing great!!! He is ‘leading’ with his head, which means he is setting himself up to turn really nicely and bend through the turn. Perfect! When he made the little errors, I think he had gotten busy eating some crumbs then lost his train of thought… so he lost the rhythm for a minute. But then he got right back on track and you were smart to break it off for some play.
For the next steps – you can move the bowls back to behind your hips a little so he has more room to be able to turn around and wrap again.
And you can change your position to sitting on a couch, or in a low chair… working up to standing.
The distance that the object is away from you is not that important right now, it is the understanding that he should go back and forth – and he is nailing it! YAY!!!Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>> I did go back to the same small plank and she did better on the turning around. And with both exercises, I released her and waited for feet on the ground before giving her the toy.
Perfect!
>>For backing up, the hand signal is the cue to do it. I started to work on getting the verbal more solid on its own.
I htink the hand signal falls into the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ category 🙂 You can still work on getting the behavior to be more of a verbal-only skill but the hand signal is working fine for our needs at the moment.
>> I think I have had definite categories of toys – the throwing/fetch ones and the tugging ones. She will fetch and tug on the udder tugs, so I should get those out to use too. We played around with the tossing and tugging with multiple HR. She has such a strong preference for chasing that it was not always easy, but I think we made some progress.>>
This is an important insight! Rather than 2 categories of toys, you can work to have different markers that apply to all toys. So a frisbee can either be a thrown toy or a tugging toy and the marker indicates which, in the moment. That will get rid of the conditioned responses you are seeing (the stalky, sticky stuff) and will give you greater freedom with your reinforcement choices!
I feel like we are nerding out a little in terms of sorting out reinforcement and stuff, rather than just training little agility things – but the nerding out is going to be SO much more useful for her in the future. The agility part is going to be easy for you to teach her 🙂
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>> Can I have a holder for the bond cross and racing her?
Yes 🙂 That will give you a better head start AND she will be even faster 🙂
>>And I can’t use a toy for the blind cross, can I just treat her? I need to work the lotus ball, then maybe that would work and I give her the treat from it Or maybe have her ball and when she comes in to hand, I throw it??>>
Yes, and yes 🙂 You can reward from your hand as long as you keep moving. And you can also throw the lotus ball or regular ball out of ahead of you when she catches up 🙂
Keep me posted!
TracyHi!
>> On the wing wrap, when can I drop the bowls and reward from hand. I did a few that way at the end. Just easier then bringing the bowls.
You can drop treats on the ground if she can find them. And you can reward from your hands if you want – we will be adding more about motion and reinforcement in the next couple of weeks 🙂
T
Hi there! Both of these sessions look great!
>> I have to confess that I struggle with using a toy to work and keeping them interested in it. Its just so much easier to use food.
Yes! It is so much easier to work with reinforcement that the dog actually loves – it makes the training stuff go faster and is more fun too. And he DEFINITELY is very fast in his training!
>>So moving to another room or insisting on toy play while shapping or working is tough for me.
Definitely don’t insist on it – that is a fun killer for you both. You can move to a different room and throw a toy around, or just carve out a minute or two during the day separately from training to just hang out and play with the toy. If you feel like you are insisting, then you can stop 🙂 It is more important that the toy is fun for you both! So play with it separately. I have found that reducing the pressure with toy play and bringing the toy into training later, when the pup loves it, is worthwhile and effective.
On the videos – his wrapping looks great! You can sit on a couch and even try standing up! It was hard to tell – how much distance between you and the basket did you have? If there was not a lot of distance, you can add more 🙂 We will be moving this to a jump wing soon too.
He is VERY driven for his food, so I am confident that you will have a ton of speed on course and in his training – so there is no pressure to bring toys in, you can build it separately as just something goofy and fun then add it in to agility eventually 🙂The backing up cracked me up – you placed the start cookie just far enough under the chair that he HAD to back up. Brilliant! LOL!!!! Keep going with this approach, gradually adding in more distance and more steps away in the backing up. You can also add in starting him on a target or dog bed, and have him tak a step off then back on… building up to all four feet off then backing up. Then, the bed or target becomes a useful destination for backing up and hind end awareness.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Backing up mechanics can be adjusted to the ‘whatever works’ category! This is not necessarily working, so we can play around.>>It’s hard on my back and one hip because I have to bend over much more than with tugging and hold the position for a longer period without moving.
On the left side of the screen here, it looks like there is a ledge or something to sit on – you can sit on that with your legs extended (which will act as channels!) and so you do the same procedure without bending over: cookie right at the base of the ledge you are sitting on, then next cookie between her front feet. Low hands – yes. Bending – no 🙂
>> I can’t toss a treat through her legs as she doesn’t really move from between my legs until after I toss it and I can’t really do it while she is still between my legs (plus the whole she has no chest yet – LOL!) and once she takes a step back out from between my legs she simply turns around to go find the treat so I don’t think she has backed up more than one or two steps at most.>>
I am not worried about # of steps backing up right now, it is more about sorting out the mechanics. So you can reach your reward hand forward and place it to where you want the cookie to be – this will help her back up and NOT turn around. I would place it just behind her front feet.
The other option is to use a target:
Start her all four feet on a low dog bed. Lure her to bring her front feet (only front feet) off the bed. Then reward her for stepping her front feet back on by placing the cookie on the bed between her front feet.
Do that a few times and if you think she is getting it… lure her to get all four feet off the bed… then reward her for stepping even just one little foot back onto it.
And to make the bed/target salient, you can put it in a crate, or between X-pen panels, anything that makes is easy to step back and hard to turn around. I like starting with front end awareness for this with baby puppies, because it helps get the concept going while they are growing up a bit to be able to realize they have back feet too 🙂Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Ah yes, I can see she was a little questioning at first! You can pack the underside of this with towels so it is more supported (moves less) and also the visual of the towels under it will help her confidently get on the raised edge of it. Then we can fade out the towels, over time.
Question – what does she love to chase? We can get her to think less about the movement of the board and run back to it quicker by throwing the reinforcement as a click-then-toss strategy. You can do something like thrown cookies, or even balls if she loves those. She might not love a tug toy here, or maybe she will? The action of the movement of getting on then off builds the love of the wobbler very quickly for dogs that get thoughtful about it.Backing up is going well! Since you shaped it – we can get her head lower by lowering you hands by just having you sit on a chair or couch for this session (and don’t have the wobble board or anything else nearby, I thought she was going to offer getting on it even though it was leaning on the wall LOL!!!) It also looks like you were ping ponging distance, that is going well too. You mentioned having shaped it to a target at first – was there a question from her that caused you to leave it in favor of shaping it? If not, you can add it back in as a hind end awareness game. If there was a question, let me know – we don’t need to add it to the backing up but we can game plan separately.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
Have the board not there
Sit on a couch
