Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Good morning!
>>But, I do need to work on the wrap cues not being shouted.
That is why I switched to front-of-mouth noises for my wrap cues (tststs, choochoo, and digdigdig) – it was simply the only way to stop myself from shouting them because they are basically un-shout-able LOL!
>.We tried the serp drills. I’m not sure I did them right as rental time was running out and I didn’t have wi if to watch the video again. We go back Friday so 8 can pick up the missing two then.>>
This was a great session! I am super happy with how she is reading her serps. She had a lead leg question on the first jump after the tunnel but she sorted it out very quickly.
In the middle of the session, you did a FC on the tunnel exit putting you on the takeoff side of the 1st jump, so it wasn’t really a serp line unless you can get further ahead to serp the 2nd jump 🙂 But it was still a great line!
Then at :37 you put yourself on landing side of the jump after the tunnel and the serps also looked great. It looks like the jump angles got harder as the session went along, which is great. And you kept your upper body connection open through the serp lines, so she found the 2nd jump perfectly and did not end up on any backsides.
So yes, in the next session, try the other sequences. And you can also be one step closer to the serp jumps, just at arm’s length away, to tighten the line even more.
And if you want to really add spice: you can use your left/right directionals on the serps too. But only add those if you are feel super comfy with the connection (which looked fabulous here)
Great job!! Looking forward to the Friday session!
TracyHi!
This was a fun set of sessions to watch! I love watching dogs process verbals LOL!He did well with the ‘mat as obstacle’ session at the beginning! There is not a lot of ‘action’ associated with the mat on the agility field (usually it is the ‘chill’ location) so it is good to build up the value for it to use it as a contact replacer for now. I am a big fan of finding the “thing” based on the verbal cue (as we are doing in CAMP too :)) so the mat is yet another fun thing to add to the mix.
When working the discriminations: when lined up between your feet, he wants to move on the first moment of the verbal cue, which is great and eventually it is what we want. But moving instantly means he might not have processed the cue, so he had some errors and creative answers 🙂 He did better when you added some handling and he did GREAT when you held him for a heartbeat so he could hear the verbals a couple of times and THEN move. That really increased the rate of success, so keep going with the gentle holding for now, especially at the start of each session.
Then you can fade the hold at the start, but as you do that, you can move the start position further away so he has more yardage to process the verbal as he is moving (15 feet away would be great, if he is going to move as soon as he hears a word). He was definitely processing the verbals and it was so cool to see sometimes he would catch himself and change lines to the correct obstacle. A little more distance will smooth all that out too.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Family time and a training break is always good – I figure between the crazy summer heat and busy schedules, we can take the time pressure off and just extend the class 🙂
>>I was going to do the ladder game but then I thought maybe we should do this one from lesson 2 first.>>
Good choice! This game will help the ladder game because it is all countermotion.
This is a hard game and he did a great job!! I saw much steam coming out of his ears at first, and he seemed nicely balanced turning to his left and to his right.
Your neighbor has great timing, to drive up at the 2-minute mark in the session LOL!! So it was fine to stop there.
>>Do you think we should try two wings in a row? I thought we could do some of the games with countermotion and then go back to straight line or circle.>>
I think in the next session, you can add more of the motion and excitement of the next steps to it. You were already adding motion, so now you can add more motion and sending him past you to the next wing, and rotating away early. And the advanced level of this game has a bunch of racetracks around the outside, which keeps things moving along and exciting 🙂
And also yes – revisit the straight line stuff sooner rather than later, to keep those skills sharp too. He looks great!
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>New verbal: “Kenme” meaning soft turn, used for both L or R. Continue using Left and Right for the sharper turn, and “zip/taap” for the wraps to the L and R.>>
So Kenme is a general “take a jump and turn a little” cue and the left and right are the L shaped turns?
Also – apologies for being such a pain about it… but kenme and tunnel sound a lot alike during the runs, especially the 2nd course. You can make them sound different by keeping kenme the way you were saying it, and repeating tunnel more: tunneltunneltunneltunnel or something like that.
>>I may also add a new verbal for the wrap out of the tunnel (not as common, I think).
I agree, wraps on tunnel exits are not common at all, at the moment.
>>Are you coming to the UKI NE Cup at Barto, PA?
Nope, it is really far and Barto gets really hot at that time of year.
On the video:
Great job on the 1st jumpers course! Really lovely!!!
I can hear you differentiating the verbals more, in terms of how they sound. Yay! The one thing to add is a louder CORRE CORRE for the GO sections – you re delivering it as a suggestion (softer, higher in pitch), but you can deliver it as more of a demand (longer, drawn out, lower in pich) 🙂 Let me know if that makes sense 🙂The blind 2-3 and the tunnel send and the blind after the tunnel all looked great!
I think you can send to the tunnel backside and leave even sooner at :17, I don’t think he needed the serp arm there.
Nice job running past he backside exit wing for the German turn!On the jump before the weaves: that mght be your only late cue on this run (:23). You said ‘right’ but he had already made a takeoff decision, so he was a bit wide on the way to the weaves. You can start the right cue as he exits the german turn.
After the weaves, trust him more on the jump after it so you can be on the takeof side as he is taking off- lots of countermotion will set up a nice tight turn 🙂
On the ending line – you said corre for the 2nd to last tunnel so he was a little wide heading to the last tunnel. You can try his name or the kenme if it applies to tunnels too, so he exits slightly turned.
On the 2nd course, I can totally see the horse distraction was making your brain hurt a little – that is a big distraction! Grizzly did really well with the horses right there.
At the start of the 2nd rep, it sounds like you were using your kenme and corre interchangeably, so be sure to plan which one to use (in this case, it would all be kenme, yes?) so you don’t mix them up.
On the 6-7 line – I think that would be a left verbal for him, it is the L shaped turn to the left. But more importantly, you can support it more with handling – on the first time through, you said the verbal but kept moving through so he went to the tunnel.
On the 2nd time, you called his name and rotated – at 1:34 and 2:14 you called his name (and that is when he responded).
So – we can add some handing help to get collection before takeoff to 6 on that line, so you can say the verbals and leave without calling his name 🙂 The one thing I would add to that section is a brake arm (outside arm). When he is landed from 5 and you are cuing 6, bring up your left arm and press both hands downwards, just abouve your hips, as an additional collection cue. It would look like this:
I can find more video of the big dogs doing it, there is a lot of Papillon on this video LOL!
The entire middle section looked great! And the ending was really strong too – I think doing a spin at 16 will work better- you deceled and started to spin (your feet were rotated) then opened up for a post turn, and he hesitated a bit at 1:48. On the 2nd run, I really liked the way you handle 15-16-17: you had the spin rotation and were in a great position to threadle! Stick a little closer to the exit wing at 2:33 for that blind, and his line will be perfect (you went past the exit wing a bit so he slices the jump rather than wrapped it).
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
These sequences all looked really strong!
Seq 1 and 2 looked really strong! You can start closer to the #1 jump as you wrap it, so you can move up the line on the other side of the tunnel – you were a little ahead so ended up decelerating. You can add challenge for him by starting close to 1 and accelerating the whole time.
Seq 3 looked great, you did a lovely job moving up the line on the other side of the tunnel. Yay!
Seq 4 – this is a hard one for the dogs, they are NOT expecting the tunnel cue after all the layering! The trick to it is that as he exits that #1 wrap, you are cuing the left turn on the next jump so he lands facing the tunnel. You were a little delayed in that cue (he was in the air or landing when you started it) so he missed the tunnel on the first rep and was a little wider on the others. You can also be moving away up the line as you did it, so you don’t need to decelerate near the tunnel entry – that will keep you ahead and in good position on course 🙂
Seq 5:
>>Some of #5 was embarrassing to watch>>Nothing embarrassing here, I think you did a great job breaking it down for him and he got it beautifully at the end! The #4 jump being a backside makes it much easier – wrapping the front of 4 is much harder. On the first rep, you wrap cue was a little late plus he had just worked a whole bunch of extension lines, so he was surprised that collection while layering was a possibility LOL! You were correct to work it as an ‘out’ because he did have to push away from you and then he was perfect 🙂 Yay!
Great job on these! I am looking forward to #6!
Tracy
Hi! Look at both videos here: shaping is NOT your nemesis at all, you got really great behavior here and she was fully engaged. She is getting the idea here for sure! One suggestion to make it easier to get her taking that first step around you:
She didn’t love the pressure and leaning over at first, so you can throw the cookie behind you to get her to go behind you and then show her the cookie hand on the new side – it is a total lure to et her moving back behind you 🙂 but it helps for dogs that don’t love the pressure and leaning over at first. So you can have her face you, show her the cookie hand you on the side you want her to go around – then throw the cookie behind you. That throwing motion becomes the cue too!
She was getting the idea here on the 1st session and also in the second session. She definitely liked it all better when you were standing upright more about halfway through the 2nd session! She had a harder time when you were leaning more in session 3 – so definitely stay upright as you try the tossing behind you to get her started.
I think all of these had her moving to her left, so be sure to work in her starting on your right and turning to her right.
Great job!! Let me know if the cookie toss idea makes sense 🙂
TracyHi!
This looked great, she seems to remember it all!
When starting her from a stay, you can start moving and showing the hand cue before you release her with the verbal. It won’t make a huge difference on just the wing, but when coming in with a bar and more speed, the earlier cues and more motion will help build it up. You can add in the wing wrap before it now, for more speed and to work the timing as well! Great job!
TracyHi!
The one and done reps with Yuki looked great! She seems to understand the turning away and layering really nicely! The only thing I would change is have her turn to her left no the white jump before the tunnel on each rep, rather than wrapping to her right – the left turn will give her a better line to the tunnel. Everything else looked great – you were really connected and timely with the verbals and her commitment looked really strong!>>You may go ahead and laugh when she stops to eat grass. This has been a life-long issue, and it’s why I don’t do outdoor trials with her. She’d be in the midst of a fast run to a jump, would screech to a halt right in front to of the jump, grab a hunk of grass, and then leap over the 20″ bar from a stand-still.>>
Yes, she is definitely an opinionated dog LOL!! She had the grass-eating moment and the standstill moment later on – both seemed to happen when she thought she was supposed to go one direction, but then you told her to follow the line of the jumps. The a-frame as a big visual draw in the grass-eating moment, she was totally heading that way – so keep looking for the big off course obstacles, especially contacts if she loves those, and call her more as you move away so she doesn’t lock onto them.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
Yes, totally understandable that she felt it was too much repetition, and it is great to move along – I like for the dogs to see the setup or course no more than twice, and it seems Keiko feels the same way LOL!
>> I was surprised at how effective the off-side arm is on the pull to the side jump. You’d think a dog wouldn’t see it, but she did and she did respond.
Yes! She totally read it – the off-side arm changes the handler mechanics and the dogs see it pretty well. When you are working the jump versus tunnel discriminations in upcoming sequences, cue the obstacle names sooner – she should know if you want the jump or the tunnel before she makes a takeoff decision for the previous jump, for example, which means handling & directionals & obstacle names should all be underway. I think these were a bit later here, probably because you were starting on one jump, so she was turning on landing (or committing the the tunnel after landing). So when you add them to sequences, you can totally start telling her when she is still about 10 pr 15 feet from the previous jump, so she will read the cues and respond even sooner.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! I’m really excited that Coal is getting so many in-person training opportunities!!! Have fun with the seminar!
You can probably do some of the smaller challenges while he recovers from the neuter like the threadle wrap wing stuff. 🙂
TracyHi!
Are the weave problems showing up on course? I watched this clip a few times and she seemed to do well. Was this session before or after you saw weave questions? She didn’t seem worried about the wing and this session went well. Let me know what you are seeing; hopefully it is just the heat or she’s a little ‘out’..
TracyGood morning!! The weather has been pretty icky!!! This was a good choice to work on – less sweaty and helpful for commitment 🙂
I loved the energy that the frizz brought to the session, he was so funny trying ALL the things to get the friz. The food got a bit more success but lowered the energy, so I think we can have a middle ground:
Rather than jump versus tunnel, let’s do jump or tunnel but with directionals and the friz. That will accomplish the goal of discrimination of cues as well as help him look for the obstacle when there is something that focuses him away from it (the friz in this case, your motion on course).
Start with just simple “take the obstacle” cues like jump or tunnel, then you can build to directionals.
I am not entirely sure why he kept offering the backside on the jump, but it is rewardable if you said jump. My guess is that he was pushing off of pressure with the bar at 16 and you being close, so he was lining up to take the jump AND look at you and the friz. Smart! LOL!!
So a lower bar can help and you can also turn the jump 90 degrees so there is a better angle to the front when you are up close.Great job!! Let me know how it goes. Stay cool!
TracyGood morning!
I am so jealous of that arena, it looks SO NICE! It is rare to find a big ring with great footing like this. What a great place to train! And looks like the instruction is really strong too. YAY!
About the FC versus BC on this course:
If you take a long lead out like you did at the beginning, the FC make a lot of sense (BCs don’t make sense when we are standing still to begin LOL!). Just be a little more close to his line – your lead out position was a bit past it and had to push him back to it. I couldn’t hear what your instructor was saying but based on her position and gestures, I think she was saying something similar to your position needing to be a bit further over. A BC is something to run into in these openings and has to start pretty early otherwise it is harder for the dogs to read. The FC here looked really great.
However… the FC versus BC when running? That will almost always be a bind cross, like at :21 after the first tunnel. The FC was late and it takes longer to finish the rotation – a BC will work better there and you can start it before he even goes into the tunnel and finish it as you continue to your position.
The distraction of the other ring is hard, so rewarding each time he is successfully ignoring them is GREAT!
The line from the 5 jump to the 10 jump looked AMAZING – he was SO fast and focused, I don’t think I have ever see n you have to run that fast! He was on fire! Great job maintaining the connection and cues for him, it looked beautiful AND he ignored the other ring. Yay!!!
Great job here!!!
Tracy
Good morning!
Lots of good work here!!! Starting with the harder skills parts is a good way to start, especially if you know they will be really hard in sequence. It also means that there might not be enough left in the tank to run the full thing, so be careful of that too. I think you both ran out of steam a bit towards the end of the video here.
She was a good girl finding the weaves at the beginning! She had trouble finding the tunnel after the weaves at the beginning her and later when you ran the full course, so that is a good spot to take on more step to make sure she has it – you were pulling away a bit which set the line to the jump.
Looking at the section after the DW – the teeter is on her line there so she was correct when she took it – reward that! I reward partially because she was correct and partially to keep the arousal levels in a happy state. Telling her she was wrong will make her more aroused which will make processing information harder. My philosophy is that off courses get rewarded because I somehow showed that line.
As you can see, the right verbal on that jump could set the line to either the jump or the teeter, so the name call helped turn her. When you run the full course, try to just use the directionals there – you said “go jump” as she exited the teeter which is more of an extension cue – the right verbal should commit her in collection.
She has a little trouble understanding the commitment on the serp #9 with countermotion, so a good training element would be to drop the reward in on the landing side as you move through it – first without a lot of motion, then gradually add more and more motion but till dropping the reward on the landing side to help her default to taking the jump.
A cross on the landing side of the jump #8 will also help get the turn and get you up the line sooner for the backside – you did that at 1:04 and she totally turned! The timing of it would start right after she exits the DW, and the position is easy to get to with the layering as she was on the DW.
The Backside at 12 is a tricky discrimination, especially coming up that big line! The ideal handler path and position is to where the backside wing meets the bar, so she can see the whole wing. If you are too far across the bar, she will either. Take the front of slice the backside. If you block the wing, she will take the tunnel (like at 1:51). So that is the position that will help, with your shoulders open too (arm back and lots of connection) because that also shows the whole wing.
One other thing to ad to your training sessions:
On the resets and restarts – ask her for a position to hold (either a stay, or the end of the contact like you did at 3:29) as you take one step ahead to show the line, then release her into it. When you try to resend her from your side, the line is not clear enough and you get lots of frustration barking and not enough smoothness 🙂Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>When I face her back towards them, should I face her all the way back or sideways first as a transition?
Sideways! That plan should help add challenge in small pieces while keeping her highly successful.
On the video:
One general thing about the start:
turn her to her left on jump 1, rather than to the right. Wrapping 1 to the left pts her in a straight line to the tunnel, and turning right puts her on a much harder line.For the setup for rear crosses, you will want to start closer to the #1 jump and move into them. Sending from far away and getting way ahead worked nicely for the wrap to the left (a FC) but didn’t work as well for the RC, because you were ahead and end up running out of room especially when you want to show her the difference between the tight RC and the wider one into the layering line.
For the jump tunnel discrimination – try to run the same exact line on all of the reps here, on the landing side of the jump and heading towards the 10 jump of the sequence (the #1 jump of the line you just ran). That means you will layer the jump when cuing the tunnel and also serping the jump when cuing the jump.
When you did the full sequence:
I think you were actually early on the RC at 1:26 – you cut across her so early she might have questioned whether she should take the jump or not (she looked surprised when she landed LOL!) Being that early to cut across did put you on the wrong side of the tunnel, so you had to step around it to get back onto your line which delayed the info on the 6-7-8 line.
On the 2nd rep at 1:45, I think the timing was clearer but stopping near the tunnel definitely caused her to ask questions: the decel and position didn’t match the verbal cues there.
On the 3rd rep, you were earlier citing behind her again and ended up standing still at the tunnel and using the outside arm – that rotates the body and caused you to have to move backwards to get up to the 6-7-8 line.
So to smooth this section out – strategically, start closer to the #1 jump and turn her to her left (starting her on your right. That way, as she exits the tunnel you will be parallel to her or only a tiny bit ahead – then you can run forward to the center of the bar to set the RC line – by setting the line with motion like that, you will also be able to move up the next line (without needing to stand still or getting caught on the tunnel line). And as she turns, especially for the layer, your motion should be parallel to her line with lots of verbals 🙂 You can use an outside arm but only if you keep running forward while layering. I don’t think you need it here if she understands the verbals and layering.
Speaking of the outside arm:
If you are going to use the opposite arm for the 6-7-8 backsides, you need to leave it up the whole time – by putting it down at 1:31, she correctly read it as a straight line to 8 and not a backside, and by the time it went back up and you said the verbal, it was too late for her to adjust her line. That 7 jump is a serpentine, so turning your shoulders to face the jump and making a direct connection will help, with or without the opposite arm.
Also, keep moving through that line – at 1:48 you stopped then started again – the stopping changed the line info so she couldn’t quite adjust when you moved forward so dropped the bar.
On the last rep, you kept moving really well and had great connection, so she got it perfectly. See if you can handle from the landing side of 9 rather than takeoff side, to present her with the jump-tunnel discrimination 🙂
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy
