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Good morning! For some reason, the site didn’t notify me that you posted this so I was thinking of you, and just about to ask how it went 🙂
It is interesting to know about her having to arrive on an empty stomach – the pattern game is best for both getting focus AND getting food into her, so she can think (I personally cannot think that well without breakfast and it seems to be the same for dogs LOL!!)
Great job with her run! What a great start to her career! I know you said food was the more exciting thing but she was great with her toy! My only suggestion is that is she misses a jump or something – don’t fix it, juts get on a line and run, and connect more. The fixes are for handling errors, so you can just keep going and add more connection and motion support to help her.
For today – lather, rinse, repeat. Make it one more great experience like you did yesterday! Carrying in was great, letting her engage was great, then fast-fun-run-toy is perfect: just like home. No need to add any more challenge because she is REALLY young and also we want her to be really relaxed in the environment. Looking ahead – these runs don’t matter in terms of challenges or the sequence, but they matter HUGELY in terms of how she feels about her experience.
Great job here! Keep me posted!
TracyGood morning!
Yes, 52 degrees feels great when there is no snow/rain/wind!!!
One thing about the grids from yesterday and when she was ticking bar 3 on the zig zag – you were keeping her to straight lines which was smart! But that footing doesn’t help the dogs even on straight lines, as they just can’t grip it properly, so they modify their strides. Now that (hopefully) the snow is gone, you might see the best development in her jumping skills if you stick to only grass. I think the mats at OTR are a bit better for the dogs but it is amazing how much dogs use their feet and toes for jumping – and slicker mats don’t help them in the learning stages so they make adjustments that we don’t necessarily want them to make. And I am not picking on mats – same can be said for slippery grass or horse arena footing LOL! Getting the perfect footing in agility is same as looking for lost pirate treasure. My favorite footing, to be honest, is backyard grass 🙂 Your backyard grass looks great!
The set point here really shows us how she has to balance and power off her rear when she is set up close (can’t rely on momentum). I watch them all in slow motion just to see every little detail for obsessing LOL! She did well! It is hard to tell exactly how far the toy was when she was released, but in the moments when it was closer (like the rep starting st :30), he form was not as good (carrying her rear getting ready to stop, rather than moving through with the rear getting ready to run). On the last 2 reps, it looks like the toy was further away and so she used her rear better!
One suggestion for all of your jumps grids: think of each session as a bell curve: easy, moving up to hard, ending on easy. Do a couple of warm ups of the easier height, but just a couple – and then go to the harder height for one or two reps – then back down to the easier height and then be finished. That is what we have found protects form and really develops it: We challenge the dog when she is warmed up but NOT fatigued – then ease off before fatigue sets in, so she doesn’t change her form at all.
Rear crosses:
Good job keeping your GO lines outside the wing! And she is doing well on the rear crosses too! She definitely had questions on the left turns but I think they were good questions, about your running line. Watching that first step or two (your steps, not hers LOL) as you exited the start wing – you were tending to show the backside wrap line by were pushing across the bar too soon with where you feet were pointing (to the backside) and the line you were running (to where the wing and bar met). Yo can see this at :10, :14, :23 and she had questions on those (the questions were “front or back, mom?”). You probably felt her cutting in front of you at the last minute to take the front of the jump, but we don’t want to dilute the backside wrap line. The rep at :19 was MUCH better in terms of you moving to the center of the bar more.
All of the right turn reps looked a lot more like rear cross lines, with your running forward to the center of the bar more and not pushing to the backside line at all. I think on the left turn reps, you will end up feeling like that actually cutting behind her is later because you will run forward to the center of the bar for longer – but that will be correct 🙂 That way you don’t end up having the backside line and the rear cross line potentially looking the same, while still showing her the rear cross diagonal line pressure.I really liked the serp session!!!! Nice job angling the jump to get it more serpy 🙂 She seemed happy with that! You had to have TREMENDOUS hustle to be able to get to the serp line after the start wing 🙂 but you did! Feel free to send her to the wing with you starting further away. I like to start next to the first wing of the jump to send to the start wing, so. I can easily be across the serp jump. And your upper body cue was very clear as you serped – nice!
One recommendation is to send her the other way around the start wing: rather than wrapping her towards you (to her right in this setup), send her away from you (to her left, so it is more of a soft turn than a wrap). That will add a bit more challenge to the serp! So you might want to angle the jump back to the easier position for that new challenge, then flatten it out again as you work through it.
Great job here! Enjoy the trial today!
Tracy
Good morning! I heard about the winds – crazy weather for sure!! I live in a valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains so we get winds like that in February and March each year, so I feel the pain of the high winds. I think we are all ready for a long stretch of great weather.
It is good that the in-person class is working up to 5 jumps in the grids, that will support what he is doing here (and vice versa) even if they are a little different. They are all useful!
And this was a really lovely session. Yes, he had a little question here and there but that is what these grids are about. His questions were pretty minimal, though, and he was really balanced I n how he was handling himself!
1st two reps on your right looked good, he might have been rushing a bit at the end (got a little forward in that last interval, so you can slow down the toy drag (especially on the first couple of reps in the next session) a bit so he controls his speed a little more.
I love how you handled the stay break – clear, happy, quick, try again, no big deal, no drama LOL!
I see his head coming up on the rep after it when he was on your left, but i didn’t see that head up question on the other side (dog on right) – was there something different in the reward delivery or is he just less comfy on that side? Possibly a little less comfy, or something about the visual was different – this grid is very visually challenging. His head was down and he was powering on the last rep of the video when he was on your left, it looked pretty identical to the dog-on-right reps.
The send is definitely less comfy (“are you SURE I am supposed to do this without you??”) but that is totally normal at this stage. You can back chain the send a bit (start him between 3 and 4 and send, then between 2 and 3, and so on) so that he realizes that he totally does have permission to leave you in the dust on grids, when you are not moving (eventually you will be running too).
This grid shows the dogs a straight line through the angles at first (developing their ability to jump that line even when the visual of the jumps is not the typical straight line) so you can tighten them up a little more to add more challenge without losing the straight line. Eventually we do flatten the jumps out completely so it becomes a much more challenging slicing grid with lead changes 🙂
Great job here! I hope Mother Nature has CALMED DOWN for you all!
Tracy
Hi!
I am so happy for you that you more time to play and you don’t have to work as much! YAY!!!
And I think you will find that you are really not behind at all – you have been working on things and everything builds together, so you are doing just fine 🙂
Yep, the serp has been the hardest thing so far for this group of youngsters! So you fit right in LOL! But based on this video, it looks like you sorted it out and she was plenty fast and confident! You can angle the serp jump towards her more when she exits the wing, so it is easier for her to see (harder to run by) and that way you can add even more speed. But overall, this session looked great! Nice connection, nice line, very clear upper body cue. Yes!! You can add the wraps in the next session, but I think it was smart to just sort out the serps first.
And I am glad the race tracks are going better! Super!! You’ll see it all coming together really nicely. In the next couple of weeks, you can add in some set point sessions along with more handling stuff, mixing it up so you don’t emphasize any single thing and the training stays balanced. She looks great!!!
Nice work! Fingers crossed for great weather ahead!
TracyHi! Lots of good work here!
On the set point – I like her organization on the 12” height with the toy pretty far. She seems a lot more comfortable with the spider setup! I think then going to 16” is a bit of lumping 🙂 She is carrying herself very differently at 16 with the toy pretty close, lifting rather than jumping if that makes sense. She might need a bit more room, the toy further away, and also t get great at it with the bar at 14 first then 16.
She is doing really well on the zigzags! Have you worked these on 3 and 4 jumps before going to 5? She is landing on the 3rd bar a bit, so she might need to see this on 3 jumps for a while longer before going to 4 then 5. Where was the toy on the last rep? That looked like a good distance from the last jump because she was powering through and not preparing to land.
I really like the ladder/tunnel setup!! So fun! Maybe I don’t fully understand the goal of stopping with a dead toy right in front of the next obstacle (tunnel in this case) but she is splaying on her front end to make it happen especially on the rubber matting (it would happen the same way on grass, though). You can see it at :03 and :14, and especially at :35 when the toy was pretty close to the jump. I know you see the pulling up, but watch it in slow motion so you can see the splay and torque that is happening too.
Because she has to stop in with the obstacle acting like a bit of a wall and so much coming from all of that momentum AND forward motion from the handler, she either has to modify her jumping form or splay her shoulders, neither of which we want, right? So I vote for not stopping her like that and also if you are using the dead toy, a big tall one like a large hollee roller that she can scoop up and run through without stopping or splaying. Food for thought!On the reps where she kept moving through, she looked lovely! Such a fun grid! If she was skipping the jump between the 2 tunnels, she might just need more experience on the ‘find the jump’ before adding tunnel #2 🙂
I am not too concerned about the start position – I prefer the close start because it focuses on immediate organization and the dogs cannot rely on momentum to get it done (something we learn in human fitness too, sadly for me haha) but starting her half the distance can work too – the double tap is that middle ground that we don’t want. If you are starting her further away and she is double tapping instead of striding, you can move her even further away (or a lot closer LOL!!)
Great job! Let me know what you think and fingers crossed for great weather ahead!
TracyEwww 92! Hopefully it cools down for the weekend!!
The go reps looked great! You can add in more position variations – get way far ahead, be more lateral, and also run deeper into the tunnel so he can accelerate ahead of you.
He read the rear crosses well! I think you can start the rear cross line sooner in terms of the pressure, so that he is already seeing it as he is exiting. On the video, you were starting it after he was already out of the tunnel, so he looked left then right. I think he will be able to handle earlier pressure as long as he has just enough room to get past you 🙂
Good verbals here too! Yay!!!
Great job! Stay cool!!!
TracyHi!
I think these were really good sessions – the goal is to get him to think about organizing himself and being powerful and fast, and he was sorting things out nicely!>>Mike started session 1 with a dead toy and no handler movement and switched to flirt pole and some movement.
On those early reps, I felt that Ronan did well but wasn’t necessarily sure of the release, so he was hesitating a tiny bit. My guess is that he was waiting for more connection on the release, maybe Mike was facing too far forward? So you can try this with more eye contact before the release.
>>We thought he wasn’t supposed to be taking an extra little step before taking off so we set him up even closer.
Correct, ideally there is no front foot tap before jump 1, but we get it sometimes as we figure out the ‘sweet spot’ of where to set the dog up. That’s what you saw on some of my demos – a double tap when trying to sort out the sweet spot start place.
>> This seemed to cause him to “fall forward” a bit over the first bar.
That’s him sorting out the organization of pushing off his hind end. That was looking good and will keep improving as you work the set point as well.
>> Ronan didn’t look comfortable (he was really stretching) in most of the reps in session 1 and session 2 so I moved the jumps in a little for the last 2 reps of session 2.
I liked the distance you ended on! You can also play with keeping the jump height at wrist height for him, he might have been trying to process too much with striding and height, so you can use that distance and the slightly lower height and see how he feels about it all 🙂
>>>Should we be using a “dead toy” or is movement using the flirt pole OK?
I think the flirt pole incentivized (is that a word? Lol!) the organization on the jump while helping maintain the head-down position. So for each new jumping concept, start with a dead toy. Then when he has it pretty well, move to the flirt pole like you did here. My only flirt pole suggestion is that it is further from jump 3 before you release, maybe 10 feet past it, so he is looking further down the line rather than ar the base of jump 3.
Let me know if that makes sense! One thing about jumping is that you’ll see it change a lot in the next year or so, as he grows from his baby body into his adult body 🙂 So I am pretty sure that as soon as we find today’s sweet spot, it will change for next week 🙂
Great job!
TracyHi!
I think this was actually a very good data gathering experience!
>> I was super depressed with Sparky – until I talked to my friend who reminded me I am making progress on grass.
Yes! Your friend makes a very good point. Horse arenas are incredibly challenging.
In terms of figuring out what he was able to do in that environment:
Were you able to play the pattern games, or off leash offered engagement, then do some tricks? Those are ways that we basically ask the dog if he will be able to ‘work’ in that environment. In this order:
– I start with pattern games – the dog will then either give me a “Yes, I can totally offer engagement” or a “No, this is too much”. If you get a yes from him, you can move to the next step:
– tricks for treats! If he can do those, you can move to the next step:
– off leash offered engagement.If he says “no, I can’t” with pattern games, you can move him further from the distractions to see where he can say “yes” and offer engagement.
And then at the start line, that very first reinforcement is for off leash offered engagement.
>> Also we were not allowed to walk the dogs on leash around the arena so i guess this didn’t help …
Yes, that is most likely part of the reason he struggled: he needs to be able to assess and handle that incredibly difficult environment before doing agility in it, rather than trying to do agility right off the bat.
>> obviously the area had heaps of smells and basically – Sparky would not run.
I don’t see it as “would” not run, it is more like “could” not run.
>I guess Tracy I should have taken my food ball out but really I wanted to see if there has been any improvement.
It was a bit too much testing at this stage – my first test is only just off leash offered engagement at the start line, rather than trying to do the full line up and sequencing.
>>so the seminar instructor then had me play crate games with him and he was super with this.
That was smart! He looked great! It worked because it used a couple of things with a long history of reinforcement in different places. That is what we are going for with the new games, and that will get us the same results 🙂 We need to gradually introduce them to the harder environments – I think the only error here was trying to do all the things, all at once. DOn’t beat yourself up! It is good to know and it gives us good ideas of how to proceed the next time he is in a challenging environment.
Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! I really like all the levels of the game you did here!!
The tricks with cookies in your hands? Perfect of course 🙂 The down needed a couple of cues early in the session but then he was snappier with it later in the session.
Cookies-in-pockets also went well – for this section and for when you have them in your hands, you can add in more action on the reward delivery. Rather than stand still, you can have him chase your hand a bit, or move a few steps. That will help make the treats more toy-like, which can help bring him into the optimal state of focus.
You can see how exciting it is (in a good way :)) when you had to run to the treats after the tricks when you did the remote reinforcement element – he really lit up! Yay! So you can definitely keep this up and also add that excitement to when you are delivering from your hand.
He was offering some barking… I like that too 🙂 You can get that barking on cue and use it as a trick to build up his engagement and excitement on the start line! He was barking playfully at you, not in a frantic way and not out at the environment. So that can be really useful!!!
Have you gotten a chance to look at the instant focus and off leash offered engagement yet? Those will be useful for him too.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>I love the piece of cardboard idea. The first clip where he’s breathing hard is very shortly after he’s entered the building, hasn’t run yet.
I think a visual blocker and maybe a little music will help him chill more and chill sooner 🙂 he is greatly improved but we can do more 🙂
>> Pattern games have been SO good for us.
Awesome!!
>I think the other thing that helps him is familiarity, or maybe it’s distance from the action. We’re trialing today and tomorrow (I’m building courses for the Brittany club). And here’s a couple of short clips of him hanging in is crate upstairs.>>
Yes, familiarity helps for sure. He looked more relaxed here- try the barrier and see if that helpsa
>> Pretty typical is I can regulate him after we walk in the gate with hand touches, and he stays engaged for the sit but the moment I reach to take off his leash or collar he consistently looks away, gets sniffy, says Hard, Hard, Hard >>>
I think the hand touches my regulate him downwards too much, so maybe try spins and other more active tricks? And yes, counterconditioning the leash off will help too. Part of it is not fussing on that start line. No touching, no moving, very short stays, no real possibility of error – that way he can have a positive CER in that way.
And the 80 zillion reps of the leash off, offered engagement cookies will really help too, to develop this engagement into a reflex 🙂
>>and unfortunately I think because I feel the pressure of time I haven’t been giving him the chance to breathe and then choose to reconnect….
Yep, totally relatable!!! I just plaster a smile on my face and remind myself that there is no rushing the dog, take the moment, breathe, etc.
>> Depending on how that goes I’ll add in actually removing the leash. So far he likes the game…. Still disengages as soon as I reach for leash but reengages much quicker. What do you think?>>
Don’t worry about disengagement when you reach for the leash, that’s just a bit of reflexive response. That will change pretty quickly as the reps add up 🙂
Have fun! Keep me posted!
TracyHi! This looked really good! It seemed like she was pretty perfect 🙂 my only suggestion is to remember to take off her tags, I thought I could hear jingle tags 🙂
Have a blast today!!! Keep track of it all, adjust to the moment, video all the things and keep me posted!!!
TracyHi!
You handle better without sleep than most of us do WITH sleep! You looked great!
And I think you had all the pieces here: fast transitions, leash off rewards with the toy, 2 balls, more action tricks, etc.How did you feel about her runs? How did this compare to her normal Thursday night class? I thought she looked great 🙂 Yes, the weaves were hard and also some of the 270 stuff was hard but even after an error, she was in full GAME ON mode. I like how she brought the balls back. I admit to also liking the barking 🙂 Very sassy! And it is my ideal: bark when I pump you up… but then shut up and work when I ask you to work. What were you doing to elicit it, or was she freely offering?
Your classmates can be useful distractions, if they will sit in the ring and eventually have their dogs out too!
If I am remembering correctly, you have a Jen seminar on Saturday – I suggest doing what you did here for at least the first turn. If you like what you see.. you can play with a bit of hidden toy/remote reinforcement built in! Keep me posted on that!
>>I also have a question, you recommended adding toys to line up game. Currently I am at toss cookie, call through leg, lead out a few steps or none and toss give cookie. Do I toss cookie to set up the reward with toy, toss toy the reward with toy, or am I missing a step to get her behind me to start game. Sorry if this is a dumb question.>>
Sorry for any confusion! You can toss a cookie to start it, line her up, lead out, then throw a ball/toy back or release forward to tug. The goal is to get her into the line up and stay with more arousal and also with the toy she will use in the ring. (You can lave toys at the start line for UKI on real runs too, so it is all good to be able to have toys involved with the line up.)
Great job! Let me know what you think! Say hi to Leslie 🙂 and get some sleep!
Tracy
Voodoo is an expert of dealing with my screw ups hahaha so it happens very fast.
>>So you pair a word/phrase with it?>>
A VERY informal one, like “you’re cute” or ‘cmere’ or ‘sorry dude’ or “F*CK!” hahahaha but most definitely NOT a reward marker. For me, all of those markers are reinforcement markers, which mean “you are correct, your reward is_____” So ‘search’ (or my ‘get it’) should mean “that is correct, your cookie is tossed out there”. But the thing is, it was NOT correct – and using the reward marker can be very confusing if it is used for both. For example, I use “bite” to indicate “you are correct, grab the toy in my hand” but I never use bite when I use a toy for a reset or effort reward – because that would get confusing as to *which* behavior is correct: take the front or the back? So the informal words for resets/efforts are very clearly different from the ‘click’ value of reward markers.
Now that I am typing it out, that could be why the pups we have raised with the effort/reset cookies like this are very happy to keep working and also very clear about what is right or wrong… versus the pups that get frustrated when the reset/effort rewards have the same markers as the ‘you’re correct’ markers (like when people use ‘search’ for ALL the things, the dogs are confused).
t
