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Hi!
For the home sessions, you can try toy-only sessions and see how it goes!
For the new teeter session – definitely use food and start with the elevator then crazy elevator and then decide if you want to do the full one. And start with a big target and then if she is fine, go to the uncovered one 🙂
I tend to be very cautious in new places to set the dogs up for success 🙂T
Hi there! A couple of idea for you that will help build on what is working and also smooth out what is harder.
On the lateral lead outs, you don’t need to wait for her to look at the jump. You can totally use your dog side arm and leg to send her to the jump, though – release and then give a big swoosh/step towards the takeoff spot to indicate the jump. Your arms/legs were generally stationary so she was confused as to whether she should come in to you or go find the jump. So it is total perfect to sue the arm & leg send: think of it as bowling LOL! And as long as you stay connected to her, i think she will be able to read it easily.
And to help build more commitment: rather than reward from your hand, throw the reward to the landing side of the jump. That way she looks at you less and at the jump more.
And to balance that, you can throw a ton of rewards back to her for holding her stay: when you lead out and get to position, give her a ‘catch’ cue and throw a reward back to her. If she might take off with a toy and not come back 🙂 then you can totally use food for this.
And you can also set a timer for the session: 8 minutes is a really long time and we tend to lose their brains after 2 or 3 minutes. So even if the first couple of minutes were not great, you can give her a break, regroup, see if there is something to tweak in what you are showing her, then bring her out again later on.On the starfish: you were doing a GREAT job of spitting out all of the verbals! (There are a LOT of words on this one, right? LOL!) When you were connected, she was really strong on her commitment. My 2 favorite spots were at 1:25 and especially 2:25: long extended moments of connection with your arm low, so she was able to find the wings really well.
Same as with the lateral lead outs: more throwing the toy past the wing will help build more commitment to the wings. Her tunnel commitment has improved a LOT and she was getting a lot of rewards for it, so now you can shift the value to the wings.
And some of her questions had nothing to do with your handling – those poles get in the way!!!When you do the tandem turns when she has to come into you then turn away on the wing, you can pretend there is a cookie in your hand (or you can actually have a cookie in your hand LOL!) and draw her in then turn her away with big hand motions. Those hand cues will be pretty slow so she can read them clearly as they are pretty hard.
I really liked the rewards for the leg weaves to settle her back down after a bit of frustration – that was really helpful and raised the overall rate of success 🙂
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
I am happy with her thoughtfulness and accuracy on the teeter here. She was nailing it on all levels of the games. And at the end when you were really running: nailed it. Yay! good girl. If you think back to training the other contacts, that was hard for her so I am glad she is taking a more thoughtful route on this one.Because she is thinking about it and NOT splatting herself, you can layer in more arousal: I think toys are the way to go. The teeter is mainly associated with food, which will create more of a zen response. So in the home environment, start to add toy play before running her up the board (you can still use food to reward in position).
if she is fine with that: reward with the toy! I liked when you released her off the board for the reward, that will get her driving more and thinking less too 🙂Now in non-home environments, the environment might create the arousal, so you might find yourself needing to use food to keep her thoughtful 🙂
The other thing to consider is fading out the elevator games and just doing teeters 🙂 Yay! She is far enough along in the progression that you can do the real thing 🙂
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
TracyRemembered one other thing – when he pops out and you fix starting at pole 6, I think ultimately that might be confusing (because it will be incorrect if he enters at pole 6 in other scenarios). So if he pops, start him back at 1. If he pops consistently, we can open up the 2nd part of the channels more 🙂 We don’t want to make him mad or tempt him to deliver tooth hugs 🙂
T
Hi there!
Two ideas to help make quicker progress. I don’t want to open them back up any more, so we can help her out with this:Think of the 2 bases as the same as the box cars (where we do 6 poles then 6 poles). You might not have looked at that video yet so here is the general idea 🙂 :
Start her by doing poles 3-4 on each side, to prime the pump (acting like they are poles 1-2, so you’ll be starting her between the 2 bases). Then start her with poles 1-2, then 3-4. That way poles 3-4 already have value. Do this procedure each time you move them a little closer (until they are basically close enough to be a straight set of 4).The other idea is that because she is doing well with motion with the slightly open poles, lets take out your motion for now as the poles get straighter and closer. You can move a little bit, or not at all – whatever she finds easier 🙂 When she is happy to do all 4 we can add back the motion bit by bit too 🙂
let me know if that makes sense! We are so close to convincing her to do straight poles 🙂
TracyHi!
he was a good boy here and gave us some really useful info! He is working his colorful tail off to get it right and be rhythmic and fast 🙂
Three things stand out:
First, I think the best reinforcement combo was the tugging before the weave and then the MM as the reward, then tugging, weave, MM. That little loop was where he had the most excitement and best reps! And he was watching the toy in your hand less.Second – he seems to get his rhythm, then lose it towards the end (poles 8-10, approx). So you can help him out: leave poles 1-7 where they are and open up poles 8-9-10-11 wider so he can retain his balance and be highly successful. Then we can gradually tweak those poles back in.
Third – he definitely gets hot easily! At the end, it seemed like the coolest temperatures so he did really well. When he was hot, he didn’t have the “oomph” (physically or mentally). So try to plan the sessions for the coolest weather for now (early morning, dusk, etc) and if he gets hot – note the tongue length and stop the session 🙂 You might only get 2 or 3 reps in if it is hot, but that is better than him losing his oomph 🙂
Let me know what you think! He is definitely on the right track 🙂
TracyHi there!
Really nice session here! I know you mentioned that the park was more crowded than before, but he was very focused! Good choice of reward target there (instead of the MM) so he was able to get it right immediately. He was highly successful here, the hardest parts coming when he wanted to look at you on the exit rather than find the exit – especially when he was on your left. Those left side exits require him to look away from you (so hard!) so one thing that helps is to overcompensate with the reward: instead of placing it out straight ahead like normal, you can throw on the opposite side of the poles from where you are. That can really encourage him to want to look away and get that last set of poles because if you are near the 7 o’clock side of this poles, the reward will land more at the 4 o’clock side. I do it with my big dog on the last couple of videos a lot because he didn’t to look away from me either (these mommas boys haha)I think he is ready for more motion here and more handling challenges! And, separately, adding more poles (6 and 4 then 6 and 6).
Great job!!
TracyHi! Super nice session here! He was able to hit and hold position while you moved past… without the target!! YAY! The only errors were when you didn’t take the moment to get him ready before the send, so he was not quite focused yet. Otherwise, a really great session!
Using this setup, you can add arousal: get him setup next to you, get him more pumped up (tugging then gentle restraint then ready ready ready….) then see if he can do his end position while you move past. Separately, you can also add running to your motion! Wheeee!
And when the crazy winds die down, you can totally add this to the bang game (ideally without the target) and then to the elevator games.Great job here!!!
TracyHi! I fell like there was a question about reinforcement here that I was coming to chat about but I can’t find it now? Hmmmm. Anyhoo – the reinforcement procedures might be the hardest to figure out with all of our dogs. With weaving – it is a behavior that might not be naturally self-reinforcing because it is not a running behavior (it is a collection behavior) so the dead toys might be less exciting? Sequences have a lot of running and motion. A RDW is pretty exciting on its own 🙂 You can try more friz rollers with the weaves, or tying a jolly ball or something to a rope so you can drag it can keep him moving to chase it – that can add the running component that the weaves don’t bring, and ramp up the value of the reinforcement too.
let me know what you think!
TracyI am really excited about the upcoming Top Chef: Teeter Edition with the compilation of ice cream concoctions! And the photo at the end of him holding his new toy was SO CUTE!
Both sessions looked REALLY good here. Strong mechanics plus confident dog plus layer of understanding are coming together to move things along really quickly. Happy dance!
The bang game went really well. He seemed to have no questions about the motion or end position or anything. So, you can add some more height to this, but this game can go on hiatus for a moment while we turn out attention to the elevator games.
Was this his first real experience with the elevator games? He did really well!!! You started with the board pretty high up but he didn’t seem to mind at all. And I think you had the countdowns going (couldn’t hear all of them) so be sure they are in place if they were not 🙂 and ignore this if they were LOL! You can totally add motion to the regular elevator game.
The ice cream hippo was a delicious addition to the zoo of ice creams that have given themselves in order to produce a great teeter. So funny!! He was a GREAT job on the crazy elevator game. Fast up the board, happy to go to end position, and didn’t mind when you added your motion too. Perfect!
My only suggestion is that for now, don’t have the toy out front. The countdown on the crazy elevator game does produce a forward focus moment – and with the toy out front on the ground, he was not sure if he should focus out to the toy or down to the ground for the target position). We want the downwards focus, so the toy can be out of the picture for a bit as he gets more experience on this game.I think for the next sessions, you can add the wing and your motion as he is approaching the board, and then very easily move to adding the tunnel. Based on his confidence here, I think it will be just a couple of sessions til we get to the full teeter. Yay!!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
The threadle session went well, he was very successful – but I don’t think these were technically threadles 🙂 The threadle setup is the same as the regular setup in terms of where the MM is, but what changes is his position relative to you and the poles – when sending from 11 o’clock for example, a normal weave send would have him on your left and a threadle send would have him on your right. You were generally doing normal sends with an offset MM, except the last rep was a threadle: he was at about 2 o’clock and starting on your left side, where a normal send from 2 o’clock would be from your right. Let me know if that makes sense.
Yes – do more of these, it is good practice – but do them with 4 poles now 🙂 and yes to the frisbee 🙂On the 2nd session – after a bunch of misses early on, he did get into the groove in that 2nd session. What I saw in the first session with the misses was that he was worried in facial expression and body language. There was *something* in the environment that was concerning to him (wind? People? Maybe it was internal environment and he was sore? Hard to tell). But after you focused him more, the rest went well! So that focus can get built into every session of all the things, to transfer the focus into every environment and also to help get the good skills going no matter what is happening in the environment. I don’t think it is moving backwards in the weave training, I think it is assessing his frame of mind before the session and making sure he is really ready.
Let me know if that makes sense! Nice work here!
TracyHi!
This is a good session – tells us what works best for her and what is hard. The most important thing is to move on a parallel line to the wing – she did really well when you did that. When you were moving towards the wing, she thought it was a wrap cue and not a tandem turn. You can see how well she read the parallel line of motion at :42 and :51 and after that.
I thought your arm movement was fine – you were trying to get her attention on your hands and off the wing, which is an important element. She is VERY wing-focused, so when you had her come to your cookie hand at 1:37, you could see her lightbulb moment: aha! It is the hand NOT the wing! That really helped! You can have her come all the way to your hand and eat the cookie then turn her away, to balance the value of your hand with the wing (right now the wing has a lot more value :))
As soon as you convinced her it was your hand after 1:37, she did REALLY well as long as you moved on a parallel line. When you moved towards the wing, she was correct to think it was a wrap.So the parallel motion line and the emphasis on ‘come to my hand’ will really help.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Glad you are feeling better and more mobile – you can definitely send her away to a barrel or wing if your foot is happy with it.
These went well. My only suggestion is to wait til she gets a little closer to you hand before starting the cue – hold still til she is about 2 or 3 inches away from your hand and then move. In the middle of the video, when you had switched sides and she was coming to your left hand/left and turning to her right, those were the smoothest: partially because you waited til she was the closest, and partially because she is more comfortable turning to her right on these.
On the other side at the beginning and end of th video (going to your right arm and leg) – you were moving earlier so it was not as clear and she is not as comfortable turning to her left here. So waiting til she gets to that 2 or 3 inch spot away from your hand will draw her all the way in and make it easier to turn her.Nice work here! let me know what you think!
TracyHi! She is doing pretty perfectly on the plank here, so the real question has to do with the target on the teeter. She probably just needs more reps across the teeter (elevator, crazy elevator and full teeter) with the smaller/partially obscured target. A couple of sessions of that and then the target can get more and more hidden each time. That will probably be easier – on the fading sessions, she seems to struggle at first without it (or if it is reduced) so she just needs more experience and exposure to the teeter end position with the fading more gradual.
Everything else is looking strong! She is a little ‘chill’ going across the board coming from a jump, so feel free to use a tunnel before it or even put the teeter in a little sequence so she can get practice when she is higher 🙂 It can be a sequence to the crazy elevator game, or the full teeter!
Nice work here 🙂
let me know what you think!
Tracy
