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I used ‘tunnel’ to go to the obvious end of the tunnel and ‘kiss kiss’ to mean come to me for the other end/bypass side.
Hi!
She definitely liked the food pod!!!!
>> She is finding the stay more difficult.
Yes, so that is a good thing to work on because it is more important than the jumping skill for now. To help her with this, 2 ideas:
– teach the stay with the moving pod on the flat, separately from the set point, so you can lead out further without getting a broken stay. What was happening was that the release was often coming as you started turning to walk forward (after placing the pod) so she was anticipating. You can lead out more then put it down, and see if that helps her.
– to get this started, for now have the BCs in the house – they were very stimulating and running/vocalizing and she might have found that a bit distracting while she was trying to sort the stay and the form. Smaller dogs are sensitive to that pressure.
>>v Is her jumping different with the toy? this setup?
It is hard to tell about her jumping form because the toy is a little too close to the 2nd jump when you release her, so she doesn’t have room to really power over the 2nd bar. Ideally, the moving target will be 2 meters or more past the landing spot of jump 2. That will be easy to get when she understands the stay better, and I am confident she will have lovely jumping form.
Very nice job with the Wing In Your Hair game! She definitely had a burst of speed when you placed the toy out past the jump! So keep placing it like you did (and the running and getting the food in it) but also the other option is to throw it sooner: as soon as she looks at the jump, throw it so she races to it. I think she will really like that too! You can spread the wing and jump out more now, so they are further apart, so she can get even more speed going 🙂
>> yesterday with a toy, today the tug held no interest so back to food pod.
This is interesting! Did you do the set point with the food before this? If so, she might have been in food-mode so you can do the toy games first next time. Or, when you did it yesterday with the toy, were the other dogs out? It is possible that she finds it hard to play with the toy with the other dogs out, she might be a bit sensitive to pressure. We can track when she plays and when she doesn’t to try to find a pattern – that will help us build even more toy play.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>I’m really glad that there are Contraband videos in this class. He seems like he was a slower maturing puppy too. Like he’s not very fast when he was a puppy doing inside things but then later he’s super fast when he’s older and outside.>>
That is why I use him – he was a typical puppy 🙂 He was about the same age as Saphira is now when I filmed these. I felt it was more important to get him to understand the concepts without frustration (and without barking or biting me) than it was to demand speed… now that he understands concepts, he is plenty fast. Hi puppy jump grids are so funny – so many legs going so many different directions 🙂 He is still “slow” at the moment because he is not yet fired up, he is only 2 – he currently runs a speedstakes “only” about 2 seconds faster than Elektra (who is 6 inches shorter) and I know he is likely to be able to be 3 or 4 seconds faster, and he is at about a 3.8 in flyball (I mean, 3.8 is not slow but he will probably end up low 3.7s and maybe even a 3.6ish?). But that extra hit of speed will come when he lights up in the trial environment and I ask for the speed… and without any of the frustration.
I think the push to get speed before understanding is in place is NOT good – as long as the dog has the genetics and structure to go fast, then we build the confidence and the understanding then BOOM! The speed kicks in 🙂
Great job on the video. Yes – The strong connection on the lead out does help! You can throw back rewards too, to help keep it solid. I think giving her a bunch of treats from hand then immediately walking off was not helpful because she just followed you on those: so maybe give her one treat, let her settle, take a breath, connect, then lead out – those were the more successful stays.
She did well with the grid – she kind of looked like Contraband, kind of galloping through but not really jumping 🙂 Using the bumps, you can activate more hind end push by putting them at 5 feet apart because she will have to think about her feet more. When you get to OTR or back out on grass, you can try back at 6 feet but there is no rush – she is only 8 months old so the physical maturity won’t kick in for at least a few more months. This set point is more about teaching her about the concept and parameters of a set point with the stay, the line, the toy placement, etc, than it is about actual adult jumping form 🙂
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>>Ok I sold my android soul for the apple watch
HA! I feel this! I love my Android phone but all of the video work is done with Apple devices because they make it so easy peasy!
She did a great job here! Very nice commitment to the tunnel and the wing wraps! And you were remembering the verbals (which might be the hardest part for us humans :))
She is ready for a bit more challenge on this game, in the form of more motion for both of you. The best way to do that will be by stretching out the tunnel so it is full length and a little curved so she gets going even faster – and then you can meet her at the tunnel exit and run forward to the wrap. Wheeee! That challenges her to still listen to the wrap verbal while running, and challenges you to connect and say the correct verbal while running. And to keep her on her toes, you can add in sometimes doing 2 tunnels in a row before the wing wrap, to be sure she is listening and not going on autopilot because she knows the pattern 🙂
One other suggestion – for this game and also for the verbals on the wing, she wasn’t always sure if she should start or not so she wasn’t as explosive into the game as I know she will be. So you can start her with a gentle collar hold, say the verbals, then let go – that way she will be ready for the start and drive right into it, and will be done chewing her cookies LOL!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Great job here!!!
First up, the tricks:
He was really explosive with his spins and backs and touches – and you were much calmer but still connected and that is great!!! So now the next step is to be calm like this but don’t have the cookies in your hand. You can still be wearing the training pockets, but cue the behavior with an empty hand then reach in and grab a cookie for him.The Remote Reinforcement is off to a GREAT start! He thinks we are insane hahaha but he worked through it nicely! When you are going back to deliver the rewards, you can use a marker that is very specific to mean “and now we get the cookies from the magic cookie spot :)) I use ‘let’s go get your cookies’ which is not very creative LOL but it is also something I don’t say anywhere else on course (as opposed to good or yes, which I say all the time and don’t want the dogs to run to their cookies LOL!)
You can also be more boring on this game, for now – simply walk away watching him, but not using fun or enticing body language. You are really a naturally fun person so we are going to have you be a bit boring for now (then we can add back the natural fun way you interact with him in the volume dial game).
He is getting the idea that he can move away from the cookies in order to earn the cookies! He is not totally in love with this game yet – watch his tail as he walks away (low and sad) versus as he returns to the treats (high and happy) LOL!! But on the very last rep, he had a nice high tail walking AWAY form the treats with means he is beginning to feel good about it all!
So for this game, keep playing it just like you did here for a few more sessions. You can also play it indoors, by having him see you place a bowl of cookies on the counter, move a few steps away, then go back to it.
You can also start the pattern games, I think those are really helpful too!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
>> I just needed to share with someone nerdy enough to see how fun this is.
I am honored to be considered nerdy enough to see this 🙂 He looks great! I love weave training because it really is so fun to see them work through the puzzle 🙂
Nice work on the set point! He seemed nicely settled in his sit and was happy to get all of the variety of reinforcement 🙂 I watched it a few times in super slow motio:
>> I feel like he’s pulling his rear legs in and forward over the 2nd jump a bit early.
I see it a little especially on the first rep, but I think it is nothing more than him learning the mechanics of his landing gear 🙂 With the toy being low, his head is lower and with the bar low – he is all like “wait, what do I do with this hind end power?”. So he is thinking about how to get it under him to then be able to power out to the stride after landing. I think this is a good thing, and he will sort it especially as we move different jumping games. You can play with moving the toy more slowly, or a slightly wider distance (but not both, so if something changes we have an idea of what it produced it). But overall, I think it he is doing really well! I would leave the setup the same in terms of height and distance for another session or two, and see how it percolates 🙂 Let me know what you think!
Nice work 🙂
TracyGood morning!
The garden fencing here is the object for Instant Focus, yes? I was confused at first because it was the distraction yesterday maybe? I might be confused because your pattern game in the previous video went right into the garden fence and you had the get it cookies going. So with the pattern games, use a different distraction. The garden fence was clearly the shaped object today and the session went well. She did well even with the little bit of chaos on the ground around it. So now take this object on the road and build value for it in different places 🙂The remote reinforcement is also going really well! For the verbal marker: you can say let’s go as soon as you turn back towards it – she was confused on some of the reps when you were heading to it but hadn’t said anything.
She did well with the toys also, I think the frisbee was hardest 🙂 especially when the jolly ball was out there! But she worked through it without needing a lot of help. Good girl! For now, the next step is to add your leash in – have her on leash, and play the game the same way 🙂 Work up to taking the leash off before using the ‘let’s go’ marker and then we can build it up even further.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHello and welcome!!!! Glad to see you here and I agree – there is always something new we can learn from the dogs 🙂
I think for her, the best starting points are the pattern games and the remote reinforcement games (plus the tricks games, especially when the cookies are NOT in your hands :))
Let me know how she does!
TracyHi!
>>When he screams with excitement while other dogs are running – how does he do if he runs next? Have you ever tried that?
I don’t think that I have recently. I also noticed at your seminar when you held him for me and I ran without a dog, he got very excited and screamed so it’s certainly something I should revisit. I had done FOMO in the past when he was younger with Callie and usually got the result that I needed in training.
At trials, he really just keeps oriented to me and doesn’t get as excited. It’s very interesting.>>Yes, revisit it – let him watch a friend run without trying to control what he does – then when that dog is done and out of the ring, try him on a simple sequence and see what he does! #DataCollection
>>He is somewhat of a target by other dogs- when I pull him out of his crate, often other dogs growl and lung as we walk by at their crates
When that happens, what do you do?
>>I will walk him with a cookie lure. If it’s unexpected, I give him food to or toss a cookie or just try to pet and console him. Sometimes he will get barky-lungy in response so we add distance, walk quickly and just crisis manage.Maybe try a friz toss! Have a friz stuff in your pants or something and it can come out in those moments. It is both a high value pairing AND it gets him out of the situation faster – it can be a short toss but he loves the friz so much I think he will be fine with that 🙂
>Does he tug on his leash?
>He is not the best at this. I am working on building it, but he doesn’t love it. I’ve had to build it with Callie as well, so I think we can get there. He loves picking up things and bringing them to me, so I think we can get more value. He also loves tugging with me.>>Perfect! Keep playing with it and attach a toy to it, so it is a big weird toy : )
>>When we first considered meds, the behaviorist didn’t think he needed something daily (like an SSRI) but we have a follow up scheduled in April so I can discuss more at that time. I’ve seen a dramatic reduction in his general anxiety at home- he used to freak by all sorts of sounds and get stressed/shake and that’s exponentially better.>>
Glad there is a follow up! The clonidine and xanax are for more for ‘in the moment’ help, particularly if you know there is a ‘moment’ that will be happening. An SSRI can be helpful for the general day to day “life-is-good” state, which might be the piece of the puzzle that helps put everything together. He is not a dog that lives a daily life in extreme anxiety, so it might not be an obvious case for help. But there might be *just enough* anxiety that is underlying that he can use the help. That is certainly the case in human medicine and I have seen it be super helpful in a lot of dogs. Having the SSRI (or similar) on board already can make the moments when he xanax or clonidine are needed even easier and/or even further reduced, especially when something unpredictable happens.
>>I think he’s more resilient.
Right! I think he is making excellent progress!!
T
Hi again!
I am glad you are feeling better!!!
LOTS of good tricks here! He seemed to enjoy everything except the back foot targeting. I really like the leg hugs 🙂 Keep working the leg weaves too, so he is very zippy through them. That is a high action trick while being close to the momma.Does he bark on cue? If not… let’s train it. SUPER useful trick for engagement!!
One thing to add here is to use your food like a toy – move it, get him to chase it, you can get a lot more motion on the food so it is more toy-like. I like to cue a trick, then explode with praise, run a few steps and reward with a cookie, or have the dog chase it in my hand and maybe even do a spin before I deliver it. So after the head-down tricks, for example, you can have him pop up to get the cookie – it adds a lot of action to the trick, which will help raise his state of arousal. You can see that after a few minutes of high rate of reinforcement, the state of arousal drops because the food is passive. Making it more active will help!
So do one more session with the food visible in your hands, making it more active. Then try a session with the food in your pockets! And also do the same with toys 🙂 Let me know how it goes!
T
Hi!
Posting the full session is fine, it is good to see the before-during-after for the purposes of this class. You and Fever did a great job with the handling!Looking at things behaviorally: the transitions are critical for him. When you are talking to the instructor, he is tugging for a long while then eating cookies for a long while… so he never really gets to relax and look around. His state of arousal drops in that moment, which is fine – but then you were sending him right back into the sequence, which directly correlated to the disconnections.
The engaged chill will help you not have to tug for as long (30 seconds of tugging is tiring!) or feed for as long and then before you got back into the sequence – play a bit of volume dial game! Get him pumped up, assess his state of arousal with action tricks. and when he is ready, send him into the sequence. Dudley was suggesting a couple of tricks after he disengaged, which is correct – move the tricks up to happen before you work the sequence, especially after getting a few minutes of instructor feedback.Also… where is the friz? The presence of the friz totally helps increase arousal, so I highly recommend it during seminar work where the sessions are long.
Onwards to tricks!
T>> alprazolam PRN
Ah, Xanax LOL! And PRN – as needed. Have you considered a daily pharm to balance his chemistry, in conjunction with the other stuff? The ‘better living through chemistry’ side of dog training is INCREDIBLE nowadays!
T
Thank you for the history! Great stuff! Some comments and questions for you:
When he screams with excitement while other dogs are running – how does he do if he runs next? Have you ever tried that?
>> alprazolam PRN
I’ll go do a google search but – what type of med is it? SSRI?
You have a really good grasp of things that are anxiety-related distractions. When the pattern games are installed with the neutral distractions, we will work on the anxiety-inducing distractions.
>>He is somewhat of a target by other dogs- when I pull him out of his crate, often other dogs growl and lung as we walk by at their crates
When that happens, what do you do?
>.small tugging for a toy and head to the ring.
Does he tug on his leash?
>>At this point, I’d like to raise his arousal walking in and wanting him higher to run. He’s very engaged going in and gets higher as we run but I don’t want the little bit of nervousness that happens prior.
Based on what I am reading here, I agree, he can come up into a higher state which should be more optimal (which is why I asked how he does in a run after screaing LOL)
>>Waiting on a station at a busy trial makes him very nervous.
If I had to guess, I would say that the stationing at a trial puts him in a state of arousal on the lower left side of the Y-D bell curve, which is the low arousal where external distractions become more obvious (like other dogs) – then the internal arousal shifts to anxiety which zings him across the bottom of the bell curve to the lower right side – which, per the science, is still “low”. So “higher” is definitely something to play around with. It defies the agility conventional wisdom, which emphasizes calming and control… but conventional wisdom is not always *actual* wisdom and sometimes it is just a bunch of baloney LOL! So we will play around with different things. Onwards to videos!
T
Good morning!
Have fun with Becca! So cool that she comes to your area once a month!!
>>One question I have is how to get him nutty without negativity affecting the other dogs waiting to run
Good question! I don’t think it will be a problem – there is always a way to do it without being a distraction to others 🙂 A lot of the action tricks and tugging and jazzing up will have him close to you (and not leaping around near other dogs) so distance will be your friend 🙂 You can keep yourself a little further from the ring and the crowd if you think other dogs will struggle (gate stewards are fine with that as long as they know you are ready :)) And most of the really wild stuff will happen when you are next dog or heading to the line. When I am running in Novice, I will delay a little to make sure the previous dog is fine. But in Masters, it is not an issue – Masters dogs are pretty focused 🙂 I like to communicate this when I am running in Novice – I will tell the gate steward that my dog might be noisy, so I want to be polite so Iwill wait a heartbeat til the other dog is fine and secured – and so far, everyone is fine with it 🙂
In the tricks-from-pocket video – really interesting! There was a definite dip in criteria when he didn’t see treats at first (I think he even pawed your cookie hand LOL!) – we saw slower responses, looking around a little. This is all good – he wil get better and better as he learns that there will still be a lot of reinforcement even if it is not visile and not part of the cue. You were GREAT about continuing to reward all.the.things even if the behavior was slower or not as explosive as it would be if cookies were in your hand. He seemed to have the hardest time with the backing up, so that is something to reward even the tiniest bit of behavior. His touches and spins were still pretty strong, and that is good to know!
FASCINATING that at the 2:30 mark he took off and barked! That is a big insight into Twister: he has trouble controlling arousal when the reinforcement is not present. As soon as you started moving he came back to focus, and at 3:00 you put your hand in your pocket – and he was back to engagement even though the barking dog distraction was still there.
3:48 – good job waiting and letting him process that sit cue rather than helping him, so he was able to do it and get rewarded.
When you have a free minute or two, do this game more but with shorter incremenets – do 5 tricks, then be done. He says it is a REALLY hard game 🙂 so the shorter sessions can help build up the mental stamina.
Pattern game 1 –
what was he looking at at :21ish on the first video? He did a good job offering engagement! The smell of the treats and something outside (some noises or something in the distance) offered a good distraction moment here and there, and he came back to offering engagement each time.Try this game with dropping cookies on your feet now 🙂 And try it with 2 toys 🙂
And when you go to the seminar this weekend, try this as you wander around outside the ring (you can be pretty far from it if other dogs are running). You can use really big chunks of cookies so he can find them easily – and let’s see how he does with the big agility distraction 🙂
Great job! I am looking forward to see the next steps and hearing about how the seminar goes 🙂
Tracy
