[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

First, I have to point out an adorable and hilarious moment: watch the heads of both girls move as you move, starting at just after :17 – you rocked back as you got into position, then both looked left, then you move forward, they both looked right at exactly the same timing and head position. Love it! Good girl Gemma for supervising 🙂

This session went well – it is a really hard format (moving and doing both the threadle and serp in the same session) but I am super happy with how she did! Some dogs get locked into doing all-threadles or all-serps and gets the big gold star for not making any mistakes in that department. YAY! You did a lovely job of just the right amount of motion.

>>She decided the reward was easier than then task on a few occasions>>

Yes, a little bit of testing the efficiency of just running to the bowl. LOL! It seemed to be most challenging on the threadles on your right side? But she worked through it really well and was highly successful, so it will be even easier when you have more room and the bowl won’t be inches away.

I totally laughed out loud at 1:10 when she hopped back over the bump to the bowl – clever! I mean, you said bowl, and that was the fastest route to it, so…… LOL! You can wait til she lands and turns her head away, with that head turn being the moment you are looking for to say ‘bowl’ rather than the decision to come towards the correct side of the bump. She got a little sticky with the release towards the end, it might have been an internal struggle for her to override the obviously easier path to the bowl with the “mom says go voer the bump” cue 🙂

>>I’m also waiting too long for the serp release.>>

I thought you were good! I had no problem with the timing of your releases on any of them.

>> I’ll work on her understanding some reward markers are also releases. I’m worried about wiggling fingers in that I MIGHT pair the release with motion which I tend to do anyway.>>

The verbal directionals can be the releases as a higher priority than the reward markers as releases (although some of those are releases too) . She seemed to be releasing on her ‘look look’ here which is GREAT!

>> My iPhone would not load my thread to post at work. It kept redirecting. Hopefully your tech crew can get the last post first soon.>>

Yes, so frustrating! It appears to be a mobile iOs issue only (iPhones and iPads) – my Mac is fine and the fully updated ipad is fine, but the ipad that is not updated is definitely having anger issues about it. The tech crew here is pushing the software developers at WordPress to fix it in this LMS but the developers have a bit of a ‘whatever’ attitude about it (this is not unusual when iOs and developers have to play nice with each other). So for now, since I ave no idea when the developers wll get this done, feel free to start a Sprite 2 thread for these next few weeks, so that you don’t lose posts or deal with the frustration of it kicking you off. Then I can merge it all back into one thread, if you like!

Great job here!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Well, in terms of telling you what was wrong, it was incredibly boring feedback LOL! You totally nailed it 🙂

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

The lefts and rights are going well – no problem with the wing in the middle, the verbals sounded good and the reward placement was good!
She was cracking me up – she is matching her stride pattern to your ri ri ri (or you were matching it to her footfalls) – either way, very rhythmic! And also can be very helpful on course because the rhythm and energy of your verbal can help her understand what the rhythm of her collection (or extension) should be.

Two next steps for you on these:
– do you have any stride regular/jump bump things/pool noodles to replace the towel bars? A good next step would be to give her something more salient to move over – if you use a pool noodle, maybe duct tape them down or use something so they don’t roll. If tape is not an option, I have used tube socks stuffed with some sand and laid the sock over the inside and outside edge of the noodle to keep it in place.

– and, in keeping with giving her something more salient to move over – you can change he angles of this a little so she doesn’t need to reach as much and fitting herself into the gap between each ‘bar’ is easier. The middle ‘bar’ can stay where it is but the 2 outers ones can angle in closer, It will look more like a bird claw than right angles, if that makes sense. You can use the towel bars for shortening the distance between the bars/angling the outer bars in.

Going out of order and looking at the 3rd video next (more on the reason for that below):

Turn and burn wing transfer video:
She did really well transferring the concept. Super!!!! Good job getting the markers in with your ‘take it’ with the treats, same with your toy marker. Try to use them very consistently on every rep, including the first reps (they got added in later in the reps). Your reward placement was generally quite strong too.

And she was generally quite clean – only touched the wing twice (significantly once) and I don’t think she was being sloppy:

>>Once she connected with the wing pretty significantly trying to get to me so the next one I waited longer on it.>>

I think what happened on that one was your marker was early, not your movement – in fact, you didn’t move enough so you were in the way. Here are the two spots:

1:09 – you said tug it and stopped moving so she hit the wing/foot of the wing coming to the toy
1:29 – she was just past halfway around and you said the marker, presented the toy but didn’t really move so you were in her path as she drove to the reward and she hit the jump cups

Smoothing the mechanics will help her be super clean on the wing wraps: you can move at the designated time of your choosing (when she is halfway around, for example) and you don’t have to say ‘tug it’ til she has cleared the wing and is on the way to you. Your motion affirms her decision to move around the wing, and the ‘tug it’ marker reinforces the full behavior including the clean wrap.

And for now, you don’t have to run away – you can do this at a walk the whole time to really give her a full understanding. Then move to jogging, then running – this will take several sessions, potentially – I don’t recommend it in one session.

Also note that we had no frustration behavior from her *at all* in this session: no vocalization, no running to you, no rushing, etc. I think it was because it was a high rate of reinforcement session with smooth mechanics where the reinforcement was clearly related to the behavior. That, plus working systematically with the slices of behavior, set up a really successful happy-making session.

So how does that relate to the rocking horses? First:

>> I also tried covering a barrel with a garbage bag and again much more respectful of the barrel, so I went out and bought a couple of white ones and did some doodling around still using food.

Well, covering the barrels with a garbage bag is completely brilliant. I bow down to you! Love it!

Now let’s geek out a little about this behavior:

>>And the big question – what to do about the vocalizations?

Her vocalizations and attempted “tooth hugs” bites (not sure if you noticed those but they were clear on video) are super important pieces of feedback from her about what she is understanding and how she feels about it. I obsessed on this video a bit and here is what I see:

Some dogs vocalize out of excitement, especially when there is a chase element (and countermotion predicts chase). We get that here and there from her and it sounds different than her other vocalizations – and it is fine for her to do that 🙂 And example of that excitement vocalization is probably at :05, first noise on the video. The rest seemed to be frustration vocalization, so I slowed the video down to see what was happening when she did it and also looked at the rate and use (placement/timing) of reinforcement.

>>Stop when she does it?>>

Depends on what your intention is when you stop. If you reinforce her for a behavior that you want to build here and the reinforcement is clearly relative to the behavior – yes, you can totally reinforce, stop, then figure out why she is vocalizing and be cleaner for the next rep. More on how to be cleaner below.

If your intention when you stop is to try to stop the vocalization, so the stopping is a negative punisher? Then nope, don’t stop, as that will make matters worse. The answers are in clarity, and clarity here comes from reinforcement, not neg punishment. And trying to calm the dog might be perceived as negative punishment, so I would not want to use vocalization as criteria for stopping – it makes things very muddy.

Her frustration behaviors (vocalizing and attempting to bite) seem to be due to lack of understanding about what exactly you wanted her to do. If you were a little late, not connected enough or blocking the barrel (at :13, :20 :45, :48, :49, 1:41 for example), she would show the frustration behaviors.

But also if you tried to be clearer, move faster, connect more: she didn’t necessarily commit to the barrel cleanly and in fact would come into you there too and get frustrated – the rep at 1:03 was the most insightful for me: you had a lot of extra connection and also a quick acceleration so you could be super connected AND show her the barrel from up close (that was a good adjustment to make!) but she cut to the front of you (perhaps attempted a bite there, it was hard to see) and vocalized. Judging by her facial expression and body language at 1:06, she is confused/stressed.

OK, that is great info from the pup at this stage, so I went back and looked at reinforcement. When obsessing 🙂 I looked at rate of reinforcement, timing of reinforcement and placement of reinforcement, because the source of a dog’s frustration is almost always rooted in one of those (and reinforcement plays into understanding criteria which plays into frustration behaviors as well):

First up, Rate:
While it might appear that rate of reinforcement was high, it might not be in her mind. And reinforcement is always in the eye of the reinforcee so we have to accept her feedback and make adjustments based on that:

if we calculate RoR based on the number of little sequences that you rewarded, it would be 7 sequences, 7 rewards. So it appears that the RoR is high, right? 100%! But that might be misleading because using a complete sequence of multiple barrel wraps on a 1:1 ratio of sequence:reinforcement assumes that each element of the sequence has self-reinforcement built in… and at her age and stage of training, I think we should not assume that (particularly based on her feedback here).

So, a quick recalculation (yes, I sit here and count like a nerd LOL!) brings us to 34 barrel wraps and 7 reinforcements which is about a 21% rate of reinforcement for barrel wraps. Aha! We are onto something. The reinforcement builds up the rate when she does get the cookie, but you can hear the vocalizations increase as the RoR drops in each little sequence (usually after the 3rd or 4th barrel wrap).

Now we look at the timing and placement of reinforcement: on all 7 reinforcements here, you were facing her, she was facing you, you had stopped moving, and there was a pretty big time differential between the barrel wrap and the delivery of reinforcement because you needed to stop and take the reinforcement out of your pocket. Another aha! The placement/timing of reinforcement was not relative to the barrel behavior – it was relative to stopping and facing you, which is why she really really wanted to come in to you and was getting progressively more frustrated when she was being asked to wrap barrels.

>> Not 100% sure what is going on with the lookng to cut in>>

Timing and placement were building a different behavior than you wanted, plus the rate of reinforcement for the barrels was low. If we really want to obsess, we can say that the timing and placement of the reinforcement was not relative to the barrels at all, so the RoR for the barrels was more like 0. It is that old adage: you get what you reinforce. But the good news is that reinforcement, like a bank account, can be replenished easily with some planning 🙂

>>so maybe looking for the treats in my hand (they are fairly high value).

Pretty sure it is not that – your hands were empty plus on the turn and burn video, she did not obsess on the reinforcement in your hands.

>.might be connection in some, especially the RS’s where I need to turn back sonner/faster but in others I look like I am pretty connected>>

While there were moments where you probably could have been more connected or earlier or faster…. I don’t think that is the issue here – she just doesn’t understand the game. That is a relief because otherwise you need to be perfect which is a zillion times harder to do when compared to the simplicity of changing the reinforcement structure of the session 🙂

With the barrels being so salient, yet she is not driving to them, we can safely say she just doesn’t understand what you want relative to the barrels. If you are perfect in handling, you can get some clean sequences like at :27 – :35 but I don’t want to rely on trying for perfect handling.

So let’s plan:

We need to change the timing/placement of reinforcement so it is delivered FAST and placed relative to the barrels:
– have the reinforcement in your hand and not in your pocket for speed of delivery (she can totally do this with the reward obvious in your hand, look at your TnB video :))
– install your marker word for each reinforcement event (don’t be silent) – that will totally help bridge the gap between behavior on the barrel and reward delivery
– we can also consider some changes in placement by spending a couple of sessions with more of a ‘on the spot’ placement. What I mean by that is you can toss the reinforcement to the other side of the barrel when she leaves to take it when you send her. That might be a really good ‘palate cleanser’ to shift her understanding back to the barrels here.
– When rewarding from your hand, always deliver the reinforcement in motion and at your side (hand across the body like you did in TnB from 1:41 to the end counts as at your side because she is not stopping in front of you)

And we need to change the rate of reinforcement too. Since she has associated some frustration with this now, let’s dial it back to pump it up:
– bring the barrels in closer together, maybe 6 feet apart
– for now, take out the motion back and forth between the 2 barrels – just hang out in the middle. Send to one barrel, mark her commitment to it with your reward marker, do a FC and reinforce at your side facing the next barrel. Lather, rinse, repeat with a 1:1 ratio of barrel to reinforcement for 2 sessions in a row (on more than one day to allow her to begin cementing the behavior). Then you can add in some reps of 2 barrels in a row mixed in with plentiful reps of 1 barrel:reward.

She will let you know when she is ready for more, she gives *excellent* feedback. How will we know? She will drive to the barrels with the bare minimum cue from you – you can casually point/step and off she goes! She might vocalize some excitement, but she won’t come in to you or attempt to face you or tooth hug you.

Obsess on your mechanics! Mechanics are the key to this all. Every single one of our dogs has a game that they say “wait, WHAT??” and we need to evaluate what we are doing in order to help them get it. So for Beka, the rocking horses are the game which will take your mechanics to a whole new level 🙂 I am 100000% confident you will get it because you are already getting lovely mechanics on the other 2 videos here!

I am excited to see the changes here so you can get the same gorgeous behavior you are getting with the minny pinny and the Turn and Burn! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi –
I would say that there is nothing out there that is entirely issue-free. Websites are designed to save information everywhere, from CCs to PayPal to Stripe to Google to any of them, really. Stripe is the closest we have come to zero problems. We are happy to opt people out individually, so it is no problem to drop a note to Jeremy about it – that way it won’t be saved in the system. He has it noted as well, so he is likely to see it come through and go ahead and do it. The other option is to receive an invoice through PayPal, which does not require a PayPal account.

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! This is a really good topic!

A couple of ideas about how to use the crate. I have not seen any negative fallout (the dogs know when to relax and when to offer behavior) for five reasons:

– I don’t do a zillion sessions on these. The ones here are probably the only sessions I did with these two dogs before moving on to the next game.

– the rate of success is very high so there is no frustration. In the early days of traditional crate training, we did not have a good handle on high rate of reinforcement and I think the dogs were working at a low RoR. That is where we see issues.

– in these games, closing the crate door is never ever associated with a negative punishment as it often is in traditional crate games.

– speaking of the crate door: when they are in the crate with the door closed, they are not anticipating that I will come to the crate to start a traditional crate game – so they are able to relax and snooze, especially if I am in the room or moving around near the crate.

– context! Dogs are brilliant with context. So when the crate is sitting next to the tunnel or near a MM, with the crate door open: clearly we are doing a thing. But if the crate is in the bedroom and they go in, get a treat and I close the door? Clearly we are NOT doing a thing 🙂 so they relax.

Some visuals for you:

Here is one of the ways I use a crate – it is the very first element of running dog walk training 🙂 It teaches the dogs to move away from the MM in order to get the MM to trigger, and it is the very first way to isolate the hind end. I should have used a bigger crate 🙂

And here is baby Contraband:

and eventually, using the crate as part of tunnel-contact discrim training to help the pups understand the concept:

I do teach them to wait their turn a bit, and get called into ‘work’ by their names and learning some of the ‘not your turn’ cues.
Here is Nacho’s first session:

And here is Contraband’s first session:

These are pretty informal sessions, as you can tell by the pajama-wearing in most of them LOL!

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! This looks great! Hooray for standing 🙂

She seems to be a little stronger turning to her left, really approaching the wing with her head turning which makes for lovely bending. Nice! The right turns were also really good but maybe didn’t seem as fluid – but that might be because of the starting point; She had straighter line ups on your right side (for the left turns) and was a bit more sideways when starting on your left. So be sure to line her up straighter on your left (a little cookie lure will do the trick :)) and see how she does when she has a straighter approach.

I think the reward placement was fine – it was not near you and it continued the turn 🙂 The next step is to put this on something bigger, like a barrel or a wing. Yay!!!!

Well done 🙂
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>Search is indeed a general, food is being tossed so go find it. I do not have a verbal for food will be chucked at you try to catch it. My room service marker for them to stay in place and I will bring the food to them is “Goooddd”.>>

Since he is a foodie, I recommend one more marker for food use:
search seems to be more of a ‘move forward to it on the ground’ marker, and the room service marker is great! The 3rd one would be the ‘I am tossing it back to you’ marker. I use ‘catch’ but I do not expect or require the dog to actually catch it 🙂 It just means “you stay back there, I am staying where I am and tossing the reward to you”

I use that for toys too 🙂

His stationing looks GREAT! Yay! Yo’ve clearly put a lot of reinforcement into it because he is interested in what you are doing, but still pretty relaxed! Nice!

>.Since I have been leaning away from formal crate games I was thinking you might be as well so was just wondering what? Types of training you were doing with the crate.>>

This is a great question!
I answered this in your other thread too – but in general, I teach the dogs to not bust out of the crate when I open the door (they don’t have to sit, but please just wait for a release or let me put the leash on). I do plenty of ‘go in your crate’ games for life skills (it is great for sanity with 10 dogs and a cat in the house – even the cat knows his “go in your house’ cue :)) I also use the ‘go in your crate’ for some shaping stuff and some other games – I will dig out those links and put them in the other thread 🙂

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! I hope your snow melts fast too!

The feedback here on the video is not really feedback – it is more like a narrative of how great the session was LOL! Yay!

So much lovely stuff here:
Nice play before the sit! Nice job going back to some tugging here and there, he did really well with that and stayed in a great state of focus and engagement throughout.
The Serps looked great – he had one error of not coming in on the serp, but that was right after you had to fix the misbehaving MM – and the focus on the MM might have caused him to forget for a moment. But he was perfect after that, so I am not concerned by the one error.

Nice transition to threadles: your release and position and verbal all looked & sounded different from the serps so he was very successful on all the threadles.

Great job staying in motion but not moving too fast, and also great job keeping your upper body stationary until he got to the MM – fabulous mechanics!

Nice job working the angles and the different sides – his turns looked great on all of them and he seemed perfectly balanced on both sides. Super!!!

Since this went so well, the next step is to just add a little more motion, moving a little faster 🙂 Great job!!!!!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Retirement in May??? That is really exciting!!!! Congrats!!!

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>Why is the lawn guy so late today? I know if I set up anything he will show up!

It is the West Coast Murphy’s Law of agility! The East Coast Murphy’s Law is that it will snow the minute I set something up. I have (had) a weekend of seminars set up in North Carolina so – of course – snow. Sigh.

>>The wings were touching in the MP,so I’ll separate them a bit.

Perfect!

>> I can try the serp/threadle indoors again, but there isn’t much room.

At this stage, waiting for outdoors is probably best to add in the motion too.

>>Also, Sprite is not understanding to release from her sit on “look” or “back.” If I always toss a cookie first for the threadle do you think that antecedent arrangement outweighs the verbal? Just curious.>>

Yes, I think if the cookie moves before the verbal, then the verbal will fade into the great beyond 🙂 To help strengthen the verbals here, the first thing I would consider is what will cause her to move into the behavior? A hand wiggle with the target in it? If so, you can say the threadle verbal then wiggle the target hand in the ‘please come to the target’ manner to help get her moving. You can also try the old school ‘new cue – old cue’ approach which is to say the ‘look’ and then the release she understands – the look or back verbals will then predict the release and she might be able to transfer the value of it.
It is useful to have threadle or backside cues as release words, because you will need them off of stopped contacts and also potentially the threadle verbal off a start line.

>.We trues wing transfer and she kept going regardless of the distance. I added the verbals, but realized you didn’t in the video. Hope that’s ok?>>

She transferred the concept perfectly to the wing for the turn and burn! She was able to commit regardless of the angle, and was balanced on both sides. Her turning looked lovely too. Happy dance!

I didn’t use the verbals in the demo only because I wanted folks to begin by adding only one new variable (the wing) at a time and not risk muddying the verbals if the pups had a question. Sprite seemed to have zero questions (hooray!) and also you have put a lot of value into the verbals already, so I think adding the verbals was the correct thing to do.

You can start her further away s you can try to do the FC even sooner before she arrives at the wing!

Only 1 suggestion to add: when lining her up or sending to the wing, move yourself over to let her seem more of the wing. Your line and be towards the exit edge of the wing so you don’t end up on her line at the entry edge of it (the entry edge being the side with the jump cups. You can see that you were blocking her view a bit at :03 :13, and :19 – your leg is on her line so she goes wider to get to the wing. On the other side, it is harder to see your position at :26 and :30 for example, but you can see how wide she goes compared to :34 when she had a clear entry line to the wing – she was VERY direct to the wing!! Nice!

Great job here! Fingers crossed that the lawn guy got things done in time to set things up 🙂
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
I do sometimes suggest crate games as a really black and white way to teach some concepts, however the rate of reinforcement needs to be SUPER high, which means handler mechanics need o to be great… and if handler mechanics are great, then we can teach all of that stuff without a crate lol!
In the past, one of the problems I saw with CGs was that there was just too much punishment and not enough primary positive reinforcement. Admittedly, 20 years ago I didn’t really understand all of that but now it leaps out to me.
So I reward the dogs a bit for no busting out of crates and for letting me get their leashes on.
My main use of crates nowadays is about sending the dogs into them:
I use it as a life skill, as in please go in your crate, it is time for bed. Or, please go in your car crate, we need to leave.

I use that concept as in sport training too:
I shape the dogs to go into their crates and problem solve when I close the doors a little – especially when I introduce the MM.
And I use crates as destinations when teaching fancy things like tunnel-contact discriminations, to get the concepts in place before I finish training contacts.

I’ll pull up some videos and post them!

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

>>I’m leaning toward the sprinkler for the softer turns and keeping left and right for sharper turns. Some of this is because I have a hard time getting it all out on course. With Mari, “Check check” is for wraps to both sides, and I find I’m having trouble with Dellin remembering which is which, even when we are going around a trash can, so I figure it won’t get easier at speed 🙂

I have faith that it will be easier at speed because you will have so much rehearsal of it!

>>She had in person class last night (we do baby sequences – tunnel and a few 8″ jumps) and I could see her looking for her jumps and not looking at me – it was so exciting (the instructor commented on what a good job she did looking for the jumps). Anyway, to my previous point, I could barely remember what words to use on these tiny sequences! And she really has no understanding of the words yet. LOL And I was also having a proud mom moment looking at my puppy do things. She reminds me of Burst at that age, so there’s really no time to admire her while working.>>

So exciting!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!
Ask the instructor to get you to use the verbals. Or maybe insist that you use the verbals. The trick is to do a walk through and practice them. Most people HATE this – they are happy to walk the courses but hate hate hate when I ask them to do the verbals during the walk through LOL!!! But, great rehearsal makes great runs!

I am glad she was feeling better for class and the other training.

>>I need to do the threadle work separately – if I mix them in the same session, she thinks everything is a threadle. And yes, I use the cross arm for threadle so that should eventually help her.>>

Yes- but that is why you should mix them in the same session, even if it is simple: easy threadle angle versus a push to backside. We don’t want threadle autopilot 🙂

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

I agree, he transferred the concepts immediately! Yay! It was very cool to see him commit so brilliantly and you were able to do the FC and leave so early. No problem! He also transferred the ‘head turn’ concept – he was leading with his head and bending nicely!

Just when I was going to type “now do the turn and burn”… you did! Nice! You probably have to give him a clear line up cue and send, because he was trying to send himself LOL!! And you can also add your verbal wrap cues.

Since he did so well, you can bring your wings into the rocking horse games!

His stays are also improving a lot! Question: is ‘search’ a general find the treat on the ground marker, or is it specific to “you stay there, the treat is being tossed to you”. He might need that level of specificness 🙂

To get to be able to walk forward away and not back away from him, you can try this game lining up at your side first, so you it is easy to walk forward and not back away.

And of course you can do some crate games 🙂 I find that the rate of reinforcement (in terms of primary reinforcement) is often too low in crate games, and dogs get frustrated. So be sure to start easy and get lots and lots of rewards in 🙂
Some old school videos of a very twitchy pup:

Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

I don’t really do traditional crate games anymore 🙂 I lean more towards general “don’t bust out of the crate and chill out in it” rewards and some station work 🙂 I am happy to include lessons if you want!

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

About the wings – if you only have 2 wings and the barrel, I would put a barrel as one of the outer edges and a wing in the middle. I think using a wingless upright would not be a big enough visual for her at this stage.

About the cookie placement – the cookie should be where it ended up – so if she starts on your right and goes around, the cookie is in your right hand nice and low so she makes that last turn. It can be near your knee if that is what keeps her head straight. It ended up there, which is good, but the movement before it is what I suggest taking out, so have it ready in that hand (she will have to pass the cookie to go to bump #1 which is a great little distraction) and then you can basically leave the hand there and show her the cookie as she is bending into the last bump.

I agree about Gee and Haw! I think those are GREAT words… but they are so unnatural for me that it has been easier to use left and right 🙂

Rocking horses:
Consider these all to be front sides, until you do the full 360 degree turn (which is a backside wrap and we haven’t added them to the rocking horses yet :)) So the front side wrap verbals are appropriate – you can picture the bar being where she makes her first approach to the barrel.

First video:
Her commit to the barrels seems really strong! She seemed to be slipping less on the carpet than the mats here on the first video, but I still think she needs to sort out some coordination before you add too much of your speed and too much toy because she was pummeling the barrel on a bunch of reps, pushing it out of the way. I think part of it is she is very excited about the toy and motion so she is choosing to go a bit through the barrels rather than around the barrels. Part of it could be that they are clear so she can see you moving away and see the toy, which overrides the slowing down needed to make the turn.

So, 3 things to help with this:
Walk through these and use food. She is going to ramp up her own speed which is fine, but then we don’t need to also ramp up your speed and have the excitement of the toy. When she is consistently NOT pummeling the barrels, you can go faster and still use food. Then the toy can come back in when she is strong with your motion too.

Do you have opaque barrels? Not being able to see them might help.

If she still runs through the barrels with you walking, then we need to immediately transfer this to really solid big wings – basically to tell her: these do not move, you need to go around and not through. Part of that is also foot – she was still trying to sort out grip so it might be the kind of thing that proceeds slowly until you can get her to true agility footing. She was still slipping more that I would want on these.

One other little detail to keep things really clear for her. At 1:23 – yes, good catch, you needed more connection but you need to still reward her – she was correct and continued to commit even without connection. The error was yours, not her 🙂 Withholding reward is telling her it was an incorrect choice, which it was not and she checked out a little after that. Compare that to 2:07 when she didn’t commit and you gave her the toy… I think 1:23 was the better place to reward and I probably would have just resent then rewarded at 2:07.

The race tracks are going well! The easiest thing is to just run and connect rather than try to point out each barrel. Pointing out each barrel might be why the beginning felt weird. You started that run-and-connect at about :40 and it went really well!
For this level, don’t worry about your speed yet (it is mainly a commitment game for the dogs). Going really fast makes it hard for you to give her connection all to the time so there was a moment of broken connection at :50 (she legit thought you were doing a blind cross). Same as with the previous video: reward her because it was your error, not hers and it is confusing/frustrating to her when she doesn’t get rewarded for commitment. You upped the connection on the next rep and she went where you wanted. By moving slower, you will be more consistent with being able to show the connection.

Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

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