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Hi!
>>>>just work with starting the tunnel verbal, then let go, then reward him for turning away without you moving at all to help get the turn.>>
When I use the tunnel verbal in this scenario where he is turning away, should I use the threadle verbal (I decided to use “Flip” instead of “Kiss” since I just couldn’t remember/get the hang of that one), or do I say “Tunnel”?>>For the very beginning stages to get him turning away, you can say tunnel. As soon as he is turning away easily, add the new Flip verbal to it, to work the new verbal.
>>Regarding my commands…This is probably the nicest way anyone has ever pointed out that I am an idiot and was for sure using the wrong command for the turn! Ha ha ha!!! I was totally not thinking and just said right/left based on what arm I was using. Doh!! Well at least I only did one session of that so I’m sure the verbals haven’t stuck yet and I can change it.
Teehee! We have all done that. When I was doing the demos for this, I did an entire session with my verbals backwards. Oops! I deleted it but I should have saved it as a blooper reel LOL! And sometimes the video is mirrored and the handler was correct.
>>And on another funny note, somebody managed to get a hold of their hand target somehow and had a shred fest. 🙂 I guess I will have to get a fresh one. Ha!>>
HA! He really wanted to internalize the lesson LOL
Tracy
Good morning!
He started off really well with the minny pinny! Good job convincing him to line up straight before starting, that is helpful and important!
>>It was interesting how he was doing so well with the right turns and then kind of lost it and started cheating even when nothing had really changed.
I think 2 things had changed: the middle wing moved out, and also he had a number of reps already before he started changing his behavior. The number of reps can produce fatigue or behavior change because it is too repetitive (dogs are not used to doing the same thing 10 times in a row, so they offer something different) or both. I have been guilty of not recognizing that – it is easy for me to stand there and have the dog do it 20 times without remembering that it is a bit of a plyometric exercise that is pretty challenging for the dog.
When you added the toy toss between the 2nd and 3rd wing, that really helped him understand to leave you and it spiced things up s he was happy to all the way out. Based on this session and the tunnel session, he is a lefty so the right turn games will progress differently: the left turn games can get more challenging more quickly (same # of reps, but added challenge) and the right turn games can build up the challenge more slowly as he gets comfy with turning right (both of my MaxPup demo pups are lefties as well).
So on the next session, set a timer, do 5 reps to one direction, 5 reps the other direction, then be done 🙂 That will prevent the fatigue and also prevent him from offering other behavior because it seems odd to do the same thing too many times in a row,
Rocking horses:
>> You said: “…you can mix in tossing th reward to the ‘landing’ side (other side) of the barrels as you continue to move away… have a lot of the reward tossed to the other side of the barrel when you move away…” Wait, what?! Can you explain if I did any of my rewards in this one right as far as what you meant? >>You might need to consider things visually: Think of the barrels as a jump wing and as he is starting to wrap the barrel, he is going over an invisible bar. To convince him to leave you to go over the invisible bar (and therefore wrap the barrel), you will want to throw the reward to where he would be landing from the invisible bar, which puts the barrel between you and the toy. You were closest to that at :27. On the other rewards, you were dropping it near you which builds value for drivingback to you, but not as much value for leaving you. Let me know if that makes more sense 🙂
There was a lot of lovely work happening here!!! His commitment looked good, it looks better and better each time you work these. For example, your spin at 1:32 was great: nice early rotation and moving away! And that made the blind look easy.
One suggestion for when you are doing the crosses: run more of a back and forth line in the middle and not towards the outside of the barrel as much – you are moving to the barrel entry which ends up blocking his line because you are standing on it 🙂His victory lap was hilarious – he ran a mini course then took himself up stairs, too funny! To prevent those, you can let him have a quick zoom with the toy and then you can offer a trade for another toy or cookie.
I think he really liked the race tracks! Fun! For the arm position arm on the race tracks, either keep your dog side arm really low and back to him, or pump your arms like a sprinter and run and connect – when you pointed forward, he lost connection and ended up on your other side (probably looked like the beginning of a blind cross). My only other suggestion is to say your wrap verbals on these and don’t say go becaue go is an extension line and he was wrapping 🙂
Great job on these – I think he liked this session a whole lot! Note the differenece in his reaction when you asked if he was ready towards the end versus the beginning LOL! Yay!
Tracy
Good morning!
I love your setup – so colorful! And I love how when you said “you ready?” he gave a joyful little leap. SO CUTE! I agree – he took all of the challenges in stride, figuratively and literally 🙂He had no trouble at all with the verbals being added, and I like how they sounded significantly different than your other verbals. That is important!!
The first few reps were easy for him when the wings were touching. You can add more bounce challenge to this by having the two outer bumps angle in a little more towards the center bump, to encourage a tight bounce.
When you move the middle one further away, he might not be able to bounce all of the distances on a bend yet, which is fine – so you can move the 2 outer bumps back into the position they were in here so he has more room to sort out his feet 🙂On the first rep of each new distance of the middle bump, he had a moment of WHOA! and had to put his head down and sort out the striding. And he did! He was totally working this bending skill by leading with his head to bend nicely and use his rear. The 2nd rep was always much better than the first rep, good boy! And soon enough those “WHOA!” moments will go away because he will get used to reading lines and making instant adjustments.
My only suggestion is to convince him to line up straight at your side and face the minny pinny straight on – he is starting sideways to it, looking more at you and perpendicular to you – and that makes the initial approach harder to sort out out the footwork. So I recommend a good old fashioned cookie lure to help convince him to line up (I am confident that he will be happy to eat the extra line up cookie LOL!!!)
So adding in lining up as straight as possible, almost in heel position: if he is super solid for another session like he was here, add in distance by starting him one giant step further back.
Great job!!!
TracySUPER GOOD BOY here turning both directions AND ignoring all of the distractions. HAPPY DANCE! I think he looked great here – the retrieves were lovely but the ignoring of big trial distractions was truly top notch. Yay!
I saw no difference between left and right turns here, that is great! A bit of latent learning, perhaps? My only suggestion is that for the games where he is doing a complete U-turn to drive back to you to get the toy (:03 and :17 for example), he will have an easier time with something he can scoop up like a giant hollee roller. Getting the toy off the ground made it hard to stop his momentum and I don’t want him to jam himself. On the 90 degree turns in the more ramped up level like at :29 and the last rep, he was able to scoop and turn without jamming himself – yay! So that toy seems fine for that angle.Great job here!!!! How did the Regional turn out with the other dogs?
Tracy
Good morning!
>>now feeling hopelessly behind in class
You can skip around to some of the non-prop stuff that is simpler – the prop stuff is pretty technical and there are plenty of games that you can just check off pretty easily. That can reduce the feeling of being behind! And also you’ll find that as soon as the concepts are sorted at the early levels (like on the prop) then the rest of the stuff gets SUPER easy and you fly through it.
Looking at the prop games here, you had each of the 3 concepts going: parallel path, countermotion, rear crosses. Lots of good work!!! Working through each concept:
The parallel path looked great! Check it off LOL and move to the concept transfer version of the game, where she does it on a baby jump:
The countermotion games are also going well – one suggestion is to be more specific about the cue and less quick/looped in and out of it. If the transition happens too quickly from the cookie reward to the movement forward to the send/countermotion, she is not quite ready for the cue and the quality of the sends loses some crispness (if you watch her closely, she was still chewing/swallowing on some of the reps when you were already moving back to the next cue LOL!! She was a bit in catch up mode because of that). So to make it clearer, you can have her start in front of, make eye contact (ask her if she is ready :)) – then send with the sideways send and show the countermotion. Then reward – and after the reward, take a moment to reset, make the eye contact (let he finish chewing haha) then send again. I have that the reset moment helps with success and actually makes the behavior a bit more explosive because the dog is more ready for the cue, and there is a little bit anticipation being built up because we are not going directly into it.
The rear crosses are getting started nicely and your reward placement was SPOT ON! And that really helped her. To get the RCs even smoother, you need to be earlier in terms of cutting behind her line. You were late on these, she didn’t see the RC info until after she was already committed to turn towards you on the prop hit.
Ideally, when she is still about a foot away from the prop (or more), she is already seeing you finish cutting behind her – that means your motion towards that line starts sooner too, so start her further away from the prop so you have more room to cut in. When she arrives at the prop, you should be fully on the new side of her (and you will see that she is also already turned to the new direction :))I like visuals on this one, so check out these screenshots:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JQOVT0ZMnI3phH2kNspa162XtTfLciNdD8B9nD9UNBI/edit?usp=sharing
You can see at :09, 1:06 and 1:11 she is about a foot away from her prop and you are just beginning the RC info (at 1:06 and1:11 you can see she is already turning towards you there). For comparison purposes, look at the next 3 screenshots of me and Elektra: I am fully behind her when she is about a foot from the prop and almost on the new side so she turns the correct direction (you can see her head already turned before she arrived at the prop).
Let me know if that makes sense! And keep going with the great reward placement – it helps the dogs understand the rear cross pressure as the cue, even if we are late.
Great job!
TracyGood morning!
>>can’t tell you enough how much I’m getting out of your feedback on these videos and how much I love working on concepts away from agility equipment and separate from jumping skills. >>
Yay! You are doing a great job with it – and when he is old enough, it all comes together in a heartbeat. It makes it really reinforcing to us humans to do all of these things separately then suddenly have an adult dog who can run high level courses with speed and accuracy.
>>Leo shows minimal frustration in our training sessions since everything is broken down into steps that we can both accomplish, and I’m not getting any more tooth hugs these days>>
This right here is the BEST part!!!!! Learning happens when everyone is relaxed and happy and successful – tooth hugs are feedback from the dog that perhaps we are not being clear enough 🙂 And since the dog is our partner, we need to be supportive and clear.
>>In the meantime, here is our Minny Pinny work. I keep forgetting to wait for feedback on Baby level stuff before moving on to Advanced version,>>
The minny pinny is the type of game where we can go from baby level to advanced in one or two sessions – not every game is this easy LOL!
The baby level is going well -you had a little extra arm pointing to get him started and he was watching the reward move at first, but then he totally figured it out and was whipping around the wings really well. NICE! You had really good reward placement – the food worked perfectly and he was GREAT with the toy: faster and more excited… but he didn’t lose the accuacy and thoughtfulness. he was benidng really nicely! GOOD BOY!! I think the toy worked better than the food when the food was in the send hand (for baby and advanced levels) because he didn’t feel the need to watch the toy.
On little detail: resist temptation to say go to get him started 🙂 because go is an extension cue. The release word worked better and then adding the left/right verbals were great.
Advanced level – as he adds more speed here, either lock in the bars (by sticking the jump cup through the open end so they don’t fall if he touches them) or use something he can’t knock as he is learning this – just so he doesn’t get desensitized to dropping bars.
At first, he was looking up more when turning to his left, didn’t notice this on the wings without bars as much – left turns might be his harder side so the cookies are more salient (he was watching the cookie hand) – but he also might need latent learning to kick in on the left – when you came back to it later in the session, he was MUCH smoother! The right turns looked strong throughout. So if he is a righty, you can start a session on the right turns to ‘warm up’ the skill before going to the left turns.
One other small detail: For now, start him really close so he doesn’t come in with speed yet – he was losing a bit of rhythm/coordination when he started closer to the fence behind him. Have him start with his front feet about a foot or less from the first bar or bump so he basically takes off from there ad doesn’t stride in to it.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Super session here!
>>Jumps were backwards at first. >>
Ha! She didn’t seem to mind though 🙂
The MP on the wings looked really good and easy for her. Good reward placement on the cookies! And adding the toy boosted the excitement but she didn’t lose any of the precision on the behavior. Super!!!
When you reset for the next rep, try to have her bum lined up straight and almost heel position so she is not starting sideways to the first wing/bump. I think this became very important when you added the bumps and she had a significant difference between left turns and right turns. While it is possible that she is better turning to her right than her left right now, it also looked like her starting position was different: a bit sideways at :51 and :54 and straight on your right at 1:02 and 1:04. On the first rep on each side, you were moving a bit so she came in with more speed and seemed surprised by the bump – so lining her up pretty close and straight, and taking on step rather than a bigger shoulder turn should her smooth it out.Those are small details and you can totally add your left/right verbals at this point to name the behavior, especially on the right turns! The left turns might need a rep or two more without verbals but then I am confident you can add the verbal.
>. Interesting how much mud is getting on her dew claws. First dog to have them.>>
YES! So interesting to watch how the dogs use their wrists and toes when they drive – wowza! And if you ever wrap her (flyball-style) when she works (especially on artificial surfaces) the dirt/wear on the vet wrap really indicates how much the stopper pads and dew claws are engaged. Fascinating!!
Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
Keeping chill for a few days… so hard!
>Wondering if you have any ideas for low energy, low motion stuff to work on while he heals up.
Does he know single foot isolations, meaning he can lift one foot at a time? It is kind of like ‘shake paw’ but he is in a stand and can do it with any foot you put your hand next to.
>>I’m thinking mat work (which he’s already decent at but using a flat mat with no edge – not our regular hop up on cot) and a bit of working on reacting less to dogs barking (kind of a new and intermittent thing) but figure some DS/CC to it can’t hurt.
yes, I love mat work! And DS/CC is ALWAYS a good thing – I mean, it can’t hurt and can only help! What about some control unleashed games, like Look At That or 1-2-3 (which is done at a slow walk, I believe). I use variations on those games in new environments or when there might a ‘trigger’ of some sort – my variations are a bit twitchier then true control unleashed (perhaps because I am a bit twitchier haha) but you can do the calm versions 🙂
>> We’ve got hand touch, fist bump and chin rest that we can refresh and add some more duration to.
Since you have a chin rest going – a calm but difficult game is getting the dogs to take a breath 🙂 I do this by holding a cookie in front of the dog’s nose until I see him breath in – then he can have the cookie 🙂 It is a good outside-the-ring game for my dogs that are a bit “hotter” when waiting their turns 🙂 You can do this using a chin rest. And you can also take the chin rest and have him learn that very cute head-down-chin-on-the-ground trick 🙂
>>Most of the other stuff I think of is higher energy, faster, moving stuff and trying to think of other things. Open to any suggestions (classmates too feel free to chime in here).>>
Yes, the other stuff is mainly high energy. If he is allowed to walk or slow trot, have you tried slow cavalettis? Those are pretty non-explosive (I did them with one of my dogs as prehab for luxating patella surgery)> There is another version of it called mountain climbers where the dog is stationary and lifting a rear foot back and forth over a super low cavaletti:
Let me know what you think! We have a sheet of ice on the ground and 10 bored dogs here, so I might come up with other games today too LOL!
Tracy
Good morning!!
>>tunnel threadles release work – I was questioning the use of a RELEASE word or just use the obstacle or handling cue “Close”. She is struggling with turning right on threadles. I didn’t include those videos but she just stopped forward motion after turning and would not enter the tunnels; so I added back the tunnel cue and then tried to fade it. >>
I think the tunnel verbal to start then fading it/relpacing it with the threadle verbal will work nicely – and if she was having trouble on one side (totally normal), placing the reward just inside the tunnel will totally help (I don’t have video of it, but I put the frisbee just inside the tunnel entry for my Hot Sauce to get her to turn to her left on these tunnel threadles LOL!)
>> so much fun to play with her in a larger space.>>
She was great! I am so impressed with her focus and speed in a big new place!
On the rocking horses: Your FCs look good! Her commitment looks lovely – that was great to see because she seems to have had no trouble generalizing the behavior to this new place. Super!!! Are youusing ‘around’ as your wrap-to-me verbal?
Your spin starting at :16 looked good, good timnig! You can add in trying to move away to the next barrel as part of it. It is more important to keep moving than it is to do the immediate blind, because doing the blind immediately was causing you to get stuck in that spot. Think of it as doing the FC, starting to run away to the next barrel, then doin the BC at some point after that.
At :24 start your FC sooner to both move away sooner and get the BC sooner – her distance to the barrel looks great so I think you can push things earlier and see how she does.
The racetracks look great too! I don’t think you need an arm up to suppot her line, as it draws her focus up to you a bit – you can try this with running & pumping your arms, like on a big course 🙂One other suggestion: She was not always sure when the toy was in play for grabbing or not 🙂 so you can have it more squished up in your hand when you use your arms to just run – and add a marker word for when she can have the toy in your hand (I say “bite” in that situation if I am stationary, or I make a shhhhhh noise if I plan to keep moving and want the dog to get the toy).
Her turn and burns looked great and she seemed to really like them!
>>Tunnels, wraps and backsides – first time outside of my living room practicing wraps and backsides. She was having fun!>>
She was awesome! Even more awesome considering this was the first time she was doing these in a new place!!!! Her tunnel commitment looked really strong and so did her backside commitment. Her wrap commitment looked good too – you can turn sooner on those, so you are rotating and moving away as she is passing you (sam ea no the barrels). The earlier rotation should help her get a collection before she gets to the wing. For now, do it on just a wing without a bar, so she can sort out the collection and you can sort out the timing. When she is trying to do it with a bar, there is a lot of sort out 🙂 and she ends up jumping a little long and landing on her front. I would take the bar out of i tuntil you see her approaching the wing with her head already turned the new direction – that is a good indication that she understnads the collection (on the bar, she was jumpingith her head straight which means she was not making the adjustment for the big collection
Great job here!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
One of the porridge heating goals is to eventually be able to use food and toys in the same session and to know what helps get his focus into the perfect spot in every situation. That takes a long time and I don’t think we really know that until the dogs have been trialing for a year or so! We start it now to build the toolbox then we play with it for quite a while 🙂The minny pinny looked great! As the middle jump gets further away, you can go to adding throwing reinforcement between 2 and 3, to really keep the commitment solid (he won’t be sad about stopping for cookies LOL!!) And, you can also get a bit more bouncing by changing the angle of the 2 outer bumps (the ones closer to you) – scoot the bumps in so they are angled towards the middle bump, which creates a little less distance between 1 and 2, and 2 and 3. He won’t bounce when the middle bump is moved out away, so this is only for when they are all close together.
Yes, you can think about how you want to deliver the left/right cues. When the dog is running, I am not totally convinced they make out the difference in each word by itself. I think they also respond to the energy and rhythm of the word: wrap cues are short and repeated fast and quieter. GO is long and loud GOOOO GOOOOO GOOOOO 🙂 so the left/right can be somewhere in the middle: medium volume, and extended. I try to say them as a question: “Leeehft? Leeehft?” Or “riiiiiiight? Riiiiiiight?” That makes them sound completely different than any of the other verbals which seems to help!
You don’t need to move the middle bump much further away for now (that would change the directional on the first bump) so you can move yourself a little further away to start him further back and see how he does.
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Lots of good stuff here!!!!
Tunnel threadle: He does have some question about the turn aways to get into the tunnel, so you end up using a lot of physical cue to get him into it on the threadle entries especially on the right turns. For now, break it down a bit more so he doesn’t need you to stand still or move to the entry – warm up each session with him on the inside and pretty close to the entry, and your hand on his collar (you can be kneeling or bending or sitting since he is little 🙂 and just work with starting the tunnel verbal, then let go, then reward him for turning away without you moving at all to help get the turn.
And do tons and tons of normal straight tunnel sends without your motion, so he is frothing at the bit to go into tunnels 🙂 That will help him find the threadle entries more easily because the tunnel will have more value.
It is pretty normal that the pups have a strong side and a weak side. His left turns on these will progress faster than his right turns – so on the left turn tunnel threadles, you can meet him more at the exit of the tunnel and be moving forward the whole time. For the right turn tunnel threadles, you might need to just work the turn away element without body motion to help so he gets comfortable turning to his right on these without waiting for a physical cue to help.
Porridge heating:
He did well with the food here! A tweak of the mechanics – you can have him follow the cookie around as the reward, but I think he was confused about following it before the cued behavior. So a little bit of ready ready excitement game-on posture will work before you ask for a trick, then the cookie can move and dance during the reward delivery.That will also get you standing up for most of it – you can be upright except for the tricks that need you to cue them with a low hand, then deliver the cookie low, then upright again (we don’t want to make your back angry, plus I think that being upright will help with the transition into the sit cue). He was a little surprised by the first sit cue 🙂 but the 2nd one at the end looked great and so did his stay and focus!
He seemed really animated here for the food! And there will be situations where the toy works better – and moments where you use both food and the toy! At this point, you can experiment with this game in different situations, different locations, different times of day (because being tired or hungry might make a difference). It takes a while to know what works best, so take this game on the road and see how he does!
Minny Pinny
He totally has this one figured out 🙂 And your reward mechanics were really strong, getting him in on that last turn after the 3rd wing. Super!
Check your verbals before each rep – either the video was mirrored or you were calling left a right and vice versa (unless you are naming the verbals after the arm you send him in and not the direction he turns? )
One mechanics suggestion: After each rep, line him up at your side again so he moves into the next rep straight (and not being turned away). That will smooth out the first approach to the wing in the wing where he had questions later on in the video – the handling context will help get him going there as you add the verbal.
He looks ready for baby jump bumps (if you have 2 inch bumps?) or pool noodles or rolled up towels 🙂 to be added in as the jump “bars” for now. Start with the middle wing moved back in for that but then I bet you can move it out again pretty quickly! As that middle wing gets further away, you can keep the value of going out to it high by mixing in tossed rewards that land between bar 2 and 3.Rocking horse:
Good connection on the exits of the barrels and the FC and spin exits! He seemed to always know which side of you to be on as you exits a cross and that is great!
It is a fun winter/basement game, so we can add some more challenge: Try this with no arm sends at all for now (or very little arm sends) as those arm sends are where the mistakes and questions happen like at :08 where he thought you did a blind. So you can use a tiny arm send but keep it super low and maintain massive connection the whole way through. You used very little arm at :30, for example and also at :55 and he committed really well!Adding in the racetracks can help too, as it will get his eyes off of you and onto the barrels more.
One more thing to add: the reward is coming near you and in the center between the barrels, so you can mix in tossing th reward to the ‘landing’ side (other side) of the barrels as you continue to move away. He wants to be closer to you and the reward (ok, mainly the reward, don’t take it personally haha) so have a lot of the reward tossed to the other side of the barrel when you move away will really help him leave you to commit more easily.Good morning! I am excited to hear you are having a good time at the Regional – the photos, videos and maps coming across Facebook look great! And it is a wonderful opportunity to get Ronan doing ‘things’ in that environment. It looks cold, though… LOL!
On the minny pinny video:
He did really well when it was all scrunched up, no problem at all finding the line around the 3 wings.
>> We are waiting for some (fake) jump bumps and will use those next time. It seemed like Ronan didn’t necessarily “see” the bars as much as the wings themselves. >>
I agree, the bars were not all that salient to him so you can do bumps or you can get pool noodles and slide them over the bars to give him a bigger visual on those.
>> >> I think in combination with too little motion in some reps caused him to go in between the wings vs going all the way out around them (and over the bars).>>
I think he was probably not fully ready for the wing to be that far out – try it where it is far enough away that it is not touching the other wings, but he can’t really fit himself between it and the first two wings. That way you don’t need to add motion to get him out there, he will go on the verbal. The motion definitely helped but it also produced a wider turn, so we can teach him to go find it on his own and set up the turn by himself too 🙂
It looks like this middle wing was maybe a foot or less away from the other 2 wings, which is not a lot but he can still squeeze himself in there LOL. So try it just 3 or 4 inches away where he can see the gap but can’t really fit 🙂 And as he is deciding about that middle bar: when he gets it, toss a treat or toy out to the landing side of it so we shift some value out there. The reward would land between the 2nd and 3rd bar. I think each time you move the middle wing away, you throw in some reps of tossing the treat out on the landing side of #2 to keep the value fresh 🙂>>Questions/comments: 1) He steps in between the bars and doesn’t “bounce” for some of the reps with Karena.
He was trying to sort out his leads and the bending, which is all good. Bouncing will come when there is something more to jump (like a bump or a higher bar) and we can tweak the distance between the bars to encourage bouncing. These early sessions are more about getting the bending, the bouncing will get added in later on.
>>2) Should we be going for as much speed as in the last reps with Mike? Maybe doing this earlier in the day might have helped :).
I think the speed caused the turns to get wider so no, keep things chill for now 🙂 The speed will add itself in when we blow it up into full blown pinwheels as he grows up – eventually on really distances, he will run hard to the middle jump, set up a great turn, run hard back to you on the line with very little effort for you other than a send and some verbals. Yay! So for now, he can work through it without a lot of speed so he can sort out what to do with all of those legs 🙂
Nice work! Let me know what you think and good luck today at the Regional!
Tracy
Hi! I will get the link to the turf and post it – it was not too expensive and pretty nice!
She definitely needs more grip so a ring rental would be good too – on the rocking horses, she isn’t really bending because she is holding her core and hind end tight to keep from slipping. Her commitment looked really good, so when you revisit this in a gripper place 🙂 you can add more distance between the 2 cones. Be sure to plan the handling ‘moves’ though – she did best when you were very clear and I think a couple of were more improvised (like the post turn to the throw back) so she kind of went judgey on your there and slowed down 🙂 Also, when you plan your handling moves, plan where the reward will be at the end – then put it in that hand and leave it there. You were moving it hand to hand, which delays info and is a hard visual for her. You probably don’t realize your are doing it so try to convince the toy to stay in one hand 🙂
The head turns are looking good, she is doing well!!! To start the rep, line her up at your side and send her in for one forward wrap, before “grabbing” her head and flipping her away. That will give her a little more speed coming into it 🙂 And it will help you start to click a great head turn on her very first approach to the upright, which is ultimately what we want 🙂 If you see her give a great head turn on that first forward send to the upright, you can click and toss the treat for that.
>I had a question that I keep forgetting to ask you pertaining to the minny pinny and left/right cues. If I’m understanding the way you are using “left” and “right” in this context, it’s the way Terry uses the sprinkler cue with Burst – for a soft-ish turn (in either direction), generally only over jumps (not sure if he uses it in other contexts), so she knows there’s a soft turn staying on the same lead (and not going straight). Left and right cues are for more “dramatic” or sharper turns.>>
Admittedly, I am not up-to-date with my H360 info 🙂 but I don’t think the left/right is the same as the sprinkler – the left right is more of a 90 degree collection, asking the dog to make an almost L-shaped turn to land parallel to the jump.
Think of it like this, if you can picture the geometry:
on a GO over a jump, the dog runs a straight line perpendicular to the bar.
on a wrap cue, the dog turns 180 degrees to come back around the wing
on a left or right, the dog’s path is a right angle approx, so his landing line is parallel to the bar
It sounds like the sprinkler is more generic and the dogs path is somewhere halfway between a go and a left/right?(bearing in mind that agility lines are not pure geometry, but that is the general idea).
I use it on jumps, tunnels and off contacts (I know people who have different verbals for tunnel exits and for contact exits but I find my dogs are happy with the same set of verbals)
>>I guess my question is what do you use for sharper turns and then what are your thoughts on the above. I like the sprinkler since it’s two less words to remember
Some of my front side cues are wraps (all the way around the wing), left/right (90 degree turns) and GO fir straight. If a turn is pretty mild and somewhere between left/right and go, I would probably either say the dog’s name or just say “jump” or the next obstacle or perhaps not say anything and take a moment to breathe haha
Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! He is doing really well with understanding the threadles versus serps here! Yay!
>>My mechanics, ugh. I will keep working on them. >>
The mechanics only feel wonky because you are starting from a cookie toss, so you don’t really have time to get into a good position and you have less control of his starting point (plus the tosses land close by so he doesn’t have a smooth line to the threadle). The errors were all cookie-toss-based LOL! So…. he is a year old now, yes? Time for a stay 🙂 This game gets much much easier for both of you from a stay – how is his stay going? Work it on the flat and in front of the jump and the MM, then add it here. Don’t be worried about it, time to add it in 🙂
The other thing you can do is have your threadle arm a little higher now, especially the cross arm. You won’t be able to bend over as much when you are moving, so you can start being more upright and see how he does (I am sure he will be fine with it 🙂 )
I am glad to hear that the barrels are going well! Yay! Keep me posted – looking forward to more videos. Nice work here!
TracyHi! I think this is going really well, your mechanics are looking good! My only suggestions are:
– to line him up straight at your side before you send him in each time. Sometimes he is straight and that looks good, sometimes he is a little sideways and that makes for a more awkward approach LOL!
– you can extend the left and right verbal so he hears it all the way though to the last bar. Instead of leftleftleft really fast, think of it as leeeeeft leeeeeft leeeeft so he can have all of the turns named. Same with right!
Those are minor details – it is going really well! You can keep gradually moving the middle jump out, and feel free to toss some rewards out to the landing of the middle one to help support the commitment to it. Nice work!
Tracy
