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Hello again! She is doing really well here too – the different angles were not a problem 🙂 The only suggestions here are the same ones as above: show her the connection and arm positions separately from the release cue, not all at once.
And on the threadles, work to have her take the jump on her own without you needing to turn your shoulders or use an arm to cue the jump after she comes in. Keep moving forward, with the threadle cue going – then when she turns her head away and looks at the jump: big party 🙂 She had that question at :19 here, so that extra layer of understanding will help her. And then you can add more motion. Yay!Great job on both of these!
TracyGood morning!
Yay, Sport! It was fun to see her make an appearance. She looks great!!Really nice session here! A couple of ideas for you for the next sessions:
As you move into position, show the serp or threadle arm and be connected as you move into position then release. Two reasons for this:
– first, I think she was releasing on your reconnection and the arm movement, and we don’t want her to think that the motion or eye contact is the release (only the verbal is the release :))
– second, if you show it to her for a few steps before the release, she will have more time to process it and will have an even higher level of success 🙂You might feel like a total goofball walking out with your arm up and shoulders turned 🙂 but it will help her read the difference and help you add more motion too 🙂
The other side looked really good today – no distractions. YAY!!
One other little thing is about threadles: she is coming in beautifully but she is not as sure about going back out to the jump and I think she is relying on you to help cue it… and if you are not perfect (like at 1:38) she doesn’t take the jump. So for the threadles, stay super close to the jump and keep moving with the threadle arm out, shoulders rotated, til she turns herself away to take the jump. That is the ideal meaning of the threadle cue: come in and take the jump 🙂
She is great with the tunnel cues – she really loves it and I think it shows a lot of self-control on the other cues!!
Great job here! Onwards to super advanced next 🙂
T
Good morning! Nice work here, I love that he was able to get into end position while being super confident with the movement of the board. Yay!
You mentioned using a tab or harness a while back – let’s get those incorporated, so you can get him right to the end of the board, get him excited, then cue the position. Starting him right at the end will help him engage his rear more to explode onto it (and we are all about getting him to use his hind end on this behavior at the end of the board :)) And plus, it allows you to hold him and get him pumped up to start the game: that allows him to focus on the position and explode into it, more than the transition from the cookie bringing him into it does. He was super confident with the motion, so I am sure he is ready for you to add the challenge of starting right at the end of the board and more excitement in the form of you holding him and doing a little ‘ready… ready…’ before the target cue 🙂He did well with you adding motion and your releases were also super clear. In your next session, continue walking past but don’t stop moving until you have done 3 steps *after* you are completely sure he has stopped in position. Dogs are brilliant at reading our changes of motion, so we want to be sure he stops no matter what you do 🙂 Those 3 steps can be very sloooooooow but that will help make sure you don’t get into the rhythm of decelerating and stopping as he is stopping because we don’t want him to think that is part of the cue.
Then you can either toss the reward back in position, run back to deliver it, or release forward.Great job here! Let me know if the ideas make sense 🙂
TracyGood morning! The neighbor dog cracked me up! And the wind was WILD, we had some of that here too this week. Eek!!
>>I tried to just let her be successful on a tunnel.>>
I think that was perfect, helping her out to add in a success 🙂 This game is wicked hard, in that we are asking her to process 3 different cues (that look pretty similar) AND ignore the wind AND ignore the neighbor dog LOL! She was a VERY good girl!
It was interesting to see how the value shifted from the tunnel at the beginning… to the jump by the end.
>First attempts I did not open up my chest enough >>
yes – good assessment. In the face of the delicious tunnel, you can be closer to the jump, point your feet to the tunnel like you did and exaggerate the rotation of the upper body – almost like the center of your chest is rotated alllll the way to where she would take off. This was especially important on the early reps where she was sitting parallel to the jump and facing the tunnel 🙂 On the serp reps where she was angled a bit more and facing the jump more and the tunnel less, she had an easier time with it plus your cue was really good 🙂
And because the tunnel is sooooo tempting – as you add motion to the serpentine, you can also shake your serp arm a little to help catch her eye 🙂The threadles looked great! No problems here! You can add more motion to those and also add your threadle cue instead of the normal release.
And at the end, when she was all about the jump and couldn’t find the tunnel – that was just a value shift, so you were 100% correct to help her out 🙂 You can be on the takeoff side of the jump to help like you did at the end, or you can reach over the bar to help her – feel free to exaggerate 🙂 Any time the value shifts, we can exaggerate the opposite cue to help get the behavior (and the value is going to swing back and forth like a pendulum for a while as she is learning here 🙂
Nice work here!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi there! These are looking strong, just a couple of suggestions to move forward to the next steps!
On the bang game with motion: one of the things that I like to do is look at the math of success rates when there are repeated errors, and also to let me know when I can go to the next step. I aim for 90-95% success rate for 2 sessions in a row before adding variables. And if I am working at a lower success rate, I will change something to raise the rate of success.
He was working at about 70% rate of success here, which means we can change something to get into the 90-95% zone. I think 2 things can help:
– first, get 2 complete sessions at super high rate of success without adding more to the motion or more excitement. This is a relatively ‘new’ behavior for him, and I am conjecturing that because of the running dog walk (which he already has been trained on, right?) we are also working to shift the conditioned response of running on a board when you run. So there is a little bit of history to change up.
– second, based on the elevator game which did NOT have the MM out front… if it possible that the MM is eliciting the RUN response (because he runs to it when weaving, and maybe you also used it during running dog walk training?) . So with the MM out front, you are trying to both train the new behavior AND countercondition the response to the MM especially with your motion. That might be toooooooo much for now and the source of the errors.
So, simple answer: take it out for now 🙂 Just continue your ‘catch’ rewards as you move past, throwing back and low. He is more likely to stop when you do that, and I am not worried about where he is looking at this point because his understanding of the end behavior is really blossoming 🙂On the elevator game: Great job with the mechanics needed for holding, counting down, dropping, rewarding, etc. Yay!!! He did really really well here – and no MM out ahead, yes? (Or if there was, you did not use it). One little tweak for now: always reward in position for now, putting the reward on the target (the scratching was FUNNY and also perfectly fine to do LOL!)
There are 2 reasons why I think rewarding in position is better for now:
– first, it builds even more value into the “stop there!” that we want at the end and will also help your bang game 🙂
– second, when you reward by throwing the reward, the mechanics are really hard: you are moving the cookie hand to toss the treat, he starts to move… and then you were saying the release. That might accidentally cause him to think the release is when you move! And that is what we are asking him to NOT do…. so better to reward in position right now. If you watch the reps at 1:25 and 1:36 in slow motion, you will see it clearly 🙂
So after a reward in position – say the release cue, then wait for him to move or tap the ground to encourage him (which is fine because it is such a distinct motion we would never use on course, hopefully)… and then reset for the next rep.And, with rewarding in position, you can move to the next 2 steps of the elevator game: adding more height (but with you still staying next to the board) and with a little less height: starting to slowly move forward after you cue the target and drop the board. I think he is ready for that!
Let me know what you think! He is doing really well so we are just obsessing on tiny details 🙂
Tracy
Good morning!
>>Regarding the blinds…just checking that I need to turn in the same direction as the send around the wing and then blind.
Yes – turn away from her, not towards her. Moving towards the wing will help that – sending and not moving will cause your muscle memory to want to do a spin.
>> Because I really want to send to the wing and reverse spin, it seems like much less work, tighter turn, with the dog ending on the same side as the turn with the dog and the blind.>>
Actually with the blinds here… there is a side change. For example on the spin, if I start her on my left: she ends on my left. But on the blind, she starts on my left but ends on my right. And done at the right time it is just as tight or tighter 🙂 It feels like more work because it is a bit weird LOL!!! Most of us use front crosses for side changes on tighter turns but there are times when the blind is a better/faster/tighter choice 🙂
>> I have experienced the turn in the same direction as the dog results in the wider path (perhaps because I am late). Sorry, my head just goes to that answer as you tell me to start my blind as she is entering her wrap>>
That is why we are starting the tight turn blinds – it is more handler training than puppy training 🙂 Blinds can be wider-than-desired due to timing, connection (or lack thereof), or the line the handler runs (or all of the above, I’ve been guilty of being late, disconnected, and on a poor line all at the same time haha!!!! The same can be said for front crosses and spins, but blinds are probably the least comfy for us humans. But when you get comfy with them – wow! So useful!!! And keeps us getting to amazing locations on course in front of these little speed demons 🙂
Let me know if that makes sense 🙂
Tracy
Good morning! These games are going really well!
On the elevator game – the mechanics are looking good and he did really well! One suggestion: let him finishing licking the hop on reward before the countdown – he was fully engrossed in the licking so didn’t multitask the target cue that well LOL!! So you can do the tiniest bit of hop on cookie then wait… and when he kind of looks up, then start the countdown to the target cue.
You can add in motion now: as you drop the board, also start to walk forward to challenge him to hold target position as you add motion. It will also get rid of that curling in that he was doing when you were rewarding on your left side.
Separately, add more height on the board – lift it a little higher as he hops on.
I think he will be fine with both of these so if he is… you can do both: higher board AND adding motion 🙂Bang Game: Yes, this went REALLY well!!!! Having to balance on the moving board might have helped, plus the 8 million rewards at the end of the board on all the games help too: he is getting conditioned to stopping at the end without having to think about it much 🙂 Also, there was no MM out front as a distraction and not a lot of motion from you. So building on this success: keep adding your motion by just gradually moving faster and faster, then toss in a front or bind cross. If he is happy with that, we can add in a MM out front (8 feet away or so) as a challenge, but no need for that right now – we can just focus on motion.
Great job here!!!
TracyGood morning!
I am super excited by his progress here!!! He is right on track to be in the perfect place for the next games coming Monday. Happy dance!
Bang game fading the target: looks fabulous.
I don’t think he was really using he target so I am glad you faded it, and and he looked pretty much the same without it. Super!
Maybe one little tweak: Have him line up right next to the end of the board to challenge his balance and strength jumping on, rather than a running start.
I think the next step of this game is to see if you can take it on the road anywhere – in new places, the target can still be visible. Any other locations with teeters that you can do a little field trip to? If so, start with a low tip and a visible target, just to begin generalizing the behavior.Next up: downhills to ground – also great!
I think the main challenge here was something you noticed too – it is hard to jump on because the board is so high. Will he enjoy being picked up? You can pick him up, cookie him for that, then place him on the board. If he will hate being picked up, you can put a table next to it to act as a step to help him get up onto the board.
If you get a chance to play this again in the next few days, I think he is ready for you to fade target out on this one too now. Do it exactly the same way you did the fading with the bang game, that worked really nicely!!Elevator game: Also great LOL!
These elevator reps had both challenges – height and your motion: WOW! He looked so strong and confident here. YESSSSSSSS!!!!! Not much more to do with this one yet other than only suggestion: try to convince him to start with his feet first at the end of the board. I recommend a cookie placement to get him there right before the countdown – as he hops on, place the hop on reward just past the edge of the board so he steps forward to the edge (then do the countdown and target cue.You did a great job on these staying in motion (running!) until *after* he was for sure getting the end position. Yay Sly! That is hard and he was great.
And he cracked me up at the very end of video 3: He didn’t want to release at the end LOL! Ha! Good boy.
These are all going well – the elevator game can also go on the road if there are other teeters available, starting with the very first part of it.
In your home base, you can start to fade the target on the elevator game too, dialing back some of the height and motion at first til he is solid without it.Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>>I also think I’m still throwing my toy too early.>>>>
I agree on the need for more patience with the rewarding 🙂 You can wait til he is entirely out of all 4 poles and then throw it, even if he looks at you like “WHERE IS MY TOY” lol! Better to have a little looking at the end then reinforcement for missing poles, because then yes, it does get confusing for him.
(Side note: why does one reinforcement build a behavior that we don’t want and yet it doesn’t build a behavior that we do want? Case in point… running dog walk. I can reward poorly ONE TIME in training and the dog will repeat that behavior for the rest of his lie. I can reward beautifully 100 times on the RDW but yet…. LOL! OK back to weaves)
>> there was one where he missed the straight entry that I had to watch the video a few times to see that he missed it because he got close to the poles and collected. >>
Connect more especially as you are ahead (that is where he struggles the most, more on that below) so you can see if he is in and what his striding is, delaying the throw until you are sure he has gotten both sets of poles. And by connect more – specifically I mean to stare at the base of the weave poles so you see something red crossing the bases (reward!) or not (no reward). It is the same as staring at the contact zone or mat on a running contact – don’t watch the dog, watch where you want him to be and see if something appears there (reward) or not (no reward).
>>It’s also so hard for me not to work these every day because more reps equals faster results… right?! That’s how training works 🤣.
Ha! Less is more, less is more. That is my mantra. Plus there is some science about sleep and rest and play and NOT training every day actually cementing the learning in the brain better than if we trained and trained and trained.
So on the video, I think 100% of the errors (even the ones he got rewarded for :)) happened when you were past pole 2 before he entered. Now he did have some successes with those as well! But we can teach him to hit and hold the entry when you are ahead by splitting it more:
– start him in a stay and lead out, walking: when you get past poles 2, release and keep walking
– if he is successful with that, add more of his speed by adding the wing wrap before it (you still walk)
– if he is successful with that, go back to the stay and add more of your speed: jog and when you pass pole 2, release him
– if he is successful with that, add his speed back by starting from a wing wrap with you jogging ahead
– and so on, back and forth from the stay, until you can be running.By “if he is successful”, I mean multiple reps over the course of several sessions – it is not going to happen all in one session 🙂
And if he fails, dial back your motion or make the angles of the poles easier but don’t change your position – when you are at the entry when he enters, he is really pretty perfect. That is good news (yay!) but also we don’t want the cue to weave to have anything to do with you being at the entry when he arrives there. So, focusing on the independence of you being ahead is a great way to add challenge at this stage.Let me know if that makes sense! He is progressing nicely and I agree – very resilient, even when the rate of success is a little lower. Yay! Must be all the dirt roll rewards haha!
Tracy
Good morning! Thank you for the update and video!!!
>>One of my concerns with the one session we did starting to close up the channels was that his striding was “all over the place” so I’ve actually been wanting to do that session again and get video this time for you to take a look at.>>
Yes, I’d love to see it – he might have reached that spot in the progression where we focus solely on striding for a couple of sessions. The distance between the poles might just be in an awkward spot where he can’t quite run but also can’t quite do the bounce striding. I hit that point with Hot Sauce who is very similar in size, and she was doing what I call ‘pattering’ – a combo of extra front feet steps like a fast trot mixed in with trying to reach/swim (she is too little to swim the poles).
When that happened, I detoured into striding – it is all posted as of last Monday 🙂 I used the 2x2s to get it but you can also use 6 channels. It is a normal part of the progression and basically we need to find the sweet spot with the tightness of the poles without making them toooooo hard – plus easy entries and getting him really excited 🙂>> Well it rained today so I “made” the time to catch up on all the games videos and after watching the one about Troubleshooting striding issues I decided to get my s___ together, watched all the 2×2 track videos and incorporate some 2x2s in with the channel training.””
Perfect! The first striding video was Contraband and getting the swim stride, which applies conceptually but the more recent ones are very specific to what we can do with Sly because Hot Sauce and Elektra are just about the same size/length as he is 🙂
>>Short session that introduced the 2x2s…and I think because of the channel work he was pretty quick to pick up “entries” on the 2x2s so we quickly went to angles on the 2 poles. I thought it was pretty interesting how he’s already figuring out how the “hopping” movement.>>
Yes! The sessions all looked really good!!! Because of his channels experience, my guess is that he will fly (or bounce haha) through the early stages very very quickly like he did here. Two thoughts as you progress:
– add movement at all stages for now, be moving right after you send so he sees it before he has to make a choice about the entry (a nice little distraction challenge while things are still easy for him :))
– try not to have any reward delivery from your hands, not even placing the treat directly into the bowl – it is causing him to want to look at you. So either have the pre-placed reward (but that can get slippery as things get harder haha) or a MM or an empty target and throw a ball or lotus ball/treat hugger.For the next session, open up poles 1-2 a bit and add in poles 3-4. I believe you can have them close to start with but if he struggles, you can move them further away. Then work through the angles and let’s see what he does with the striding 🙂
Great job here! Have fun!!!
TracyYAY! Glad to hear that! Will he trade for another toy or treat? Ideally you can use them during the session and not just at the end, so play around with it separately from weave training – throw a ball, let him have a little bit of party, then offer a treat or a 2nd ball to come back and reset for another rep. You might notice I often have 2 or 3 frisbees in my hands, or a frisbee and a stick of string cheese – this is to be able to reward the dog for bringing the high value reward (frisbee) back to me for another rep 🙂
Good morning! This was a really good session! He is getting into the ‘almost finished’ part of weave training 🙂
His drive to the poles is really good and I think that is transferring to the wings: he was actually running on many of the wing wraps here and not rolling his eyes at them haha! Yay!
Entries look great! You can definitely add more motion – before we get into the harder stuff, we need you to be able to run (because that is the distraction he will be seeing 99% of the time on course 🙂 )
And I think he has also reached the moment where we take a few sessions to focus only on striding. They all reach that moment at some point 🙂 The current distance is squarely in the ‘awkward striding’ spot and he is pattering not bouncing, which is also probably why he was missing poles 3-4 on those 2 reps. However – no problem, totally normal!!!! He seems to be following the exact progression Hot Sauce followed. They are exactly the same size and also both thoughtful dogs who want to get it right before laying on the speed.The only difference is that I started the training and videoing about 3 weeks before the class started, so I hit this striding detour about 2 weeks ago and have worked through it – and I think all we need to do is the same thing with Kaladin! He is sooooo similar that it is very cool to be able to try the same game plan. I mean, maybe it won’t work and we try something else… but I bet it will work.
I have posted all of what I did with Hot Sauce in the new games for this week, but in a nutshell:
* I put the 2 bases at regulation distance apart and slightly open – this will take some experimenting because they should only be open enough to produce the bounce – but not so open that he can patter (take multiple steps with the front feet) and not so closed that it is too hard. I think my bases were open to the width of my thumb. Spend one session playing around to see what gets the bounce with just simple straight entries.
* when you find the magical bounce stride setup, we embed it into muscle memory in two ways:
– get him very excited so he is in ‘think less weave more’ stage (I used the frisbee with HS, you can use the ball with Kal)
– do a series of short, fast sessions of simple straight-ish approaches where you are moving kinda fast.After a few sessions where we can consistently elicit the striding, you can add more challenge in the form of harder entries and then slightly tighter/straighter poles – but each time we angle the poles to be a little tighter, we do the crazy fast fun straight entries with handler motion for striding 🙂
When the striding is embedded… it pretty much remains there because it is SOOOOO much easier for the dogs to be correct and go fast. Then it is REALLY easy to get 6 poles going because that also helps embed the striding. For example: HS was the last of my 3 to get the striding… but the first to get to 6 straight poles. Hmmmm. LOL!
So for now, if you do any find ’em games, have the poles open enough so that he doesn’t have to think about finding the entry AND striding. When I was embedding the striding with HS, I didn’t do any Find Ems because her entries are great, far better than my other 2 youngsters 🙂 Kaladin is incredibly similar so feel free to set the Find Em games aside and go directly into the striding work.
Nice work here! Let me know if the striding ideas make sense!
TracyHi there! He is definitely finding his 2o2o better and shifting his weight!
I still want to get him to watch you less to be more independent moving into target position. Two ideas (and one more below with the MM):
One way to do it is to start moving forward as soon as you cue the behavior, rather than stand still or hang back Having you move will get him straighter and he will be more likely to look at the target to get it right.The other thing to add is having your cookie reward ready to be dropped into the target from above – he is watching you get it ready to deliver, so I think dropping it right onto the target as soon as he gets there will really help. When you are out ahead of him, you can toss it back for him to get (I use a ‘catch’ cue which means he can leave position to get it).
I think the ideal setup here has both the red target at the end of the board and the MM.
Without the red target, he is relying on your body position entirely and targeting towards your feet. It worked here because your feet were close to the end of the board 🙂 but it will be harder to have you move forward past the board. When your feet were further back, he curled back to you. When your feet were a step past, he stopped with his front feet further away from the bottom of the plank.
But using the MM as the reward location is going to be super helpful! So I vote for both of them LOL! For example: with the red target on the ground, you can ask him to move into position and you start to walk forward, past the end position. If he hits and holds position, you can mark it and release him to the reward from the MM. That can help build the independent behavior and allow you to move past while also getting him to look forward and not at you. Let me know if that makes sense!>>Next time, I would like to try the Bang Game on the end of the teeter given that Cowboy appears to have a better understanding of how to shift his weight backwards on the board.>>
Yes, you can move this forward for sure! On the Bang Game, use the red target and keep yourself nice and close to the board for the first sessions (because the only variable to change is the moving board). You can drop the cookies in real fast from above, or you can have the MM 4 or 5 feet away and release to that.
Separately, work on adding independence to the 2o2o on the plank – when he understands that the position is separate from your position, then we can also add that to the teeter. Yay!Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! He did really well here! A couple of ideas in general then we can plot the next sessions 🙂
Definitely add more motion, be moving on almost all the reps and definitely be moving before he makes the entry (so he learns to handle the motion as he is trying to find the entry). You had this happening at the end of the session more and he definitely needs to keep seeing this – no more standing still 🙂 You don’t have to move fast on the harder angles, as long as you are moving. And you are welcome to move faster on the easier angles : )
I think he was tracking the toy throw on some of the reps, and so popping out when you started to throw. So you can play around with that: when you are focusing on harder angles or more running, keep the toy throw delayed until after he has finished. But with easier angles or less motion or slightly more opened poles, feel free to swing the toy around early to challenge him to stay in 🙂 That way you only have one difficult variable in play at a time.
OK, plotting the next sessions 🙂 The angle of the poles here was challenging and he did well – but the angles are in the awkward position where he is not running but not bouncing. So- Let’s get the footwork going first then we come back to the other challenges.
For the next session, use the 2x2s and 4 poles. Angle them a little tighter than they were here – let’s see if that produces the bouncing (he was bouncing at tighter angles previously so I think he will do it again pretty easily). The poles will both be at about 1&7 for a session, or 12:30 and 6:30 haha! I looked back to the last 4 pole session you posted (April 6) so the poles can be tighter than that. If that produces the bounce striding, you can do the Find Em from the wings while he also has to stride through the 4 poles. Get them as tight as needed to get the bouncing 🙂When that goes well, the next step is to finish up getting the 4 poles straight: pole 1-2 goes straight or almost straight and poles 3-4 stay at 1&7 or 12:30&6:30
After a couple of sessions of that, move to 4 straight poles with 3-4 a bit further away at first, then if that goes well – move them together.
Then we go to 6 poles – at which point we can go back to the Find Em.
I suggest doing it this way rather than channels for 2 reasons – you have 2x2s at home and not channels, plus the 2x2s are great for getting the bounce striding.
Let me know if that makes sense! Based on trying to get in a session every other day or every couple of days, then you will probably get into the 6 poles in about a week or so. And we might do some troubleshooting to perfect the striding as the poles get straight, which is fine! Exciting times ahead 🙂
Great job!
Tracy
