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Hi!
>>How much room between sets 1 and 2 when I have more space? He seems to do better closer together…>>When he gets the hang of it, you can move them to ‘regulation’ distance – what I do is set them up in a straight line of 4 poles, then angle them open to create whatever level challenge the dog is ready for.
He is doing well here on both videos! I think he is ready to have the bases closer but the PT should be further away – put it at least 6 feet past poles 3-4. That will help increase the speed too!
On the first video, he did really well with the entries all that until the 8 o’clock entry – that one was hard! That is understandable – when he struggles with a really hard entry, you can leave it, do some different ones where he will be successful, then come back to it later. Good job adding motion here!
The 2nd video also had good motion! Nice! He did well here too, until he got to the 5 o’clock angle The 5 and 8 are two of the hardest angles, so no worries – he will get those eventually. Keep working the easy angles too! As I mentioned above about the first video – if he is struggling with a really hard angle, you can switch to a different one and then revisit the really hard one later.
At about 3:20 you angled poles 3-4 more, which is fine but I think you angled them a little too much. At this point, change the angle in one inch increments or less, just tiny bits 🙂At the end – he totally loved the toy! You can mix in toy play into all of these sessions: it will also get more speed and it will help with keeping him focused 🙂
Nice work! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>> knew about her struggles with disengaging from potentially worrying stimuli, but I had been looking at her engagement with positive stimuli as a strength.>>
The interesting thing is that stimuli all generally fall under the category of stress – good stress, bad stress – and it can swing back and forth between the two in a heartbeat.
>> I suppose this inability to disengage with positive stimuli is the same behavior as the inability to disengage with negative stimuli. >>
Yes – both have reflexive elements (fight/flight/freeze, for example) that they need to learn to overcome. The negative stimuli is harder of course, because of the chemicals that flood her body when it happens. You might consider talking to Tricia about her experiences with helping her dogs through that, she has done a tremendous job with a lot of dogs 🙂
Tracy
OMG the one hit wonder session…. I don’t know what made me laugh more: the cherry ice cream with cheeeeeesey sprinkles, or the expression on the face of the person holding it LOL!!! She clearly thought it was nuts hahaha but Lennan was happy so then we are all happy. Yay!!!!! Now I am going to think of ice cream every time I see a teeter lol
Bang game – I think this was the first time on a teeter? Looked great!!! It took him a moment: HOLY CRAP THIS ONE MOVES! on the first rep, then he was fine. Nice position and balance going directly to position every.single.time. with a decent amount of tip, too!
Toy out ahead was not a problem, happy dance!
One suggestion: Try to release to the toy (or any release in general) when he is looking anywhere except at you. Ideally he would be looking at the target but looking at the toy is fine too 🙂On your next teeter session for the bang game, warm him up where he was here and then add more challenges at the same height: you walking past (building up to more speed, based on his success rate), sending ahead, adding some crosses. If that is fine and dandy, then the session after that can have more tip.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
This looked great! Helping her with the handling was really good, she picked it up nicely. Yes, go all the way out to wing 3 so you can stand still and get her to zig zag 🙂 As with the baby level – she is ready for you to move the wings in closer (5 feet for now) and if she is fine with that and with you standing still at wing 3… go ahead and show off more and do it with 4 wings. Wheeee! Fun! Both sides look really easy for him, and that is great!!Great job on these!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
>. I think a light bulb went off and she came in on everyone, every side.
Perfect!!!! We like those lightbulb moments 🙂 You can gently angle the jump back to the original position as long as she is still super successful.
>> I did use a toy. If I use a toy, should I “click” the commitment to the jump?>>
You can do a verbal click of some sort, like a ‘yes’, then a permission to go to the toy (like ‘get it’ or something.
She did perfectly on the slice jump foundations! Nice patient sit (mostly lol), and she was spot on for the zig zags on both side. Yay!
You can move these 2 in closer and add a 3rd wing. That will add challenge to both the zig zags and to her stay. I think you should go to about 5 feet between the wings/barrel (length of a full size jump bar) for now and if that is easy, we can go to 4 feet distances 🙂
Oh wait – I see advanced below for the zig zags – onwards! Great job here!
TracyHi!
What is that white stuff falling from the sky?!?!?!? I take responsibility, because I urged all the MN people to bring their teeters outside. SORRY!!!! She did really well here! Great session – no rush, let her explore, let her find target position. The setup of the game doesn’t ask for a lot of speed so she is shifting her weight right at the beginning of the contact zone, but she got faster and faster each time! I am super happy with this.Not sure what you did between reps (brush off the snow? LOL!) but you can add in more wildness to stimulate her internal state: chasing toys, tunnels, anything she likes! Then a rep of the downhills. Then back to being wild, then another rep. And keep adding in the challenges of you running by and crosses etc, so she has those solidified as we add each new level.
She is making tremendous progress here and I know the next series of games will add even more speed. Great job!!!
TracyGood morning!
The age old issue: To Bark Or Not To Bark, That Is The Question 🙂I personally have zero issues with dogs barking on the start line. I wonder if the dog even realizes they are doing it – it is a ‘cheap’ behavior. It is possible he thought he was maintaining a great stay!
By leading out then either punishing (stopping or coming back to him, which is in effect a negative punishment) or coming back and asking for a trick then rewarding (which is positive reinforcement that could be causing the barking to be chained into his behavior) – I think you might run the risk of causing more issues that you solve. He did not appear frustrated here, his sequencing looked great. And he did not break his stay. But if the consequences on the start line are unclear: sometimes punish, sometimes tricks/cookies, sometimes release forward – you will create stress. That is likely to lead to more barking and also breaking stays.>>But, if I come back, he often keeps barking and barks right out of his sit. >>
Yep – that is the stress of not knowing what is happening and why. The barking changes in that moment, then he is guaranteed to fail, which lowers the success rate and becomes a vortex of fighting with each other on the start line.
The other thing is that in arousal, we sometimes get noise. Some breeds (cough cough TOLLERS also Shelties and Papillons and many others) are vocal. Does it mean he is over-aroused? I didn’t appear so here. Does it mean he is excited, quite possibly in a good way? Yup!
Many many many people thing that barking on the start line is a terrible thing because OMG the dog is too aroused or stressed or frustrated or whatever. But barking is not a one-sized fits all and sometimes it can be any of those things: read the context and success rate to try to have a better idea of why he might be barking (you won’t always know).
For example, flyball is very exciting and the dogs bark – but it is the joyous bark of THIS IS SO AMAZING and they are able to bark, then go lay down a super precise fast run with complete focus.
So think of it differently: what behavior do you want from his eyes on the start line and from other parts of the body (ignore the vocal cords for now): Can he hold his stay til released, focus on the line, keep the bars up, run fast, but also be precise? If yes: rock on! He is in good company in the agility world, many of the best dogs in agility bark on the start line.
If no? Then you can address the non-vocal cord parts of his body. If he barks himself right out of the sit, then he has broken the sit and the game stops. Bark and hold the sit? Cool beans, let’s run!
If barking himself out of the sit is a common thing, change the position for a while: a down on the start line is harder to hold when he is barking, so he might have to do a bit of problem solving to figure out how to hold the proper position 🙂
The best handling in that situation is to ask for the sit, let him settle into it, then get outta there: lead out, connect, release. Adding more pressure will probably increase the barking and decrease the sit, which is the opposite of what you want.> I have also played a bit with ASKING for a cued bark before I start my lead out (which I’m calling “ping” – as in “one ping only” from Hunt for Red October, which makes me a super geek).
Ha! Love it! I personally put barking on cue for all of my dogs. And also, personally, it has never worked to reduce barking elsewhere in life and sport LOL! I use it to get the dogs pumped up, knowing they will ‘offer’ it elsewhere LOL!
>>In the end, I don’t like him barking at the start line. I would like to stop that behavior.
The only ways to stop it would be to either punish it which would create all sorts of other problems, or create a start line behavior that is completely incompatible with barking (such as down with head on the ground and holding head on the ground until the release – which is incredibly hard to maintain in agility and also leads to punishing too often).
>> BUT, I also need to recognize he is who he is and at least ask the question whether his barking at the start line is a problem when it comes to his performance.
It might not be a problem at all. Focus more on the rest of the body for the start lines: eyes, feet, etc and not on the vocal cords 🙂
>> Is it potentially his way of saying he is ready to play? And, if he is barking because he is frustrated and excited to get going, I am wondering if all that control behavior on my part is just leading to MORE frustration.
Yes, this is entirely possible. I am sure you have seen the people at trials that fight with their dogs on the start line. Bleh!
>>What I’m asking myself is whether or not I should accept some barking, if so, what is ok and how do you draw the line?
I personally don’t care what comes out of the dog’s mouth, and I have no idea if they bark on the start line: I look only at the stay criteria involving position and forward focus. I know that a lot of folks might find it horrifying that barking doesn’t concern me – if the dog is vocalizing and still executing the trained behaviors? Great! I draw the line at stopping the trained behaviors and decided to bark at me instead… which means that I have not fully trained the behaviors in arousal, right?
An example: Voodoo barks on the way to the start line. And clacks and jumps around. Sometimes howls. LOL! I have no idea if he barks while holding his stay, because I am focused on my handling at that point and watching his body to maintain the criteria. He is really solid on the stays! He barks on course during runs. As a youngster, he used to bark at me and NOT commit to obstacles. It was a training issue, so I went back to deepen his understanding of commitment in arousal. I didn’t punish the barking, because he was already so frustrated.
Now he barks on course AND executes his trained behaviors – it is simply vocalizing, I am not sure he is aware he is doing it? For example, he literally screams when weaving at trials. Shrieks. And when he is screaming, he nails the weaves, doesn’t pop out. And on some send-and-go commitment, he will shriek when my handling is GOOD. I call it the shriek of surprise that I was good, for once. LOL!!!
I know when he was younger and frustrated, many folks would have punished the barking – but we know the science well enough to know that it would never work out the way we want. So I chose to focus on clarity and reinforcement and working through arousal, rather than against it. Now the only problem is that I am just too slow hahaha!>>If no barking, how do I discourage this behavior without adding more frustration.
Ignore the barking and focus on high levels of reinforcement for the behavior you DO want, in arousal. Then he might still bark, or not. Barking might be reflexive – he might not be choosing it operantly so trying to work it operantly might have fallout on other behaviors we like that he is choosing.
Let me know if that makes sense!
TracyGood morning! Great job in class last night! He is definitely doing well with his soft left & right turns! That is great, they are incredibly useful 🙂
I think the source of his questions here was that you melded 2 of the games together (sends’n’serps and the zig zags) and added distance plus speed… so the accuracy got a bit lost in moments. It falls into the ‘too much, too soon’ category 🙂 and also requires a lot of threadle understanding at speed, which is not fully in place yet. So in order to get it right, he needed you to be perfect in handling/timing/position. And if you weren’t (like at :26 and :39 on the first video, and :20 on the 2nd video) he didn’t get it right. He seemed fully engaged and trying to sort it out (not resistant and also not too locked onto the toy) – just not fully understanding what to do and when.So for now keep the 2 concepts completely separate: on the wing and the jump for the serp, work the send to one wing and serping the jump so he learns to come in on the serp when you are moving – starting at a walk, then jog, then run. Don’t add distance or anything else until he can come in on the serp jump with you running – then add more distance between the wing and the jump. It is pretty common that BCs (all dogs, actually) run parallel to the serp jump when the handlers run, so the other option to raise the success rate is to angle the jump a tiny bit towards him to make the bump more visible – so it is easier to take the jump and harder to run past it. That can allow you to add motion more easily.
>>Perhaps his instincts to stay wide are part of the challenge which makes him seem resistant to the come in cues in the serp line? Would u say manners minder might be useful here?>>
Yes, the MM on the sends’n’serps would be very useful! And I don’t think he was being resistant, he was definitely watching and trying to figure out the cues – there were a lot of things added all at once, so he wasn’t always able to sort it out.
For the zig zags on the 3 wings – try to get that without any motion at all (it is much more challenging that way :)) Try to lead out to the third wing and face him, and direct him through the zig zags just with upper body and as little foot movement as possible. That will help him focus in on the back and forth shifts that will produce the serpentine and backside slice jumping form.
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Lots of great work here, he is doing really well!!! And gawd he is cute, it is a distraction to me LOL!
Look at the videos:
Set point is going well – because he is short but long in the back, it is hard to find the comfortable distance. The lower bar on jump 2 (first video) looked like very comfy form, more so than when you had the bar higher on the 2nd video. So you can do 2 things to help include the bar: on that 2nd jump, use 2 bars as cross bars: one end in the low jump cup, the other end one the ground. That way he still gets challenged with jumping a bar but he cen develop his form over a slightly lower bar. And the other option is to move the distance to 4 feet (or a couple of inches less) as the bar gets higher to see if the little bit of extra room produces the great form.Wind in hair – His commitment looks strong! He loves to wrap wings and I think that is transferring VERY nicely to the jump. SUPER!!!! On the first 2 clips, you were working out the timing of the throw or handing it to him but then on the 3rd and 4th clip, you had it: long throw of hte reward and he was driving to the jump without looking at you. That is exactly what we want! Good boy!
So – add in the next steps of starting very close to the wing and staying there til he is done, then accelerating forward (and throwing the toy) so he drives ahead of you. That will build in really nicely to the rear crosses we did last night (and the backside wrap pushes that are the Advanced Level of last night’s game :))Proofing: I am not surprised that he was perfect here. He loves loves loves wrapping the wing so he is highly unlikely to ignore it in favor of the tunnel. And I am super happy to see that he is doing the tunnel even with the wing right there. Nice balance of skills!!!! And you are using the verbals too, which is lovely to be able to add them everywhere. So now: you can move to the advanced game with the curved tunnel so it is tunnel-wrap with you moving, or even tunnel-tunnel- wrap 🙂 That is to proof the verbal AND the motion, because sometimes the dogs get so ramped up when we run that they can’t process the verbals and don’t “see” the wing with the tunnel out there 🙂
Smiley Faces: Very nice connection! He can see your upper body very clearly so he is finding the lines beautifully. YAY! On the first clip: You don’t need to meet him at tunnel exit, you can get ahead while he is tunneling and head more to the wing. You helped him more than he needed at the first tunnel exit and he had to slow down and look up to get more info. Compare it to the 2nd video: you were further ahead when he exited the tunnel but still beautifully connected, so he powered through the line to the wing with speed and forward focus. Perfect! You can add more distance between the tunnel and the wings now, to add more challenge for both of you 🙂
Last clip: His tunnel exits look good here! He turns naturally very tight on those tunnel exits, so emphasize the go on the tunnel exits when you work him, so he gets lots of value for driving out straight when cued. You don’t need to put a lot of value on the tight turn exits right now, because that is his natural inclination (good boy!). The figure 8 front crosses look great 🙂
Lovely work here! He is doing well is ALL the areas! Great job – let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning! Really lovely work here!
First part, backing up – nice!!!!! You can try it with the plank and the teeter board! Get nice and low (I sit on the ground to start) so as he backs up onto the end of the teeter board (no tip tp start) his head is low and not looking up at you.
I love the tugging on the wobble board, it is an excellent weight shift game. If he likes to ‘win’ the toy, you can have him hop on the board, then you start tugging – then if he can lean back while tugging on the board, let him win the toy and come off the board. Remember to keep your hands lower or even bend over a bit so the toy stays low. It looks like he was coming up high off the board because the toy was high (and also dogs do that as a little bit of avoidance on this game, because it is a hard game :))
For the targeting, he is off to a good start here. I think this is going to be the effective way to teach him where to put his feet. The TnT was something that he loved to look at but didn’t help with choosing foot position. The TnT can come back in eventually 6 or 8 feet away from the end of the board (more on that later on down the road :)) A couple of things to get more of a low head position:
You can start in front of him with the target in your hand held maybe halfway between the floor and his natural head position, so he moves into the 2o2o and touches with his nose and not feet, and you can reward it. Then you can stay in front and gradually lower the target to the ground while still rewarding head position. Then we move you off to the side with the target on the ground: as he gets into position, you can drop the rewards in right on the target before he even looks at you. Try to click as he is looking at it and not at you – the clicks were coming when he was looking at you. If the clicks encourage looking at you (because dogs often look at us when we click) then don’t click 🙂 Just mark with a quiet yet and get the reward in – then release when he offers another look or touch of the target (try not to release when he looks at you).
To be able to get in all of that quick reward for head position in these early stages, don’t add in as much distance away from the board yet as that is drawing his eyes to you and delays the reward – stay close and make it all about the targeting with tons of quick rewards on the target (first with you in front then with you to the side). You will see the shift to look down at it start to happen pretty quickly, within a couple of sessions: and at that point we can add more variables in terms of your position and motion.
Great job here!!! Let me know what you think!
TracyWow, this is looking good! He was a confident little dude and was even running back up the board to restart!!! He was perfectly happy to ride the end down on the bang game, and he was going about as fast as possible on the full downhills even without the momentum of running into it (the dogs can’t go that fast on the downhills because of how they start on the board). This is exciting!!!
Question – for the bang and downhills, was there a target right past the end of the board? I see the cookie bowl, and I think there is something at the end of the board for the 2o2o but he wasn’t really using it, he was looking at you a bit (especially on the bang game). If the target was there, you might want to make it a little more obvious for a few more sessions to help with the don’t-watch-the-momma element 🙂 And if there was no target there, maybe put in a tiny bit of one. When the cookie bowl was out ahead, he was definitely watching you less 🙂 I think it was there on the early bang game reps but further away.
And the only other detail is as you are running, be sure to keep moving for 2 or 3 more steps without decelerating after you are sure he stopped – the decel was happening as he was stopping so we don’t want him to rely on any physical cues for the stopping.
Great job here! Onwards to more tip and also the elevator game 🙂
Tracy
