[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>think there was too much time between when I read your feedback and when I recorded these videos because I did forget a couple of the points, but not a big deal>>

Totally relatable!! There is a lot to remember in terms of the mechanics and words and all the things! I write down 2 or 3 things that I need to remember and then text them to myself, so I read them right before I train the dog 🙂 That, plus the proper amount of coffee in the morning, really helps me remember 🙂

Turn and burn – oh yes, I think he liked this AND the excitement drew in a visitor at the beginning LOL!!! He did a great job – that was some serious distance between you and him, and you were leaving really early and he was able to get it! Hooray!
The only hard part were resets for the next rep. You can use a boring cookie to line him up for the reset at your side (I think he will still play with the toy after getting a boring cookie in this scenario). It is hard to start with him facing sideways or facing you LOL! But I do like his “game on” approach to it 🙂

He was quite good about maintaining commitment to the exit of the wing as you were leaving earlier and earlier. You can also add in sometimes throwing the toy to the exit wing, to help affirm that yes, he should continue around it as you are running away the other direction. I mix that in a lot, particularly for my small dogs because the smallz have to take sooooo many more strides. My big dogs can do this game in 2 strides but it is more like 6 or 7 for the littles!

Threadles/serpy stuff:
I agree that serps tend to be a LOT easier for us and the dogs – maybe because the concept is easier in terms of ‘take the jump’. Threadles are “don’t take the jump even though my motion shows you the jump.”

And I also like the cross arm threadle cue, it is really obvious to the dogs!

The reps on this video looked great! I am always impressed when young dogs can go back and forth from serps to threadles to serps as easily as he did here, Great job with being in the right position for the releases!!! Really nice session.

As you noted – Your position relative to the jump is an important detail to remember especially on the serps, so text yourself to always reach out and touch the wing with a bent elbow on each rep 🙂 Being too far from the wing causes him to turn after landing on the serps when we need him to turn before takeoff.

He was very strong on his serpentines and starting to drive like mad to the ‘bar’ here, so you can add more motion! Go to a fast walk on the serps, then a jog. You might be able to build up to a run pretty soon!

Position on the wing is also important for threadles because it helps get him to take the jump after coming in – at :28 he came to the threadle side perfectly but you were really far away, so he didn’t take the jump. I would still reward that, at least with s cookie from hand as you reset – it was a good effort and the error was in your position. He changed his behavior on the next rep because there was no reward for coming in. Then you got closer and he got it nicely on the reps after that.

He was really starting to nail those threadles with motion too!!!! I think you can move to a faster walk on these – but not toooooo fast, not yet. I want to protect his success and adding too much speed, too soon is a threadle-killer LOL!!

You can also start to repeat the close cue because on course you will likely be saying close close close and not just close. Might as well get him used to that here. You don’t need to repeat the “ok” for the serps, because on course you will be saying left or right depending on the angle (or his name, for softer angles).

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

You won’t see the value transfer here instantly add speed to the wing or the eating. We know we’ve got speed on the wing when we use a toy with her, so we are using that to raise the food love. And I think it is actually great that you had to wait for her to swallow before the toy comes out. Hopefully that means you are rewarding *swallowing* the treat and not just putting it in her mouth. I am sure you have met BCs who are masterful at putting treats in their mouths but not swallowing them LOL!

I think she was great here in terms of the speed level you want in this setup: speedy enough for a small space and happy, and expectant (meaning, yay for the cookie and now where is the toy, mom?)
Only two little details on this game:
Use your reward markers particularly for the food – rather than yes, use your cookie-in-hand marker because this game will build value for that too!

Also, because the food was a little high in placement, she was coming around the wing with her head up, almost in heel position chin-up posture. So, easy enough to change: drop the treat on the ground with your ‘get it ‘ marker so she move through to get it, then when she swallows: toy time. I don’t think she will be looking up when you add movement to it, but I don’t want to accidentally build in looking up anywhere when wings are involved, especially with food rewards 🙂

Great job here!!!! What is on her training schedule for today or tomorrow?

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Mike, you were a good dog dad to work through this really systematically tp be sure he was successful! Ronan transferred the concept instantly so on the first few reps he was totally like “why are you still standing here” LOL!!!! He was perfect when you added motion and sending too and started leaving earlier. And he was perfect when Karena took over too. This means we can go to the next steps: feel free to now add your wrap verbals along with the send to get him started. You can start further back so you can rotate and leave even sooner too! If you power up the speed and timing and see him rushing, dial back the speed. By rushing, you’ll see him either not commit or he will push the wing.
My only other suggestion is to use a ‘get the toy in my hand’ marker – he was fine with getting in on the praise here when you presented it because you made the context very clear, but we are going to expand the use of the wing into all sorts of scenarios when you have a toy in your hand, so adding the toy marker will help keep him looking at the wing and not at the toy.

Great job here!!! I am looking forward to seeing him use the wings on the crosses!!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!
It was fine to start with big distances so she could learn the concept without having to also learn the coordination of the bending and leads. I think she looked great here! I like that she is actually looking at where she is going, down into the minny pinny and not up at you – that seems like such a small detail but it is actually a HUGE detail which translates to strong jumping form. And she was really quite balanced in both directions. Maybe a little stronger to the left but it is almost imperceptible.

I see what you mean about not wanting to swallow the reset cookie LOL!! What type of treat was it? It might help to use a really soft bit of cheese or something… or it might not help at all (or you might have already been using it LOL!) It looks like you were waiting for a second or two before releasing her into the game, that seemed effective. The only thing that will take away the concern about using reset cookies is to use a toy 🙂 I think she is ready for it and it increases the coordination challenge! So using this set up, try a tug toy – it can be the reward for great behavior and also you can tug her into reset position.

Separately from the toy – you can move the middle wing and bump a little further away (I think they were all close here). That might change the distances between bumps which could mean you need to angle the 2 outer bumps away from the middle one to get this nice 4 foot distance.

You are right in that she has done a lot of controlled stride work recently – and also now that the minny pinny is tight, it is in effect a jump grid which means training on it once or twice a week and not daily. So, for fun giddy up extension go fast stuff, you can take the racetracks outside (you’ll both be running!) See how far apart you can get the barrels! I also revisit those handler combos games all the time – where I have a toy or MM or something 20 feet from a barrel, wrap a barrel, then accelerate with the GO GO GO to the reward target.

Great job here! Have fun going fast!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>We are a bit behind this week so glad there aren’t that many week 11 assignments! >>

I figure there is a lot to do with puppy training and sometimes it is just fine to NOT add a whole lot more to the load 🙂 And you are doing great!!!

On the serps & threadles video:

>.We gave the Adding motion to serps and threadles a go today and it mostly went well. Ronan had some issues moving past the jump directly to the MM. In some reps it seemed to be our position or timing. Other times perhaps the handler’s feet weren’t pointing enough towards the direction of travel. Maybe Karena’s arm was too high? There were a few reps with too much handler speed too.>>

There were moments of each where maybe it was a foot in the wrong place or a hand too high or a shoulder not open enough… but overall I think it was too much motion – you were moving too fast 🙂

Bearing in mind that BCs are wired to stay out and parallel a lot more than they are wired to drive in hard to us, you can dial the speed waaaaaay back so you are walking so slowly you can practically feel the earth turning under your feet LOL!!! Motion is a stimulator, so we dial it back to the least amount possible as you build the love for these behaviors that are counterintuitive to BCs (Aussies or Corgis, by contrast, are happy to drive into us on these but it is hard to turn them away from us for the 2nd part of the behavior)

I think 2:07 might be the best example of how slowly you need to move for now – creeping along. The other thing that will help is if, as you slowly creep along, you have your serp or threadle upper body cue in position for a few steps before you give the verbal cue to start his movement. On the threadles in particular, the upper body cue and the release were happening at about the same time. So 3 or 4 steps of him seeing your arm cue as you ever so slowly move towards the wing will help – and I will often shake that hand too, to add motion in a way that helps up 🙂

You can also go to a slightly more boring reward target – maybe a perch to put his feet on, or an empty food bowl? Reducing the motion and the distraction of the reward value can help too! As soon as he has a lot of reinforcement for driving into you on these, it will be easier to add more and more motion 🙂

Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>for this next video I used just his high value toy due to all the distractions in the background (we were using some green space outside the Seattle zoo near my home.>>

Smart! It is better to work one variable at a time in terms of distractions and/or value building, so using zoo animals as the distraction was a good choice LOL!

>> The next time someone brings their screaming Capuchin monkeys to an agility trial, we will have proofed the heck out of that distraction and will be good to go LOL)

OMG I would want to be at that trial, just to see everyone’s reactions 🙂

the tunnel session went really well. I think he really only had one question, and it had to do with throwing the toy when he was facing the toy, then trying turn him to face the other end of the tunnel. He was a little confused because normally when we throw the toy like that (restraining the dog with the dog facing the toy, it looks just like the toy races mechanics), the context means that we are going to be going in the direction of the toy – so he was not sure about being turned away.
We can change the mechanics of the toy placement to help him out:

You can have him move with you while you put it on the ground then move away from it (with cookie rewards for walking with you) – that opens up a nice self-control opportunity!

You can also start him by facing the correct direction towards the tunnel entry you want, then toss the toy behind you so he is not turned facing it (it is a good challenge for your throwing skills haha!)

And, since you might be working monkey distractions too – you can hold the toy and throw it as soon as he commits to the tunnel.

He seemed perfectly great at turning into the tunnel from the threadle side, so you can add your tunnel threadle verbal now and play with the Double Whammy game 🙂

>>Away from rocking horses we worked on the “bite” cue so Leo knows when the toy is available and when it’s not, and that’s really helping his ability to cope with me running with a toy in my hand,>>

I an totally see the work you have done, he was great here in terms of knowing when to do the barrels and when to grab the toy. PERFECT! It made for a session that was relaxed and driven (no frustration or questions from him that I could see, just lots of speed and commitment) and highly successful. Yay for you both!

>>Several times in this video I end up with my toy arm crossed over my body when I cue ‘bite’ (not on purpose, too many things to think about!); should I work harder at being sure to offer the toy from the same-side arm instead?>>

I personally use the cross arm reward a lot to open up connection back to the dog, and ‘bite’ applies for either hand: the toy is in my hand, come get it 🙂 So if you do use the dog-side arm, ‘bite’ would apply there too.

And he really drives into it when it is across your body, maybe because the connection is so clear (like at :24).

>>chanting “Hallmark Moment” in my head has really helped me connect with Leo as he’s exiting the wrap and he’s not constantly cutting behind me any more YAY

I can totally see this too – looked great! I didn’t see a single connection question from him – he always seemed to know exactly where to go. His only question was early on, when you sent to the barrel from relatively far away – he looked up at your hand then proceeded to the barrel. Yay! And he had no questions after that.

On the spins, you can ‘release’ your send arm and connection sooner so you can get the blind done sooner. Basically, it means starting the FC element of the spin sooner. For example, at :46 and 1:05 – he is halfway around the barrel and you are still using the send arm and connection on the original side to commit him. By that point, you can already be doing the blind (or finished with it ) so he can see it before he exits the barrel. This moment of releasing the send arm (by relaxing it and dropping it to your side) and beginning the head turn for the blind can start just as he arrives at the barrel (and eventually before he arrives at it). You will have to trust his commitment 🙂

And by starting the spin rotation sooner, you will be doing spins more easily – on a couple of reps (1:13 and 1:23 for example) you held the dog side arm/leg commitment cue for long enough that you did a regular blind cross on the barrel (where we turn away from the dog) instead of a spin. We do work on these tight blinds eventually but I think you were intended a spin there 🙂

You can build in more of the race tracks now too, just letting him rip around the outside and then throwing in a couple of FCs or spins. He seems ready for more excitement and challenge now, because he was sooooo successful with being able to go fast AND keep his arousal in the perfect state. YAY!!!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!
This ended up being a great session in a lot of ways:
– you were smart and stopped what you were doing when he was wrong and you were frustrated
– you re-evaluated your approach, fixed the session and ended up on a long stretch of success
– you posted it for feedback and support (most people hide these sessions LOL!)

He is normally a brilliant sponge so this is a great opportunity to get feedback from him 🙂

Yes, learning is not linear, totally agree. And usually there is something we can do to help the dog (which you did by making the target more salient and doing a twrget refresher session, brilliant!). And getting another set of eyes on it will often help you see something that you didn’t see in the moment or on the video.

I think one of the reasons that learning is not linear is that reinforcement value shifts and distractions come up (internally and externally) – I think that is what happened here. The search cookie was great fun and the MM and the bowl are great fun and super high value… so after the search cookie he whipped around, didn’t look at you and rwn directly to the next high value thing (MM and bowl). The value of that loop that he created was very high LOL!
So he needed to see the serp pop out more relative to the search cookie and the MM. Because the MM and bowl are really high value, I suggest breaking that self-created loop of search to MM by having him start facing you in a stationary position. Can hubby hold him? Or maybe try his station and release him off it?

The other option is to make the serp cue more salient after the search cookie – it might be as simple as calling him and shaking the target hand.

He was getting it beautifully by the end, so you can try it with either of those ideas and see how he does!
Nice work here!!!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Yes to all of this 🙂
I agree that the pool noodles are better than a tall bump for now.

>>could be same side if treats though or still cross body?),

Yes, either – across the body is more ideal but speed of delivery is most important. So as long as it is a quick reward and at your side and immediately after the barrel, either will work.

>>keep in motion towards the next barrel until she gets the reward so I don’t end up facing her,

For the first couple of sessions, you can do a FC, stop, reward quick (with reward marker to bridge the heartbeat of time) and at your side. The stopping we don’t want is moving away from the barrels, facing her, no marker, cookies coming from the pocket.

The goal is a shift in reinforcement value and I’m sure she will feel that within a couple of sessions 🙂

And big thanks to Todd for the garbage bag idea!!!!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!!
The directionals as releases will also make more sense to her when they go into context on course. They might not make a lot of sense on the flat, but when they get applied to jumps and to the exit of, say, a teeter to a jump, she will totally have it. I don’t want to build in questions on these games, so you can use the regular release right after the threadle or backside verbal/physicals to help her out.

Her minny pinny looks great, she has the concept, the verbals are attached, reward placement and resets are strong. So yes – tighten them so she can have an easier time with her striding. She was really trying to sort out her lead legs! You can angle the 2 outer bumps in towards the center one – I’m not sure how far apart they were here, but you can try for 4 feet from center-to-centet of each bump. If she still thinks it is odd for striding, you can scoot them in another 6 inches or foot.

I’m glad Gemma gets a turn, she is soooooo good about supervising 🙂
Nice work! Let me know how she does with the bumps in closer together.
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Hooray for using your verbals at class! Keep rehearsing that, at some point soon you will get used to her brilliance and you won’t be as distracted by it, so you will spit out the correct verbals. And the other thing that helps is to RUN the walk throughs at class while doing the verbals, and not just walking them 🙂

>I had a few minutes this morning and got out the wing for the baby steps of transferring value to the wing. I started with cookies and she was like OK, and her response was not that great. When I switched to the toy, she was like game on! She could be the poster dog for using the reward that your dog finds rewarding >>

Yes! Value is best built when the dog actually really enjoys the reinforcement 🙂 She was great with her concept transfer here – easy peasy. Yay!
She did really well with the food, she didn’t chew it or act horrified LOL and yes, the toy is an entirely more exciting thing for her. And I bet she just associates food with “be chill!” in training because of how we humans use it, versus associating the toy with “woohoo!!” again because of how it is used. I like to flip that to help build up the food value so the dogs can drive hard even when food is in the picture as the reinforcement (thinking about running contacts, which are often trained with food reinforcement yet we want a whole lot of giddy up):

If you think she now has good value for the wing, we can flip the script and build more food value by inserting it more into the reinforcement process:
wing
cookie
toy

So the wing is fun because she gets to move, and the cookie is just a behavior and not a reinforcement – but the toy is a true reinforcement so she gets to party. That builds value for the food. I flip things a lot like this to quickly build value for something. If you think she doesn’t love the wing, you can use a tunnel instead 🙂
This is how I built food drive and ball drive in Contraband, took about 3 seconds LOL I like easy ways to do things 🙂

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

[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

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