[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

Tell Suzie you are in week 3 of puppy class 🙂

>> I’m also thinking about bringing the teeter in, so I could use that too.

Don’t use the teeter yet – we are a ways away from putting any of this on any real obstacles.

>> I also thought about putting a cookie tin under the wobble board?

That’ll be nice and noisy, so wrap it in a towel first and if he is fine with that, then go to the full noisy version of it.

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! This is a super fun game 🙂 He did really well! And being *after* breakfast where he is not hungry is great, it is easier to get him mind off of food. Fun!!!!
And I am glad to hear he enjoyed it enough to try to start it again after he came back in. Yay!
It was fun to see you build in a couple of ‘toy races’!

>>Anyway, let me know from a mechanics standpoint what I should be doing, should I add anything,

You can add in more toys, switching out to all sorts of different toys. Make it like Christmas, and you are Santa pulling stuff out of a bag and tossing it around. Then when he plays, pull out another! That will help expand his value for toys in general, as well as help you get an idea of which ones he likes more than others (which is useful for planning training sessions.)

Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! Nice work on the training here!

Backing up:
Being lower definitely helped! Yay! And she is ‘looking’ for the wobbly thing with her feet and not at all concerned about the noise or movement. Excellent!
I think that head toss is her kind of hoisting her self backwards because it is not always clear when she should start the backing up behavior so she is not taking a moment to get organized for it:
You can use your backing up cue to start it then give some type of clear release that she should come forward to your hand – get a cookie – and after the cookie, cue the backing up. I use “snacks!” which means come to my hand to eat. Eating the cookie is often also the cue to offer backing up again – plus that will allow her to finish chewing/swallowing – on a bunch of the reps, she was chewing AND backing up which si the canine equivalent of patting your head while also rubbing your stomach LOL! Separating each step will make for smoother movement and consistently good form.
And then use a clear toy play cue so she is certain about what is happening at all times

>>Anything with any fleecy stuff on it is a no way. And she does not run around with it, she will lie down in front of me and chew it.>>

That is pretty common – there must be some type of “feel good” that is derived from chewing or putting it in their molars and grinding it. You can slide fleecy toys into retrieves by gradually adding bits of them to the HR and milkers.

On the parallel path game – MUCH better about her nit looking at you! What were you saying – a quiet “yes”? Hard to hear but as long as she understood the marker, it is great 🙂 You can also make this more of a high energy game by using a milker or HR: tug tug tug – start ot move – when she hits it – throw the toy – tug tug tug 🙂 It will challenge her to look at her “job” even when arousal is higher and the reinforcement is more exciting 🙂
If you have good weather, take this outside where you can add a little more distance and motion.

The sending looks good! Remember the ready dance though – that bit og engagement and play will go a long way here in terms of getting play without food or toys, transitions from handler focus to commitment, and the dogs are MUCH snappier with this behavior when we do the ready dance first 🙂
And yes, you can be clearer with your markers and also chat her up more in general. I think* you were saying chase for the toy, but everything was really quiet – you can use markers, praise, ready ready chatter – all of that increases engagement while also challenging her to be able to do this with more arousal and excitement 🙂 She is ready for that!

And yes, she definitely liked the turn and burn game! Wheeeee!

>>I don’t have a fancy laundry thingy

I got my super fancy ones at Walmart for 3.99, I think LOL!

>> I tried to leave progressively earlier, but in real time, it’s hard to know if I actually accomplished that! >>

That is why I put things on the ground as visual aids: when the dog is arriving at the line, literally, I leave. It keeps me from getting into the rhythm of the same timing. My pups did not seem to notice the lines on the ground.

>> In looking at the video slowed down, I may have succeeded.

Yes, you definitely had earlier leaving as you progressed through this session! One thing that might have made it harder to feel was that the barrel is not that wide, so she got around it pretty quickly. What do you have that is wider so there is a longer time needed to get around it? That will really give her the feel of finishing the job! Do you have a large suitcase or anything like that? Giant tree?

One other thing that might have made it harder to feel like you are leaving sooner: On your sends, you are not stepping forward with your dog side leg so you might feel a little twisted and that might be why it was harder to leave sooner. Give a small forward indication with the dog side arm and leg -you had a big arm movement but no leg movement.

You can start to add your verbal wrap cues now, she is 99% sure to wrap so we can name the behavior.
And, start one step further away so you can add in leaving before she arrives at the bucket 🙂

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

I agree, the class was super fun – the dogs and handlers were brilliant AND we also had a lot of laughs. I have still not had any cheeseballs, I need to find some this weekend LOL!!!

On this video – overall he is doing really well on both sides, so we can adjust a couple of things as you move forward with this:

Because this is a ‘stay committed and finish your job’ game, start closer so we can split out the “stay committed” behavior from the send-from-a-distance behavior. Starting closer adds challenge to the commitment as you leave earlier and earlier because he can see you and the toy, right there, leaving 🙂 That will encourage him to put his head down and bend through the turn more, and also sets up a tighter turn than when you start further away which creates softer turns.

At a bigger distance, I think he is committing nicely (especially on your right side, as you noted) but he is getting a little hoppy (<------ scientific term) with his head up a bit. Staying closer for now will allow you to leave sooner and also get his head down and turning into the bend. So by closer, try to stay within an arm's length of the barrel or just past an arm's length (I am short, so I max out at 2 arms lengths for this stage of turn and burn :)) Your goal is partially to teach finishing the commitment job, and also you can 'mark' the decision to turn his head low and into the turn by making that the moment that you move (movement is such a massive reinforcement :)). So as soon as you see his head turn to start the turn - you can move away for the FC and reinforcement presentation. On the right side, he was really good too but I think the distance was biting you there - at :38 and 1:28, you were pretty far, and your movement away for the FC presented a rear cross line before he had a chance to turn his head to the barrel - so the bad news is that he didn't commit there but the very very very good news is that he can read rear cross lines! Yay! Starting closer will fix that and also build this side up to be super strong as well with the low, turned head. And we will of course build in more distance to it, that will be easy for him 🙂 Great job! Let me know what you think! Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>Video of a “formal” session of building value for his leash.

I watched the video before reading your post – I thought it was a regular toy! I am happy to hear it was his leash – VERY COOL!!! You can also try addin a harness if he wears one into the ring – my Export used to LOVE tugging on his harness at the end of a run.

>> A tunnel is also our “go to” reward spot when we are training in the ring (mostly because it’s an easy spot for me to reward when in motion and no concerns about what to do if he drops the bar), so far I’ve only done it with one of his favorite toys in the ring.>>

That is why I like to use these little ‘installations’ – without even thinking about it, his leash became his toy, VERY COOL! It is almost a reflexive response from the dog: I grab the thing and play because that is what we do in this context. Yay!

>>Question: I was using my Get It cue not Yours (which is the same as your Bite). That’s the cue I’ve used “from the beginning” because I didn’t have a Yours and now I’m wondering if I should swap cues. In my head my Yours is more of an I’m more stationary and the dog drives into a toy that I’m holding more or less still. Get it as you’ve described it is move away from me to the reinforcer, right? The way I’m using the toy here seems like kinda some of both. The toy is “attached to me” but not “on me”, does that make sense? And it’s moving so he has to if not move sometimes toward me and sometimes away from me to get it. Would it be OK for me to continue to use Get it when reinforcing in this fashion? Or is that going to be confusing to him? Next step with his leash as a reinforcer?>>

Good question! I agree that you can clarify things more for him. I also agree that the “yours” cue should apply to how you did it at the end, with it relatively stationary in your hand. For the get it – you used it two ways here: as a chase the momma with the toy, and as a thrown toy. Chasing it (which is driving towards you) is different than driving away from you when you throw it, (and also different from driving up to you when it is stationary) so I think the thrown reward can rmain a ‘get it’. For the chase the momma reward in hand, you can use the wooooooooo you used on the very first rep, or something like the ‘shhhhhh’ noise I use to differentiate “drive to me and chase” from the “leave me to get it”
Having these as very distinct cues will help him know very specifically where to look and what to do,

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!
This is looking really good and his wave was too funny!!!
He is happy to come to your side and pivot with you, so only one suggestion about mechanics:
Reward with his head turned towards you and not straight or turned away – that will help him prep his body for the pivots and turned, because the first thing we will want him to do is turn his head 🙂 So, have your hand right next to your leg and a little more forward towards your thigh, so he turns his head into the turn as he arrives at you for the pivots. He was nice and bendy on these pivots, that will transfer really nicely to turns over jumps in the future!
You can add more motion on this – maybe from a restrained, you can Karena can alternate holding him while the other person runs a big distance away – then when he is halfway to you, decel, then pivot. Then the deceler/pivoter can become the holder for the other person to play 🙂 He will get lots of training and hopefully will be tired too LOL!

And you can totally move on to the collection sandwich we posted this week.
Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>So I do actually put a good bit of thought into our session and am a pretty calculating person. I may have just poorly executed things. My general assumption was that since this is a reinforcer off the mama exercise that I really shouldn’t have reinforcement on me>>

I don’t think it was poor execution – I think you were focused on the one behavior and we can plan the full session, in terms of all the potential behaviors. That includes engagement and the loop back to the antecedent before the behavior: we all tend to get muddy in that moment between the consequence (reinforcement) and getting back to the antecedent (cue to start next rep). And that is where we all accidentally end up with behavior that we might not want! I feel that pain.

In this particular behavior – yes, it was a session about teaching him to turn back for a reinforcement placed behind him. That effectively plans the A to B to C of the loop but not the C to A.

>>Which brings me to, I think trading is an awesome idea and it works. If we are practicing behaviors without the reinforcement on the person, where do you keep the food?

In the early stages of teaching the procedure, I have the food in my hand or pocket because we are teaching the dogs to turn back – and the value of the reinforcement will help get he behavior. So, for Fever, a frisbee on the ground is going to be higher value than a dry cookie in your pocket. That gets the behavior going, and gives me a way to get from the C to the A. Then I move the food off of me – when I was filming outside, I put the food on the dog walk ramp. Inside, it was on top of a crate. A second toy can also work.
In my perfect world, I wouldn’t need the food at all because the dog would deliver the the toy to me, tug on the way back to the A position, then out the toy and be ready to start. I don’t live in that world with all of my dogs LOL!! So especially for Contraband, I always plan the C back to the A and that often involves the trade, even if the food is not on me. It can be nearby, and the dog can totally know where it is (because it is nearly impossible to hide it from them).

>> Their noses are good enough to know when you have food on you and when you don’t. Fever probably doesn’t care but Callie CARES from within her soul.>>

Truth! And I don’t try to hide that from the dogs. They know where it is and that is why remote reinforcement is so critical.

>>Trading is something he needs work with.

Yes – and when planning sessions, we need to take that into account. For example, with Hottie, I can cue the turn back for the toy and she is highly likely to bring it to me and tug and we can go back to the setup and she will give the toy back early in the session. So with that in mind, I either plan to keep my sessions super short or I plan to have cookies somewhere nearby to use to reinforce the out later in th session, when arousal comes up and the out of the toy is harder for her.
For Contraband, I know that his trading needs work when it is a frisbee so I need to either use a lower value reinforcement like a tug toy which he is highly likely to bring back, or have another type of reinforcement available/nearby when I want to use the frisbee. So I am planning the A-B-C of the behavior I want to train, and the incredibly important C-A part of the session.

>>Shifting focus to Callie for a second I have a very hard time using toy reinforcement in agility with her. I’m assuming working loops with small things will be beneficial.

Yes – installing interaction with favorite toys in training with food as part of the procedure too will help!

>>She has such a high association of food with agility that when I present a toy, she often doesn’t want it and will wait out or search for food. She loved frisbee also but won’t really take it as a reward at the end of the run.>>

Yes, conditioned responses are incredibly powerful. And it is possible that when you are presenting a toy, you are asking for a behavior that either she doesn’t understand or doesn’t have enough value. For her, tugging is a behavior, not a reinforcement (yet) in that context. So shape it using very small slices of the behavior, using presentations that are most likely to elicit what you want: moving towards it, tiny bits of interaction, increasing criteria – with food as the reinforcement in a really fast loop. And since she finds agility reinforcing too, probably, putting the toy interaction into these agility-food loops can help shift the value too.

Let me know if that makes sense!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

>> I’m not sure how to do 2o2o without using a target and a nose touch.>>

I train the 2o2o separately from the teeter by using a target and a travel plank (but not necessarily a nose touch, it depends on the dog – but the lowered head position that the target brings is VERY valuable for teeter training!). Using the target makes things VERY clear for the dog, and it is easy to fade – and I like clear and easy LOL!!

I shape the dog to move from 4on the plank into a target position, first with me in front of them and then moving myself off to the side, with ALL of the value initially right on the target. I use my ‘catch’ procedure for this, because no matter where I am, I want the dog to stay in target position and wait for the reward to be tossed to him. When he can do the targeting on a travel plank, I move the game and the target to the games you describe of running down the teeter board, or jumping onto the end of it.

You can use a MM but only if the dog understands what the target is all about – otherwise, the MM is too much of a distraction at first, and it also draws the dog’s focal point up and forward. On a teeter, I want the dog to be looking down to where his front feet will be when he steps off the board, which creates the weight shift and balance we need for when the board is moving.

Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! Lots of great stuff in this session!

Great use of the toy on the first sequences – it was both a remote reinforcement AND a placed reward for that big go line. He was great! And I also love that he brought it to you on that 2nd rep (and didn’t run off with it at all here!)

I think the next step here is to try the exact same thing, but without the treat pouch (that will change the picture entirely!) Do everything the same except put the treat pouch up on a table behind him, 10 feet away or something that is not terribly distracting. The visual of he treat pouch is something we can work on fading as remote reinforcement too, because he will need to see you without it at trials (and it is a perfect thing for remote reinforcement!)

>> target mat at the bottom of a frame still a wip>>

I like the idea of a mat as target to help him out. You can break it down so that he understands how to get the reinforcement without you needing to stop or face him – I like to hop the dog on the side and let them move to target position with me a little behind them or with me moving past, then use the catch to get the reinforcement to him in position.

Nice catch on the stay in front of the jump! Overall, his tugging looks great! Towards the end he got into some plucking so you can go to an immediate trade for a treat or another toy, as an anti-plucking measure LOL!

So on the next session, definitely try adding the challenge of a couple of reps of the treat bag on a table, as the remote reinforcement.

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

So for clarity (and also to overcome my lack of coffee :)):

>> I understand the differences so I am going to add a new marker for our turn back back to the food. It is going to be “food”. I am going to keep “cookies” for the reward outside the ring marker. If I release them forward to take the jump I use the word break and then I can run with them back to the manners minder and use the marker “get it”.

The turn back and get the thing behind you: “Food”
Remote reinforcement, such as cookies left on a table outside the ring at the end of a run: “Cookies”

Is “get it” specific to the Manners Minder? Or will the MM be used as a remot reinforcement, same as “cookies”? Just trying to make sure you don’t have to worry about extra words, we all have a lot of words to remember already LOL!!!!

>> So we have been working on staying focused in the storage room which is just a walled off area next to the big room.

Good for you! Brilliant way to break it down!

>> The total time we were working in the storage room was about 11 minutes

That is a long time for working, so you can add in chilling out on a mat, or a snuffle mat, so he has brain breaks in there too.

Even though he doesn’t need the leash here, I suggest using it anyway because the leash elicits a conditioned response and changes arousal. So I use it a lot (even in my own backyard :)) so it can blend into the background and there is no conditioned response when it comes out.

The run looked good and extra hooray for the stay!!! You can use the catch procedure for this – one little pink panher step away and then a catch, and build up to more duration (mixed in with releases forward).

The run looked AWESOME 🙂 Hooray!!!

>> We have a way to go yet but this is definitely good progress.

This is HUGE progress!! I am doing a happy dance for you!

>>But I think what you are trying to tell me is that I need something less extreme to use to practice the games.

Yes – before we can work in the big distractions, we need to teach the dogs the coping skills of what, exactly, earns reinforcement. Same as teaching the weaves – we break the weave skill down, we ateach it with a lot of reinforcement, we build it up into sequences, we add distractions – so when the dogs get ot sequences with weaves and distractions near weaves, they already have an understanding of how to earn rienforcement involving weaves.

Engagement and focus is a behavior, just like weaving (harder in some ways though). So just like weaving – we break it down, teach them how to earn reinforcement, build it back up, gradually add distractions and so on.

The video with Keltie is looking good! She seemed to think this was easy peasy, and that is exactly how we want to start” easy to be correct, super high rate of reinforcement.

2 ideas for you:
– take this skill away from the agility obstacles, because when the handler is moving towards obstacles we want the dog to take the obstacles and not look at the momma 🙂 Same with the MM – rather than have it right on her path, have it a little more off to the side. A MM on the path is often used as a target, so we don’t want to muddy that at all.
– as with Buccleigh… do this on leash (I know, it is totally weird LOL!) because the more you incorporate leash procedures into all of your training, the easier it is for you to manage the leash and the easier it is for the dogs to not get over-stimulated when the leash is in the environment.

>>I could also use a food bowl and I have a couple of toys that hold food that would also capture their interest.

Sounds good! Start with them empty, then add the food distraction. And build up to things that might move,

>>Am I on the right track?

Totally YES! We are building up to the harder stuff by teaching them how to earn reinforcement at each step. Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi again! I love that you are making up your own procedures and games here – brilliant!

This is a super fun game for the MM value building!!!! My only suggestion is to have the ball in the thrower thing before you click the MM – you are not really wanting to reinforce the retrieve, you are more interested in building up the MM – so if the ball is in the chuck it and then she eats the cookies from the MM… you can chuck the ball sooner and make a stronger pairing.

And you can also loop the MM in as a reinforcement: wing wraps, MM, chuck it. Wing wraps, MM, chuck it 🙂 You might already be doing this because there are wing wraps right there 🙂 And you can put the MM into any fast & fun sequencey thing, right before a chuck it throw 🙂

Here are some visuals of that behavior – MM – toy game. My markers have evolved since then, so ignore the old words 🙂 but you get the general idea of how I was using existing behaviors to get the pup to enjoy the MM (he thought is was STOOOOOOOOPID)

Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning, fellow member of Team Fake Chill!
This is a good behavior to use as a platform for planning. And more planning will make for a more efficient session, with more behavior that you want and less that you don’t want. Geeking out over this stuff will make all training in the future even easier 🙂

I tend to watch the videos before I read the comments – and I think more clarity will help here because as I watched it I couldn’t exactly figure out what the behavior was. And I think it was the same for her – she had a general idea that it was something with the target, but she didn’t know exactly what.
So, some ideas for you:

>> It will be used for teeter training.

That is good to know, and we can plan backwards from the finished behavior. It sounds like this will eventually become a 4on behavior, where she drives to the end of the board independently of you, not looking at you (this is key) and with you anywhere except facing her (because we never really face them at the end of the teeter, we are always moving somewhere or behind them).

With that in mind – I suggest changing the set up so that she moves ahead of you to th target, rather than facing you – by facing you, the body position of you facing her and her looking at you gets built in and then it is harder to fade.

And since we want her driving ahead and looking ahead, for now use a ‘get it’ for tossing the treat out ahead (it is also a release) and then you can use a ‘shhhhhhhh’ to reset her. Get it here on this session as a reset worked well, but it set her up to look at you while offering the behavior, so we want to see if we can switch that around.

One more question:

>>wanting sustained interaction.

What does that mean, specifically, in terms of rewardable behavior? She seemed to have an idea that it was about going to the target but then she didn’t know what you wanted – you got lots of down and looking around, which might be similar to a mat behavior. So defining sustained interaction will help you decide how to split and reinforce the behavior.

One more idea:
Use your marker words, don’t say yes 🙂 Yes is a little too general and causes her to look at you – and using the premise that everything between the click (the yes, in this case) and the reward gets reinforced, then the looking at you after the yes and before the catch will get reinforced and you will get looking at you as part of this – which is probably not something you want on teeter behavior.

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>It’s a little unexciting to watch, but Keiko was engaged the whole time>>

I find this stuff VERY exciting because when the dogs understand what to do when presented with distractions, it gets much easier to generalize that behavior to all sorts of situations!

>>especially one where one or both of her sisters would be outside the fenced area watching or (worse!) playing with their Daddy. Super hard – it’s going to have to go up near the top of the list.>>

These are great distractions for a few reasons:
– she isn’t worried about them, just stimulated
– these distraction simulate trial distractions (especially if The Daddy wants to come watch her run at trials!)
– you can easily control these distractions in training, in terms of intensity, distance, etc.
All good to work on!

The Find It review was a great warm up. And the open lotus ball with treats was a little distracting but no too much! She did really well with that, even when a find it treat bounced right next to it 🙂

The outdoors sessions also went well. Dead toys and the food container were no problem for her (the moving food was very high value for her). Being both on leash and off leash – also no problem, she was super successful for both!

Ok then, since this is going so well – let’s plan the next steps:

The ‘happy’ distractions can increase in difficulty. With The Daddy be willing to sit outside and let her play this game with him as the distraction? And if that goes well, maybe add in one of yoru other dogs, just hanging out with him?

And at classes, if she is happily wanting to greet other people or dogs, you can play this at a big enough distance where she can be sucessful. And also if she is happily distracted by dogs running in the ring – you can start to install that at a big enough distance that she can offer engagement.

As the difficulty of distractions increases, the length of session should decrease because she will mentally tire out more quickly.

Separately from happy distractions – you have mentioned that sometimes she worries about things in th environment. Make a hierarchy list of these too – then start with a very short session with the easiest, least worrisome one, with you at a big distance away with the highest vaue food. If it appears that she doesn’t even notice it, then you are doing it right 🙂 We proceed far more slowly with any worry distractions because worry or fear wakens the ‘lizard’ brain, and the decision-making process is different for the dog (or should I say – they can’t make operant decisions when faced with worry, so the training is very careful to help build in a positive conditioned response more than an operant response).

Let me know what you think! She is doing really well so we can systematically work through all sorts of distractions 🙂

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi there! He is doing so well!!!!!
Some ideas for you:

Drive forward: When using the stay, release him before he looks back at you (which will be pretty soon after the toy lands) so he doesn’t look at you and so he doesn’t break the stay 🙂 His stay looked really strong!!! You can also hold him so there is more of a race feel as you move into the next steps, which is starting the toy races (less control. more go go go 🙂 )

Circle work/decel: it is hard because he is so little 🙂 He did best when you turned a little slower (like on the 2nd rep) and when the toy in your hand was presented a little later (like at 1:34, that was really nice!!) And you can also add a long wooden spoon so you don’t have to bend over as much – when you bent over on the last rep, it was great so he didn’t hop up, but we don’t want your back to get angry from too much bending 🙂

He is ready for you to add moving into the decel before the pivot rather than standing still til he gets to you: so give yourself a long lead out, keep walking, release, then slow down when he is halfway to you so he sees the transition into decel – then do the pivots that you did here.

Plank work – very smart to already be low when you started, that really helped him!!! Good boy getting up on the plank!!! He was really great with hopping on and hopping off and you were great with the cookie tosses so he was happy to keep hopping on and off 🙂 Now that he is so good about getting on it, try having him turn in a slow circle on it with a cookie hand for him to focus on – that way he can start thinking about his balance and where his back feet are too!

When getting the toy play going, move away from the cookie zone (plank :)) at first so he stops thinking about cookies, then get it closer. He did well with interacting with the toy, but he totally seemed to still have cookies on his mind 🙂 so moving away from there will help to get the great toy play you had in the driving ahead game.

Barrel game
He had a little trouble with the big barrel here! How far away were you from it at first? Looked pretty close, so I don’t think distance was the question – probably size of barrel 🙂 So, you can almost hug the barrel with your hands at first to get the game rolling, then fade your hands back – you did a bit of that starting at 1:12 and you can totally start that way to jumpstart the game, especially when you have a new barrel or new location. It can mirror how the game started on the flat – getting the rhythm with the cookie drops, then delaying them to let him offer more and more, then he will be zipping around the barrel. Also, I almost think he would do better with you standing, based on that very first rep where you were a bit more upright: he zipped right around it. So feel free to try standing and see how he does!

Backing up:
He did well here! You got some really good backing up going and no barking! (OK, a little barking towards the end but that might have been excitement barking) After he does a long distance one, you can call him back so he doesn’t stay out away for too long.
I think he is ready for the next step where he backs up onto something – this will really get him using his back feet as a way to find things and also will help keep him straight as he backs up (rather than curling off to the side).

Great job on all of these! Let me know what you think! And best of luck at Tryouts, we are rooting for you!!!!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Glad to see all the nice weather!!!
He has lovely value for his prop! Yay!
Yes – try to say get it, I think that will help. A couple of things about mechanics – have the cookies ready to toss, the moments when you were reaching into your pocket caused him to look at you more than needed. He was better on your right about looking for the target and on your left, he wanted to look at you more – maybe you are doing some heeling or something? So a little extra practice on your left to get his eyes on the prop will smooth things out 🙂

>I noticed I need to throw the treat and let him drive forward, I think the time he looked at me, I hadn’t thrown the treat or indicated driving forward. >>

Yes – I think the first couple of throws were a little too random so he didn’t know where to look. But as they got clearer, he got stronger with driving ahead.

One last thing – don’t say go 🙂 This is not a go, because he actually has to collect a bit to hit the prop. Plus, we want to name extension over a jump as a go, so for this – just be quiet til you say get it 🙂 I know it feels weird to be quiet LOL!!

Great job on these! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

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