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Hi!
I am glad you got to work with Suzie! She knows this program pretty darned well at this point 🙂 Hold off on the figure 8s and fanciness for now – we build up to it when the single barrel is amazeballs.One thing to be careful of on the barrel games is that you don’t go right into handling and skip the parts that get the speed and commitment – he is doing well here in terms of going to the barrel… but we can ramp it up a lot before asking for more. Keep it simple for now so he can really drive through it (don’t worry about adding more to the handling yet)
I want this to look more like the turn and burn where you run away on a 90 degree angle because of the commitment challenges and the fun of the chase 🙂 – so if the barrel is at noon on a clock, your running line takes you to 3 or 9. You did do that on some, but on others you were running back to 6 or doing other angles. If it is unpredictable, he will slow down and we don’t want that right now.
Before going further on this, let’s get him driving more (don’t go to 2 barrels or the full 360s you did until he is blazing around it)
So the way to get him driving is to have chasing your motion as part of the reward, and – you guessed it – toys. Try to build this with the toys, using a really long exciting toy that he can chase (he likes toys enough that I think he can do this with a toy).
Get him all jazzed up with your ready ready ready, then point to the barrel (you will be close to it to start). No need for the wrap verbal yet 🙂 Stand perfectly still til he is almost done with the wrap… then do the FC and take off, cheering and dragging the toy. Wheeee! If he does well with that, you can leave earlier and earlier. It will be a wilder session, you both should be a little out of breath by the end 🙂 Keep it short and sweet with the toy 🙂Have fun!
TracyHi!
I love that he is super confident here too! Nice!!!!
Because this is a shaping exercise, I want you to stand still the a lot more. You are moving around a lot and he is waiting for you to move to get on and also to release. So, just stand still next to the plank and let him offer. You stood still more later in the session, so remind yourself to be relatively still from the very beginning 🙂
When he gets on with all 4 feet, you can use a hand lure to have him turn around, then turn in a circle. Feeding the treat by dropping it on the plank is causing him to jump off a bit, so you can deliver it to his mouth.
Do you have access to a longer plank? You can start giving him more room on the planks to move around and also getting on different planks is a good thing too.
Great job!
TracyHi!
He is really confident on this wobble board – YAY! And it has a pretty big tip. Nice! You can move it to different surfaces to gradually introduce more noise. And yes – you caught yourself – you can “yes” the correct behavior when he gets on the wobble board, but then say get it for the toss. Everything else looks great!Great job!
TracyWell helloooooo and welcome! So fun to meet the new pup!!!! She is gorgeous and smart!
It is a long class so you have time to get all the things in and not feel rushed 🙂
She did well with the shaping to get on the ‘thing’ 🙂 You can build value even more quickly by doing a short session or two where you feed her in position with feet on it, or put the treat right down on the prop: that will tell her that it is the thing we want her to smack 🙂 Then when she immediately smacks it and won’t get off 🙂 , you can move to tossing the treats to get more of the running back and forth.
Same thing with the target – she is hitting nicely and then looking at you, which morphed into more looking at you, because the cookie was tossed away. So you can adjust the placement: Your target holding position is great so when she hits the target, you can bring th cookie hand over to it, plop the cookie on the target (turn your hand) or hand it to her right in front of the target. Then, after she hits it a couple of times right there, you can toss the treat. We build on this next week, so it will make even more sense in context.
Great job here! She is so fun!!! Looking forward to more 🙂
TracyHi there!
I think he was great here – the MM is a MASSIVE distraction as well as a high value reinforcement, and he was really great.
What you did here was say “Treats” then click (then moved if the click wasn’t enough) and it worked really well. He was not necessarily turning back immediately yet, but he was not coming forward which means he was getting the idea about location. As you get further away, you can turn back and point so he doesn’t think treats means come to you first, the pointing is permission to turn around right away. And it is fine to have a physical cue for this, because it is likely you will always be able to have a physical cue in the context that this will be used.Yes, the transfixed moment was hilarious at 1:14 – nice patience on your part, and you were brilliant to release forward when he was staring back at the MM! LOL! It was my favorite moment of the session!
>>would like to switch over to the Lotus Ball but am not quite sure how to do that just yet in a way that is clear for Cowboy.>>
It will look very much like this, but you will probably need to point a bit more because there is no beep. You can start by holding his collar and placing the lotus ball behind him, say the cue, point, let go of the collar. He will probably figure it out within a handful of reps, at which point you can use your sit cue – then put the lotus ball down (or put the lotus ball down and cue the sit, either way is fine so go with whatever is easier for him) – then stand still – say the cue – then point. I think it will make sense to him right away.
Let me know if that makes sense. Great job here!
TracyHi!
>>He does no how to jump into my arms. I think that most of the time he enjoys it. I haven’t done much with this because I want him to feel like it’s not ending something without appropriate reinforcement and then him avoiding it because he doesn’t want to stop. Does that make sense?>>
TOTALLY! Same as going in the crate – they won’t go if it is paired with ‘being done’ aka negative punishment. So do lots of it mid-session, give a reward, put him down, carry on. It is “just” a trick, not an end of run routine.
>>I’m hoping you mean least distracting. I’d say things on the ground. He’s not super distracted by a bag of cookies, if I saw that out on a good day, it wouldn’t worry me.>>
Yes, least 🙂 Start with the easy stuff so he learns what to do to fluency when presented with a distraction. Then it is not so hard to move up the scale to the really hard stuff.
T
Hi!
A lot of these procedures are about dog training, true… but also they are about learning what to do when we need to build on these behaviors. And I think he did really well with the ‘turn back’ element of the dog training – the hardships were in the planning stages.
>>Unfortunately he strongly desired to kill it and I lost him shortly into the session. I should have had cheese to trade. I didn’t.
So that brings up an important planning thing: never go into a session with only one possible reinforcement, unless you are willing to be $1000 that you will only need that one reinforcement.
>>He selected this broken and decrepit frisbee for this session and it’s killing my hands. But heyyyy look at that frisbee tug.
So when he selectd this frisbee, the next question to ask yourself in planning in: how am I going to get it back? Answer… cheese 🙂
Also, part of planning should be the ‘loop’ or the reset back to the next rep – how are you going to get him back? This is where cheese would be a good answer too.
And also it is high value but if part of the plan was tugging, you would not be as effective if the fris was ripping your flesh. So you can take it out of the selection pile, and if selects the toy: liimt it to toys that will work for the session.
So this qualifies as a really good session on two fronts:
first, he got to produce correct responses to the turn back cue. Win!
second, you learned a planning lesson that you will carry over into your next session. Double win!Before you next session, plan for the behavior you want to train, yes – but also plan the befre and after so you can get the loop going for a very efficient session.
>> He put his front paws on me to wait for food, which he never does. Super cute.
Awww good boy!!! I love this type of spill over!!!
Nice work!! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
OMG you are BUSY! Wow! And thank you for the kind words 🙂 I am so glad you are joining us on this puppy adventure and if anything doesn’t make sense, please ask for more clarification 🙂 It sounds like you and Tali are off to a great start!!!!!!!Tracy
Hi! He is a fabulous goat! He looks super happy to get on any of the things. And I love your creativity LOL!! Make sure you switch sides in your shaping more frequently so he learns to approach things on either side of you (you probably do this but were adjusting to limited space here).
He did really well turning around on the stable thing and also on the wobble board.Since this is going so well… next step would be to incorporate a lot more toy play before and during the sessions, and even do entire sessions just for the toy 🙂 This is incredibly useful before it teaches the pups early on how to be aroused and stimulated, but still use their bodies wisely. I am sure you have seen dogs that get super aroused and crash through things! So incorporating tugging before and during these shaping and goating sessions will help Leo learn to control his body and brain even when he is REALLY excited about what is happening 🙂
He looks ready for us to get him even more jazzed up 🙂 Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! He was a good boy here!!!!!
Good job with the various markers here, I think it is helping him know where to look and how to approach each type of reinforcement.
For the bringing it back: I think we can add a little helper cue of some sort to remind him to bring it directly back. It is easy to fade a helper cue, and he gets a little frantic when he doesn’t know what you want and offers all sorts of things. Since we don’t want to build in the frantic energy and all of that offering, we can help him out. With that in mind:
What do you think the best helper cue would be to get him to move directly back to you with minimal tossing? I think last time you were moving in a little so you could move back – so maybe moving back on the first couple of reps (with the open hand cue you had here) and then during the session, fading the motion. The other options are a pat of the leg or a verbal cue, both of which can be faded out pretty easily.And I gotta say: He was hilarious when he accidentally tossed the toy at you LOL!!! He looked as surprised as you did! Ha!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
I don’t know if this was too much too soon, but I do think some of the verbals were conflicting in terms of definitions so she was confused.
The look on her face when you said “OK GO EAT” was priceless on the first rep. She was like…. wait, what? Release, go… but turn back? OK means go forward out of the stay. Also, GO in front of a jump means move forward in extension so she might be confused.When you led out and said ok let’s go, that is very similar to what you were using for the turn back so she did ask a very valid question there about what you wanted.
I think clarifying the markers will really help: maybe just use “Eat!” And then point at it, as that really helped! And save OK and Go for when you want her to commit to lines and release forward off the start line.
And then before each rep, remind yourself to not use ok or go, just ‘eat’ 🙂
Let me know what you think! Clarifying the words should totally help.
TracyHi!
>> I found myself not always perfect with my verbals, even though I rehearsed first.It is hard to have all these words LOL!!!! Try to say the verbal without anything in front of it, like “ok go eat” or “go get it”, as that will muddy the marker up a bit. Also, you can probably just say “eat” or “get it”, because we want go to remain a valuable directional on course.
>> Once she got the idea of going back to the lotus with food, she seemed happy to do so. ;). I did toss in a couple of “cookies” forward rewards, too.
Yes, she was happy with that for sure! On the ‘cookies’ release forward, you can also use your release from a stay to move forward, the cookies to mark the reward from hand.
>>Questions – I’m using “go eat” for the food reward, but when I switched to the food/tug toy, I automatically used the toy “get it.” Is this confusing to her (or just to me…?).
I think it falls into the category of things you CAN train but don’t need to train 🙂 In this setup, we can let the context dictate things and only use one marker word. I could, theoretically, say “toy toy” for both cookies or toys because contextually, I am only leaving one thing behind her and the marker means “turn back to get the thing behind you”. You can train different markers, but that is only ever useful if you plan to leave both a toy AND cookies behind her, and you will want her to discriminate which one to take. I mean, you are welcome to do it… but it seems a lot of easier to just leave one thing behind her and have the marker indicate to turn back and get whatever thing you left there.
Is ‘get it” used anywhere else for her? If so, use a different marker that is specific to the turn back.Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi! This was another interesting session!
The toy toy game was not ready for the great outdoors yet, as he told you when he took off. Good to know! You can keep building it indoors and also on thE flat outside, without jumps.For the weave reinforcement: I think he is doing really well here and really beginning to understand what this is about 🙂 Be super clear with the marker – try not to have the marker starting with “go” or “good boy” coming before it, as both of these will happen elsewhere on course and do not mean ‘go to reward’ in those situations 🙂 I think also starting with “get” it might be hard too, because you sometimes say things like “get your weaves”. So, “let’s go” might end up being the best candidate for being super clear, because he will be responding to the “let’s” and I don’t think he hears it in any context on course. Let me know if that makes sense!!
Nice work 🙂
TracyHi!
Yes, planning reinforcement is definitely the hardest part!!! I think that perhaps agility and remote reinforcement after a run is more associated with food, which is why the toy was not a valuable reinforcement to him here. Same with the bushes – perhaps he has associated the ‘end’ of a run with food, so that is what has become valuable. Reinforcement is tricky as we sort it out!
So, go with the highest value food you have. 🙂
What is the remote reinforcement marker? I could not tell if it is was let’s go or go get it – so try to be as clear as possible. Otherwise, the rest looked good – the weaves looked great and you will gradually want to increase the length of the sequence with the weaves (and by extension, the reward) coming later and later 🙂Nice work!
TracyHi! This session was pretty strong too! The hardest part for him was the treat behind your back – that was more distracting than if you were just holding it 🙂 I think the behind-the-back treat was causing him to either say “whatcha got there?” Or he was predicting that it was about to be delivered. So, don’t hide it, have it right there in your hand 🙂
He was a little engaged in the fluffy toy at the end, so on knowing that he might get lost of in the moment of shredding it, you can ask for the out more quickly before he gets too into it 🙂
But overall, really nice session!
Tracy
