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Howdy! I’m excited that you and the Aussies are here 🙂 we can get creative to make it all fit your space. Fun times ahead!
Hi!
>>OK, I hadn’t noticed that, but I’ll try another surface soon…which may mean that I need to finally get/build my own wings. Do you have plans or resources for building agility equipment? The wings just seem like they would be easy enough to build and pre-made ones seems so expensive for what they are.>>
Pre-made wings are ridiculously expensive!!! Here is a link to a popular way to make your own:
>> The tandem turn to get her to come in would be more on a parallel line to the wing, facing the center of the tunnel, with your outside arm drawing her in as if you had a cookie, then turning her back out.>>
Uh…what? I’m sure it’s perfectly clear, but I can’t picture things in my mind, so not really sure what this is saying. 🤣>>
You can see the visual here:
https://agility-u.com/lesson/handling-game-rocking-horse-turn-aways-2/The Advanced Level has the tandem turns to give you the visual 🙂
>>Overall, it seems like a lot of the issues that I’ve had during this class have been from handling mistakes>>
That is basically the life-long challenge of agility, from beginning to masters level 🙂 Handling is the hardest part 🙂
>> and things that are probably easy to correct in the moment by a third-party observer who knows what they’re doing. I’m thinking that some in-person agility lessons would be helpful for me, just so I don’t get into bad habits myself. Do you offer any of those or know of someone in Alexandriva, VA/DC area that does?>>
I think the closest to you will be at A Click Above in Leesburg:
https://www.aclickabovellc.com/
And a lot of the NoVa/DC folks also go down to Level Up – a bit further but they have seminars so you can have a longer experience to make the drive worthwhile:
https://www.levelupdogsports.com/
Live, in-person training is a huge part of agility, so hopefully you can find classes that fit your schedule. There are a couple of other facilities on the MD side of things too!
Have fun! Great job here!
TracyGood morning!
Nice work here!! A couple of things that I see:
on the 12 poles, he only has a couple of reps before the striding goes from rhythmic to wonky. It could have been a bit of fatigue, or it might be that he strides better when you are ahead (like the first couple of reps) and when you stay parallel, he slows down to match your speed so he ends up crossing over in the striding. With that in mind, you can add more speed and move faster to stay ahead. And mix in driving ahead to a reward target so he doesn’t rely on you being ahead.On the 2x2s – he was definitely more consistent here. He was somewhere between the bounce and the swim – not quite one or the other but definitely rhythmic!!! So keep moving forward with speed on these and maybe tighten up one more inch and see how he does. Then it can be 4 then 4 to see if he can hit and hold the rhythm, eventually bringing them closer together.
The zig zags are correct! You can move the wings a little closer together so he learns to make the changes quickly – the ideal eventual distance is 4 feet (then add a 3rd wing in the line :))
Great job here and thanks for all of your work and feedback!!!! I will see you in CAMP 🙂
TracyHi!
yes, I think that is a great progression! Now that the weather is good, it won’t take long 🙂
See you soon!
TracyHi!
On the accordion grid – your setup is good with the distances and your placement with the toy giving her plenty of room to land (and be sure you aren’t facing her, be facing away but still watching her – it was hard to see what your position was here :)) Her stays look great!
About the bars coming down… I believe it is about the footing. The rubber matting is slippery so she is unable to get her hind end organized for takeoff, which changes her jumping form. If you watch it in slow motion, you can see her slipping a bit as she is trying to take off. So on the first rep – she slips on takeoff. On the 2nd rep, she starts from the stand and she can’t sort it out, so she runs around the jumps. On the 3rd rep – she can’t organize her hind, she jumps short trying to use only her front end and lands on bar 2. On the 4th rep from a down – she is trying super hard but can’t get the grip on the footing. On the 5th rep, same thing happens as on the 3rd rep – a little bit of slipping so she lands short. On the 6th rep – her start position was a little too far back from 1 at 2:53 so she ends up short on jump 3. On the 7th rep she worked really hard and pulled it off, but it is hard to find the balance on the mats. Because she is fast and making split second jumping decisions in the learning process, the next jumping sessions should be all on grass or dirt or turf – no more mats 🙂 They are just too slippery for a fast dog and while she is doing her best to figure it out, I don’t want her to have to work that hard – I want her to find the natural feel of using her hind end to power off for the jump. Even a small patch of grass or dirt is great, she can work the jumping skill on 1 or 2 jumps if you don’t have a lot of space for all 3.The lateral lead outs are definitely going better! When you got into the groove (especially when you were on the far side of the wing) she was really finding the jump! Yay! Throwing the toy really helped her focus on the line – but the bars down at 1:26, 1:45 and 2:23 were because of the toy throws (that was causing her to drop her feet a bit and hit the bar). That improved too later in the session – it is possible that a big cookie reward (like a visible piece of cheese) will be better because it will still reward the line but will be a little less stimulating, so she can still keep the jump bar up.
On the starfish video – the setup was also good here! It looks like you were able to fit it all in and still have to do a good amount of running 🙂 And nice work adding the verbals – right now they still need body support, but it is great to use them because she will get better and better at recognizing them without physical cues.
>>Also, despite having 5-10 minutes between repetitions, did I overdo this for a single day?>>
I think it is not so much about length of session (this looked to be 2 sessions of about 5 minutes each) but it is more about keeping track of the dog’s rate of success. This is particularly important when the dog keeps making the same error while insisting that something else is correct. I have found that when this happens, the dog is always correct LOL!!! That is why I have the 2 failure rule (and by that, I mean 2 failures for the entire session, not just 2 in a row) – if the dog fails once, a little red flag goes up in my brain and I try to clarify the info. If the dog fails twice, especially on on the same cue and even more especially twice in a row – I stop asking for the skill, ask for something else, then take a break to figure out why the dog has the massive question.
>>I had a really difficult time getting her to wrap clockwise around the first wing.>>
That is where the 2 failure rule will definitely help: you were cuing something and she was insisting it meant something else… she was correct. The line up and cue for that very first wing was the question: I think you were trying to get her to wrap away from you on the inside pf the wing, turning to her right and clockwise away from you – but the cue when starting her on your right side really was presenting the counterclockwise turn – it looks like a send to the far side of the wing to get a left turn. To get her to come inside, the cue would look really different – A tandem turn with the outside arm would be needed to give a clearer indication of the come-in-to-you-then-turn-away.
There were a lot of failures there which really dropped the overall rate of success, so you saw frustration behaviors such as the hard mouth on your hand and grabbing the tunnel (she was offering something else because she didn’t know what you wanted on the wing).You can see it more clearly when you changed the camera angle at approximately 4:08, the physical cue was to the counterclockwise side – there was a step and motion towards it. The tandem turn to get her to come in would be more on a parallel line to the wing, facing the center of the tunnel, with your outside arm drawing her in as if you had a cookie, then turning her back out.
That is a more elaborate physical cue for sure – but if she doesn’t read it twice, you can break it down or change your position – generally it is easier to start the dogs for a clockwise turn by sending from our left sides (rather than having them turn away from us).
If something is going wrong and my dogs are insisting that what I am asking for means something else – I invoke the 2 failure rule and either change something or skip it and come back to it later 🙂
Once you got rolling, the sequence went well! The race tracks and tunnel commitments are looking really good. That left turn around the wing after the tunnel was also going nicely – keep giving her the connection to get her to the wing past the tunnel. When you connected after the tandem turn, she nailed it, When you didn’t connect to her eyes, she ended up back in the tunnel.
>>An additional trouble spot was the last wing to the tunnel threadle (?)>>
She did best on those when you turned your shoulder away from her earlier and more dramatically – when you kept your shoulder open to her, it looked like you were cuing the end of the tunnel in front of her, so that is where she went. That earlier rotation totally helped her be able to change her line!
Nice work here! Let me know what you think!
TracyHi!
She is doing really well here! On the plank, I think there is definitely a solid understanding developing here and that is great! At this stage, add in waiting one heartbeat longer now to be sure she is fully stopped and fully in position, and then mark and reward. You can still be moving while this is happening – either moving the whole time, or stopped the whole time, as long as you don’t stop when she stops 🙂 I liked how you were praising in there with a lot of quiet “good girl!” before the reward – those were the reps where you could really assess her position. She had one error at :40 and on at 1:37 where I think she was anticipating the quick reinforcement. And there were a couple of reps where she was not really in position and got rewarded – because she is quick on her feet, adding in the extra time to see if she has truly ‘stuck her landing’ in the 2o2o will work in your favor.I totally agree that the plank session was strong and the bang game was the right next-step. It also went well, and not surprisingly – she had an easy time transferring the position to the teeter. Super!!!! On the teeter here, you can add challenge: line her right up at the end corner of the board so she leaps right into position with no steps down through the yellow. It is harder for balance and simulates what she will be doing when she is driving across the board. And as you cue the position and move, keep moving the whole time until you see that she has stopped, you praise, then mark and reward. The quickness of reinforcement makes it harder to see if she has fully stopped, and she is anticipating a bit 🙂
Overall, she was SUPER successful so you can keep moving forward on this. We want her to keep her head low on all of these, so keep trying to get the reward on the target. When you were tossing to her mouth, she was looking up high at you and that will change the weight shift on the board – so the low tosses will help maintain that weight shift. Losing the treat in the grass can slow things down a bit for sure, so you can play with different types of highly visible treat (I use chunks of white string cheese and others use those orange crunchy cheese ball things 🙂 I practice that – throw a treat in the grass and when the pup finds the treat in the grass quickly and returns her attention to me, I give her a toy or another treat – the dogs get REALLY quick about finding the treat in the grass haha!!!
Planning ahead now: The bang game is going really well so you can also add the 2o2o into the downhills to the ground, and into the elevator game. And when that goes well for a couple of sessions, onwards to the crazy elevator games and then the full teeter! She had basically worked through most of that before the position change, so I think it will be a straightforward progression to get to the full teeter. Yay!
Great job here! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
She did well on the 12 poles on the right side! One thing to add when she is weaving all 12 is to move away from her more (moving laterally) – your tendency is to converge into her at the 12 pole which she is fine with, but it allows her to watch you more – adding the lateral motion will be super useful on course and she will not be able to watch you AND weave 🙂
On the left side entries, there are generally 2 reasons why the dogs struggle more on those: the entry is ‘softer’ in that she has to go between 2 things and not wrap that first pole, so it is harder to do. Or, she has to look away from you in order to stay in, which is also hard. Or both 🙂 I like your idea of breaking it down to 4 poles so you can add the motion distraction – she is pretty strong without the motion distraction but she will be seeing them with motion on course for sure. You can also isolate the entry with a marker, so you can mark the exact moment she gets into that left side entry – when I do this, I open up poles 3 through 6 so they are easy – then I click the entry (which is still a little closed) and drop the reward at pole 6 – having poles 3-6 easier is so that she can get the reward easily after making the hard entry as you move, if that makes sense. When she has a high rate of success with that, you can close them up again.
>>>>I can switch you over: did you want a working spot? << Yes – I would to love to have a working spot for Yowza – thanks>>
Sounds good, I will swtich over and send the invoice (the CAMP class is has more to it so the working spot costs more, if that is OK)
Great job here!
TracyHi!
>>We definitely did exactly this. What I did not do is bring Sizzle. We did the weaves at the very end when we were leaving. We took chill breaks, he drank water rolled in the grass and got some great belly scratches.>>
Great – fewer reps on the teeter with high levels of excitement will help get even more drive across it (calmness is overrated haha!!)
>>I will definitely bring Sizzle next time.
A little bit of jealousy can go a long way 🙂 You can also do this at home: Sizzle gets one rep, Stark gets one rep, Sizzle gets on rep, Stark gets one rep. You can have someone standing by with leashes (cough cough Kevin cough cough) so you can just swap them in and out without too much effort.
>>Also I’ll set up straight approaches.>>
Perfect – don’t let him think about how to get on 🙂
>> The discs only come out for disc class and the teeter. I actually haven’t seen him love one toy over the other but the discs are special.>>
Also great! It might be the only agility spot he sees a disc, or giant meatballs or anything mind-blowing (does he like hoses or pools?)
Have fun!
TracyWow, he looked great! He seems like he really really really liked the trial environment: you had to HUSTLE LOL! Great job though! The little oopsies looked like all stuff that will smooth out when he is more experienced. Very cool! And it is amazing that he did 12 poles!!!! Good boy – it is rare that dogs can do so well in the trial environment in their first outing, but it seems like he really got both pumped up AND really focused. YAY!! I am thinking your trips to the park to train really helped him. Hopefully Get Rev’d does more UKI so you can keep playing and do more and more trials!
Tracy
Good morning! He did well here, the poles are basically straight. At this point, I think the behavior needs to percolate without any changes to the poles setup (one change to the reinforcement, see below). That way he has some time to sort out his striding and you can add in more of your speed (which will help him get into the rhythm because it will be really exciting :))
>>Accidentally threw too soon the first time. Whoops.>>
I feel this pain 10,000%! I have done the same thing because it looks like the dog is going to do the last gap but then we twitch a muscle to do the throw, which pulls the dog out. It really only happens when the dogs are on the left of us in that last gap – because they have to turn their heads away and look away from us to do it. And the frisbee-loving beasts struggle with that. I think they are trying to sort out how to both get that last gap AND watch us throw the friz. So, I changed the friz placement but over-compensating the throw, to encourage the dogs to NOT look at us in that last gap on the left side. When the dogs were weaving on my left, I threw the frisbee to the 4 or 5 o’clock section of the clock, so the friz placement ended up on the other side of the poles.
That way, they would look away from me because that is the fastest way to get to the friz: it developed a response cost for looking at me (takes longer to see the friz because it is going to be on the other side, and NO friz coming if they look at me and don’t get the last gap – eek!)
In your setup here, he would be weaving on your left side and your throw would be towards the house, rather than on that straight line where the other weaves will be eventually.That change in placement fixed the pop out really quickly. I still throw the reward on the straight line when the dog is on my right because they don’t have that same problem on that side 🙂
Let me know if that makes sense! A couple of sessions on the 6 basically straight poles will get him back into the bouncing. For now, shelve any of the Find Em games that require a lot of thinking, until he is blasting through 6. Then when he is blasting, it will be easy to do boxcars and then get 12 straight.
Great job!! Let me know what you think!
TracyGood morning!
The line up cookies worked really well here – she was almost 100% successful when you used a cookie to line her up and then give a clear cue. When you didn’t use them, she tried to send herself and that didn’t go as well 🙂 So definitely do them on every rep to keep fostering that high rate of success!
She started off a bit excited and distracted by your human manners minder, but when you switched sides she had a bit of a lightbulb moment and then she had a ton more success! Yay!!! Also, good work adding motion and some more angles, she did well too.Keep working the progression with this set up, adding angles and your motion with some type of reward target out ahead (human manners minder is both helpful and a great distraction for her to work through :)) One think I was thinking of is as you continue to tighten up the poles bit by bit, you can also move that last set (poles 5 and 6) further away like you did when you added poles 3 and 4 – if she has any questions about how to find them, that can help answer them.
I am really excited by her progress!! I see actual real weaving happening, and it won’t take long to finish closing up the poles.
Great job!
TracyHi! The last day is tomorrow – it is amazing how fast the time went!
I am glad you had fun – thanks for sharing Emmie’s adventures 🙂 You did an amazing job of making the teeter fun for her!!! And I am very excited to be able to see you in June – it will be a blast!Have a great weekend 🙂
TracyHi! I think he did really well here! A couple of ideas for you for future tours:
The bang game looked great on both sides. He was definitely in food mode, which is fine (he is not lacking in toy drive, so with teeter training it is good to go with whichever the highest value reward is in the moment: is there a toy that makes his head explode? If so… only use that toy for teeter training in new places).
On the crazy elevator games, he preferred it when the board dropped a little more and then you caught it. He did not seem to be a fan of that first rep when you caught it high and then started it lowering it before the countdown (note how he was backing up and lifting his head).
The last reps with the raw food were good, including the full teeter – but I think the angle of approach was causing him to have to think too much and slow down (he was coming in from a 180 turn on a jump so note how he slows down, lifts his head, and swings wide to find the teeter entry – that affected speed across the board).
The other thing is that since we want to make the teeter really exciting and minimize reps, we can structure the tour session differently:
So for his next teeter tour, I would first acclimate to the environment in general with a little short fast fun sequence, jumps and tunnels, yeeeehaw!!! When he is acclimated (which will happen pretty quickly) show him the teeter with a bit of bang game for nice big rewards, just one rep on each side.
Then take a break while he is still high and before he settles in (and don’t do any other stuff, just let him chill. Then after a break (ideally where he watches Sizzle do something, let him get nuts watching her for a couple of minutes) then you go for a full teeter from a very easy straight, fast approach: think less, run more 🙂 A wing wrap or tunnel is great to set up the approach, with you running but not too far ahead, and also with the target still visible (because it helps and is easy to fade :)) And you jackpot it even if it is less than perfect) with the entire bowl of raw if he is hungry & working at mealtime, or his favorite toy if he is working for a toy.
For example, Contraband did his first ever sliding seesaw yesterday… except he slid past the end position and stopped with his 4 feet on the floor. Oops! But I still partied with him, because it took a massive amount of confidence to produce the slide. I know I can get the 2o2o when he is confident.You can also skip doing full teeters in any new location if he shows any signs of concern about anything, and also if the teeter is new/weird/different than what he has seen before (play end games on that but don’t ask for the full teeter). My guess is that he will NOT show concerns about new locations and there are very few weird teeters that you’ll run into 🙂
Let me know if that makes sense! Onwards to the next stop on the tour lol!
Tracy
