[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>No updog in LA. I did look and there’s some in AL during the week but unfortunately I have to work.
I have a friend who does disc and it seems like it would be a more friendly learning environment. I also see you can use a long line for the beginner stuff.>>

Totally friendly environment! And I used a long line when Contraband did his first disc event, because I was not entirely sure he would ever bring the disc back LOL!!!!

And, because it is so user friendly (as is UKI), local folks have just started hosting them (seems easy enough to do) and I am the local who hosts UKI to be able to do more of it. I don’t host out of any great love of hosting… I host so I can work my dogs in that specific environment.

I am also doing the At Home UKI trials – and it has allowed me to work specifically on the remote reinforcement in a comfy environment. CB doesn’t care, he is fine with the remote reinforcement tat is needed for the At Home stuff but HSM *totally* cares and so it is similar to working in a slightly easier version of a trial environment. Highly recommend it, not so much for the Qs but because it is forcing me to teach HSM more about remote reinforcement!

>>How much longer do we have to submit videos? Anything you’d like to see us do more for feedback?

Last day for videos is the 23rd. I think what we should spend the week doing is planning for the next several months, making a general outline of what you want to train/work on, and then quite literally wrap a plan or map it out. Writing it down helps us be progressive and systematic, but also allows for flexibility! You can bullet point it, you can put it on a white board, or index cards… what is the easiest way for you to be able to outline this stuff? I am a bullet-pointer LOL but every learns differently and perceives things differently.

I have really started to love the planning because it is a FABULOUS way to reduce anxiety (MY anxiety :)) and shake me out of any training funk or depression. And I think we are birds of a feather, so the planning stages of skills —> plan —-> reinforcement procedure will really work nicely 🙂

Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! I like hose choices for verbals! Zazaza is really fun sounding LOL!
His pounces on the toy were adorable 🙂

He did really well with the choochoochoo and also on the other side with the zazaza – nice commitment on both sides! You can start your front cross earlier on these, which will challenge his commitment and also give you more time for the blind or decel, depending on what you want to do after the barrel. By ‘earlier’, I mean you can do the FC just as he is arriving at the barrel so you are fully finished with it before he exits the barrel.

Your connection was also pretty solid – all great reps and one little oopsie at 1:35 where you looked ahead of him towards the toy, so he correctly read it as a blind cross and switched sides (good boy :))
And the decel looked really good at the end too! That was especially nice because he had one a lot of reps of driving forward, so it was great to see him immediately read the decel. You had good mechanics to catch his attention and get the turn. Nice!!!!

He was DEFINITELY happier with the collar grabs here! Nice! So now two things with the collar grab:
When you want to get the toy back, try not to grab his collar – ask for the give without the collar grab and reward with a cookie 🙂
And after you put the toy down, you can hold his collar as you do that for now, but the next step to build in more self-control is to then let go of his collar as you move to the barrel, and have him move with you (you can totally talk to him while you do it, and you can also reward with treats). Pretty soon, you won’t need to hold his collar at all while you put the toy down.

Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Rear crosses are definitely going well! At this point, no more clicker when she turns her head because she is getting up and turning towards you, which can make the placement of reinforcement harder. You can do the rear cross, and then keep moving up the line and release her before tossing the reward (cookie or toy)- that will set you nicely to add the prop in out ahead, so she learns to change sides then go hit the prop after the release (and when that is going nicely, we fade the stay :))

Contact mat – yes, good mechanics speed up the training and solve most of our problems 🙂
And here too, the click is causing her to look at your hand – it becomes a cycle where at first the clicker is paired with our hand moving, so then the click stimulates that and so they look at our hand, which gets more hand-looking. And because you started thinking about not bending over to throw, your clicks got early and they were for front feet. So the clicker mechanics cause some issues. You can totally play games with a clicker and targeting so she doesn’t look at your hand at all… since I can’t toss faster than a dog can look at me, I don’t bother with that – instead, I get rid of the head looking by moving my cookie hand the entire time as if I am going to fling the treat and then when the dog presents the behavior, I click and actually fling the treat.

That can be done separately from this, though. For this mat work, for now, you can replace the clicker with a get it marker which means “reward is available out ahead”. It can be as precise as a click without getting the head turns.

>> My bad – I thought this was supposed to be a dead toy/object.

You are correct, it is a dead toy game but the wiggling of the toy and interacting with her like that a little is designed to increase arousal & interest, which shortens the time between behavior and response – which is TOTALLY did here, she was much faster to get it. You can make it more of a dead toy game by wiggling it then putting it down so it is stationary for a second or two, then cue the get it when it is stationary. The toy doesn’t have to be rolling at the is point, we just want it to be more stimulating before you put it down so she snatches it faster like she was doing here.

>>She did have one rep though where the toy rolled away and she went after it maybe 6 feet and delivered it to my hand, which is huge for her.

That is great!!!! Yay!

>>I feel like there’s a fine line with her with the toys- too jazzed and she’s biting and tugging and then delivering to hand goes out the window.

I think the excitement level was good in this session – she was excited but able to respond quickly and correctly. I prefer the lower latency (faster response) even if the toy is slightly more ‘alive’ at first because it is easy to transfer that excitement as the toys get more stationary.

>> I think if I actually put both wings out, you’d be able to follow what I was doing (or maybe I could follow what I was doing. LOL)

You can visualize where the jump bar would be, or even put a leash on the ground. Having 2 wings out is visually easy for us but opens up to many options to be incorrect for the pups, so you can try a leash on the ground as the bar for now 🙂

Great job here!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

I think it was very clever to add the bed into the retrieve game! I think this can turn into a ‘stationing’ behavior where you build the retrieve into the other games by having her bring it to the bed as part of the loop you create. That can make for a really efficient session as well as happy retrieves of the toy! Yes, on the 2nd rep, you presented the 2nd toy a bit too early but you were more timely with the rest. You can delay the presentation of the 2nd toy until after she has gotten onto the bed, it looks like she is definitely going to do it! And the bed is a strong cue for the retrieve, so protect that – when you send her to be on her own with the toy and when you end the session to go turn the video on, lift the bed so she doesn’t offer the retrieve on it and get ignored.

Strike A Pose:
Your position looks good here – my only suggestion is to turn your feet a little more towards the reward hand and less towards the target hand (as much as possible without feeling like a total pretzel.
She did well hitting it then coming across the body to the cookie hand, she is definitely targeting that cookie hand after the hit (which is want we want in this particular behavior. And she did really well when the toy was out there too, she was faster so the toy was probably more stimulating.

I think you caught yourself mushing the mechanics together like at 1:28 when she was tugging, facing you – and you tossed a treat and said get it. She was like, “get what?” So make sure she sees clear transitions from the toy to the treats – she was starting to drop the toy as your cookie hand moved after that (you kind of pulled the toy away, moved the cookie hand, so she started letting go). We don’t want to lose the toy drive, so be sure to have a clear play-release the toy-move the cookie process for now.

The next step would be to have the toy dangling so you don’t need to really move your arm or shoulder to present it, just use the tug verbal so she grabs it. Then the step after that is to get the reinforcement to the ground – you can start that with an empty food bowl so she sees the concept then yo can move to the toy on the ground.

Sits – She was great with offering the sits! At the beginning, it was hard to tell where the reward placement was going to be so that can dilute getting the stay behavior quickly – you had catch and get it alternating with the tosses thrown kind of off to the side. The predictability of this is what gets the strong behavior, and the reward placement was more randomized here. Get it is more of a move forward marker and catch is more of a ‘it is coming to you so stay over there’ marker – but the throws were kind of similar so it gets hard for her read the difference. Later in the session, you had more catches going and she was starting to figure it out – the last rep was the best one where she held the sit and remained in that area for the ‘catch’. So no need for a get it on this, it muddies the waters for her.

For now, to help her understand the “it is coming to you” element of the catch – stand still while you toss it back to her so she is less inclined to moved towards you. She was holding it beautifully as you moved away, so a couple more sessions without you moving as you throw will help solidify the procedure then you can add the moving back in.

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!
The video looks really good – the toy moving was a distraction for sure and she had to think – but you have worked on it and she was able to successfully respond to a lot of different cues. Yay! I think her only question was after you asked her to out the toy, she went over and bopped the snack hand. That might mean that you have a pattern going with the out-snack being closely paired, so she was anticipating. You can be a little less predictable, in that case 🙂

>> You may remember seeing it when you were here. When I’m actually running a course and reach for the toy if she’s not already committed it will pull her off. Ex. If’s she’s already in weaves, she’ll usually stay in, but if she’s just about to enter and I’m early, it’s 50/50. So I’m wondering good ways to transition from what we have to eliminate the distraction of my hand reaching for the toy while running. >>

I see this with a lot of dogs! And sometimes reaching for a cookie ends up being the cue for the behavior, especially on the contacts – and in trials when the handler doesn’t reach for a treat, the dog doesn’t understand the contact behavior. To help her, I think that can be an extension of what you did here. Rather than the toy moving the whole time (she has got it quite nicely, and it seems clear to her what the training is about) – you can reach for the toy while you cue something. So the setup looks more like a regular training setup: toy tucked away and not in your hand, or cookies in your pocket. Cue something and simultaneously reach for the toy. Start easy with behaviors she does really well like her sits and line ups that you did in the video. Or wing wraps!
When she can do that, then move it to a simple, short, open set of weaves so the weave behavior is easy – because the distraction challenge is difficult. Then build it up from there! And, also, keep mechanics clean and try not to be moving to the reward as you are also cuing something 🙂

>>The other issue is someone else moving the toy. That part you’ll probably remember since you had to give it back to me. LOL Someone else moving her toy is the hardest for her. I don’t think she believes they have read the toy rulebook .>>

Ha! I didn’t even know there was a rule book LOL!!! I think you can treat that as an extension of remote reinforcement. Instead of leaving the toy on the ground, for example, hand it to someone and move away. Approach this just like the very beginning of remote reinforcement- one step away, one trick, then go back for the reward. If she really struggles, you can also build this up by having rewards on you and just rewarding for leaving the toy with someone else.

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
Yes, FEO and NFC will be the thing that bridges the gap for you at trials. And I know there is more and more UKI coming to your area! Yay!

The leash session looked fabulous! You had lots of different reinforcement procedures happening – she was awesome!!!! No worries about touching the wing, that is probably just because it was a small space. Everything else looked crisp and strong!!! My only suggestion is that when she comes to you and you put on the lease, praise her while you do it – it was very quiet in that moment and it was hard to tell if you were happy or not. So, use some praise to help in that moment – which is probably what you would do in the ring anyway 🙂

So the next step is to bring the leash play to different places, to start getting her use to it in trial settings. And for UKI, you can tie a leash to it for ALL runs, not just NFC runs! That way there is always a toy available 🙂

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

>>So, we were thinking the same thing. (Great minds???;)

Definitely great minds LOL!!

Just to clarify:

>>>Not sure what you mean by one hit on the teeter? Did you actually take your teeter along and set it up and do a bang game or a low run over or ???

Sorry for the confusion! I would go to someone else’s field or facility, do one rep of the bamg game, and be done.

>>What were you doing when you went all over the place? I do have the 2 places we’re taking classes and a friend with the same type of teeter that I can do drop ins for the sensitivity. Just what would be the next step?>>

The next step is to establish the other games like the bang game at home. That is the game you’ll want to do on as many teeters as possible, but you’ll want to train her to love it at home first 🙂
And you can also do the find it or whipped cream snacks for teeter bangs in class for now- first really quiet ones, then building it up to louder ones and dogs running across it.

>>>Today, we had a Saturday handling session and Keiko did nicely with the “find it” while other dogs were running. A new and very lively dog came in half-way through the session. Keiko lay outside her crate crunching ice cubes from her water dish and watching the action calmly. Nice! :).

Yay!!! That’s awesome!!!!!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Yay!!! Good boy with the toy!!!!!!!
Happy dance. 🙂 🕺 💃

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! He was great with his commitment here – he looked pretty darned perfect with finding the jump. YAY!!!! My only suggestion is that you have several treat in your hand so you can click, toss, turn and go the other way, click, toss, turn and go the other way, and so on. By only having 1 cookie in your hand, he was watching you reach for another cookie and that was causing him to watch you more than we want.
Also, by having to reach for the next cookie, the efficiency gets detailed and you have to toss a start cookie rather than just turn and go then next direction. Now, the start cookie is not a terrible thing but because he is little, we want to avoid cookies we don’t need 🙂
So, bu having 4 or 5 cookies in your hand, you’ll get 4 or 5 reps in a row and then can take a break to grab more.
When you have room, add more distance! This looked strong so you can add more challenge 🙂
Great job!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!
Nice list of verbals! You can definitely be using your wrap verbals now and I agree, use the same ones as Gemma’s 🙂

She was a Rockstar with the parallel path game!!!! She was perfect with her commitment and as you mentioned, also looking ahead nicely in general. She seemed stronger looking ahead on your left side than on your right, but that might have been a product of the smaller space. Hopefully the weather is cooperating and you’ll have a chance to go outside (and throw a toy!)
To help get her looking forward more, you can use a marker like get it so she looks for the tossed reinforcement and drop the clicker. The clicker gets her looking at you a bit, even with your super quick rewards.
When you have more room, you can mark and toss when you see her intent to move towards (she might be 8 or 10 feet away from it) it rather than wait til she is close to the jump – that can really get her sailing ahead without looking at you.
Great job here!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

This is great! Thank you for the drawings 🙂 I like how you have laid it all out. You might not need to differentiate between the left/right and the La la la ray ray ray – it will depend on the context but sometimes for the la la turn you can just use an obstacle name or a name call. I mention it because it is one less thing to remember and you don’t want to dilute your left/right cues (which are currently the hottest cues in course design, I use them more than ANYTHING else at trials, strangely).

The rest look good! And I am 1000% confident you will remember them all because we will add them gradually 🙂

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>
>>With all of the mechanics and words and new games, definitely practice the mechanics and markers before she comes into the session.<< Unfortunately, i had prectised before we tried it, and I still messed it up >>

I have gone to video taping my mechanics sometimes (especially new stuff) and I have a whiteboard in my little training area so I can write down a list of all the things to do (and NOT do) LOL!

My neighbors think I have REALLY gone nuts because I walk around, saying the words, training the dogs… but no dogs in sight. Ha!

>>>So, a follow-up question – when is ‘yes’ the appropriate marker? Like, is ‘yes’ appropriate when rewarding at source (eg, when I reward a nose touch at the target)?

Super question!!! I think we can get away with yes in any situation where placement of reinforcement can either be so quick or so obvious that we don’t need to be clearer with the dog about the specific location of the reinforcement. So for a hand touch – if handler mechanics are FAST in terms of delivery of reinforcement to the source of a cookie, then ‘yes’ is probably fine. If the reinforcement is not a speedy cookie delivery, though – maybe it is a toy – then something else is needed.
And, if yes is used as a click… when we need to reserve it only for that specific, scalpel-like use. I am TERRIBLE at keeping my mouth shut when it comes to “yes”, I say it all the time 🙂 So it is really low value to my dogs as it is generally non-informational. When I used it more, they thought it meant reinforcement was available near me in situations where it was not available – and it was causing errors. And it is something I see all the time… we use ‘yes’ inappropriately and that causes errors and frustrates the dogs. So I use ‘yes’ as a general praise similarly to “good boy!” And try to avoid it elsewhere in training.
It is very individualized, of course! But if you watch other dogs work, you will begin to see how we all use ‘yes’ too much in places we shouldn’t and it causes confusion and errors in the dogs.
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Rear crosses looked much better here! It is also good for stay training 🙂
Be careful of where you are when you click, and where you toss the reward – use the base of her tail as the line or rear cross. If you stay on one side of the base of her tail, no rear cross. If, at any point, you are on the other side of the base of her tail (even just 1 foot) we want her to read rear cross. So at :14, when you were behind her, she should turn to her left and not to her right. Same at :23 – you can see she looked to her left and got clicked but got rewarded to her right, and at 1:05 where you cross behind her, she turns to her right, then you reward to the left.
Since her stay looked great and she immediately understood which way to turn (YAY!) you can add more motion: she can be in a stay about 10 feet in front of you and you walk up the rear cross line crossing behind the base of her tail) so you are in more motion (and sometimes walking forward, no rear crossing).
And if that goes well (which it probably will) – add the prop out in front. She is in a stay about 5 or 6 feet from the prop. You start behind her – sometimes you walk forward and cross behind, so she turns her head – at which point you release her and keep moving so she goes forward to the prop on the new lead (no click here because it will pull her off the prop). Don’t release until you have crossed behind and she has turned her head – you are in motion the whole time. And sometimes you can just walk forward, no rear cross, release, go straight to the prop.

Parallel path – you were still late at the beginning but then got earlier and earlier – like at :22 and after, you were trying to toss sooner. So if she is starting 10 feet from the jump and you see her immediately look at it and move towards it, you can totally toss the reward (toy or treat) as early as when she is still 6 or 8 feet here. She was probably about 5 feet away from the jump at :23.

I prefer to not use the MM for this, because then she is just going to the MM and it is not as useful in terms of commitment in the future. I am not overly concerned about her looking at you now, that will go away as the game gets built up but we can play with mechanics to help get her looking forward as much as possible for now.

She also looks at your hands moving when you say search, which is not a big deal but you can try to wrist flick it more rather than bowl the treat.
When using the toy, you can throw it earlier – if she arrives at or near the the jump and you have not thrown yet, then she will look at you (nothing else to look at :))

Also, since she looks at you on all the markers… drop the markers for now and let the context do the heavy lifting. Just go back and forth and toss cookies or toys.

Contact mat – the clicks were good!!! So now… ok more mechanics 🙂 Everything happens so fast here and you were doing something that was delaying the reinforcement which causes her to look at you and even stop at the mat: after the click, you were bending down then tossing the treat, especially when you were using the opposite hand to toss. That moment of bending down is enough to build in other behaviors like looking at you – it is more obvious here than in the parallel path game on the jump, but I think that bending to toss is contributing there too. So… just flick the treats and flick them to the spot you want using the hand closer (not across your body)

Yes, feel free to curse me out about mechanics haha!

So you can just wrist-flick them from each hand and use a treat that will land and not bounce around, like cheese or flat treats. That means a couple of treats in each hand, and the clicker in the one of the hands – and you would click and toss from the same hand.

I highly recommend sitting in your kitchen or living room and doing this without the dogs first LOL!!!

I do eventually use a MM for the running contacts which TOTALLY helps but it is also really useful to sharpen mechanics at this stage.

I think get it and give are perfect in terms of sophistication LOL!!!! Good job making sure she swallowed the cookies with her get it game LOL! She had high latency on getting the red ball and hollee roller, meaning she did not get it right away and we can shorten the time between cue and response.
I do that flyball-style, with a little bit of ball wiggling, passing it back and forth between my hands, getting the dogs jazzed up – then putting it down and saying get it. She was good about getting it to your hand but I think if the initial ‘get it’ is crisper then dropping it into your hand will be crisper too.

Her garbage can work looked great 🙂 Fabulous commitment! So now a question about handling style: you cued the sideways sending with the arm across your body (the arm furthest from the barrel). Is that you preferred handling style on wraps and spins and such? If so, cool… I will try to talk you out of it LOL!!! If not – then on the sideways sending, send with the hand closer to the barrel, like you did at :12 with the backwards sending. When you switched side at :21, you used the hand closer to the barrel on the sideways sending, so maybe you just like your left arm better.

A couple of other little details:
Keep using the verbal – you had some reps where you had it and some reps were quiet.
Move over slightly so she can see more of the barrel, you were blocking it a little so she was widening her line to it.

Remind me – has she seen a jump wing yet? If so, cool! You can add in the wing to these games. If not, you can transfer these concepts to a wing, starting with the wing wrap foundations and turn and burn game.

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

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning! Your sessions here look terrific!

Wow, that was an impressive first tunnel session! Good boy, StrykR!

Very nice lap turns! I think the first set on your right hand looked pretty perfect – you can toss the ‘search’ cookie sooner, as you are finishing the turn, so he doesn’t stop and look at you. The left hand side looked less comfy for you – your timing was still great – just try to step straight back rather than out to the side as you turn him away – stepping out to the side makes the turn a bit wider

Adding the prop was easy for him 🙂 As he turns and heads back to you, make a bigger display of your magic cookie hand so he knows where to go: you can have it fully extended and as low as possible, even shake it a little so the power of the magic cookie hand cuts through the draw of the prop more 🙂
He found that prop every.single.time (GOOD BOY) which bodes really well for jump commitment in the future (happy dance!). You can keep moving now: after you turn him away, keep moving towards the prop (like the parallel path game) and reward him for hitting it. I am sure he will.

And then remember to use your ‘search’ instead of the ‘yes’ to mark it (I used the ‘yes’ too much with my pups when they were young and so they look at me too much with the yes markers. This has turned out to be pretty common so I am steering folks away from yes as a general marker)

RC on the flat – he has zero tour leaders turning away from you in either direction here, this looked really good! When you do a RC on the flat or tandem with your others, do you stick with the one-hand cue? If so – perfect, he read it nicely here! If you had a cookie in the turn hand here, you can play with doing the cue with an empty hand and throwing from the other hand (you had your search marker here on most of them, which is was great!)
And adding the prop: again, no problem at all, he rocked it. YAY! Plus he was able to find it with you continuing to move past again. Double yay!!!

His sit is the CUTEST thing ever! He was not sure about sitting while you were moving, so for now – be stationary while you cue the sit and add movement during the duration. We can add sitting while you are in motion later on. This was a SUPER high rate of success session, click/treat to you – these high rate of success sessions will get you an awesome stay. Keep adding in the tiny bit of movement away as you were already doing (ping ponged with shorter stays) but add 2 things now:
– a tiny bit of praise before the cookie toss – it helps extend the duration and helps teach him that not every word is the release or cookie marker 🙂
– as you move away, turn more and more towards walking forward away rather than backing away. Like you did here, this can be very gradual to maintain this high rate of success for him.

Great job on all of these!!!!!!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>> I have always been taught the click is to mark the behavior, ugh.

Well that is not incorrect, but it is not the complete picture. The click and the reward should come as close together as possible (clearly easier with a dog than with a dolphin :)) And, also – you were not just training him to move into a sit here, you were training him to remain in the sit. So the behavior to click is the behavior of remaining in the sit, not getting into the sit. So the click should come later, based on the duration you want.

>>So when he sits, I don’t click until I say catch?

Correct. And with duration behaviors like this, we can fade the click really quickly and just use catch (I think the clicker works best for precision behaviors or finding tiny slices of behavior, and stay duration is neither of those).

>>Are we going to move to a line up behavior for the sit. I use “middle” with Chewie and “get-in” slap my leg with Piper. I am really liking “middle” for tons of thing. It’s a way to help me keep them safe, etc.>>

We are not formally going to do it here, but you are welcome to do it as part of your stay training.

>>Just wondering where we go next. I will work on mechanics. I use sit so much with him he understands the command, I just need duration and distraction. Can I incorporate “wait” yet?>>

You are welcome to use a wait cue but it is not needed 🙂 It is a ‘superstitious’ human behavior, meaning we do it even though we don’t have to. But we add it in anyway LOL!!! The reason i say you don’t need it is because sit means “don’t move til released”. Think about it – when would you want sit to mean for him to hop right back up right away or without a release? So the wait is more for us humans and I think it helps me stay calmer :). I use “stay” as my stand-stay cue and I do say it sometimes just to kind of soothe myself but the dogs just roll their eyes at me 🙂

>>Thanks for all the help, I have always been such a cluts and not super coordinated and then after my big surgery my balance is screwed up too, lol. Has made my >>

You are very welcome HOWEVER you are not a klutz at all – we are getting into really fine details about mechanics to get the most brilliant behaviors from the pups. If I thought you were a klutz, I would not bother yo about it. But you have the skills in place, so we can look at these tiny details 🙂

T

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