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I think for her it would be really good to keep using the elevated target with all of her proofing exercises. The criteria is a bit more clear to the dog and as she starts to really understand how to hit with the distractions/motion/speed then we can slowly fade the elevated target or the inverted target. In the video it looks like you are using the inverted target? But I can’t quite tell. You are still pretty close to the target (although getting farther away!! Which is really good) so we want to keep building that independence and distance. It is a bit more important for dogs like her that like to look at you a lot and looking at your hands for the cookies a lot. I do not meant that as a fault at all! It is just who she is and so we want to adjust our plan to what will work best for her. Knowing that she is a bit stuck to you means that we will need to work more to get her to be able to work independently and we will likely need to spend a bit of extra time working on the handler distractions/distance.
Yes, I think rewarding for effort is always good 🙂 Especially with dogs like him. So that is perfect. Just keep Jping the extra good ones 🙂
He did great with the turns! He is getting more speed headed to the target so I am happy about that. The other thing I want you to try is having him wrap around a wing then sending him to the target. Even if we end up doing a lot of the proofing exercises with the wing to the target that would be ok too. Just make sure that you are moving the wing every couples of reps (or the target) so that he is going to the target at different angles. Work on the straights slightly more than the turns because that should help him pick up more speed as well. You could do wing to target to PT. You can also reward him on the way back if he hits the target. He is doing great! Keep up the great work!
Hi Julie! Sorry for the delayed reply.
1. In lesson 2, when we start adding motion, can that be done on the small platform? I think the platform really helps her understand the criteria and motion is going to be hard for her since she is so motion focused. Is there a reason to switch to the mat on the ground immediately?
YES! I actually think that would be preferable to work on this on that platform. It is a lot more clear to the dogs in the beginning on what the criteria is. Then as they are successful and understanding then you can start to fade the platform
2. Similar to when we start to do straight exits. Can this be started with the small platform? If it makes a difference, my small platform is about 1.5-2″ tall.
Yes! Same thing 🙂 So much easier for the dog to understand and as you get better understanding you can work on fading it
3. I have a medium size feed bucket that I bought specifically for the purposes of the inverted target exercise. It was recommended to me by someone else. So it’s round instead of square. Can I use this for the inverted exercises or is it important that it’s the same shape as the mat? We’ve already worked on that in that past and she’s great with both the back and forth game as well as straight exits on it. I don’t feel like I have something else that would work well for an inverted target.
Yeah I think that will work great. It is really more about her understanding/learning the skill and the concept and generalizing that skill to any type of target — eventually the DW target. So yes, that will be perfect.
This looks fantastic! Next session you can start running a bit more. I am really happy with her running and hitting the target. Add in more lateral motion throughout your sessions as well. Don’t add the lateral and more handler speed at the same time. Knowing her as a bit of a mommas girl, I bet the lateral motion will be tricky for her. Then after doing all of that, lets also do a session where she is starting from a wing wrap or a jump. She looks great!
OMG HI JACLYN!
She did fantastic with the larger inverted target! Good girl! I am happy with that.
Turning to the left seems to bed her hard direction. She is usually hitting with FF going to the left rather than RF. That is not too big of a deal but I would play with the distance of the pole/starting position there to see if you can get her hitting with RF. She might just figure it out as she goes. Otherwise she is doing a great job listening for your verbal and hitting the target. Good girl! Watch out for her hitting with her feet off to the side of the DW. Sometimes it looks like she is hitting where the target is but just off of the side of the DW. Make sure to not reward when she does that.
Yes that plan sounds great!
Ahhh yes I get the muscle memory part now- not sure why that was a brain stopper for me earlier. My only struggle with this is I have to rotate her around my body to load her up using the pole method so I don’t have enough time to front cross or push for a backside. Does that make sense? Yes, this totally makes sense. But she knows how to do a wing wrap so can you not just teach her how to do the same thing in this situation? Just start her at an angle towards the pole while you are ahead and give her an around cue?
Not so dumb question – I think should be fine. If you start notice her hitting on the ground more then we can take a look at it then but I doubt it will be an issue.
This is looking so good! It looks like you are working on adding distractions? If you are, you may be sending her to the target a bit too early. You want her to really see the distraction and see that she is making the choice togo out of her way to find the target. In many of these she was already running to the target. Her hits on the target look fantastic though!
OMG so hard! I think I saw steam coming out of her ears at some point!
When she is going from the left to the right side of the screen it doesn’t look like she has much room to exit. With a dog like her that we are trying to build up more speed getting her to really anticipate hitting and running of the target will be really important. So make sure you are tossing the rewards as early as you can after the hit and tossing pretty far so she is running off the target. I couldn’t quite see her going to the right so I could be wrong. But either way it is a good habit to get into. Otherwise, she did fantastic working through the cookie distractions! Good girl! Sometime soon because you are starting to add the distraction in it would be a good idea to add a “go” word to the target. I just use a generic go that tells the dog to do the target. This will start proofing her to understand that that word means she needs to go find the target not go to the first thing that she sees (the cookies). SO it is a really good time to start adding the verbal for that.
Great work!
Yeah that completely makes sense. He was probably a bit tired. No biggie. For your next session see what happens if you do 1-3 reps of the target to the PT then 1-3 reps of something different like a tunnel or something fast (definitely not something slow or thoughtful). I am curious if that will help him get a bit more excited about the target. The other thing that you can do for the first few reps is to push the button on the PT before you send him (you might have to hold him by the collar because you want him to know that the cookies are already in there). That might help him learn to just run to the PT and not stop on the target. So try a few sessions like that and see if he starts anticipating the cookies in the a bit more.
Otherwise, his hits are looking great. He is really understanding what to do we just need to find a way to get him jazzed up and running more. Great work!
Wow!! He was amazing! I pretty much have the same comments with him that I did with Electra. Although he did excellent with the toy rewards! I wouldn’t go any smaller with the box size for him. This size will also be fine for when you are adding handler motion/distractions but later down the road when you start to add a lot of speed using something a little bit bigger would be good. However, when we work on collection exits this is the size both/mat for him. Just because we want the dog to understand to hit as low as possible in a collection exit (and it is actually the same motion that they are doing now) where as when we are wanting then to run forward he will need a bit more room.
Follow along with the other notes I gave to Electra. They are pacing each other with slight variations right now. Great work!
Yes, I agree, the little box was a bit too small. However, it is really cool to see her starting to really understand the game and trying to put all four feet in that tiny box. You could still come back to this one (with no speed) every now and then just for fun to see how well she is grasping the idea on a pretty challenging size.
She did fantastic with the elevated target and the bigger inverted target! I am super impressed with that! It looks to me like it is time to start adding more pieces to it. The next steps for her are adding in toy rewards/building consistency with toy rewards, adding in some handler motion with both the inverted and the elevated targets and continue working through the different proofing exercises.
With the toy rewards – this is where you want to start slowly building up her excitement and only rewarding the 4 on hits. Gradually building up the excitement to make sure she is still learning to think and hit with all 4. When you feel good with where she is at with the toy rewards then I would start the distraction proofing from lesson 2 but we don’t want to add that in until she is really solid with the distraction of just the toys being present as the reward first.
Adding handler motion – For this you will toss your reward back and forth as she hits similar to what you are doing now (but in a bit more of a straight line). As soon as you toss one reward start slowly walking in the other direction and wait for her to offer going out of her way to find the target. If she is having a hard time finding it walk slow or closer to the target but try to keep moving (even if it is very slow in the beginning). Start to vary your positioning by walking lateral and throwing your treats in different places so she is learning to go find the target from wherever she is/you are.
It is important to make sure that you are separating these skills and not adding them together just yet. Its fine if you do them in the same session (the motion one might be a good warm up to the toy rewards..?) but I would not add both handler motion and the toy rewards into the picture until you feel they are both solid separately.
The first DW half height video – This is looking fabulous! Yay! SO one thing to really keep in mind is how you are setting her up. She is hitting from the pole wrap on every time because starts he with less speed and keeps her more thoughtful. She also has smaller strides when she starts there (because less speed). That is part of why I love that so much. Because it really teaches the dogs to rehearse the correct end behavior. So for her starting on the DW if you start her half way down the down ramp she wont have enough strides to adjust so that it often why she is missing. Even starting her at the top of the down ramp she may miss depending on how fast she decides to run. My guess is with a dog like her your best starting place will be half way on the DW (like exactly in the middle). Try a session with her running to the static toy with her starting half way and see what her hits are looking like. Because now we just need to find the sweet spot for her for those lovely RF hits that she does about 60-70% of the time. If she fails twice in a row then have her start from the pole and reward then try again from where you were. The pole makes her slow down and think. So I think when we start doing more from the top of the DW it would be a good idea to do 1-3 reps on the pole then one reps from half way on the DW of the same exit to the toy. And slowly work your way around the clock that way. Yes, also work on sending to the wing after with the verbals 🙂
Half DW to different exits – Yes, I think this was too much. Mostly because you are trying to develop a muscle memory of how you want her to hit and she is not doing that with all these different exits. HOWEVER, I think you could this same exercise starting from the pole wrap and going to all the exits and I think that would be SO GOOD for her. Again, the pole forces her to slow down and think about her job so what a perfect way to really encourage her to think while doing the exits 🙂
Inverted target – Yes…. This one is soo hard. So don’t worry about it too much. Try working on it with a bigger inverted target for a few sessions then come back to the smaller target as you have better understanding around the clock with the bigger box.
Great work!
Oh wow this is looking awesome!! Yeah she is doing a great job of hitting with all 4 feet. I suspect that this might change a bit as she build more speed. I have found that with a lot of small dogs (Iffee *cough* *cough*) they will be amazing and amazing and then pick up speed and not generalize the skill because they were never really running 100%. So next time that you are working in the bigger space use a bigger elevated target and start working on adding more speed. The bigger elevated target should be easier for her because she shouldn’t have to slow down or think really hard about hitting it. She is also realllly watching you for that cookie toss. So I want you to start walking in the direction that she is running over the mat ahead of her then let her nearly run to you before you toss the cookie on the ground. And as soon as you toss a cookie be sure to start walking in the other direction because you want to be ahead of her in the other direction as well.
Also she is really to start working on the distractions and inverted target from lesson 2. I wouldn’t even worry about the straight exits to the MM with her quite yet. Just building up speed and confidence with the elevated target and proofing games.
Great work!
HI MICHELLE!
Excellent! Toss your reward farther away from the target. We want him to learn to hit that while he is running. Also, try to toss a bit earlier so he doesn’t stand/stop on the box. You may get a few misses in the beginning but you can usually fix that by tossing the rewards in a bit of a straighter line then gradually adding the turn back into the picture. But him anticipating the reward being tossed soon will help with him stalling out on the target a bit and encourage him to look forward.
Yes you are right the accuracy totally went away. Go back to the elevated target and do the back and forth game with the elevated target. He needs to go through all the proofing exercises with the elevated target or the inverted target and not the flat mat for not. He is also looking at you a lot. It was A LOT better with the collar hold so continue like that. Collar hold and elevated target (with the toy rewards) I think he will do great with the toy reward with the easier criteria of the elevated target.
Feet in the box is looking great. You can try to put this sized box inside your old bigger sized box. That will help him build a bit more duration in the smaller size. Then go back to the small size by its self. Remember, when you are clicking it is one click for the treats (either one or multiple for a JP). Try not to click multiple times for one reward
Great work!
This is looking great! One thing that works GREAT to secure the mat to the cato board is vet wrap. I will wrap it all the way around both the mat and the board and it secures it really well. So you could do that instead of a longer target 🙂 I also do the same thing when I am securing the mat to the DW in the future. I also use is to fade the target. So I will put the vet wrap on but not the target and take away pieces of vet wrap. So all in all it is very useful 🙂
For him I would go through all the proofing exercises with distraction and the inverted target before fading the target to the ground. I think he will need to really go through all of those proofing exercises to continue to build up his speed and consistency with hitting the target. So even the MM exercises starting in lesson 2 I would use the elevated target with those to really keep this type of hit. That will also help him understand turns better. AND if he likes to run to a static toy, it is easier to train with the elevated target than the target on the ground. It just makes more sense to the dogs. So when he has really got all of that down then start fading the target. You could move to the smaller elevated target as he gets more consistent with speed — BUT if you see him start to slow down then it would be better to go on to adding distractions/making things more challenging in that way to keep the confidence up. Then later go to a smaller target. A smaller target is basically teaching them to adjust their striding by making them take a tiny step to hit the target — but that is not necessarily what he need because we want to keep him in extension more. Is this all making sense?
This is looking great! Keep trying to stand more and more still. Keep working with the toys as much as possible and ramp up the excitement. Does he have any crazy games he likes to play? Like biting your hands or wrestle on the ground with you playing with a toy? Try to play those games with the target nearly so you can play play play then tell him his “go” word so he runs jumps on the target then gets to play the crazy game again.
