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The trick is to reward really fast. Reward right away when she is walking up to the box (before she steps in) that will bring her to a stop just outside the box. Then as she starts to step in you want to quickly reward for each foot. As long as you are fast with your rewards then you will be able to get one foot in at a time.
Excellent! This is looking really great. Continue working with the food until you have 100% success then start working with toys (great planning on your part!). Our whole goal with her is to gradually build up the excitement to teach her to think through the excitement and maintain criteria. In Lesson 2 there are a lot of additional proofing exercises. Take your time working through those gradually adding the excitement as well. Don’t be afraid to use the larger target for on session in the beginning of adding something new. Then going back to the smaller target. I love that you have the treat on the ground before releasing her. In lesson 2 you will see there is a section specifically on adding distractions. As soon as you start naming this (a generic “go” word is what you want) you will start cuing that even when she is looking at the treat to see if she is really learning to listen and understanding that that go word means to find the target. You can start adding the go word in your sessions now.
I think that is a great set up for the mat to not slide. I think the jump is out of the way enough that she isn’t cuing off of it at all.
Yay! Sunni!! She is such a fantastic pup 🙂 I am excited to see her running DW start coming together
Only use the inverted or the elevated targets for now. She is getting the best hits there and looses that with the flat mat. Not uncommon at all. Also use the elevated target for the B&F game. It just helps her understand how to hit better. You can really see that in the straight lines that she is doing too. When she is hitting with the box she is very deliberate and pounces in/out of the box. That is exactly what we are looking for because it is closer to galloping/running. So when we add it to the DW it will make more sense to her.
This is looking GREAT!! For the back and forth game for her use the elevated target. That will help her rehearse the correct behavior with a more defined area. It will help her a lot with understanding where to hit. Then as she is getting more confident with it you will fade out the elevated target.
She is doing a great job with the inverted target, that is a hard skill! In the next lesson there will be a lot of proofing exercises I think she is ready to start working through those! They will come out tomorrow afternoon.
How is she with the MM? Just wondering because she is not super foody.
The elevated target and the inverted target are looking great. Just a couple things to change:
– In the beginning start with more of a turn rather than straight. She gets a bit too much speed going straight right now so I would rather save that for the DW
– For the first few reps in your session start with her with very little speed. So from the stand stay. We want to encourage her to think more right from the beginning. Right now she is getting the first few wrong then making adjustments.Half height DW – This is looking AMAZING! I am super happy with this. Yeah the striding is really hard if she gets on the DW where she was. So no big deal just keep starting her from the pole right now. I also am curious, does she drive well to a static toy? You can also do sessions like this with a static toy around the clock. This will be useful for when we start adding more speed/more of the DW. I think she is ready for adding some verbals when you think she is. And try some with the static toy around the clock and let me know how that goes (that would still be with the one run verbal).
Overall she did fantastic! She is figuring out the motion of hitting the board so well! It looks fantastic. I love that she is no longer trotting by running the entire time. The toys definitely got her reallllly excited. Which is awesome! But we want to make sure to set her up for success when using the toys so we are really teaching her to think through the excitement gradually. So next time just stand about 4 ft closer to the board and that should make it easier for her to understand and get overall more success. Then, as she is really figuring it out, add more distance. Also with the toys don’t trow them quite as far only because I worry that it will take her focus off the target a bit too much. We want her to be looking for the target as much as possible and I have a feeling that part of her will always be looking for you tossing that toy (again, that id fine, we just don’t want to pull her focus too much). For the same reason make sure to separate your throw and your verbal marker word. So it is always “yes” (for hitting the target), PAUSE, throw.
I like the idea of doing a med sized platform. But when you are working with the toy, use the this platform for now to make her success rate a bit higher. We will want to go through all the toy proofing stages before going to a smaller target because that gets even more challenging. Which now that I read your message again, I see that was your plan.. Ha! Yes that is a great plan. Toys/excitement – larger platform, food – smaller platform.
Yeah I would try to build up her excitement for the MM away from the target training and see if you can really get her running to it. At this point all I care about is her getting excited about it. Then later we can add it into the picture when she loves the target game and the MM.
Boys always keep things interesting and you entertained that is for sure Ha!
Wow he has picked up a lot of speed here! I am really happy about that. He is still a bit slower than ideal on the approach but looking excellent on the exit. You can try getting him more excited before you send him to the target and see if that helps generate more speed on the approach. He is also doing a lot better with your motion as well! The extra excitement might help with speed to the target as well as more willingness to drive away from you — we will see how that goes. You can also work on getting him to drive away from you without the help of your motion in other scenarios, such as sending to a wing or a tunnel. I have found the stronger they are with that skill overall the easier it comes in situations like this.
Oh that completely males sense regarding his fitness! Always better safe with anything like that. It will be a good skill to work on for him now that he is ready for that 🙂
Towards the end of the session he really started to figure out his feet on the mat more! Let’s still do the elevated target for him on this as well. One thing I really like about doing it that way is that you can add in all the excitement (toys, your excitement etc) into the picture while the criteria is still easy enough for the dog to understand. With both of your dogs this will help a lot because we want them to have that extra umph of excitement that they give you when you are using toys but then I think we are loosing a little bit of understanding because they are not thinking as much (totally normal) and therefore not always hitting with precision. By using the elevated target, it will give then a more defined criteria then you can build it from there. When you start do a couple reps with food then go to the toy again. Let me know how it goes!
This is looking pretty good. Let’s use the elevated target for her on this so we can build a bit more understanding of hitting with all 4 feet on the target. The elevated target a lot of times is easier for the dogs to understand because it has a very defined area of space. I am also hoping this will help give her a more obvious target to go to so she is not relying so much on your body motion. In the beginning a bit of that is fine but we want to try to fade it pretty quickly. So elevated target, one of the larger ones to make it easy and obvious in the beginning then as she is building confidence and understanding go to a smaller target, then back to the mat on the ground.
Yes that sounds like a great plan! I think if you do all of those things you should be just fine. 🙂
Hello! Yes, lets fix that spin in that one direction. It will be important she is confident turning in both directions and that is a good sign that it is not super confident yet. They all have a good direction so no biggie. As soon as you have pretty good consistency without a spin, then yes, move to outside with the pet tutor. You could also do a session inside with the PT and the smaller space to it is easier to generalize outside too. Be sure to JP anytime she is running and hitting rather than just walking through the target. We want to make sure she understand how to run and hit the target (especially important down the road 😉 ) Everything else is looking great!
This is looking awesome! You could raid your pyrex dishes/Tupperware/pans for additional box sizes. I have found some that are just the perfect size 😉
This looks awesome! I am super happy with her progress here. Especially knowing her and how much she doesn’t always love the different surfaces she is really doing great. Also another reason why doing some training with a glass pyrex dish or a metal pan would be really good for her. It just helps build up their confidence with all of that.
Meisje!!!! I love that dog and her crazy awesome smiles!
Man he is so cute! I like him a lot. 🙂
This is looking so much better! SO because you are mostly working on building up his excitement, use a much larger elevates target for now (something slightly taller — just barely — and bigger around as well). This will help make his success rate higher, therefore getting more rewards and help him hit the target easier with all 4. This will also help give him more of a visual cue hoping that he will start looking for the target more and less at you. Then as we are getting more consistent running and excitement, then we will make the target smaller and gradually add in that precision for the smaller target. I think this will also help with you being able to use his more exciting toy as well because the target will be bigger and easier for him to see/perform correctly.
