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Hi Mary! Looking good!! The threadle slices are looking amazing!! You are doing a great job of not helping her on those and she is understanding really well.
With the threadle rear – She is back jumping because you are running the wrong direction. In this situation you want to run away back in the direction of the where your wing is. Then she will not back jump anymore. You don’t want to run forward like you would with a threadle slice.
Ther verbals at the end are looking pretty good. I think she just needs more confidence. You could try putting the treats in a container for a session or two so they are less distracting. I would also reward her sooner for the correct behavior so that she is getting more rewards more quickly in the beginning then make it more challenging.
Not quite. You want to start all the way down by the non obvious side of the tunnel first so that she can build confidence looking for the non obvious side. Because while we are building this whole behavior up we do not want to them to be looking at us AT ALL. The entire time the dog should be looking for the non obvious side of the tunnel (or the obvious side if that is what you were cuing). So by starting her really close to the end of the tunnel she is still performing the threadle and has not a lot of room for error. And you can build this up until she understand to find it without looking at you. And for this same reason you don’t want to give her food from your hand at all (meaning don’t reward her for coming into you when doing the threadle) only reward after she has taken the non obvious side of the tunnel.
Cool place! Yes that is looking great! Your motion is looking WAY better in this video. So from here you want to work on varying your positions and what direction you are moving away. Right nopw you are staying on a path that is in line with the jump. In order for us to teach more independence you are going to start gradually making your motion more away from the jump so that she is learning to find the jump bar by herself more and more. When you feel confident with all the directions that you are leaving then you can gradually add more speed from you (but you are still not helping her find the jump bar). While you are working on your slower motion in different directions you can also work on gradually making the threadle more challenging for her by moving the cone more and more to the right (in the situation) so she starts to see the front of the jump more and more again testing her understanding that she can find the non obvious side of the jump when given this cue.
Lesson two is looking awesome! Just try to make sure he is looking more towards the tunnel before giving your cues because we want him to be looking for it not at you. And your hand is too much involved right now too. It is really showing him to the tunnel it should just be there a cue to the dog to do the behavior. So try to fade the hand movement pretty quickly. The next part of this to add is your leaving motion. We want to teach him to commit to that tunnel even when you are starting to run away. So as soon as you give your threadle cues and he is leaving you to find the tunnel make sure that you are starting to leave as well. Start first with slow motion then gradually build it up until you can run away the moment that you are giving the cue. That should also help get him to run after you a bit more for the reward 🙂 And at the very end you gave both the “in in” and the tunnel cue. If you want a threadle only say your threadle word. If you say tunnel he should drive to the straight ahead entrance.
Lesson 3 – Same comment here about your threadle verbals. If you are giving the threadle cue, you should NOT say jump 😉 And if you start training it that way now then he will just learn the verbal for the threadle and take the jump. On the last few reps where you were doing the toy on the ground you were slowing down to help him with your motion a lot to make sure he took the jump. Instead we want to first set him up for sucess with out your help and then slowly build on that. So put the toy a lot farther away from the jump in the beginning and make sure that you keep moving forward (even if it is slow in the beginning) to let him make the choice to either take the jump or not. Of course if he does take the jump then you want to throw a huge party and if he doesn’t just set it up so that it is even easier for the next try. Then you can gradually build up your speed from there. Is that making sense?
Yay!! That looks fantastic! A little hesitation when you got a bit farther back so make sure not to add too much distance too quickly as you real.ly don’t want to move on until she is driving to the tunnel extremely confidently. The verbal discriminations with the tunnel, toy and down looked really good!
The jump threadles are looking really good but your motion is still helping her quite a bit. So you can see in the video that you are stopping when you are saying “here here” to bring her in. Instead you want to train this so she doesn’t need your help at all. That doesn’t meant that you run as fast as possible and don’t help at all. That just means that instead of helping her by stopping your motion you are going to help by moving incredibly slow in the beginning allowing her to get the threadle with you at a CONSISTENT slow speed. Because then you can go a tiny bit faster and a tiny bit faster until she is understanding how to do the threadle even though your motion is running forward. So you are not stopping to help her come in at all. Then when you are adding in the tempting toy go back to the initial slow stages so that she can be successful and not fail. The toy is also a little bit too challenging in the beginning. Try putting the toy farther away from the jump on the ground in the beginning (and with your slow consistent motion) then gradually move it closer and closer to the jump as you build up speed and she is building on success.
Yeah I was wondering if that was the case with her and the sit stay. Those tiny dogs are so picky! You could also try it with table or her on a platform instead of a sit stay if that would be better for her. And you can do some reps with the cone as well. I would just keep the cone reps at really easy angles for now and do the harder angles with the sit stay or table. This way you could bounce back and forth one or two reps cone then one or two reps table. Also set her up another 4 feet farther away from the jump. She doesn’t have very much room to work with there so she will probably build better understanding adding that distance.
She is seeking out the far wing a lot better!! And looking for the jump a lot better too! Continue with the small bar through the initial stages of training independence and once her independence and understanding is really good with this we can try it with a longer bar.
Now it is time to start adding a tiny bit of motion. In the beginning just be barely walking in place and work just that with you in various positions but not super far away from the bar yet. Then as she starts to understand that you can start taking tiny tiny steps forward as you are asking for the threadle. A couple of time you did rotate your shoulders towards her a bit too much. We want her to understand this cue with very little (or no help) handling help at all. So especially in these initial stages try not to help her too much. When I am adding motion (the tiny tiny walking steps) I will release them from the stay while I am in motion so that you can release her earlier while you are moving to the position that you are in now rather than leading out and releasing when you get to that spot because then when you are moving forward you are making it more challenging. So you would want to release about when you are getting to the wing nearest to you. Then really slowly moving around the corner of the wing of course rewarding her when she is successful. Also when you start adding motion it is important that you release while you are in motion rather than leading out, stopping then going. You want it all to be one big flow just very slow in the beginning.
In the tunnel send exercise you don’t want to send to the wing first. Only because we want to make sure that he understands how to commit to a tunnel with out any help of the handlers motion. And adding the wing in creates motion.
2:56 – The last couple reps that you did with the threadle you are not doing a threalde. She should be on your right in this situation bypassing the obvious and finding the non obvious. With where you have her she is actually just a tunnel send to the far side of the tunnel
Part 2 where she is not taking the tunnel unless cued should actually help her with that problem of not always taking the tunnel. So you should start her really close to the tunnel mouth and then giving the verbal so I don’t acticipate any problems with that at all. But you want to make sure that you are giving the tunnel verbal pretty frequently so she can get a lot of rewards in for taking the tunnel on your verbal.
Hi Mary!
Yes, the verbal “get it” is looking A LOT better! Now you can start adding in other verbals as well to make sure that she is listening to what you are saying not just patterning.
The threaldes look amazing too! Your motion and running is so much better than it was before. Now you are both ready for starting the proofing exercises.
Hello!!
This is a great start but make sure that anytime you are asking for the threadle you are facing the same direction that she is going. I know in this situation you are not running a course so you don’t have a destination but we want to build her understanding that she can commit to the verbal/threadle with you going in any direction. Right now you are helping her “come in” a lot. So instead slow your motion down to make it easier but make sure that you are not helping at all but calling in, rotating your body (you are doing that a lot in the video) or slowing down until she comes in then moving forward. Is this making sense? You can see it a lot at 0:28. Where you stop and are waiting for her to come in before moving forward towards the jump. That will teach her to rely on your stopped motion to come in.
So in your next session try doing a few from a sit stay (working around the clock). You are going to lead out to almost where the jump is and with very little motion (could be walking in place in the beginning) and making sure that your shoulders are always facing the direction that you are going (not turning towards her to help her come in) build the threadle up from there until you can be jogging forward and cuing the threadle without any help from you. Is this making sense? Work that all the way around the clock until she can do even the most challenging threadle without any help from you then add the cone back into the picture.
Hey Janice!!
Her sends look amazing!! When you are sending to the tunnel without and motion it is important to remember to reward her in your direction. So you can reward her for coming out of the tunnel to you or toss it in the opposite direction so when she comes out of the tunnel she is getting rewarded for running towards you. This will help with the overall consistently of her cues in training and handling. Because when you stop in front of an obstacle and are not showing any motion in that direction you are giving the dog a turn tight/collection cue that means you want them to come turn tight and come back towards you out of the tunnel. So that will help keep things clear and make sure that you are not teaching her to always run straight out of the tunnel.
Tunnel threadles – These are always tricky. I did also find that these are much more difficult for my small dog than they are for my large dogs. So with my small dog I had to take things very slow and make sure that she was really building up confidence as we progressed. In this video you actually have her on the wrong side of you. The dog should be between you and the tunnel so that she can see both the obvious side and the non obvious side of the obstacle. And your threadle is calling her past the obvious to find the non obvious. From where you are, take three big steps to your right (making the obvious side less visible) put the dog on your left side (with the threadle in this direction) and ask for the threadle. Then very gradually move back to your starting position just very slowly as she starts to understand to find the far side without you helping her (only the verbal theadle is cuing the far side).
Hi Maddie! I am doing great, how are you? 🙂
That play looks amazing!!! Keep playing with her like that in short sessions as much as you can! Also try the multiple ball game. I want to see how she does with that.
5.0 – When you are doing the send to the tunnel exercise instead of running to the exit of the tunnel with her you want to stay at the front of the tunnel, send her to it and let her run through and then run back to you (still at the front of the tunnel). This way she is learning to stay committed to the tunnel away from you. If she struggles with that, then you can shrink up your tunnel a bit to make it easier. Remember in class when you were running Gabi’s beagle and he wouldn’t go into the tunnel away from you without you running with him?? It is because he didn’t understand this exercise well enough. He did not understand how to commit to tunnels while you went in a different direction or were stopped.
5.1-5.3 – The looping is pretty normal in the beginning. The better she understands the first exercise the easier this is going to be. But sometimes even when they understand that well this is still tricky. Put your box of cookies (closed) at the exit of the tunnel so her reward is right there when she goes through the tunnel. That will also help her be a bit more excited about driving to the end of the tunnel then we can fade the cookie box later. Also make the angle a lot easier for her in the beginning. From where you are take three, maybe four, big steps to your left (around the tunnel) still with her on your right then ask her for the tunnel. This was she will be able to see the tunnel mouth. Then as she is finding the tunnel with out the loop then gradually move back to where you are now.
