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Tried our first time on the plank today since we were at an agility facility! I won’t have access to it very often, so probably won’t get too many more plank sessions in before spring. Looking back over the video, I didn’t realize how much I was moving… I should have stayed more stationary. Overall, I think she still did well, but I wish I hadn’t added motion (which was not intentional) so she could have had a higher success rate. There was also some agility going on in a different ring which added some distraction. If I counted correctly, she had 15 really good hits. 4 of them I could tell when looking at the video that she adjusted her stride to get that hit. There were 9 that were right on the edge. These included 1 rear foot in and 1 not or both technically on the mat but very close to the edge. I don’t think I was consistent in my rewarding with these kinds of hits. Only 1 time was a very obvious fail. So overall, I think pretty good for first time on the plank. I need to do some sessions with no movement so she can up her rate of really good hits.
I did some platform work with the straight exits before I took it away. Here’s where we’re at for straight exits and curved exits. This was also our first time adding in an “obstacle” before and after the target. I just have a couple pieces of food in the bowl that she’s targeting. I don’t have a Treat and Train, so we get by with this. I also don’t have a large area in my house and there’s 3 feet of snow outside here, so we did this at work and I used a pillar in the building instead of a wing. She’s pretty consistent with her hits. It’s a lot of rear feet right in the middle of the target with feet together. I think part that may have come from the fact that she really pushes off of the mat/platform and if she hit too close to an edge on my small platform, the platform would tip as she pushed off. So she probably trained herself to hit the middle so it wouldn’t tip. This video is our 4th session of just the mat on the ground and I’m starting to see more rear feet separation as she’s gaining some speed. I reward the ones with rear foot separation more, so hopefully between having more speed and the bigger rewards she’ll separate them more. Let me know if you think I’m moving to an obstacle before/after the target too quickly and shouldn’t add that yet. I’ve also worked on adding some handler motion and started adding a bit in towards the end of this video.
No video this time, just a couple questions.
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?
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.
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.
Hoping to get some video in the next couple days that I can send to you!
OK, we’re down to what I think will be the smallest platform before getting rid of it. It’s the same width as the mat (1.5 ft) and about 2 inches tall, maybe 2.5 inches. Here are the first two sessions on it. She loses the inside hind foot sometimes, especially with the shorter platform. She’s pretty much 100% on a higher platform, so I think I just need to keep working on this. I failed and rewarded her a couple times when I shouldn’t have, so that isn’t helping… But here’s where we’re at. Food is lower reward for her than toys, so I’m starting there. Once she’s pretty much 100% with the food I’ll switch to a toy. You can’t see it, but I did start putting the treat on the ground before sending her so she knew it was there and had the option to go to it instead of the mat if she wanted to. Now, even without excitement, she’s pushing off of the platform too much for it to stay put on its own. I have it against the base of an agility jump, not sure if you have other suggestions. I don’t think she’s basing any of her foot placement off of the agility jump, but there’s a chance she is. I tried it right up against a wall once and I don’t think she liked the pressure of being that close to the wall. Her hits were much worse when I did that so I went back to the agility jump base quickly. Let me know if you see something that I should be doing differently!
Ooo! Vet wrap is a really good idea! I have lots of that from flyball. If I forget, please remind me of that again when we get closer. 🙂
When it comes to a smaller platform, do you mean length or height (or both)? I tried a smaller cardboard box but she’s pushing off of it so hard that she crushed it… We might have an enthusiasm problem. 😛
First off, why are you responding to videos at 4:45 in the morning!?
We’ve done a couple sessions with adding distractions to the elevated target. She works nicely for food, but it isn’t a big distraction for her. I started with moving the food around in front of her, setting it down, and releasing her to the target. She never chose to go straight to the food and it looked the same as before, so I switched to the toy within one session. When I’m just holding the toy still, she hits the target 100%. When I have it moving when she’s released or have dropped it on the ground, she’s gone for the toy once each session. I can see her wanting to go for the toy and making the right decision to hit the platform first. I want to stay working on this until there isn’t any hesitation to drive straight for the platform no matter what the toy is doing. I had to duck tape the target to the platform. Even before adding excitement and distractions she was knocking it off. I also have the platform against the base of an agility jump which is then against the wall as she’s pushing off of it so hard that she makes it fly if it isn’t against something… As I mentioned earlier, we aren’t good at doing things slowly. But she’s definitely the kind of dog that when you add excitement (and especially movement) she can stop thinking. So I really like adding the excitement here when the criteria is very clear and she understands it. Let me know if I should be doing anything differently.
Zeal has done mat work for a while. And I’m pretty confident I’ve confused her on multiple occasions. The first method was pretty much a trial and error method of rewarding when they touch it while running, but Zeal doesn’t think super well when she’s running… Then we went to shaping and wanted to shape hind feet hitting it. My most recent attempt focused on front feet hitting it. She definitely understands she’s supposed to touch it. She still misses at time when there’s a lot of excitement, but in general the concept of touch the mat exists and there’s a lot of value for it.
We’ve never put it on an elevated platform. The first session isn’t included here. It was really just a troubleshooting session to get her to understand the general concept. She was dead set that I was asking for two on two off initially. Once she figured out that stopping wasn’t part of the equation and all 4 feet are required, she started trying to do flyball turns off of it. The session in the video is our second session. I started with the big tub there as a reminder of what game we’re playing and remove it fairly quickly. We also have a hard time doing things slowly…
I also included some back and forth game. This is something we’ve done before. I don’t remember if I required all 4 feet in the past. Her inside rear foot sometimes doesn’t hit the target. That’s partially because when she pushes off, she moves that side of the mat so it’s no longer square and has to rotate her rear farther in order to hit. I was actually really impressed with how well she did and her ability to fix it when she didn’t get all 4 feet. Especially since I started adding some excitement. I wanted to get a baseline of where she’s at. So this is the first session of back and forth.
