Time for a new lesson! And a "catch-up break" 🙂 With every class, we do a two weeks break for those who got somewhat behind to catch up and for those who are on schedule to give a dog a little break from plank running. I'll be answering your questions till Tuesday 4th October night and then again after 14 days, from 19th October morning again. Please don't post your videos during this time, I won't be reviewing old videos as things can change in 2 weeks.
If you're behind, make sure to complete lesson 1 before you start with lesson 2 and that you complete lesson 2 before starting with lesson 3 - you can't jump steps, there is a reason I'm giving you this assignments in the order that I do!
1. switch to a static toy, position it at the bar of a jump with a bar on the ground. The jump should be straight forward after the plank, about 7m away. The goal is the dog starts to look for a jump, knowing the toy is there. Occasionally, still throw a toy in advance, but mostly, have it there. When the dog already knows where it is, put a jump bar very low and a toy behind it (close after it, but far enough that the dog can land normally). Keep it there long enough that the dog is expecting it there. When you see the dog is pulling well towards the jump, knowing the toy is there, stop leaving the toy there and throw it after you click the contact, so that the dog gets it after the jump.
The goal is to switch from a static toy that is there as a target for the dog to focus him forward to a jump as a target to focus the dog forward and a toy as a reward we throw AFTER we see the contact is good. You need to be pretty quick as you don't want the dog to wait for the toy - so quick that I sometimes throw it before I realize the contact was actually not THAT good - but it gets easier 🙂 I guess this step will finally make everybody worried about rewarding leaps happy as now, you can withhold the toy for unsuccessful tries. HOWEVER, make sure the dog successful rate is high for this step as otherwise, you can loose the speed and get the dog checking back with you if you're throwing a toy or not. The same can be dangerous if you're late throwing a toy.
This is usually an easy step for BCs who will run full speed in anticipation of the toy, but can be a very hard one for some other dogs. For Le, that was the hardest step. She was running beautifully if the ball was still rolling when she saw it, but if I threw it that early that it was already static when she saw it (or when I positioned it there), then she didn't extend well enough. What finally worked was going few steps back with height, exciting her a lot with a toy, throwing it at the jump and sending her quickly to the dog-walk. That made her striding good enough to continue long enough to have her look for the jump and then I quickly switched to a toy, thrown after the contact is done, over the jump. That temporary caused some checking back with me, so I needed to go back to a stationary toy again, but then she finally got the idea to keep running full speed towards the jump/tunnel and trust the toy will appear then 🙂 and that again gave me the beautiful striding I had before trying to get rid of a toy, thrown in advance.
If the transition to a stationary toy is too hard, another way to try to avoid that phase is to pretend you are throwing a toy in advance, but then only throw it after. OR, using a tunnel as a way to focus the dog forward and throw it after the tunnel - works great with tunnel crazy dogs, didn't work with Le. Try and report back if you have problems.
2. keep adding height. If you have an option, it's also time to try the real thing. If you don't ahve a low DW you can use a normal dog-walk with additional plank at the end. Start with down ramp only and then slowly put the dog further&further back until you run the whole dog-walk.
When trying this or any other, new variable, don't vary other variables - make it as easy for the dog to succeed as possible. You can also lower a criteria somewhat. Normally, your criteria about hits by now should already be to be deeply in the contact - but temporary, you can click for good tries on a limit too, IF hind feet are well separated and the dog is not leaping.
3. new trick: have a dog back up on something very low and preferably soft first (folded blanket, low pillow) - then slowly add height, so that they need to pick up their hind legs higher&higher. At the same time, you can teach a "pee trick": click for lifting the leg, searching for an object, before they touch it. Make sure to try to get leg lifts on both sides - they usually prefer to go up with the same leg, so try to sometimes position them somewhat diagonally in front of an object so that their preferred leg is too far from it to start with that one. Also try climbing stairs backwards and cavaletti backwards.
Have fun! I'll be back to answering on 19th October and will publish new assignments on 7th November, so you'll again have 3 weeks to work on this assignment in class form - and 2 additional weeks to either catch up or take a break 🙂
Yes,
Its complicated LOL
You can see in the video what I mean by “low height”… it would be the last video clip in the video.
This video should explain things a bit more on the issues. She was really good at full height on a certain set-up; but if I changed that set-up it went downhill.
http://s1117.photobucket.com/albums/k589/Agilitycourse/?action=view¤t=Nov2nddw.mp4
Hm… Try to analyse her stride: mark where she is hitting the whole DW, count the strides, see what striding is best for her, experiment with approaches, try some of partial DWs, etc. It would be good to be able to challenge her some, but having something to get back to and help her succeed if things start to go downhill… It’s also important you know why things went wrong, what exactly changed in her striding etc. , so watch the old videos frame by frame, mark where she is hitting and what changed etc.
Well, I definitely challenged her today LOL. She’s never seem a tunnel under a dw before (sequence was tunnel under dogwalk, then wrap up to the dogwalk). Video explain’s everything pretty well.
Dogwalk is 3.5 inches off full height We’re working on all different approaches. Not sure if I should put the dw to full height or drop it lower.
Interesting with the different approaches she was much slower then she typically would be across the plank. It seemed if I was ahead of her she would be more likely to leap.
Let me know what you think.
http://s1117.photobucket.com/albums/k589/Agilitycourse/?action=view¤t=Noc4dw.mp4
Tara
Well, the good thing is that she got them all! It’s also normal that she is slower when the approach is hard and it was good to see that going slower doesn’t make her leap but actually gives you really nice deep hits. I would still like her deeper in on straight approaches, but I think you can raise it for those 3.5 inches, those last few inches normally don’t matter. Still, try to find a pattern when she does best and when gets leapy (try different handling positions, different approaches and exits, different ways to reward etc.) so that you can help her succeed and get as many jackpotable hits as possible.
This is our latest session. I’ve had 3 sessions before this one, and this one is the best of the 4. What I’ve done in the last 3 sessions, was have two jumps, almost side by side, so she would learn to slightly curve and not go straight -- so if I was on her right, she was to take the right jump, if I was on her left, she was to take the left jump. Well, that did not go well. She was fixated on one jump and would take it all the time, then she became leapy and/or would slow down drastically to see where she was to go. See the picture (it’s the blue and yellow jumps)
So today, I removed one jump and only had one jump slighly off set from the DW and a straight tunnel on the other side of the DW. As the session progressed she was getting better and better hits. I think I will have to very slowly introduce the jumps at angles to her.
oops here’s the photo
http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/qq52/ChinookMaia/DSC_0118.jpg
Yes, if you only did straight so far the two jumps on the picture are too extreme. Already the fact that she has a choice can be confusing. So going back to one jump and moving and angling it some was a good idea.
Hello Silvia,
I am not posting videos but have something that I observed yesterday during our training that I would like to get your feedback on. Both Eli and Liberty are running a full DW great. The dog walk is about 50% raised. With Liberty, I am still throwing her Kong in advance and she is still figuring out her stride over the full DW but her hits are good. Eli is RUNNING the full DW. His hits are great. I have been throwing the ball for him well in advance. However it is a small rubber ball so most times it is still bouncing as he is coming off the dog walk. Last night with him I decided to see if he would run to his ball without me throwing it. The first time he had a good hit but the next two reps were his superman flying leaps again. I am not sure why running to a static toy would cause this. I went back to just throwing again in advance and he continued with is superman leaps I then placed him on the last third of the DW and let him run after the ball and he hit it every time. So then I did a couple of reps of full DW with throwing in advance and he was back to good hits. Do other dogs have this issue transitioning to a static toy? How important is this part of the RC training? He has had good hits about 95% of the time since moving to full DW so I don’t want to go back to superman leaps but want to continue progressing our training.
Thanks,
Melanie, Eli, & Liberty
Yes, fading the toy can be hard with some dogs -- especially terriers 🙂 Le was the same, she was fine as long as the ball was still rolling, but wouldn’t run fast enough to the static toy and became airy. What finally worked with her was to excite her a lot with a big tug toy, playing close to the end of a DW, then I told her to release it, threw it to the jump and immediately send her to the beginning of a DW to run it. The contacts were still worse as with a thrown toy, so as soon as she was starting to expect a toy there, I switched to a toy, thrown after the jump and the contacts improved again.
Another way to approach this is to try to skip the static toy completely, maybe pretend you threw but instead only throw over the jump. You can also try always being in front of him at this stage to pull him forward with your positioning: it worked for Ania (see her videos), but it didn’t work with Le. But running hard yourself should definitely help some! They’re usually fine once they get that even if the toy isn’t flying yet, it will come flying eventually. I never had this problem with my BCs as they are at least that fast running to their tunnels as to a toy, so it was easy to just use a tunnel to pull them ahead.
Happy Friday! We did pretty good on day 3 of this 17″ set up. The plank is completely secure. He had a couple wonky foot placements again with his no back feet touching but also had some good hits. Staying ahead and running definitely helps him. Should I continue to stay here for a while?
Yeap, let’s do some more sessions on this set up, to get nice running only, and try the whole DW.
Spur going into nothing (sorry, no video) -- I gave him two weeks off after Nationals and today did a session. I had the tunnel about 7 meters out and before Nationals he was 100%. I moved it about 1 meter more today and had about 50%. He actually had more hits, but they were high and at this stage I am not rewarding those. My question is did I move it too much or is this OK to keep working like this. He did lose some speed, but his last two were good hits, with good seperation and definitely jackpots. Should I let him work it out or should I make it easier and move the tunnel a little closer next session? He doesn’t seem too bummed out and was always ready to try again, but earlier in his training career I would never stay at 50% as it WOULD bum him out. My gut says he can handle it now, but I am just not sure what is the right thing to do?
Thanks!! Amy and Little Spur
*Tomorrow is our first trial since Nationals and I have a feeling he is going to be pretty high!! We had our first “winter” class on Wednesday and he was SO excited and showed more confidence and speed than he has maybe ever shown! I may have his start line issue worked out! I ask him to back up a few steps, then we start. He loves his back ups and does it before his launch off my leg trick, which is one of his favorites, so it may be our answer!
Good luck at the trial! Try another session with 7m and if he is still 50%, move it closer again. If the trend is good and he is missing less, then you can leave it there.
OK, sounds good.
I look back and this trial weekend is the same weekend as last year when he had so much trouble and was all stressed and worried and barely made it around the courses. He sure is a different dog today!!! 😀 And as you know I credit a lot of his success to his RDW work, since that is always so much fun for him!!!
Amy and Little Spur
And I’m sure he will just get faster and faster! 🙂 And yes, RC training can really help with overall speed in agility as it teaches them a very important lesson about agility: RUN!
Hi Silvia,
Lots has been happening out here in Oregon with young poodle, Beatrice. Since last we posted we spent many hours driving to various dogwalks for foreign dog walk experience. We also worked on turning off a board. We did not put the board on the dogwalk, because I had her first competition coming up. I did not want to make her contacts deteriorate just before competition.
Here is a video of all the contacts from her first competition. I think maybe I entered her too soon, but we sure did have fun! Also in the video is some video of what she does if there is a jump that she thinks is next in the course…sort of spills off the side of the downramp. The there is our turning training session. This is the first time I have put the board on the dogwalk.
So, lots of stuff in this video. I hope you will comment on where we are with our turning. I think I am doing this very inexpertly.
Thanks,
Heidi
Well, those DWs actually weren’t too bad for a first trial! If she was first trotting on new DWs, that was actually a great progress by now! They might be even better if you could plan being as far ahead as possible and running as hard as possible: I think you’re stopping some to see how she will do and that makes her unsure. Try running really hard, saying “go go” and only check her contact on a video later on. With turns, you are still getting many leapy tries, but some really nice ones too… -- the important question is if you see a trend towards more nice ones or not really?
Hi Silvia,
Yes, when we first went to new barns she trotted the new dogwalks every time. I do think I was slowing down in a effort to handle the next part of the course…which was kinda dumb since she hasn’t really learned turns. I have one more trial entered in a couple of weeks and then won’t enter any till January. By then I hope we will have learned turns.
This video was the first time with the board on the dogwalk. When we were just working it elevated in isolation her turns were getting better. Maybe I was moving up the dogwalk too soon. I’ll video more frequently to see if we really are trending better.
BTW, I finally got around to watching the Lievin competition on webTV. Congratulations! Wow!
Heidi
Thanks! And o.k., good, sounds like a good plan! I wish you many straight exits for the next trial! 🙂
Hi Silvia,
I’m sending you video from today’s session. Yesterday we practiced from a curved tunnel with a right turn approach to the tunnel and today I’ve set up two jumps so she has to turn left to the dw. After the dw there is an 8″jump about 15′ away. I’m marking verbally and throwing the toy and playing if it’s worthy. On the video, the first run is a miss and the third is a miss although I marked it incorrectly. The rest were very good. What I’m noticing is that if she hits the top of the down ramp just past the pivot point she is consistently getting deep into the contact zone. I have a couple of questions, how many different approaches should I try before raising it? And, when I do raise it should I expect her striding to be similar or will it change?
Cool, that looks really good! Keep practising different approaches on every session. But yes, you can also raise it some first. If you’re adding height gradually, it usually doesn’t affect their striding much.
Hi Silvia and classmates, I wanted to share my afternoon training experience with all of you. I looked at course maps to set up different approaches that judges have used at recent trials…one approach was a 90 degree turn but coming from a straight line of jumps so lots of speed and the other was from a box…no speed. I was surprised how much this effected Saga. She is my young dog with no trialling experience. The first time with the speed approach she missed the up, then she got it but ran over the dw cautiously. The next two attempts she gained confidence and she returned to the striding that she showed above. From the table she did not show me the same speed and therefore she didn’t hit as deep in the contact zone. I’m going to try this approach again today and throw the toy before she’s released to see if she’ll drive a little harder. So, practicing different approaches made a huge difference for my inexperienced dog.
Yeap, different speed on the approach definitely makes a big difference and requires different striding, so it’s really important to address everything you might see in trials, but of course helping them as much to succeed as possible so definitely try a thrown toy if she likes that.
Here’s video of Twitch. I noticed when I watched it that she mostly 3 strided. The first one I marked with a no because I was able to see her leap from the middle of the down plank, the second attempt she did correctly but looked at me…I think because I was carrying the food to reward after the jump. I place placed the food container after the jump and her focus was forward but I reward 3 strides…I saw her hit the contact zone. I’m not sure I can count her strides as I’m moving. Does she need to go up. I know your prior message warned me about 3 striding.
Looks good! Those were 3 strides? Looks 4 to me, but yes it’s hard to see when you’re moving and even on a tape if not in slow motion, so don’t worry about it and just reward anything that is nicely in, even if in 3 strides. But yes, 4 is easier to handle and safer, so do go up with height.
Hi, Silvia. Here is Da Vinci’s first work on a 4 ft DW. What do you think…are we ready for this?
Looks great to me! He is a little unsure on top plank, but he still mostly manages to get in, so I would just continue like this, he is running faster and faster, so I think he will be back to his normal speed soon.
Hi Silvia and Classmates!
My video is Arrow for his 3rd session on the full DW set up but this is the first session that he was able to do the full set up with jump wrap to DW at 35 cm tall to tunnel at about 6 m.
For the first two sessions I had to backchain him to run the whole DW because our last set up was much shorter and supported more so not visibly off the ground.
I set up the poles on the ends but he does not need them at the exit but needed them the day before at beginning. I will take down the exit ones at the next session and try a few times without beginning ones too.
I rewarded numbers 4,5,6, 9,10,11,12,13,14. Most were high except 11 and 12. I could have rewarded 8. Another high hit.
I am seeing the contact hits better now on the real DW.
Question; Now, at this height he has 5 hits. Do you think he will have more hits on a full height DW? Arrow is about 38cm tall and our DW will be about 11meters long and about 1.25 meters tall. Or is this too early to say?
I wonder if I am pushing him too early for this set up; He seems to get deeper hits with a ball tossed early. But with the Autumn leaves he has a hard time seeing the ball on the ground!!! Even when I rake he will get confused by leaves falling when he is running.
Thank you for your input,
Sorry; I forgot to note that the first 2 runs are in real time and then in slow motion too.
Hard to say, but I think he might need 6 hits for full height. And even if not for straight approaches or exits, he will definitely need it for ugly, slow approaches. So you can actually try some of those very soon. But first, try to help him us much as possible to get nice deep hits before challenging him some more, so if he prefers early ball tosses, just go with it. You can maybe try a bigger ball (in white colour maybe?) to make it easier for him to see. Anyway, it looks good to me for first time on full DW, so just continue like this and report back on how the trend is after some more sessions.
Great Idea about the white ball! We already are using a bigger yellow one, and with yellow leaves!! Going shopping…
Here we are at session #9 on full DW. This has been a week of ups and downs. Lots of leaps no matter what I tried; Even just worked last board and tossed ball down the middle of the bottom of the ramp to try to have him stay in yellow! You can see from the example that did not work and only made him put in extra steps and slowed him down.
So I tried for super speed with two tunnels and run fast as I could on wet leaves and reward only good hits with Click or Yes and ball toss after Tunnel when in contact.
Sorry for the camera angle; I planned to only run to Right Tunnel but then I changed my mind and just ran him back onto the DW if he missed the contact. Because you can’t really see the contact on the Left ; I did not bother to slow motion those runs but included them to show his overall running style over several runs.
So results of these runs;
1 to Left Good
2 to Right Good
3 R Good
4 R Good
5 R Leap
6 L Good
7 R Good
8 R Good
9 L Good
10 L Good
11 R Leap
12 L Leap
13 R Leap
14 L Good
So 9 of 14 were good. And his leg separation looks OK and hits when in contacts are more spread out. Do you agree?
I have improved to become mostly accurate in rewarding/seeing good hits to contacts.
But am I doing the wrong things? The leaps seem to be getting bigger.
httvp://
Sorry; Here it is;
The good thing is that the good hits are really good now! 🙂 The strange thing is that the leaps are not just misses caused by wrong striding, but are real leaps -- he leaps despite he could take just a normal stride and hit. However, if you can now see, mark and reward it right, the % of leaps should go down -- so see what the trend is and report back. What might help is actually raising a height some or trying not completely straight approaches -- that might make the hits somewhat higher, but might also make skipping the last stride less tempting. See what it will give you, but ideally, his strides will be just enough shorter that his front feet will hit higher and only his hind feet will be in the contact and skipping that last stride will be less likely because he would need to leap from VERY high then… Let me know what you get with harder approaches and more height.
Yes! We have been making some improvement!
How high should I raise the DW?
This is 14 inches; The 1/2 ht supports are 24 inches and I could do most anything between.
Right now the tunnel exits are set at angles so he is adjusting slightly. Hmmm, he does better on the down ramp with the tunnel exit at more of an angle. I will try both changes.
Thanks!
I guess you can try 24″ for some sessions and see what happens. You can always go back down if necessary. And well, I meant more extreme entries as slightly offset tunnel -- entries where he actually needs to go around the starting pole to get on.
Wow! That’s exciting!
Thanks!
Full report soon.