Great job so far everybody! Again, please see as many videos of others as possible and read my comments to others too - I'm trying to bold the answers you really want to read, but the more you read, the easier it will be to understand what you're going for.
But things are mostly going well now, the only problem that I'm seeing more as expected is "up-in-the-air" movement. It looks like some dogs are leaping in order to get away from the plank. I think it's mostly due to the fact that everybody is going for those narrow planks and those are hard to run full speed on + they might sometimes be stepping on the edge and that can be uncomfortable and make them want to leave it as soon as possible. So again - it's no hurry to get to a narrow plank!!! If you can use two, side by side, with a carpet over, that would be perfect!
Anyway, here is your new list:
1. gradually make that plank higher&higher, still jackpotting the best hits, but make a criteria for a jackpot somewhat more strict and at this point also already stop clicking the highest hits even if the dog is striding equally - but at this point, don't click anymore the highest 20% of the hits you're getting (meaning that from 10 tries, don't click the highest 2 hits). It's no problem if the dog still gets the toy, just take it immediately when he comes back. When it's good, praise and tug and when it's especially good, be especially excited and play especially enthusiastically 🙂 And yes, dogs are smart enough to know the difference.
2. as the dog is probably already searching for the plank better, slowly start throwing sooner&sooner. Don't rush it, but you eventually want to throw that soon that the dog is technically running to a static toy. But again, you don't want to get there sooner as in 3 weeks as it's only then that we'll start using a static toy - you do want to throw it for those 3 weeks more! It's better to throw somewhat longer if necessary - usually not an issue with BCs, but with my puppy, I needed to throw VERY long to keep the speed and focus - if any of that gets weaker when you start throwing sooner, go back to whatever gives you back the speed and forward focus, we can deal with that later!
3. as you are still throwing a toy, your movement and position probably won't affect the dog's performance - but just to be sure, do try to run with the dog here and there, just to check if that's correct. If it does affect your dog's performance, add movement gradually, by first walking slowly along, then walking faster, running slowly etc. You don't need to do it on every try, especially not if it doesn't affect the performance, but do try it here and there.
4. another difficulty we can slowly start introducing now is changing starting position of your dog. Don't use the best spot all the time anymore, but vary it a little bit. If it makes their hits too bad, go back to the good starting position. But bad hit here and there is good, that's how they learn the difference between what gets rewarded and what doesn't.
5. new trick: shape a dog to go with all 4 feet in a box that is ideally as long as he is. Then gradually use smaller&smaller objects, your goal is the dog is standing with 4 feet in a small bowl. Good for balance and rear legs awareness! Also, teach backing up with you standing still, by throwing a reward for them first for one step back, then two and then add more&more distance. Great for rear legs awareness and coordination!
Send videos of the tricks and the plank work. For slow motion part of a plank work, PLEASE cut out all the parts where I can't see the dog! It's very time consuming and not much fun to watch just the plank or you, throwing a ball, in slow motion!
Also, here is a video showing different striding on a dog-walk. My puppy Le is showing the most common striding: two hits on up plank, two in the middle, two on down. Bu has this same striding. Bi can only do that if I start her from such an angle that she has no speed coming up. Her normal striding is 4 steps on whole dog-walk, on down ramp rear feet hit first and then she lands front feet above the contact, hind feet in the middle. I think that since US dog-walks are significantly shorter as mine, many of your BCs might end with this striding. Bi usually does shorter dog-walks in 3 steps (our dog-walks come in different lengths) - you can see one of those tries in this video too. She is pretty high on my dog-walk, but comes deeply in in 3 strides on shorter ones. At the end, you can see what big area she is covering with one hit, thanks to good reach forward and hind feet separation - with one hit, she is touching almost 40% of a down ramp, that's 1,5m!
Silvia Silvia, yay! my HOPE for us has returned!!!!!
This is our latest on the “mini AF” -- we’ve been working on it for about three days and I think she’s doing pretty well… What do you think??? do you need slow motion on this session too???
Whats next for us?? Maybe keep at this a couple more sessions?? Maybe turn the board back around so there is the contact in the contact location before I raise it??? (I am wondering how to secure these mini AF boards as I raise them)
--Dinah
Cool, I would keep working on this set up for a couple of more sessions and then add some height. I would only turn the board again when I see she is really starting to understand the end of that plank is important -- so not right now just yet.
whoops—Before I found your comments here I had already raised the board a little and also turned it back around… but maybe as you can see from the new video, she seems to be handling it just fine… except for the first run and one other high hit, she’s spot on. I do think she’s finally getting it this time around.
With all the space we have to play with this summer I have also been able to play around with starting distances in front of the plank and her hits seems to be pretty consistent on the plank regardless of where I start her, so you have no idea how happy this is making me--I am actually ecstatic! (see the photo I will up load below with arrows for our starting points)
The only question that is nagging me right now—and maybe you can’t see because I didn’t set the camera up to get the whole mini AF set-up—but DO you think she is slowing down a little for the contacts, collecting?? and is that ok?????????
Oh and I forgot to add above that in the two sessions before this one she was 100% all runs!!!! of course, no video… but I’m so happy!!!!
Silvia, also, I forgot to ask… is it too soon for us to start with lesson 3 now? the static toy? (her speed and confidence are back)
sorry about all the pieces of posts… I’ll try to get everything into one post next time
-Dinah
With Stella, after all the problems we have had with her speed, I would address all other aspects (different handler positions, a jump after DW, moving a jump around a little etc.) BEFORE fading the toy. I would actually try to skip the step of a static toy all together, keep throwing for so long that she is anticipating is so much that you can sometimes just delay it and throw after a jump/tunnel.
Looks good! But yes, she is often shortening her last stride to be in. That’s good in a sense that it means that she understands her job… -- but bad in a sense that things can fall apart when highly excited (like in a trial). But the problem is that after flying over the apex, she can’t do another, normal stride, but only a shortened one… So also for her, the best striding would be hind feet on top of the plank and then one normal stride -- no flying over the top. Meaning that the best would be to switch to a mini DW set-up, if possible, as mini A-frame promotes flying even more. But yes, that’s definitely a good start, very nice speed and definitely some understanding going on!
Ok thanks Silvia, I retired the mini AF and my sister helped me carry the 2/3 DW to where the mini AF was… she was a little rough running at first (slower again) because this is almost twice the height she was running at before… probably too big a change, but I didn’t want her to practice the short stride for the contacts anymore… but anyway then after a couple more runs she seems to handle this just fine and her strides also seem to have evened out…
however, even though her speed is back, overall I don’t think she is reaching/stretching quite the way she was before… but maybe that will come in another session when she has confidence on this apparatus
also… here is the smaller and smaller boxes trick… it was kind of our “break-through moment”
and the dresser drawer cavallettis
Again, Stella was slower this morning… trotting the flat plank and running down the incline with shorter strides : ( she was hitting the contact but not with gusto… (There were some truck unloading stuff thundering sounds from nearby that bothered her so our session was mostly tail-down running… maybe worrying about the thunder-sounds was all it was… not the new height or different set up)
QUESTION:
what do I do about rewarding slower runs--but that are NICE IN the contact?????
anyway, when it cools off tonight I will try again and really make an effort to make her happy happy happy running
Looks great to me!!! When she is slow, but deep in, I would reward, but then quickly end a session if she worries about something. No reason to make her run the plank when she is stressed, try to just play and see if she can relax.
Well, I’m really, really disheartened with our progress. I’ve been at this stage for months now. I started RC in January and we are no farther along than we were in March. The tunnel seems to throw her off, she does much better if I send her over a jump or around a cone. I am not sure why. Here are the few tries we did this morning -- 0% success rate 🙁 It brings me to tears when I think of how badly we are doing.
How about leaving the tunnel for now and only starting the way that is good for her? So that you can then slowly raise it some and maybe get enough understanding that things will get easier? -- Doing what you were doing in the last video and add height like that… Also, can you see from her behaviour that she understands when you’re jackpotting a good hit vs. not rewarding a bad one or not really?
I’m not sure if she understands, she understands when she’s wrong because I mark it with a verbal, like ‘oh oh’ or ‘oh no’ and what I’ve been seeing is that she is now starting to shut down -- she will run after the ball, pick it up and not come back to me. She will just stand there with it and I have to entice her to come back to me so we can try it again. It seems I’ve been here before with her and you told me to take a break from training. I would rather not take yet another break because I feel we are so far behind already. (she gets like this with ‘drills’ and I think this is starting to feel like a ‘drill’ to her -- she used to run to the plank and a DW and now she doesn’t -- oh, and I only train RC 3 x a week, so I am being careful not to over due it with her)
What I’ve been noticing is that she gets a nice hit in the yellow, regardless of the length of the plank, when I start her with me and just send her to it without having her go through a tunnel or around a pole or jump. If I add a pole, jump, or tunnel, she leaps the end. If I run with her, which she loves and will run the fastest then, she leaps the end. I am not sure what to do. I am sure it is me and that I’ve clicked wrong, or done something else to confuse her.
I took a picture of the two planks side by side, and the short plank is quite a bit shorter than the normal 12 foot one. Do you think I should still use it?
Hm, yes, doesn’t seem to be she only leaps when she runs out of space for another stride… Is she leaping also if you’re running well ahead and recalling her over? Did you try setting a tunnel after a plank and having her run into the tunnel before the ball? If you start her from a stay really far from the plank, does she leap or not? If you set a pole at that spot, will be leap or not? Did you ever try racing her to a bowl with food to see if she runs or leaps then? I think you need to experiment some to find what makes her succeed more…
Hi Silvia! I hope you had a great time at the EO!
I’ve had three sessions since the last time I posted. The first two, I experimented with her position and the height of the plank. I settled on starting her turning with me infront of the plank and the plank on an incline on a driveway.
This is our third session from tonight. I took your advice and put a tunnel at the end of the plank tonight. I also put the plank, a normal length one, on a drive way that slopes, so she does not have to actually jump onto it. We had 23 tries (one was not filmed and it was a really nice one). Out of the 23, she had 11 that were in the yellow. I jackpoted all of them but one because I was just so happy that she was actually running over the plank again. She is not as fast as she could be, but for now, I will take this and work on starting her with me farther and farther back, once she is comfortable with this new set up. Do you think this is ok to do? (the incline that the plank is on makes the plank slightly higher than what we were practicing on before) What do you think?
PS. I know my clicks were late, but I was so afraid of clicking for the leaping (which I tend to do sometimes) I opted to mark the good ones with a verbal and then a click.
I forgot to mention that what I did in this session also, is not throw the ball untill she had a good hit. It seemed to make her think more about what to do on the plank. I was reading Lesson 3 comments and it seems that throwing the ball after is part of lesson 3. I don’t want to skip steps, but like Claire, I’ve been noticing that even though I use high value treats to jackpot, she is still happy about chasing the ball in the first place. It seems with holding the ball until she makes a good contact worked for this session. Should I continue like this or go back to throwing the ball earlier?
Yes, let’s continue like that and then you’ll see what the trend is. It’s of course o.k. to throw the ball after the tunnel if she pulls towards the tunnel well. Using a driveway is a good idea, it usually makes them less leapy.
The trend so far is really good. I’ve practice every day since my last post. I am very happy with her performance again. The tunnel at the end of the plank seems to be really helping. I also have noticed that she gets beautiful hits when I sit her about 2 feet infront of the plank and release her over it with me standing to the side like in the video below. She is faster chasing the ball however, so I started to throw early again.
Today’s session, I noticed that she adjusted her stride in the first three tries. She takes two strides on the plank. When I moved her back slightly, she missed, the next time, I set her back to her good spot and she adjusted her stide again (2.5) and the time after that she was back to 2 stirdes. What do you think? I will not introduce any new variables for a while yet.
Yeap, definitely keep the good spot for a while! 5 would be my favourite try. -- And it’s definitely great to see so many good ones in a row again! 🙂
Just checking in. All our practices this week have been very successful. She is starting to ‘understand’ I think because if I move her back, and she misses, the next time, she gets in. I have not changed anything in the set up except I started to move her position back and forth, sometimes starting her from a sit and sometimes from a stand. Otherwise, I have not varied anything and we are doing well, with a 90% success rate.
Cool! Try to get some more successful repetitions in before changing anything, but if she is starting to understand, that’s big already, it makes things much easier 🙂
Will do 🙂 . Since August 13, we’ve practiced only 2 more times due to field availability, but the two practices were very good. I have not varied anything other than her starting point. I will do another 3 times like this and report back next week with her progress and for further instructions.
This class ends this weekend… Are you in a new one too, can you send there?
Yes, I am in the new class too. I will post it under that class 🙂