I didn't end up having time to make an entry last night, but I DID take some little videos. Last night I thought I might try to add a jump into our work with crate games and targeting the mat. I dragged the crate to the edge of the verandah, lined up a low bar jump in a straight line a short distance away, and then laid the mat out from that. Fyre got to be first up and this is how his session went:
Let's look at what I learned from this. First of all, though you may not be able to hear it on the video, I gave Fyre his release word shortly after opening the crate. When he didn't respond I waited a period of time before giving it again, as I did not want him to learn that he needs TWO cues before acting. But it did bring home to me again that we need to work on breaks. What was also lacking on my part was the timing of the food reward - though I wanted to reward the break, in between releasing him and rewarding him he had time to come back to me and sit, so what was I actually rewarding? The sit. In future I will have my reward ready before cueing his release, perhaps by throwing food or a toy as soon as he moves.
Next, although my plan was to set him up for the jump, we were still close to the open crate door and he jumped right back in. Although it wasn't what I wanted, he had done the right thing because there is no cue for either dog to enter the crate just yet, other than them seeing the open door. So I rewarded that behaviour because I WANT them to have high drive to get in the crate.
Now, ironically, I probably would have been better to leave him in the crate and do a lead out so I could stand next to or ahead of the target, but since he has occasionally gone around jumps in the past I thought I'd start off by just sending him over the jump and letting him see where the target was, before starting him from the crate (backchaining). As you can see, he practically did it on his own anyway and because he did go for the mat I should have marked that and rewarded instead of waiting for him to come back so I could set him up again.
We have done quite a bit of work on building value for bar jumps, hence his enthusiasm to go over it. The other thing the video shows is that we clearly need to work on his waits - with one foot moved and then breaking before his release cue, and then moving TWO feet the next time I set him up and left him, the criteria of moving NO feet is obviously not clear to him. Bad trainer!
So based on all this, it was quite clear to me that I had gone way too far too fast by throwing together a pile of different behaviours despite the fact that they certainly weren't anywhere near proofed even individually (let alone chained together). So I decided to forget about the jump, the crate and the waits, and just work on the targeting. At this point, the critera was simply two front feet touch the mat. I then moved to the other side of the mat so we weren't just going from the same spot all the time. Having considered it further, I may also do some work on him focussing on the mat (as with the jump) rather than me, by having him in a wait and rewarding him for looking at the mat. Hopefully this may help him learn to drive straight to it.
Having realised I was asking too much of Fyre, I resolved to simply work on targeting with Josh. So out to the mat we went.
I started off using food rewards and requiring the same criteria as for Fyre - hit the mat with two front feet. You can see Josh is used to these shaping sessions - hence why he returns to me after the first target, offers his default behaviour (sit) and then one of his other favourites, one paw up. Then realising this hasn't worked, but touching the mat worked just a moment ago, he returned to that. I also decided at this point that perhaps just touching the mat with feet was too ambiguous, so I decided to shape a drop on the mat. I figure this will also be useful when he come to training and automatic drop on the table for agility. So this time, instead of rewarding Josh as soon as he put his front feet on the mat, I waited for him to offer the drop (which is another behaviour he readily offers so it was no problem). I made another decision not long after this too - the food rewards were creating too much sniffing and no as much excitement as I would have liked - so I switched to the toy. I'm sure you'll see the difference in the level of drive and speed/regularity at which behaviours are offered with a fun toy on offer :)
You will see at one point Josh offers a drop NEXT to the mat but with only the tips of his toes actually on it. This wasn't good enough for me, I want at least his front half dropped on the mat so I simply waited and he very quickly offered the behaviour that earnt him a reward the last time. I also picked up the mat and moved it so he would learn that the behaviour was linked with the mat, not that particular spot of ground the mat was on. Josh also needs work on his stays/waits, which is why when he popped out of a drop when I was replacing the mat, I signalled him to drop once more and then walked around squeaking the ball before rewarding him in the drop position for staying, then giving my release cue. In future I will probably do the same with him as I will with Fyre, marking him for looking at the mat and then releasing him to it to get his reward. Generally Josh is more focussed on what is ahead of him than Fyre is, so it is always interesting having two dogs with different strengths and weaknesses to work with.
Then it was Fyre's turn again, this time to do some targeting using the toy reward and having added the drop criteria.
Fyre has a shorter 'high intensity' training timeframe than Josh, so his sessions are usually shorter as I want him to always maintain that high level of enthusiasm. As you can see, he also figured out the drop very quickly, I initially marked and rewarded him for just his front end going down rather than requiring a straight drop right off.
It was a good session for both dogs, and pointed out a lot of BASIC things that I need to work on them with, so we will go back to lots of little wait games, perhaps do some '1-2-3-break' games breaking them to the mat. No doubt I will be adjusting these again and again as I go on :)
Tonight's training I decided would be ad break training. The idea was that we got multiple very quick, high intensity sessions so the dogs would do everything in a state of high arousal and be more likelt to offer behaviours and keep working through any mistakes. (It also meant I could watch Two and a Half Men). So duly I set up my 2x2 entry in line with the back door, brought all three dogs inside and left them in the dining room whilst I went in the lounge. I wanted them separate from me so when I came barrelling out in the ad break it was even more exciting.
So each ad break I raced out to the dining room, snatched up a toy and bounded out the back door calling one dog with me. Hyping him up with excited voice we did 2 or 3 entries mixing up distances/angles, me moving or still and from both left and right, throwing the toy each time he drove through a correct entry. As soon as he was after the toy I ran away, encouraging him to race back to me and then turning straight for the poles again. Then I would quickly switch dogs at the back door and repeat. I managed to do this several times with each time slightly raising the difficult of the entries and getting consistent excellent results. Then I decided to have some fun with jumps as well, setting up two low bar jumps in a slight curve again leading out from the back door. Doing two obstacles in a row separated by distance other than the short distances in jump drills has been a weak point thus far, because I really haven't done much work on sequencing as we want to get the basics right first! But I was thrilled tonight when Josh with no hesitation raced over the first bar and then drove on over the second one also to receive the reward of the toy thrown ahead, followed by an exciting tug game. I also threw in a few front cross turns, sending him over the jump then turning into him and getting him to come to my hand with the tug.
Fyre, since he still needs to work on looking for obstacles and not me, had a bit more trouble with this, inclined as he was to simply go over the first bar then follow close to me past the second. However, I made myself very aware of where my shoulders were pointing and with a little adjustment he did do a good job going over both bars. (Incidentally, when he did follow me around the bar I rewarded him with a tug game because as far as I knew my shoulders indicated I was turning that way and he was following my body position correctly. At least I know he is paying attention to what I was doing!!) Josh finds the value of bar jumps to be extremely high now after many weeks of rewarding him every time he goes over them, so our next task will be working on waits. Quite likely I will do this with no jumps in sight to start with, so he never learns to break over a jump without my cue. Playing the '1-2-3-mat' game I am hopeful will help this since it will not only teach him to break quickly and race to the mat, it will also teach him self control in holding his wait. I am not yet sure whether I want to leave him in a sit or stand (obviously we will work on waits in all positions). In his sits he still liks to sit his weight back, and occasionally flop his back feet out. I would prefer him to have his weight forward allowing him to break and hit stride right away than have to first heave his centre of gravity forward. So I will likely either start him standing, or I might try to shape him to sit with his weight forward.
So many little things to work on!! I think the next week or so at oleast will be a lot of these mini games to teach the foundations, though I would also like to start setting up the jump drills again so they can work on learning to jump properly (these are drills from the DVD set 'Susan Salo's Foundation Jumping' - another excellent buy!)
Oh, and as a last little note - our dining room window, which has a narrow windowsill about waist height, faces onto the backyard. The cats often get up and sit there to watch me if I am outside. However, tonight it was an enterprising blue merle Aussie girl who must have climbed first onto the dining room table before slipping behind the vertical blinds and poising herself on the window sill broadside to the window so she could see out at the fun stuff I was doing with Fyre!!!! I have no doubt that she'll take to agility like a duck to water when she is old enough :)
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