Thought it was time I added a few more vids and will try to do this more regularly (along with piccies) to break up all the text.
I would have had several up except SOMEONE was silly enough to spend most of the video outside of the frame of her iPhone propped on a chair so basically all you see is my rear end and hearing me make silly noises while playing with the dog. Not really worth the upload time
I did get a couple of good ones of Fyre however. There wasn’t any major plan around these – just to video a few things we have been doing. As always, looking at them does point out a few things I need to work on.
Fyre has huge value for his crate (I literally can’t go near a crate now without him hovering around the door desperate to get in) so it’s no problem for me to have a big game of tug once he comes out. With Billie however we are still building value for going in the crate, so I tend to focus on her driving INTO the crate more than playing when she gets out. Pity my backyard isn’t bigger because Fyre really does have awesome drive into the crate – he will race ahead of me and bound in. With this video I was trying to illustrate that.
You can also see here one of my rules of tug games, which is that the dog picks the toy up to play – my dogs all play tug regularly now so I expect them to fetch a toy to me. As Fyre still needs encouragement to do this sometimes, I probably need to go back and work on it some more, perhaps with a higher value toy than this. All he wants to do is get back in the crate
Then we did some practice sending him in from different places around the crate as I have done very little of this – first off, I really should have moved the crate further out so I wasn’t obstructed either side (mechanics!!) which made manoeuvring the dog into the right spot difficult. You can see Fyre look at me the first time like ‘Hmm, what do I do now?’ but because he loves the crate so much by default that is the first thing he tries.
You can also see me working criteria for crate games - at one point he moves to sniff something on the floor of the crate, so the door shuts and we start again. No paw movement is the rule!
I am also trying to be aware of reward placement – I have done a LOT of rewarding from in front, tugging, treats etc so my circle work has been made somewhat harder because the dogs always want to come around in front – that is where the most value is. I am trying to be aware of this now and rewarding as much as possible at either side. Of course it is easier to tug from the front so I have to be careful not to forget myself and simply follow the easiest path!
The second video is Fyre playing It’s Your Choice with food – his criteria in crate games is to sit when my hand goes on the door and then hold that sit (no feet moving) til I release him. So here he holds his sit while I throw treats on the ground in front of him, then because he chooses to hold position he gets to have those treats as I retrieve them from the ground. If at any point he moved a foot or stood up or tried to come out I would have shut the door and started again, but he has played this a few times now so has pretty good self control. Next time we might up the ante and make it a bit more of a challenge.
The other thing I have been aware of with all the dogs is which way they turn when they go into the crate. The dog should always turn towards you, never ‘flick away’ – this is the basis for agility handling – and prevents the dog from taking off course obstacles. Unfortunately you can’t see me when I send Fyre in the crate the last time or you’d see that he started on my left side and therefore should circle right when going in the crate (towards me) which is why I took him out and sent him in again before rewarding. This isn’t a punishment – simply a ‘Let’s try that again’ and then he gets his food reward. He has improved at this a lot. However this really is a behaviour I’d prefer to work away from the crate because I don’t like re-dos when the dog has done a great job otherwise of driving in. So I am also working all three dogs around a cone, as well as shadow handling/circle work so they are always rewarded for turning TOWARD me and not away. (Must try and get some video of the cone work too as the visual illustrates it better than my trying to describe it).
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