My plan for this session was to stick with basics and work on motivation. I again set up stations around the room, so I could reward Gimme with a high value jackpot - high in treat value, not just quantity. It was interesting to watch Gimme trot around the room, with a sniff up every time she passed a station, just to be sure she knew where the good stuff was.
There are those in the reward-based training community who say there is no evidence showing jackpots increase training effectiveness. I think they are testing the concept with green dogs who don't understand jackpots, unlike with a dog who does understand them. Gimme learned about them when she was very young; I often see leaps in understanding right after she gets a well-timed jackpot.
Recently Gimme has seemed unclear what "out" means in our parkour work, so I decided to set up pylons to work on the concept during our practice. I've also noticed she is very slow to respond to the "sit" cue, but sits rapidly to "setup", something I'll work on soon.
Heeling video - The first thing I did was to click when she decided to come see what I was doing - to reinforce choosing to work. When she moves away, I started moving around and she got clicked for showing up in heel/side. We did a bunch of heeling around the pylons with c/t for good position. Her attitude was great.
"Around" & "Behind" video - We did a short bit on getting these circles tighter. I find clicking to prime-the-pump works well to get her in a hurry to get to the end of the behavior; faster equals tight.
"Out" video - She did this very well, even greater distance than the 10' we need for the Go-Around-Distance behavior. The next time we tried it in the real world, she again had difficulty and was inconsistent. At the time I thought I needed to keep my cuing arm/hand raised until she was committed, but from this video, I don't see it. For awhile when we were taping for parkour entries, if she had difficulty, I used a fast running-start to get her going, sort of a slingshot approach. So maybe she's confused about what the cue is and I need to spend some time retraining it in various places, being clean in my cuing. We've submitted our Level 5 videos and I am just waiting for results. I plan to take a bit of a break from parkour entries before we start the premier track, so it gives me plenty of time to work on this in various places.
"Cane" & "Orbit" video - It occurs to me after watching this video, Gimme keeps trying to go "out" around the prop, when I want her to go between me and the prop. I wish I could remember when we started having problems with "cane" & "orbit" - I'm wondering if it might be about the time when we started practicing the distance "out" for parkour. Even though I didn't really think there was an arm/hand cue for "cane" & "orbit", I think Gimme may think there is one and to her they look just like the cue for "out". So I may have to develop a distinctly different physical cue for "cane" & "orbit", just for clarity. She is better at "orbit", it's her better turning direction.
We did some more heeling. I tried to just move away from her when she lagged or went wide. I used side stepping away or taking a few fast steps. This seemed to intrigue her, sort of like playing keep-away.
Heeling with behaviors video - We did two quick sequences of heel-behavior-heel-behavior-heel (on either side) ending on heeling where we dash to a reward. For the second one I had to curve around and move a little further because she drifted too far out of position.
Playing keep-away video - I decided to actually play keep-away, with a c/t when she got into either heel position. I also backed away from her with c/t when she got into center position.
Heel-pecks video - This was an idea I had loosely based on 300 Pecks. Just a game to make her really want to get into position where the c/t happens.
"Near", "close" & "beep" video - My goal here was to get her more comfortable with doing "near" and "close" when the opposite leg is back. She remembers this from when I was trying so hard to get the backward weaves and in her mind it's a bad thing. So I'm trying to do it in tiny doses and then a couple of "beep". I want to set up something at home where she does "beep" from 90ยบ to my side, going through my legs more like the backward weaves. She is plenty comfortable from in front, but it's not really the same behavior.
Center front pivot video - I have to remember to slow it down when we are pivoting CCW. It's Gimme's better turning direction, so when we go too fast she turns it into "otto". I think I need to a lot more treats into the "center" bank account.
As I said, I thought this was a very good practice session. Gimme kept a great attitude throughout and neither of us got frustrated. All good, eh...
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