The Contact Zone

I am currently in the midst of training Sprout to have great performances on all three contact obstacles. I'm training running contacts for both the A-frame and dogwalk and a 4-on teeter. Because I live in a city home with only a small yard, I don't have space for my own contact equipment. In order to gain access to equipment, I rent an agility building once a week to train. Right now, this means those particular training sessions are very contact focused; basically, I work one contact obstacle then take a short short walk break and/or run a short jump-tunnel-weave sequence before moving on to the next contact. One hour per week, may not be ideal, but it's what I have to work with and I believe I'm making the most of it and being rewarded with good results for my effort.

A-Frame: This is the one contact obstacle where I was able to do the ground work at home. I am using Rachel Sanders box method, which I previously used to train both Poppy and Hokey's running contacts. I started Sprout by running him straight through the box laid out on the ground. I decided in order to get him a little deeper into the box and to get a better bounce, I needed to raise the back end a few inches. The cardboard insert from toilet paper or paper towel rolls works great for this, although you can also add some PVC extensions. I like cheap, quick, and readily handy myself. I worked all 3 of the stationary positions on both sides of the box:

Next I added the jump grid to the box. These are two low jumps that precede the box. The 2nd jump is placed exactly 9 feet from the back edge of the box. This simulates the down ramp of the frame. Running through the grid teaches the correct striding up over the apex of the frame then one bounce before the contact zone and then a 2nd bounce into the contact zone and off the frame. It's building muscle memory for the real thing. I did have a little bit of trouble getting the correct striding from Sprout early on; sometimes instead of the two bounces in 9', he was adding an extra stride - so two little strides then a bounce through the box or sometimes he was missing the box altogether. By messing around with the jump heights and their distances from each other, I was finally able to get a consistent 2-strided performance from him. Once the consistency came, I was able to set the jumps as I normally would have. The following clip shows us working the grid over a few different days. Again, I worked the 3 stationary positions on each side and then, once he was proficient and giving me a consistent performance, I added some motion and obstacles.

Then came time for the real deal. First, I set up the grid right next to the frame and ran him through it a few times. Then I set the A-frame pretty low and transferred the box to the down contact. I set a jump bar on the apex in case that helped him get the idea of leap over the apex; I had done this with Hokey and it had helped her. I'm not sure if it really helped Sprout or not. I didn't use one in subsequent sessions. If you look at the pictures above from our most recent A-frame session, you can see that he is now consistently leaping over the apex and catching a lot of air in the process - and getting a nice two bounce descent. For him, it seemed to come as a natural progression as his confidence increased and his drive accelerated. Here is his first session on the frame. I did raise it a little bit during this first session.

Here is Sprout's 2nd session a week later with the A-frame a little higher. As you can see, he's putting in some solid performances.

And here is Sprout's most recent A-Frame session on a still higher A-frame. Just look at him FLY! His confidence and drive are really starting to take off and he is sailing over the apex and putting in two solid hits. It can be hard to really see what's going on, but the pictures above are snapshots taken from this clip. He is catching some major air!

My plan from here is to continue to move to full height and to continue to get this kind of performance on a consistent basis, then fade the box. What is truly awesome is that NOT ONCE in any of these training sessions, has he missed bouncing through the box. He's 100% when it comes to hitting the contact on the frame so far. I am so pleased with his progress to date.

Teeter: In a previous post, I had shown a clip of the end behavior work I'd done in preparation for training the teeter. Finally, it was time to work the entire obstacle, starting with it set low, of course. Here is part of our first session (after training Hokey, I often forget that I can use a clicker with Sprout, even when it's in my hand!):

And here we are a couple of weeks later, with the teeter a bit higher:

So far, each teeter session goes like this: the first time, run like mad just past the fulcrum, then as it starts to drop suddenly panic and put on the brakes and look like a back-peddling cartoon character, end up in the contact zone, but not down close to the end. The 2nd and maybe the 3rd time through "Oh it's that scary thing that moves when I run across it. I need to be cautious." = a slow performance and a less than stellar contact performance (i.e. in the upper part of the yellow instead of down near the end of the teeter). Then the confidence builds and builds and by the end of the session he's got tons of teeter drive. My plan is to build his confidence while gradually raising the teeter to full height over several weeks. I also hope I can get him out and get him some exposure to other teeters.

Dogwalk: I'm still in the early stages of training Sprout's dogwalk. So far, I am planning a running contact performance. Unlike with Hokey and the foam tiles, I didn't do any ground work with Sprout. Instead, the last month or so, I've spent time each week letting him get used to the dogwalk by walking him on leash back and forth and letting him turn around. Then I've worked the down ramp by having my partner restrain him while I get him excited and then, when he's released, I throw a toy for him to run down the ramp and through a hoop I have set up at the end of the ramp. I had originally made the
hoop for Hokey's running dogwalk contact training and found it quite helpful since I was really at disadvantage trying to teach a solid running contact without the ability to use a clicker or any other sound to mark the correct behavior. I found the hoop taught her to run straight off the end of the ramp without leaping off while keeping her head low. She was able to retain the behavior after I faded the hoop. I'm hoping to have the same result with Sprout.

This past week was the first time I worked the entire length of the dogwalk with him (after the retrained ramp runs). Here is a clip of the result:

I'm pretty happy with this. I think his confidence will continue to build off this and his drive and speed with increase as a result. Once I feel satisfied with that, I'll start to fade the hoop and see if we retain the contact behavior I'm looking for.

3-2-1 Contact Training (with Serps & Pinwheels too)

 Hokey's agility training has been coming along. While (im)patiently waiting for spring to arrive, I've recently been able to get access to a nice building and equipment to practice on once a week. And it's only ~10 minutes from my house. Deb Goodhart rents the building about once a month to give lessons, so we've been doing that as well. I'm so appreciative to finally have an opportunity to do some training that doesn't involve traveling to the ends of the earth!

I put together a couple of clips of just a few things I was working on during our practice sessions. The first shows us doing some rear cross on the tunnel work, learning to drive through the chute and just fooling around running a little sequence -- a "real" one.

The following week, I worked her on some serps. It was only the 2nd time she'd done real serps. The first had been about a week before in my backyard. We still need a little work on timing and teamwork and her ability to consistently read the serp RTH when I add motion, but I thought she did stunningly overall considering how green she is. I also show a bit of a rear cross exercise at the end of this. Rear crosses are something we are still working hard at and still need a lot of work, but I was happy with what she did here. It's coming along. I was doing some exercises with her in my backyard this evening and after a small initial struggle, she started to really pick it up well. We'll continue to work at it.

Hokey has had a couple of initial introductory sessions on the teeter now, with the ends set on tables. During the first session, we just let her run back and forth to get treats at either end. Then we dropped one of the tables so that one end had about a 12" drop. She was unfazed. She couldn't seem to turn around fast enough to run to the other end to get her treat, even if it meant jumping up on the end and riding it down first. Of course, being deaf, the banging noise is out of the picture for her. But the motion doesn't seem to worry her.

Here is the end of our second session on the teeter. I am not teaching her any "end behavior" yet, however I am trying to train her to pause on the table at the end of the teeter as I move ahead. Since she is relatively fearless and tends to be at the "less" end of the self-preservation scale, teaching her to use her brakes now is probably a good idea. So here she is playing her favorite teeter ping-pong game:

She's been working the A-frame grid well for some time now, although admittedly I haven't been able to do it consistently during the winter months. But every time we do work it, she's been working well. So I decided it was time to introduce the actual A-frame into the equation. We've played the "mountain climbing game" on one side of the frame a couple of times to build up her hamstrings and teach her that she's able to control her decent. And she's run over it a couple of times at full height on the way to something else of her own accord (deaf dogs simply don't listen to "Don't do that until you've been trained how" and the "uh-uh-uh" as they forge ahead with their own agenda). But for a true introduction, we lowered it and I put my PVC box on. The first couple of times up and down, she was pretty tentative and unsure, like here:

So we decided to set up the ground grid next to the frame to remind her of what it is all about and give her muscle memory a boost.

That was all fine and good, so I switched back to the frame. Or at least I tried to. Suddenly, she was all "Frame? What frame? I don't see any huge, looming piece of wood directly in front of me". Even when Deb tried a restrained recall, she did a run-around.

Then she finally took the plunge up and over, proceeding to leap completely over the contact zone and box. But...she did a great job tackling the frame.

So now we were ready to put it together. As you can see, Hokey hasn't made the connection and generalized the striding from the ground grid to the frame yet. She's still getting used to the idea of running up and down it at this point. I know she's capable of opening up her stride more and she needs to learn to leap over the top rather than scrambling over and down until pouncing through the box, as she's mostly doing here. She may need a jump bar or something clamped to the top in order to help aid her in transferring the striding she learned on the ground grid to the frame. We'll see. But this isn't too bad considering it's the first time working the frame for this wee little pup.

We also worked some pinwheel exercises in my lesson this week. Since we are new to sequencing and with Hokey still being VERY green, her obstacle commitment is not always there and she apparently still needs quite a bit of support. I'm sure this will lessen as she gains experience and confidence. Here we are doing a straight pinwheel. Without a lot of support, she is pulling off jumps instead of committing:

Here we are doing the exercise without the send to the middle pinwheel jump, so that she understands that where I place my body relative to the plane of jumps tells her whether to take the pinwheel jump or not. Not taking the pinwheel jump isn't a problem, but she is so sensitive to my pulling motion that she almost misses the 3rd jump without me giving her a little extra push back out to it.

 Next, adding a front cross between jumps 4 and 5 after the pinwheel. I spent too long supporting her pinwheel jump and was late for my cross the first time through. The second time was much better. Of course, part of training a new dog, especially when you start to put it together and run some sequences, means learning how to come together to work as a team.

Then we did the pinwheel with blind crosses. The first run was pretty nice. I was a little too early on my cross in the 2nd run. The 3rd was much better timing-wise, even though she ended up dropping the bar.

Our last blind cross ended up being pretty nice though. Bonus: she doesn't even look at the off-course trap jump set up near the 3rd and 4th jumps:

We haven't started any training for the dogwalk and haven't even been able to resume the groundwork for that was put on hold for the winter. (confession: in another don't-try-to-tell-a-deaf-dog-no moment, she has been up on the full height dog walk of her own accord a couple of times. Like I said, she is fearless. I have been VERY conscious of keeping her away from the full-height teeter however).

I plan on starting 2x2 weave training sometime in March.

So that's the update on Hocus Pocus training. More to come soon as the warmer weather allows us more training opportunities! 

Running Dog Walk Training: Modification One

I still have other material on other subjects related our foundation training to write about, but, in the meantime, I added a modification to my running dog walk training set-up in order to help with one of the problems I've been having that wrote about in my last post. The issue is that Hokey often comes off the side of the plank as she runs toward a remote controlled treat dispenser placed several feet from the end. A friend of mine (thanks Ivette!) suggested using a hoop at the contact end that could act as a visual aid to keep her running straight on the plank all the way to the end. I do have a hoop, but thought that maybe just a couple of upright posts connected by a short stabilization bar (in this case, roughly 16") might be enough to do the trick.

First, I needed to introduce her to the concept of running through the uprights. I shaped this simply by strolling by the obstacle and rewarding her for taking the initiative of going through the uprights. We've done this when introducing other obstacles in the past, so it's a familiar drill to her. The only "new" concept was the narrowness of the uprights. Here I am shaping the behavior. As you can see, as Hokey gradually becomes more confident about performing the behavior, her speed and drive increase. By the way, that soft click you might hear is a flashlight that I'm using as a substitute clicker. More about that later.

Once Hokey clearly understood the concept of running through the uprights, I placed the remote controlled treat dispenser on the ground for her to drive to. She would get a treat released for a "hit" - running through the uprights, but, in theory, wouldn't get one for a "miss" - running by the uprights without going through them. She never did get a miss during this phase though.

Then it was time to put it all together by putting my foam tiles down with the uprights placed at the contact end and the treat dispenser placed several feet from the end.

I have decided it is easiest to see a contact hit if I have 3 foam tiles of all the same color linked together at each end of the "plank" (recall from the last post that 3 tiles are equal to the USDAA contact zone measurement). Here I have red on one end, yellow on the other.




The modification with the uprights worked really well. It seemed to do its job of acting as a visual guide to help her stay on the plank all the way to the end the majority of the time. She had a couple of instances where she came off and then swung back on to run through the uprights, but those misses were not nearly as numerous as those during the training session a few days ago when I wasn't using the uprights. Here is Hokey getting some nice "hits":

As for the other main problem mentioned in my last post - that of the absence of a good clicker substitute to mark the desired behavior - that is something I'm still working on.

 As you can see from these stills from videos taken during today's session, she still has times where she is leaping over the contact area rather than hitting it.

 
There is a slight possibility that the uprights will encourage this behavior since she might interpret them as a cue to jump, but because she had several instances of just running through the uprights rather than jumping, I do not think this is the case.

Here is the video showing her leaping over the contact zone:

Without a proper aid to give her instant feedback, there is really no good way for me to communicate what I'm looking for her to do. I'm sure it's frustrating to her. Not having the ability to communicate my criteria to her properly is frustrating to me.

However, I do think I may have a workable solution. I bought a little push button LED flashlight a couple of days ago to try to use as a substitute clicker (as an alternative to my hand flash). It's relatively bright, so as long as Hokey is looking at it, she should be able to see the light flash on even when outside during the day. It also has a relatively quick reaction without much of a delay, which is a huge bonus as this is something I have struggled with when trying to find devices that will work well in our training.

The downside to using the flashlight is that Hokey needs to be facing it in order to get the information. In training the running dog walk, if I'm restraining her or holding a stationary position at any location other than right at the end of the plank facing toward her, I can't provide her with the information contained in that flash of light. Even with me standing at the end like that, things don't work out so well. Having to release her, watch the contact, decide to click the flashlight followed by clicking the remote for the treat dispenser all within quick succession did not prove to be very workable in practice. Therefore, I think it would be best at this time to have a second person stationed at the contact end of the plank watching the contact area for "hits" and clicking the flashlight, while I concentrate on releasing her and operating the treat dispenser.

In the short time I've introduced her to the concept of the flashlight as a substitute clicker (I picked it up on Friday and today is Sunday), Hokey has grasped the concept very well. Here we are today demonstrating how it can be used to shape a sit/stay. Notice that she is definitely glancing at the flashlight in anticipation of getting information/feedback from it.

 

So that's the update! Running dog walk contacts are still a work in progress, but with improvements!

Foundations: Running Contacts

I finally have time to report on the progress I've been making with Hokey's agility foundation training. In fact, I have so much material, I'm going to have to split it into more than one post. This post will be dedicated to our attempts to develop solid running contact behaviors for both the A-frame and the dog walk. 

But first, let me report that we all survived "Superstorm Sandy" (I still prefer the pre-storm moniker "Frankenstorm") without any hardship. However, Hokey begs to differ with that assessment. She was convinced she'd melt by getting rain in her face. Is this not the most pathetic sight ever?

Hokey "suffering" the effects of Superstorm Sandy

So back to running contact training starting with the A-frame. I have introduced Hokey to the PVC box. The introductory step involved me sitting in a chair while shaping her moment into the box (i.e. first moving toward it, then a foot in, two feet in, etc) by building value for it with lots of tossed treats. She moved through those steps very quickly. Then I ran into some trouble at what would ordinarily be the next couple of steps - me still sitting in a chair off to the side of the box with her moving straight through without looking at me while getting a nice pounce into the box then bouncing straight out. Because of her deafness, I had trouble imparting this concept to her and actually ended up jumping ahead a couple of steps. The main problem is that I have yet to come up with a good alternative marker to use in lieu of a clicker.  Such a marker would need to be visual, yet not require her to look at me for information (i.e. some remote device that she would look at to get her information regardless of my position relative to her). It would also have to have very little delay so that the feedback would be virtually instantaneous. I've experimented with a couple of things, but none of them have worked out quite to my specifications. SO, I decided to jump ahead and see how she would respond to me working the 3 positions around either side of the box (front corner, side, back corner) with me tossing a treat or toy to keep her focused on driving forward. Being a bouncy jack, she naturally picked up on the one bounce into the box with a bounce straight out. She really gets some nice pouncing action, as seen in this still from the video that follows:

Hokey "pouncing" into the PVC box

And here is the video of us working the 3 positions around the box at full speed followed by half speed:

We've also started to work on the foundation for a running dog walk contact. I want to try to train this and see how it goes. So far, it's proving to be challenging and sometimes frustrating. I may need to rethink how I go about certain things, but I figure if it doesn't work out, I can always switch to a 2o/2o instead. I think it would be an easier transition to retrain a running to a 2o/2o contact behavior than the other way around. Currently I am using interlocking foam tiles as a portable substitute for a plank. They are 12" x 12", so 12 tiles represents a DW ramp and the last 3 tiles are equal to the USDAA contact zone specifications.

One of the interlocking foam tiles

When training a running DW contact, you want to teach your dog to drive forward with speed while remaining completely independent of handler motion. Therefore, in these early stages of training, I remain stationary and position myself at either end of the "plank". I have a remote controlled treat dispenser placed several feet from the end of the plank that acts as the "goal" for Hokey to drive to. I've also used a tug toy stuffed with hot dogs placed or thrown at the contact end of the plank. However, if I use the toy, I give up the control of rewarding her for a correct vs. incorrect performance since she's often driving forward far ahead of me. In other words, the toy reward is indiscriminate; it rewards her for performing both correct and incorrect contact behaviors. Therefore, I prefer to use the treat dispenser so that I can reward her only when she runs all the way across the plank without leaping off the end or stepping off the side. The downside to using the remote dispenser is that it has a little bit of a delay, so that sometimes in my eagerness to deliver the reward to her at the correct moment, I anticipate her performing correct behavior and instead end up rewarding her for an undesirable behavior.

Remote controlled treat dispenser

Unfortunately, as mentioned before, I haven't come up with a good clicker substitute with which to provide her with instant feedback for performing the correct behavior without her having to look at me, so, right now, Hokey is stuck with the imprecision of trying to learn what gets her a reward and what doesn't and trying to tease out what she did right from the wide range of possible behaviors. This is a currently source of frustration for the both of us and something I need to give more thought to in order to come up with a better solution.

Below are video examples of our hits and misses.

In this clip, I stand stationary at the "contact" end of of the plank near the treat dispenser and release her toward me:

I have found that she tends to show a little more speed and drive if I am at the opposite end with her and do a restrained release, sending her across the plank toward the dispenser, as shown here:

As I mentioned before, Hokey is a bouncy jack russell and has a tendency to add an occasional leap amid her strides as she runs. Sometimes these leaps carry her right into the contact zone, such as here:

However, this is not the most desirable behavior as it can easily turn into a leap that has her sailing completely over the contact zone:

A frequent problem I'm having with her is that she has a tendency to run off the side of the plank as she's heading toward the treat dispenser.

This is happening more often lately and I need to fix it now before it drifts into habit. My thought is that I either need to take some steps back and build high value for staying on the plank before running the entire length at full speed OR get a helper so that one person can be available to give some sort of visual "click" for the desired behavior. Or maybe some kind of combination of the two.

Like I said, it's a work in progress with some kinks to be worked out. We'll see how it goes as we move forward.

Another post on our progress focusing on other skills should be up within the next few days. Stay tuned!