Jackie has had a step change in her understanding of weaves this week. Today she had 100% error-free success rate from start to finish. Since she was doing such a great job, we stopped and celebrated after six consecutive weaves, three on handler's right and three on handler's left.
Jackie is also doing a great job with two-on-two-off (2o2o) contact behavior. However, I need to continue my own learning and understanding in order to avoid clumping (trying to teach too many layers of behavior at one time), rather than breaking each behavior down to the absolute simplest form and understanding each layer independently.
For Jackie's trick title, in the past we have practiced riding a skateboard, where Jackie runs up to a skateboard, gets on it with three feet, then kicks with one hindleg in a pumping motion to propel the skateboard forward while she rides on it.
So Jackie has been hugely reinforced for experimenting with "pumping" her hindlegs while being on a board (a type of contact really) and for touching the ground with at least one hindleg. Now I'm having to reinforce 2o2o behavior at the agility contacts so that she understands the difference.
While doing so I should have focused on 2o2o behavior separate from barrel wraps behavior before so she has a very clear understanding of each separate behavior, and only then sequence the behaviors once Jackie has shown she successfully understands each individual behavior.
Resurrecting the treat-and-train robot to reinforce weaving this week has been helpful! It's a work in progress and we're having fun playing together.
Jackie having 100% start-to-finish success on weaves today, and too much "clumping" of 2o2o and barrel wraps but still with overall gains:
