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Time for a running contact rant ;)
Jul. 18th, 2009 12:09 amObservation can be very difficult when both you and your subject are moving rapidly. That is the issue I've been having lately. Panic's dogwalk has been getting faster, and thusly I have to go faster to actually see what he's doing. I filmed a bunch of reps and discovered that a lot of the time when I thought he was successful, he was actually jumping. I watched those videos over and over and now I think I can pick out the jumping better.
In this picture you can see how far in the yellow he is, the lower third. But this is very clearly a jump.
This was a very successful rep. You can see that his back feet are going to land around the same place as the previous jump picture. His natural stride usually puts his back feet in lower third of the yellow. At the same time when he jumps it is usually from the same place (as in the first picture) which is another reason it is difficult to always see that he is jumping. It takes a lot of practice to figure it out, but I think I'm getting better at rewarding what I want. I have to train myself to look for RUNNING, and not how far in the yellow he gets. In full extension it can be very difficult to distinguish between a jump and a stride.
Now onto another issue: turning. I am starting to think that it is probably not possible for him to make sharp turns off the dogwalk without some jumping. If he slows down a lot, he can make the turn by almost shuffling down the yellow. But I don't want to slow him down obviously. So should I accept jumping on sharp turns? Or is it even jumping at all? Sometimes it is so hard to tell. It is so hard to teach something this complex without any type of guidance. Watching video after video of other dogs can only get you so far
Meanwhile here's a few reps we did over the past week. Quite a few turns, is he jumping or not?
In this picture you can see how far in the yellow he is, the lower third. But this is very clearly a jump.
This was a very successful rep. You can see that his back feet are going to land around the same place as the previous jump picture. His natural stride usually puts his back feet in lower third of the yellow. At the same time when he jumps it is usually from the same place (as in the first picture) which is another reason it is difficult to always see that he is jumping. It takes a lot of practice to figure it out, but I think I'm getting better at rewarding what I want. I have to train myself to look for RUNNING, and not how far in the yellow he gets. In full extension it can be very difficult to distinguish between a jump and a stride.
Now onto another issue: turning. I am starting to think that it is probably not possible for him to make sharp turns off the dogwalk without some jumping. If he slows down a lot, he can make the turn by almost shuffling down the yellow. But I don't want to slow him down obviously. So should I accept jumping on sharp turns? Or is it even jumping at all? Sometimes it is so hard to tell. It is so hard to teach something this complex without any type of guidance. Watching video after video of other dogs can only get you so far
Meanwhile here's a few reps we did over the past week. Quite a few turns, is he jumping or not?