I have started training 2x2 weaves with BabyD and I am finding it fascinating. I love how he works through each challenge I present him with. The whole point of the 2x2s is to allow the dog to fail and to work through problems, once the dog understands the behaviour you will see increased confidence and speed.
We have struggled with a few things but I think I am finding it harder than he is. He isn't a high kind of dog in general so to keep coming back from failiures is what I find tough. He will always try again but slightly slower, a lot of his weave performance is quite steady. But heres the intresting bit, you can see the speed increase quite a lot after just one or two sucesses! This is almost the tough bit, as soon as you start to see that understanding and high success rate then you give them a new challenge (more movement from you, rear cross, extra poles, jump before weaves etc) so just as soon as I see him start to drive he gets a new challenge and slows up again. I think that as his understanding of how to weave improves, his speed will increase too.
Every now and again, I feel myself getting 'sticky' with something to allow him to succeed, e.g my forward motion pulls him out of the poles or makes him skip some so I end up getting a bit static. However I can't really totally 'perfect' that at this stage otherwise I think I would be hanging around on four poles for a long time, I just have to make sure he succeeds MOST of the time and move onto other and new challenges.
Today I just added two more poles as a slightly open gate at the end of the four straight poles. So he is almost weaving six poles straight up from pretty much any entry after about nine days (prob less then thirty minutes of weave pole training). Considering I am new at this and D is a wuss I'm so pleased with BabyD.
No comments:
Post a Comment