Class and our First Weave Bump

Last night was class again, first time since before the trip.  Shasta did lots of good stuff.  Again, stayed focused.  Did all her obstacles without issue including the dog walk (still slow and methodical but she is doing it) and the teeter (it's the aluminum one that worries many dogs).  Good bottoms on all of them.  She also did well at doing a down stay while I walked parts of the sequences.  

I jumped her at 20 inch in class.  She was going fine until she really crashed about the 8th jump.  Classmate said she was looking at me, saw jump at last instant and tried to take it but barely lifted off the ground when she crashed the bar with her chest.  Poor girl.  It was going to happen but I would have liked it to be after more success.  She recovered quite well from it except for that specific jump she wouldn't do.  Interesting reaction.

Tonight it was back home and training weaves.  We hit our first "bump".  Which is actually probably too strong a word.  Today was the first time, with weaves, that I increased the criteria and she struggled.  First, she was doing the four poles straight up (again, as straight as these adjustable weaves get which isn't completely straight) with confidence and from any entry angle.  Even a few shallow angles of both wraps and non-wrap.  She missed a few on the extreme angles but none of the other angles and distances.

Next step was to add four more poles.  That is where she struggled.  She did more like 1,2,3,4,7,8.  She got it right a couple of times but never twice in a row.  OK, time to step back.  I decided to move the adjustable poles slightly.  It was still hit and miss.  I added a little more gap, back to the poles being a sliver of a "channel".  At that point we got back to pretty good success but she had lost confidence so they were methodical.  This is where I will start the next chance I get, it will be interesting to see how it goes.

The great news?  I had suddenly realized we had been at it for 30 minutes.  30 minutes of just basically weaves (with a tunnel or jump thrown in periodically).  She is barely a year old and she was willing to try for 30 minutes on something as boring as weaves!   Never lost interest, never went to sniff around.  She got confused and lost confidence but she wanted to be right and she was willing to try and try again.   Impressive.