Sunday, January 27, 2013

Weave Update

I am upset.  Really quite upset.  With training?  No.  With the blog.  The idea of this blog was that I wanted my training steps documented for future dogs.  And more than anything, the steps in teaching weaves.  I used the "channel 4" method with Roxy and Sonic and they both have what I consider awesome weaves.  But it's all off of memory.  So what did I do?  Trained Shasta's weaves and I didn't keep up with the blog.  Ugh!  I know I don't remember all the steps as well as I would have hoped.

That's the bad news.  The good news?  The weaves are going great.  We did, however, have some "bumps" along the way.   In retrospect very minor although I wasn't sure at the time.

Here are Shasta's weaves from last Sunday, 15 days after we started training weaves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaWyFjoQH-w

Here is what I do recall.  It looks like my last blog was when I first went to 8 poles and struggled a bit.  I did the weaves at 8 with a tiny gap for part of a session and they went well.  I decided to go to 12 poles with the slight gap rather than try to go to 8 straight up.  That transition from 8 to 12 went fairly well.

Next session we worked our way up to 12 poles straight up.  Well, as straight as the adjustable weaves get.  Again, she made the step fine but was being very, very methodical. 

With success at 12 poles "adjustable" straight up, I went to 6 weave poles, truly straight up on the non-adjustable set.  As I write this, I'm not sure why I felt the need to move through the steps as quickly as I did given her speed.  I guess my thought was the speed will pick up as soon as she gets confident and she might as well get to 12 straight up fairly quickly so she can gain confidence at it.  

Next we went to 12 non-adjusted straight up.  She made each of these last three or four transitions with very little trouble.  A few pops of the weaves here and there.  For the most part, very solid.  Sure enough, on the next night, she attacked the weaves, all 12 straight up, with quite a bit of speed.  Look at her go!  And......  she slips at about pole 8, hits pole 9 on the shoulder and pops out.  Now to her credit, she didn't choose to avoid the weaves but she went back, understandably, to very thoughtful on them.

The next night was class.  I had no intention of even trying the weaves but when I tried to call her off of them she entered and as I changed and went with her, she did all 12!!  First time, in a place she hadn't done weaves before.  I couldn't believe she generalized them that well.  I tried two more time in that class and she popped at 10 both times but I was still impressed by the one good set.

Since then we've been working on speed and continuing the tougher weaves.   Her speed is increasing and really is not bad at this point (per the youtube video).   Kris says I don't know what berner speed weaves are any more after training and showing Sonic!

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