A little impatient :-)

Having a very long Bank Holiday weekend and no Agility Show to go to has certainly given me plenty of time to spend with the Dogs and continue with Reno's weave training.

Since my last post I've been giving a lot of thought to how I can adapt Susan Garrett's method so Reno can understand it better.  Maybe I am being a little impatient or maybe I just know what is best for my Dog? ;-)

Throughout the week I've been working with just two poles in my Garden but using the Clicker as I think that it is a marker that Reno understands well.

I have redone Day 5 although I didn't video it as Ann came and watched.  I used 4 Channel weaves again, set at about 1"apart, but this time used my Clicker to mark the correct entries.  Again Reno was great in the low challenge area but made more mistakes in the essential entry area.  Ann pointed out that I was increasing Reno's challenge too quickly so we placed the numbers around the arc so I didn't accidently push him too much.

This is a Video of what we did yesterday. (I obviously didn't set the camera up too well so we are out of shot most of the time and Reno knocked it at the end to make it worse!!  My videoing rivals my photography!)

This is where I've been a little impatient as I've increased the poles to 6 already.  I felt it would be ok for Reno as I know he can weave 6 poles and he seemed to drive through them better when there were 6.

Although you can't see from the video they were still slightly apart.  I had planned to close them later on but Reno was getting tired so I gave it a miss.

Again you can't see very well in the video but Reno has a much better success rate now, only needing to repeat the harder entries and then getting them right quite quickly.  The difference I can see is that he's now altering his pace as he enters the weaves rather than blasting into them.

After giving him a bit of a rest I worked on a jumping sequence which finished near the weaves.  To my surprise, instead of chasing the ball I'd thrown as his reward, he took himself into the weaves and completed them :-)

I'm really optimistic about today - the plan is to close the 6 poles completely and add a jump to work the arc.  Hopefully I'll set the video better so I can see a real change in Reno's approach to the weaves.