Oct 4th - at home

Well we were back at the weaves again. The ground is much drier but after we were finished the grass was pretty much all gone, yikes.

I started with B first moving the weave poles to be 4' apart, still at 1-7 angle and staked in the ground. I had 6 cookies for the first session and did offside entries. I was making him go from more of a directly looking at them angle today to see how they would do. He did only 1 error in the 6 cookies and went to his bed really nicely. I moved onto the onside entries with another 6 cookies. I was asking him to go directly at the entry, check in wrapping the pole and go through the next set. He did this nice and only had 2 errors in the 6 cookies. I decided that I would move to the next step with him so he went back in the house and I got Rip to work this angle.

Rip came out and I decided to do 3 offside and 3 onside with each session. He did the offside perfect and then only made 1 error on the onside entries. I had him sit on the bed between sessions while I broke up cookie pieces. He did another 3 off and 3 on in the next session but this time I added my movement. He had trouble with the offside and he was not coming in to 1-2 poles but flanking them. He eventually got it but I had to go to my happy place ;) He did the onside quite nicely.

I then pulled up the weaves and put them at no extra spacing in between but put them both at 1-7 angle still, staked. It was like Rip had been dying for them to go back to weave poles :) He was weaving through it great getting each of his entries on the offside side. He did have a bit of problems with onside as he was trying to wrap around pole 1 instead of entering between 1-2. I stayed in my happy place and he succeeded to do it nice. He is striding nicely though the 4 poles with his front feet. I did this in 4 sessions and then put Rip away.

Baxter came out again and I did this same setup. He did both onside and offside entries well but what I am finding is that he is still getting his backend caught up in the poles as he strides too fast with his front end. I am not seeing that all this work has helped in the way that he weaves but maybe it will still help with the entries. I think I need to get him videotaped and really watch what happens with his body.

So I decided to see if I put the whole set of 6 poles out, the final 4 totally straight what he would do. I kept 1-2 poles at the 1-7 angle still, all poles were staked. Wow, his entries were great! He didn't miss one from offside and from what I could see, he was 1 striding his front feet through but again his backend was catching poles. When I went onside I was asking for hard entries so for the odd time he would wrap pole 1 instead of entering between 1-2. Otherwise he did great on that side too.

Sooo...tomorrow I will have to talk Rick into coming outside to video tape B's weave performance. Watch for the video tomorrow :) I am also planning to work some jumps tomorrow to get that started up again. This was day 6 of the 12 for weave poles...I guess you really can teach a dog to weave in 12 days!! :))