Thursday, January 1, 2009

Cherry day 7 working on 2X2 weaves

Ok after I got the DVD from Susan G. 12 weaves in 12 days, Susan does suggest giving a few days between progressing in the weaves for the muscles to build up in the dog, so I have been working with Cherry and her weaves every other day, about three times a day-and about 1-2 min. a session. I am videoing all my sessions and watching them after I am done so I can see where I go wrong, which is mostly....placement of reward, I really need to sit and practice my throwing and the timing is really a lot harder to get down then it looks, seriously. A couple of times I noticed a little behavior chain starting where Cherry would go into the poles, then come back once before she would really try to actually go down the poles, I accidentally rewarded that a couple of times in a row, so I had to stop after each try and do a trick first when that was happening, so I am watching more closely for that to happen again. Since this is the first session with six poles and everything just went straight I was letting Cherry work things out a little more this session. So day 6 I believe, or it maybe day 7, second session of the day, I have just closed the last two poles. That leaves six poles, staked down, straight in a line, reward is the pink ball and I do try to get her revved up and do some tugging before we start AND NO WEAVE OR POLE COMMAND YET, it is still not what I want to name weaves, or poles :-)-- I am very happy with how fast this is going and how well Cherry is doing.

WHOOPS! Re reviewing the materials it looks like we will not open up and work on footwork until we are working on twelve poles, so change of plans-always helps to review the instructions

1 comment:

Diana said...

Thats amazing. One thing Susan posted on her web site was she has her students practice throwing the toy into a landry basket. That might help. Im a bad thrower too. One thing I try is to the the toy when she is b/t pole 4and 5. It feels way early but usually lands as she is coming out and she drives to it more. Just a thought. Diana