HTacd

I get what you mean. Are you slowing the dog down going through the poles to concentrate on their foot placement, or does the dog seem to just "get it"? Have the dogs tried at all to jump over the poles? As I said, that was the problem I had with this method & I would be interested in knowing you might stop this happening.

Great tip I would think the oposite (closing up the first poles first) would work well too to train the entries without the pressure of the rest being straight?

I'm enjoying seeing the variation of ideas here and whats working for people. I guess I probably should answer my own question I have used a few different methods, thankfully not all on one dog, although probably still too many on the one... First dog I taught by luring through the poles. She learnt right sided weaving well but it took much longer to get weaving on the left side - I couldnt get my own coordination together on that side and had arms and legs all over the place It also took quite some time to wean off hand signals and getting the dog weaving independently. In all honesty I probably wouldnt use that method again, mainly for that reason. Next I started basic training with someone elses dog using the V method. Initial progress was fanastic and she caught on quickly, but she soon started leaping through the poles in a hurry to get to the end. Even with the poles on the slightest slant she would jump..so much for teaching good foot work. I then switched to training her using guides on the poles which she was progressing with quite well when I stopped training her. Current dog I started using with using the guides due to the success with the previous dog. He was very enthusiastic as well but consistently got his legs tangled - he wasnt thinking so much about what he was actually doing, just more about getting to the end and his toy. We then stopped training for some time. Later I decided to give the clicker method a go that Mokey posted the link for. Hmm, this didnt work as well as I was hoping. Going between the 2 poles was learnt very eaily. 2 sets of 2 poles some distance apart..still no problem. But when it came to linking the 2 sets together he would leap between the first 2, come back and then leap throught the next 2, but never seem to get the idea of linking things together. It may have come together with time, but I got frustrated.. I instead went to using 3 poles and shaping him going around the centre one to start with and we had much more sucess. And then built it up to 4 etc poles by tossing the reward around the next pole introduced. (If that at all makes sense!!). I found this method worked by far the best for him, but he's less consistent the more poles there are, and now we're having the problem with duration. As I mentioned in the other thread I'm now thinking about going back and using the channel method to increase his drive through more poles. I would have thought by now I would have made up my mind on whats best for me, but I'm still not completely happy. I guess thats why theres so many different methods out there! And of course each dog is different.

I tend to agree with everyone else that the majority of mistakes on a course are going to be the handlers, and so I think very rarely is stopping the dog mid course going to be of any benefit to the team. If anything it would be quite demotivating. For my younger dog however, I will stop his run mid course and remove him from the ring but that is because bad behaviour in between obstacles (jumping up) rather than making a mistake. If fact if he makes a mistake on course, eg takes a wrong jump or tunnel entrance, I will keep running and try to act as if he was correct as a) usually he was only following my body language and b) stopping him and correcting the mistake is more likely to cause his bad behaviour. On the other hand my female has a tendency to take off for the tunnel when she sees it without listening to me resulting in her taking the wrong entrance or going off course completely. In her case I would usually get her to repeat it properly, but for her retiring from the run would be waaay too demotivating.

As a follow on to my other topic (call me obsessed :D ), I'm interested to hear which methods people prefer or are using to train the weave poles and why. With so many different methods out there, I am yet to be 100 percent happy with any of the ones of used, although thats more of an indication of me as a trainer than the method itself. Would you use the same method for most dogs, or do you vary?