Super Weaver At Training, But Not In Trials

[sheena]

I have been reading up on Impulse Control in Clean Run & this questions was actually raised. Answer was that it is common for an excitable novice dog in a trial situation, to not even see the weave poles & as a result will run past them. Solution : give a green dog as much help as you can to line him up straight for the poles & if he runs past them, bring him back to try again, but be happy with what you get second time round & keep running. :)

[TigerJack]

I've been dealing with this problem myself with two kelpies. One is my masters dog who I got into agility with not knowing anything at all about foundation work so we succeed in spite of our techniques. She is dodgy on finishing weaves, especially if she is on my right or if a tunnel or something else fun is directly ahead of her. Weaves perfectly and more speedily at training, just not in trials. Her entries aren't as independent as I'd like. As I said we knew nothing about foundation stuff when we learned obstacles. I am a bit over her popping at the tenth pole in trials. My young novice boy can weave beautifully but he did pop a couple in trials and I obviously reacted in a way that has shut him down in weaves. He got super cautious and slow and kept looking at me. I think afraid of what reaction I might have.

I decided I couldn't keep that behaviour going as it was counterproductive and just not fun. I decided to go back to basics and do weaves where they cannot fail. What I am doing is setting up the weaves with barriers on them (puppy fence panels) and running them at speed from all directions with me running around like a noisy loon. They can't fail to complete and when they do complete I jackpot the reward with about twenty pieces of food (very tiny) one after the other with me carrying on like a loon about how good they are. My aim is to increase the value for the weaves themselves. I don't think either of my dogs thought they were much fun before. I have added a couple of jumps and a tunnel at either end and now do them from all directions but always jackpot.

After about 4 sessions of this, both dogs are frantic to go weave and are much faster. Older girl still needs a bit of support on entries when there are no barriers but young boy is screaming through much faster and is looking for the weaves better. I do think he sometimes didn't see them in a trial.

So, 4 sessions with barriers on and last time took them off and did maybe 4 runs without and they still stayed in nicely. I still jackpotted. At my private lesson last night, my boy actually was looking for weaves when we were doing things on equipment close by. I have discovered it is still dependent on what I do while they run. My girl I need to shut up, the boy I need to keep on telling him to go go go etc. So they are still not entirely independent and maybe never will be. I think I was doing something different in trials to what I was doing in training so I have to try and relax and not seem anxious about it.

I think I will just keep doing this barrier, can't fail thing with jackpots for a few more sessions then make sure I sound like we are having a party every time they complete weaves in trial. Guess we'll see this weekend if they work in trial or not.

Edited May 10, 2013 by TigerJack