Drifters 2 X 2 Weave Debut! 1-10-09

Well the girls are coming out of season and I am ready to try some things with Drifter. Drifter’s agility career is supposed to be over until or unless he learns to settle down and make decisions a little better. After giving it some thought I have decided to try him on the 2 X 2 Weave pole system. My hope is that he will learn to offer behaviors without the stress and panic of being wrong. I think that has been his biggest problem in agility, he is so worried and stressed that he may make a mistake that he tries to do everything possible at once. He really enjoys training in Rally and Obedience where the choices are much clearer to him. He also may really enjoy tracking. I think there is a chance that the process of teaching him 2 X 2’s may show him that it is ok to make mistakes in agility, that the world will not come to an end and perhaps I can get him back into the ring someday. I will continue to work him in rally, obedience and tracking when the weather permits but for today we are going to start teaching the weaves. Drifter was doing weaves in class and competition before so this will be a re-train. He has the classic “see poles run fast” issues that makes him miss the entry and pop out of poles at trails. So in addition to teaching him it is ok to be wrong, I am hoping he will learn to collect for the entries and then go fast. Anyways here is the set up for the first lesson.



The object of today’s game is to simply get the dog to offer the poles by properly entering. As soon as the dog does you toss a cookie to the reward line. It sounds easy but I expect this to be tough for Drifter. Again he does not like to make mistakes and when I line him up by the poles I expect him to sit in heel position awaiting some sort of direction. That is exactly what I got out of him. I waited him out for about 5 minutes before he finally engaged the poles. At that point I tossed the cookie which he was happy to go get. It took several more slow successful attempts until he seemed to figure out why I was throwing the treat. After that it was just a matter of working our way around the entry arc.

           


            

This whole process took longer with Drifter than it had with Disco. He was very slow to leave my side and engage the poles at each new position. Once he did he was comfortable doing so again from the same location. I may need to take it much slower with him in the beginning as he learns to move away from me and attempt to offer the behavior. I was very pleased that he was able to focus on the work at hand and was not running around looking for girls. Overall a very successful start.