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I had a couple more questions about Callie and stress in the weaves. We trialed last weekend and they were slow. Like painfully molasses slow. It was an outside trial, but even for the heat I really didn’t like the results I was getting.
I find her best running is when I run a bit frantic and she starts off ahead and I have to rush to catch up (blood in the water as you referred to it at a seminar and I absolutely love that idea). We also can’t be too frantic because then mom has lost her shit and she will put in extra strides everywhere while mom gathers herself 🤣. I also find if I really push her in the weaves, in the past- that’s worked. It seems to not be the case now. By pushing I mean lots of body pressure, clapping and saying weaves over. Running ahead midway so she has to catch up.
Other than MM training, do you have suggestions on how to replicate stress in the weaves at home? I do plan to try FEO with a toy but it’s approaching summer here and the amount of trials we do starts to decrease significantly.The other question- and I suspect the answer is no would be should I work her striding. She is a two foot hopper- she’s pretty small for a 20” dog. 19 inches at the withers and 28-29 lbs. if I have her run the slightly open channels, she single strides beautifully. Is it worth it to try to retain her striding- she’s 6 and got a huge reinforcement history already.
We tried some box cars. We did two sessions over the day. I didn’t love our first session. He was really wanting to do the whole 12- the two sets were very distracting to him so we had more fails than I’d like. When he successfully did all 12, his toy drive wasn’t really there. He was kind of shut down so I didn’t push any longer.
Moving on to Carrie’s house. I thought he did better- a few mistakes- I was weaving him into the sunset so I really couldn’t see what he was doing. We had one larger failure where he skipped several poles, we took a break and did some RDWs and came back for a final rep. His footwork is very variable here as well.
We had to relocate to a dry yard so Carrie let me come visit.
We used straight poles. He is working really hard on his footwork but is all over the place. He’s really trying though. At first review, I felt like he was watching me for info coming out of the poles, but on second review I felt like it was him watching the toy.
I forgot until midsession that you told me to trot and still couldn’t control my speed once I remembered.
I’m eager to hear your thoughts on this one. He only had one failure where he popped out early. I thought he recovered well. He found a FT (favorite toy) in Carrie’s yard and had renewed enthusiasm.
Here’s a short Sunday session. I probably started to ask for too much at the end. His footwork was really a mixed bag here. I’m not sure if he was getting fatigued and that’s why it’s so variable? I love to worry about things so I feel like I should worry about this 😅.
I did close to about a half inch
I wish I knew how to get this device to put emojis here LOL!
I feel strongly that my academic agility performance would be enhanced by an add GIF feature.
You can bring him to the start spot, then throw the toy to the end line
Ha! While the biggest improvement in this course has not actually been his weaves and in fact my throwing skills, you are overestimating my skills.
The exit poles looked a little wider so he lost the striding
I thought so too. I attempted to close them some for the second small session- where I moved the poles away from the pot hole of doom. I guess I’m still too cautious. I have to say, when I watched you gently kick your poles closed, I was jealous of your channels.
maybe put the entire set to a half inch of width and do a session just like this one. We should see the striding there too – at which point, the session after that can be straight 🙂 Yay!
OMG IT’S HAPPENING
With the striding, should I consistently look for swimming before making any closing advances? Is it okay if he has an occasional hop as he’s trying to figure things out- I think some of that is related to the last pole opening and running for the toy.
Thursday training session. I must confess I was driving the struggle bus for this one. I tweaked something in my tush and could really just hobble for this one…and then I rolled my ankle stepping in a hole- but agility must go on!
I tried rewarding on the line versus a thrown toy. I think we got better forward drive still for the thrown toy. I almost hit him with the ball and he did some incredible ninja moves or avoid it. He’s still working out his striding but overall happy with his efforts here.So…. shhhhhhh be chill and throw when he exits
Not sure chill is in my skill set ha!
I’ve been really trying to adjust my eye to his weave style because it looks way different on a longer body plus tail than I am used to.
I’ll try dialing back the challenges. Thank you!
Another quick session because surprise! More rain is coming. We had some nice wind for the video- if you watch it in scrubbing speed it looks super cool.
I did the tiniest of closes here. I’m wondering if I did too much or he’s just sorting out the strides. This is a pretty accurate representation of his weaves at closed to me- of course I haven’t videoed and reviewed in awhile. I feel as though he hasn’t quite figured out the striding at poles 2-3ish and usually gets a cross paw- maybe around 45 and 51 seconds you can see. Although 51 looks like a rear issue. In this setting, because it’s open he is staying in, but I feel like at speed with closed poles that’s why he may abort. When I’ve not had video I feel like he gets his long noodle body caught up in the poles.
His head also still looks a little high? Should I put a toy in the line to visualize to keep it low?
As far as Callie goes with ring stress with Callie, I find her speed and performance can be variable. Some days we step to the line and she’s like “let’s blow the roof off this bitch” or it could be “ actually I just got a manicure and I don’t want to ruin it.” Even in her really excited days, weaves aren’t as fast as they are at home or in practice. I do like the weaving away from the MM because she’s so good obsessed.
Also what I’m hearing is that I need to travel and do UKI. AKC would whistle me off for throwing a toy.💥We have striding! 💥
On a random note- lesson of the day is to not take your AC for granted because my house was 77° for most of the day. After the hero AC man came to visit, we for a brief training session before a downpour started! What an exciting day here in Louisiana.
I closed up another finger width prior to the session and I think the feet look pretty great. The wrap around the cone to the poles looked so beautiful to me! Since we have actual striding, should I add the word back?
I have a weave related question for Callie. I find that in competition, her weaves are SIGNIFICANTLY slower than in practice. My suspicion is that it’s due to delay of reinforcement in addition to ring stress. Would you have any guidance on how I could improve her speed in trials by practice at home? This one has been a head scratcher for me because I can’t replicate the scenario. Even in FEO or a match with a toy- blazing fast weaves. She’s a two foot strider and usually hits her entries 99% of the time. If she’s stressed or sore, she may pop and I usually have her seen by the chiro and it resolves.
More channels!
So the first rep I did, I reviewed and felt like they were too open. The second set, at the moment, I felt like he was getting striding- when reviewing it just looked like the last two poles, so I did slightly close more for the last few reps. We had zero errors and I was really happy with what I was getting but still feel like he’s in the not quite a run/stride setting.
Our session got crashed by some very talkative ducks.
ALSO PLEASE NOTE and exciting tug session and a collar grab with NO BITING of the mama 💃
More channels!
At rep 2, not sure what I was thinking here because my set up to the wing wrap was going to send him to the poles first 🤦♀️
My favorite part of the video is where I have a revelation at 1:06 about toy throwing and then proceed to throw it way too early the next rep 🤣
These channels move a lot as the base isn’t heavy. It looks like in the first rep he may have hit the third pole but I don’t think I saw it happen again. I don’t think he’s one of those dogs who will just plow through the poles but just wanted your thoughts on that.
It felt above 90 again yesterday. It was 88° when I got home. We just closed the poles and didn’t work them first like in your video. It didn’t seem to cause any question and had it been cooler I would have done that wanting to get more good easy reps in, but we didn’t work for too long.
A couple of thoughts for the next step:
He was fast and accurate here in the 2x2s, but he uses his body MUCH better when you work him on the channels. He is hitting the 2x2s a bit and his head is higher. So I vote for channels for the next sessions because of what we get in terms of behavior plus it will be 6 poles.I’m glad you brought this up. I had questions about this too but forgot. I noticed he hit one pole really hard yesterday- around 54 seconds. He actually pulled out a stone from his paco collar there- I’m still sobbing. His angle with his back looked weird too. Not sure if that was just a fluke from hitting the pole or not, but I didn’t like it. It was ugly.
Other than switching to the channels is there anything further that needs to be worked on this? I feel like his striding here in the 2×2 is much better that it was the first time I trained them because the feet work is more intentional, but I don’t want the shoulder slamming to be a habit. I have no preference on one footed or two footed weaves- whatever works is fine for me.Because I’m super literal and need definitive plans, I should plan to close the channels some and work all angles. Should I close any more than one finger width per session? I feel like other than that one bad session we had recently, I have kept him super successful. Also, at this point since I’ve focused on entries so much, I should shift focus to striding?
I’m feeling the pressure here because I feel far behind 😳
I straightened the second set of 2×2. I was very happy with our progress. I really really really tried to avoid the lava zone but may have had a small relapse- I’ll turn in my one day chip 😔.
I think I need to focus on keeping moving- which is hard because I’m watching him to make sure he’s right.
Also enjoy me finding that my tripod fell over. Miraculously, it fell after our first session as I was headed to a break.
but then he had a short break when you moved the giant tree limb LOL!
I totally missed that in video review! Sorry! His kiddie pool is in that corner so I sent him in to swim. I try to use that one over the nasty bird bath that he prefers.
I’m always so worried about speed since I really have to work to power Callie’s engine, so your feedback here is helpful. I tend to get fixated on it. Thank you!
