Monday, August 25, 2008

More weaving fun

I think I've been pushing Walter for too much too soon weave-wise recently, in anticipation of an upcoming trial. I need to slow down and ensure success to get Walter to be a Happy Weaving Boy. So today we did 8 and only 8 poles. All of his four attempts were clean, woohoo! From watching the video, he's single-striding all the way through every time which is good since his footwork has been inconsistent lately. (Lately as in the last six months or more!) I wonder if throwing the reward lower would help encourage him to lower his head a bit? I kept a wide lateral distance on every pass tonight, wonder if that partially explains the lack of popping.



The plan as it stands at the moment is to give him a day or two off, then next time do only 8 weaves just like tonight, perhaps making it as part of a short sequence. If that goes well, then next time up it to 10 poles, and so on until voilà, he will be a Happy Weaving Boy with all 12 poles! Thinking positive here :-)

Of course we worked on a few other things too:
- flip away from dogwalk to tunnel on far side - good
- dogwalk/tunnel discriminations - still need to clarify my body language when he's to take the closer obstacle

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