We didn’t have time to do any weave training this weekend, but we started again today and added the second set of poles. Agera was doing well, but did unfortunatly hurt herself and will not be able to do any training for a few days. This is todays training:
We’ve done the second day of training Agera to weave using Susan Garrett’s 2×2 method (though we might unknowingly do things that Susan wouldn’t). We’ve done three sessions of about three minutes each. I’m kind of frustrated about the lack of progress. Agera is making fewer misstakes, but has the same problem as we had yesterday. We’ve agreed to proceed anyway, since adding two more poles actually might make it easier for her. We’re going to Gothenburg tomorrow, so we’ll have to bring our 2x2s on the road.
Nina and Agera are living with us for five weeks and Nina is helping us out with all kinds of things. Agera is a really cool kelpie, about 16 months old. This is Agera’s first day of weaving. She caught on very quickly and did not make a misstake for the first two (1+3 minutes) sessions. I did have a feeling that when she made a misstake, she would fail and fail and not change. And that was exactly what happened in the second session when we finally gave her a challenge that she didn’t master. Nina did make it easier for her, back to a point where she had success before. But this was something Agera just had to work through and learn to change when there is no reward. She tried two different tactics before finally getting it right. And then she had no problems for the rest of the day. She failed once in the afternoon, but changed immediatly. I can’t wait to do day two!
I’ve had an intense weekend with two days of teaching at home and then two days in Bergen (on the west coast of Norway). I flew home yesterday and have been pretty tired since I got home. The dogs are not tired at all (even though Nina has done a great job keeping them busy while I was away) and we have done some training today already. Pi is finally her self again after being in heat for the first time, wich really made her tired and easily distracted. I gave her most of last week off and now she’s back to normal (and our male dogs have started to calm down around her).
We also started to teach Nina’s kelpie Agera to weave today. The plan is to do 3 x 3 minutes of weaving every day for the two next weeks. Agera did 1 + 3 minutes this morning and caught on very fast. We couldn’t get her to fail once, but we didn’t do very hard things since it was her first time. When we planned the next session we made sure that we gave her more challenging entries and sure enough, she failed. And as I had thought, when she failed once, she had a hard time changing and being right again. She failed many times but did not stop trying and finally got it right. We finished with some easy ones and because of all the thinking and failing involved, the session was 13 minutes long. I hope that we can see her get that same, challenging entry tonight. We’re videotaping everything and I might show a clip tonight.
It was very obvious that it’s a great advantage to have a dog that is familiar with the one jump exercises when you start with the weaving (2x2s). Agera was sure of what to do right from the start!
