Weaves and Contacts

I've had a couple of rather busy weeks and can now just barely remember Gidget's weaves class on Mon.  I do remember the set up: one jump, 12 weave poles, and one tunnel.  We focused on two things (that I remember anyways): flips and front crosses.  To flip your dog to an obstacle, you have to teach your dog to turn away from you* and towards the next obstacle.  In this case it was weaves to the jump or weaves to the tunnel.  I'd be on one side of the poles with the next obstacle on the other side of the poles.  At the end of the poles I tell Gidget to "turn" with a little flick of my finger in the proper direction and she should turn away from me and go take that obstacle.  I usually name the obstacle after saying turn too, "turn jump" or "turn tunnel."  Our first attempt at this didn't work so well.  Gidget seemed confused and turned the wrong way.  The second time was beautiful though, a perfect turn and dash off to the tunnel.

The front cross work was mostly a reminder to find landmarks to help place your turn properly.  It's pretty easy to trip over obstacles or pull your dog in the wrong way if your front cross isn't set up properly.  So find objects that you can see while still being able to see your dog and use those objects to help you know where to turn and set up properly.  It was a decent class.  Any chance to get Gidget through 12 poles is always appreciated.

Gracie's contacts class last night was fun.  We had a little issue early on with everyone trying to get in line for their turn it was difficult to get Gracie out of her kennel without her reacting.  Our instructor informed my classmates of the issue I and another women with a reactive dog were having.  It got a little easier after everyone realized they needed to be aware of where they and their dogs were so other dogs could get past. 

There was an A-frame and a dog walk set up to start with.  They were a lot shorter than normal and the A-frame was up on wheels and each side of it had different textures.  All the dogs had a great time running over these!  We were even able to raise the A-frame a little after some practice.  Gracie's contact behavior isn't the greatest (we're working on 2 on 2 off), but I think we made some improvement at class.  I started saying "bottom" a little earlier and she'd slow down a bit and glance back at me like she knew she was expected to do something.  She got pretty close at doing the behavior on her own but wasn't quite there.  Hopefully we'll get it soon.  The instructor hasn't offered much instruction on how to teach that, but I think her focus is more on building the dogs' confidence on the equipment for now.  They threw in the tipping board that was introduced last week toward the end.  Gracie crossed it just fine, no more concerns about the bang!

Gidget's class tonight!  Happy St. Patty's Day and Happy agility!

*I've been reading Susan Garrett's blog and she talks a lot about not teaching your dog to flick away from you, that it's a bad thing.  This confuses me quite a bit because I learned back in Gidget's foundation class to teach her to turn away from me and it's very handy in the right situation.  Will have to work on figuring that one out.