Busy Agility Night

Both Gidget and Gracie had agility classes last night.  The extra weaves and jumping class are being switched to Wed. instead of Mon. so my Wed. nights are going to be quite busy for a while.  First it was a jumping class for Gidget.  Our instructor introduced a simple (the set up was simple anyways) two jump exercise that was challenging and fun!  The jumps were 10-15 ft. away from each other and slightly angled.  The goal was to go back and forth between the jumps using front and rear crosses and post turns.  We could also work on deceleration as a cue to the dog to turn.  We were told to walk out a plan without our dogs first.  Often I'd think "Two jumps? Why would I need to walk that?" but having a plan definitely helped.  Had I just gone up there and went with it, I wouldn't have know what crosses I was doing when and it would have gotten messy, leaving me learning nothing.  Instead I was ready for each of my turns (I did have Gidget wait off to the side for a second so I could refresh my memory or adjust a plan) and got the most of the time I had at the jumps.  It was a fun little exercise and I can't wait to try it with Gracie sometime!

After driving back home, eating a quick dinner, and switching dogs, it was Gracie's turn for class.  The class was a combo last contacts class/first weaves class.  We got some good work done on the teeter.  I'm thinking I'm going to have to keep a target on the teeter for quite a while, I don't want her trying to fly off at all and the target makes a great stop sign for her.  We even did a tunnel to the teeter and that target (it was loaded with cheese) stopped her in her tracks when she started with more speed.

Starting weaves was fun.  Gracie can already weave 6 poles at home but I know she needs some extra help before I can consider her weaves as reliable as Gidget's.  We use the 2x2 method (made popular by Susan Garrett, but apparently she wasn't the first to come up with it!) and started with just two poles.  With this method there is a "reward line" which is where a treat or toy should be thrown to reward the dog.  The line matches the line that the complete set of weave poles would make and extends out past the end of the weaves.  The first two poles are set so that they are perpendicular to the reward line.  The dog is asked to run through those poles along the reward line.  Once the dog gets a hang of this a second set of perpendicular poles is added.  The way the weaves are being taught is through back chaining.  In other words, we're starting at the end of a set of 6 weave poles and working backwords.  So the first set of poles are poles 5 and 6 and the second set are poles 3 and 4.  This means that the second set of poles needs to be added so that the dog goes between that second set before going through the first set.  The dog has already developed drive for that first set so when they go through the second set and see that first set, they already know/want to run between them for their reward (I don't know for sure, but I'd bet the dogs can tell the differences between the sets even if they look the same.  The reward line position certainly plays a role in the dog recognizing that they need to go through both sets of poles).  Once the dogs are readily running through both sets of poles, you can start rotating the poles closer to lining up with the reward line.  That's where we got to last night, two sets of poles slightly rotated.  There's so much info I could talk about with weaves but I think I'll stop there for now.  I know that weaves can be taught fairly quickly with this method and I'm curious how stretching the process out over a few weeks differs from teaching it in one week.  What are the advantages/disadvantages of how long you take to teach this tricky skill?  I do know that this class won't be stretching it out too long because once the dogs are weaving there are plenty of other weave related skills to work on.  I can't wait!  Happy agility!