Weaving Dare

Dare has been a busy girl. In addition to her jump training, she just started her weaves too.

I spent a lot of time toying with the idea of training Dare using Susan Garrett's 2x2 method. I love the thought of the dogs figuring it out on their own, and having such a good idea of how to find the entrance. However, even after watching the Susan Garrett DVD, I don't think I have the confidence to try to train it. It's one of those methods where...if I thought I could get some help when I got stuck at a certain point, maybe I'd feel more inclined to try it. Since I don't really have anyone close to help me through the process though, I think I'll stick with something that I understand more easily. I figure I can spot if my dog is struggling because I've moved the channels in too quickly, or started removing guides too soon, etc. LOL

So, we started about a week and a half ago or so. here is video of her first day, channels fully open.



And a few days later, you can see the channels are closing just a little.



and yesterday...the channel is a little closer again, and I'm trying to vary my position in relation to her weaving. I want to be able to send her ahead of me, run along side and also be able to be in front.



I'm also really making an effort to use both food and toys as a reward. I tend to be more comfortable with the treat reward. I think that part of it is because I'm not that good at tossing a toy in the right spot. LOL (you'll see an example of my poor tossing skills in the first video). I've actually been out there practicing my tossing of the toy when we're not training to try to improve. Poor Dare, she's just got a dork of a mom to contend with sometimes. She's doing really well though. I'm really pleased with her progress.

Dare's Tricky

I keep meaning to work more on tricks and I don't always get around to it, but I thought I'd share Dare's latest trick. I think it's pretty cute. The best part was how simple it was to teach.



So, all I did was show Dare how to pull the kleenex out of the box once, and then I set it on the ground and told her to "get it". She figured it out with no problem. :-) The only thing that I've noticed is that if she's too excited she tries to grab the whole box instead of just one tissue. That, or she'll grab the tissue and then want to tug with it instead of just giving it to me. LOL