I think the cool thing about training/trick training/agility training is that you really see how your dog thinks, and how you communicate. I have been doing so much training with Cricket right from the start that it is suprising me to find out that I am learning even more about her learning style with the weave challenge.
It is funny because what really shows with the weaves is that we go out to work a new thing and it is always seems like a totally NEW thing-it is ugly and I think wow, this is going to take forever. Once Cricket gets anything "wrong" it really does not fix in that session-no matter how it is trained.
What I learned about me is that I want to keep repeating what we are doing until it is right. Hummm, sound a little ineffective?
The weird thing is that if I leave it alone and go do something else Cricket can be successful at, or wait until the next day...as soon as we go out there it is all MAGICALLY fixed and perfect.
I found out with the Aframe training that I do not have to control everything, really precise marking a good behavior and controlling consequences can be powerful and have its place but lately I am also learning that sometimes the dog can figure it all out-there is so much in the aframe training that I can not really go out there and show her to jump like this right here, and it happens too fast to say click the exact right thing. Our training is really feeling more and more like a partnership and I am really seeing that my little girl can really figure things out-she really amazes me the amount of thinking she must be doing.
I am seeing some of that now with the weave training. I think Cricket has a solid foundation with the weaves and really basically understands them, and now she just needs a little help to really figure out the harder entries. With just a little help she really does a good job getting it all worked out. I tend to want to break it way down, help her a lot and sometimes that is good, but sometimes just backing away and letting her have some time for it all to gel is the best way to go. WHO KNEW?
WEAVERS UPDATE
CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO WITH SELINA AND TWISTER-they did an AWESOME job! Check out her blog while you are there! I am so glad Selina and Twister are working along with us. ;-).
http://mani-pap.blogspot.com/2011/06/week-1-weave-pole-challenge.html
HERE IS CRICKETS JUMP POSITION #3 VIDEO:
we had to train this one, I got out the 2x2, so I am thinking I will really need to work with the next jump position-I think we have found our holes ;-).