Conquering the Weave Poles

Just an update on Mesa's weave pole training. We've gone through all the stages of the 2x2 instructional video, and Mesa's done really well. It is refreshing to watch your dog just all of a sudden "get it" when they see the poles in line--it's like their light bulb moment! That's how it was with Mesa.

She loves her weave poles! Any time she sees them and she's near them, she wants to go weave, which is great! She's always attacked them with gusto--never walking or trotting through them, but doing the "small dog hop" between them and tearing her way through the sets. It's refreshing for me to see her do this all the time, unlike Dally's inconsistent weaves (she may walk through them, trot, half-hop, or do beautiful hops through the whole thing--you never know).

In Merinda's class on June 7, she set up a couple of open courses with 6 weaves (in-line) with some hard entrances to use as a tune-up for Mesa's AKC debut later that week (coming up in the next blog post). It took a couple of missed entries, but then she nailed the weaves! It was such a great feeling!

Now we're working on 12 in-line. Due to my inconsistent/time-crunched schedule, it's only been in the back yard (but a different spot) or at Sandra's right now--no trips to the park or other locations. We've gone from a 90% entrance hitting rate to about 70%, and she's starting to pop out at the tenth pole--not good. So we'll go back to almost the beginning to get her entrances back to being consistent, then work on the weaves in two sets of 6 (with a few feet in between) to try to stop the dreaded tenth pole pop-out (which can be a killer at trials, trust me!).