Self directed weaving

So I've been lazy and not taken the 2x2s in from the back yard -- they're still set up out there with a jump.

I let Cohen out for her morning pee and I watched her do her customary run around the back yard barking ritual, and after a loop she ended up sauntering through the weave poles completely on her own. Correct entry, no skipped poles.

It made me laugh. Good dog.

Cohen -- weave and jump practice

Here's a new video of Cohen's weave pole progress. Adrian was awesome and surprised me with a hand made (Adrian made!) jump. So I've set the 2x2s and the jump out in the back yard and have been running drills on them the last few days.

I think you can see some obvious progress in how Cohen is navigating the weaves. Some of those weave entries were pretty tricky and she was navigating them like a champ. She's single-stepping some of the poles, which I'm really happy to see.

The poles are technically arranged straight, but they get knocked around quite a bit as the dog runs through them.

Watching myself in this video is helpful -- I need to direct more with my shoulders, not my hands. I also need to loosen up and get my arm off my hip.

I've been working on Cohen's tugging a lot, so I think I'm about ready to start using a tug as a reward instead of food. I opted not to here because her arousal level gets a bit too high and her barking gets unmanageable. It's a work in progress.

Too smart for her own good?

Yesterday I had the 2x2s set up where I normally have them and was running drills with Cohen, attempting some more complicated entries and switching up my positioning a bit.

I thought, "I wonder if she'll go through them backwards?" We only ever worked on going through the poles in the one direction.

So I set Cohen up right in front of the line of poles, but at the opposite end she's used to starting. I cue "weave!" and she gets up... and runs all the way down the line of poles, finds her "proper" entry and does the line with enthusiasm.

I can't tell if this is a good or a bad thing, but it sure as hell was amusing.

Weave poles, celebrating our successes. Week 2.

Weave pole training has hit an impasse with only 6 poles to work with at home, and the almost-constant rain. I think progress will be slow from here on out. However...

Last night we had our agility class and there were 12 poles set up in a corner. My eyes lit up!

I sent Cohen through them and whoops, she popped out 3/4s of the way through. Sent her through again and she missed the tenth pole. So I slowed down, sent her through and rewarded 2 poles in. Restarted, rewarded 4 poles in. Restarted, rewarded at 6. At that point I think Cohen kind of "got" it and was able to finish the rest (slowly) while watching me out of the corner of her eye. After that she was doing the full row of twelve as long as there were few distractions. She would do the full row with me a fair distance away as long as she could hear me encouraging her.

Ideally in true 2x2 fashion there would have been a space between the two sets of 6 poles and she would have been introduced more slowly to keep her confidence higher. The weaves weren't the focus of the evening so there wasn't really an opportunity to introduce them properly.

So, Cohen can do 12 poles in ideal circumstances. Confidence is still a bit low (she's great on 6 though) but we're definitely making progress.

Last night was a good class.

On other class-related news, the last agility class I took there were only 4 dogs. Now there's 8 and class is noticeably slower and more chaotic. It's frustrating. Especially when it takes other dogs 2-3 minutes to get through a mock-course that takes Cohen 30 seconds. Ah well!

Weave poles, celebrating our success. Day 6.

Here we are, 6 days into weave pole training.

It's pouring rain outside, the dog is stir crazy and I have a video camera. Time for a video of our weave pole progress this week.

Now, before you watch it I know it's RIFE with problems. I'm posting it because I feel it shows good progress on my two goals -- 1) training the behaviour with Cohen and 2) building some confidence and value.

So I'll link the video, and afterwards I'll try to go over everything I think could be improved.

Yes, I'm using food. I've opted to use food during the initial stages because it was key in getting Cohen to focus. She values food more than play at the moment so I opted to use it to build that initial value.

No, this isn't where we normally practice. I have a slightly wider but darker area in the house where I've set up shop that allows me to practice more challenging angles of approach. In my opinion Cohen is doing quite well finding her entries in the environment. I moved the poles here because there was better light for filming. We've not worked outside since it's March, and when it's not snowing it's raining, so working outside hasn't been an appealing option.

Yes, she's going through pretty slowly. This is partially because I'm using a food reward, partially because I'm working indoors on slippery floors and partially because Cohen is still building her confidence in the obstacle. Previously she'd been rather stressed when faced with the weave poles and never properly understood them.

Yes, I see her looking over her shoulder at me looking for her reward. My timing sucks. Hopefully it'll get better outside with more space to move.

Yes, I see the poles skidding around the floor. I swear she's capable of doing them straight, even if they don't always remain so.

So, with all that said, I'm quite pleased with myself. And my dog.

The next week will probably consist of further indoor work (ugh rain) while I try to improve her speed. I might try to transition her to a tug reward if possible. We'll see. My agility facility tends to only work with the 6 weaves since it's mostly focused on foundation work, so right now I'll work on having the best 6 weaves I can shape.

Weave poles, trials and tribulations. Day 5.

Progress is good. I added the 5th and 6th poles this morning. The first two set are positioned straight-on, and the last set are at 1 and 7 o'clock.

At first the last two were missed a few times so I went back and opened them up a few degrees (should I not have? I don't know.) and then tried again. Cohen succeeded without incident. The barking came back, but I think this was enthusiasm and not stress. It was also quieted down much more easily, as I don't want to encourage it any more.

Later today I will try to move at least 4 poles outside to test Cohen's understanding of the exercise. There's fresh snow on the ground covering ice which is in turn covering mud, so it's not the most ideal place to practice, but I need to switch up locales to help her generalization.

Class is tonight. I wonder if we're going to be working on weaves. I would be absolutely flabberghasted if Cohen manages to do a line of 6 tonight (gotta keep expectations appropriate -- new location, stressful environment, etc) but I hope...

[Edited to add: Cohen did indeed do the 6 weaves in class!!! HURRAY!!! It took her one try to get them the first time, then did them successfully 3-4 times in a row. We took a break and reapproached them and had a few failed attempts before we had to move on. They're still a tiny bit complicated for her, but I'm totally psyched. By next week she'll have the 6 poles down no problem. Woot!]

Weave poles, trials and tribulations. Day 4.

I spent most of the weekend being lazy and feeling sorry for myself for having a cold. But I'll maintain that I had to let weave pole training ferment in Cohen's head before I could proceed.

We're up to 4 straight poles with very few mistakes from some pretty tough entries. Mostly I think I'm just patterning her right now however. I still don't think she really "gets" it. I'm hoping that that will come with time.

Cohen gets obviously frustrated after 2-3 failures in a row. I try my best to keep her motivated while not making the challenge any easier for her. I'm getting a bit better at this. I can see through Cohen's reactions to frustration that I've made a habit out of answering the tougher questions for her. From this point onwards I'm going to be trying to maintain criteria a bit better in all her shaping sessions.

Weave poles, trials and tribulations. Day 3.

Did some exercises this morning in the living room with a high rate of success. Cohen has difficulty (less than 50% success rate) in entries around the 9 o'clock mark. Will focus more seriously on that from here on out.

Moved the poles outside again to utilize more space, but neither Cohen nor I were really "feeling" it. I was using food rewards (lazily) with the ground being pretty sopping wet so I was passing them from my hand. Not a good tactic. Incidence of barking increased, but was still manageable. It's difficult to really find a line when stuck with using food, and it's frustrating to not have enough indoor area to utilize distance in any way.

Entries from the 9 o'clock mark resulted in her repeatedly skipping the 2nd pole. I think Garrett would say this is due to her not gathering her body before entry. Should spend more time working various angles of approach.

Cohen is slow through the poles and can easily get stuck and frustrated. I realize this is an effect from me not having clearer criteria when shaping behaviours with her in the past.

Weave poles, trials and tribulations. Days 1 & 2.

First, some background. I'm taking a 3rd-level agility class and Cohen and I are doing pretty well all things considered. (Things to consider: my unathleticism, my disinclination to flail, Cohen's disinterest in tugging in public...) However, we're falling behind in our weaving. Cohen and I never really "got" the weaves when we did them in our last level class, and this class is not set up to accommodate us slow folks still stuck on teaching via the 2x2s.

So, in an attempt to make up the gap I picked up some 2x2s (6 poles) and borrowed Susan Garrett's 2x2 training DVD from a friend. It's recommended that I keep a training journal, so that's what I'm doing.

It's recommended that you not do all your weave training days in a row, so, if there are gaps they're probably equal parts break-taking and laziness.

DAY 1, Wednesday 2 Mar 2011

Building and testing value, poles set to 2 and 8 o'clock.

Since Cohen had already done some 2x2 weave pole training previously there wasn't much time required to build the value. I started out using food as a reward with a marker word readily. Testing the value was successful as well, with a good rate of success.

I angled the poles to the standard 2 and 8 o'clock position and kept my rewards on the reward line. Problem: Cohen will sometimes look back to me after having gone through the gate, not at the reward line. Solution: I need to use the rewards more accurately.

DAY 2, Thursday 3 Mar 2011

Working the arc, adding two more poles.

I thought I might power through multiple steps today since Cohen had done these steps previously. As a result I feel as if today has been rife with frustration.

I attempted to move locations into my back room to have more area to work the angle of approach, but I still did not have sufficient room. Foolishly I also added a second set of poles, giving me even less room. Rate of success in difficult approaches was 50% at best.

For some reason I thought maybe having more room to work would help, so I moved the poles yet again (two sets), this time outside. Because the ground was wet, and because the DVD warned against using food in the grass I opted to attempt to use Cohen's soccer ball as reward.

She was incredibly aroused by the ball, so much so that she lost sight of what it was I was asking of her. I was pleased to find a toy to which she responds so well, but there was no progress to speak of.

The biggest problem is her arousal barking. I feel like this barking was initially developed as a response to the excitement and stress of learning the poles initially (in Agility Level Two) and now this emotional reaction is tied to the training. Sometimes I opt to ignore it, but sometimes it grates on my last nerve. I did not cope well with it today.

I think I'm going to reduce Cohen's arousal level despite Garrett speaking of how important it is. As soon as Cohen begins barking her ability to be receptive to commands and her capability to learn is diminished.

For our last session today I plan to move back indoors, remove the second set of poles, and use food as a reward while I work angles of approach. I feel like this step might be worth sticking with for additional time depending on how Cohen reacts. It is always my tendency to want to push past training the basics to more flashy behaviours, so I'll have to remember to slow down.

The snow, cold weather and wet ground also make it difficult. Weave training really seems best learned outside, but I make due with what I have.

Edit: Later in the day we revisited the process. I was indoors and was working with food. Cohen had a high rate of success with all entries (though being indoors and crowded we didn't have as much room to work as I would like). So I re-added the second set of poles and had greater success. There wasn't one instance of barking. I consider it a success. Tomorrow (or later tonight) will be more of the same. Obviously I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, but I really need to pace myself.