Woven Set
Is there anyone who can help me with some dog agility questions?
I'm getting ready to enter my dog in UKC AG1. I would like to start training her for weaving in AG2 as well as if we decide to do AKC. I've been practicing at the agility club with a set of 6 poles which I bend down and have her go thru the middle. For some reason, the instructors don't use those guide wires but don't those work well in weave pole training? What has been your best experience in training a dog to be proficient in the weave poles? This is my first experience with agility. I have a 11 month old Sheltie who according to the instructors is a "natural". All mistakes made are because of me! She goes thru the poles slowly right now. She goes thru the course fast but not nearly as fast as she can. Is this because I need to work on "distance"? Is she going slower because of me most likely? I mean, I can run preety fast but no where near as fast as she can! So my 2 questions are about the poles and speed. Will she get faster as I improve?
G'day, I'm a fellow sheltie and agility addict from Australia who can't help but give my two cents worth! I have a 22 month old sheltie who weaves quickly and confidently and the method I used to train the weavers is called free shaping. I won't go into the technique here but there is a lot of info out there, particularly books and videos on it. It is a technique that really needs to be used to train everything not just one thing as it requires teaching the dog to think for themselves. It takes longer at first, but things come much quicker once the dog gets the hang of it. Once you get them thinking, training pretty much anything just comes so easily. Shelties really love free shaping and I find my boy will follow me around the house offering all sorts of behaviours in the hopes that I will reward him - hint, if you don't like highly interactive dogs, it is not the training technique for you! Otherwise, I strongly recommend shaping if you haven't tried it.
But specifically answering your question - You will probably find she is going slowly because she isn't confident about what you want from her which means that you really have to go back a step and retrain. Just because a dog 'does' the weavers does not mean that they really understand them. I would recommend going back to two weavers, maybe at a slight angle if you prefer, although I didn't find it necessary, and reward her for first finding the gap (correct entry) and then driving into it. Be patient with her and start dropping back on the rewards if it is too slow and upping the rewards if she moves quicker. Don't correct her for going slow, just give her a chance to do it quicker. If you do find she moves quicker than usual, make sure you reward it and don't be disheartened if the next time she goes slow again, just don't reward. You will find she starts to move a lot quicker. Don't move to three weavers until she is confidently finding the right entry and moving quickly from all angles. Don't push her too far, if you stay on two for a month, that's better than pushing up to 6 too fast and confusing her. Then go to 3, then 4 and so on. I rarely train with twelve weavers, mostly with sets of 3 or 4 or 6 or 8 which I set up in various patterns over the yard with a couple of jumps between. Essentially, we will do patterns where he is entering the weavers at lots of angles and just doing short bursts of a few weavers (3-8) and getting rewarded. Because they are so hard they really have to be heavily rewarded - make it worth her while to want to work with you. This page gives a more detailed explanation of what I'm talking about http://users.tpg.com.au/users/rloftus/weaving.htm
I would also recommend a book called "shaping success" by Susan Garett, specifically written for training agility and focuses on weaver and contact training.
Personally I don't like guide wires - freaked out my other dog (a whippetxfoxiexkelpie) and I think just gives the dog too many things to concentrate on and to feel against their body.
As for speed, she may get faster as she gets more confident - my boy over his first 3 competitions improved by more than 10 seconds over the same distance just as he got his confidence. However, if they are inclined to stay with you then they will only ever move as fast as you can move to keep up - so yes, distance will help, but again it is about rewarding drive not just rewarding the dog performing the obstacle.
I have to echo someone else who responded about pushing a young dog too quickly - here in Australia we don't encourage people to even start training obstacles until the dogs are 12 months old and they can't compete until 18 months old - this is to allow them to be fully grown or you could end up with all sorts of problems/injuries down the track. I am concerned that an 11 month old dog is already doing courses when really you should still be on foundation work - working with contact planks flat on the ground, shadow handling, that sort of thing. Don't push her too hard or you could literally break her. Good luck with it all!
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