It's been kind of cold the past few days, but yesterday I set-up a new set of home made weave poles and today Dazzle went through them for the first time (video below). I used flexible fiberglass driveway marker poles that pound into the ground. I slipped pieces of PVC pipe over them to make it look more like regular weave poles. I then taped bird netting to the poles and looped it around other driveway stakes to create a "channel" or "guide" so that he can't do the poles incorrectly. Well, he can, but he goes through the netting and it's not as fun as getting it right. He only blasted through the netting twice before he started doing them correctly. Using nearly invisible bird net means that when the guides are removed later, it won't look very different from what he's used to seeing. The zig-zag lines on the diagram below show how the netting is arranged:
(The center line of darker dots represents the 12 weave poles)
This is the method I used to teach Coyote to do weave poles and he is rock solid on them. He even did a 60 pole challenge at camp and aced it, even though he had not even SEEN weave poles for a few years and have never done 60 poles in a row! :-) I'm hoping Dazzle does just as well with this.
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It works on the principle of muscle memory training. He can't really do them wrong very easily, so he gets lots of correct practice and he can go as fast as he wants. While practicing, he is learning how to manuver his body, feet and nose to most efficiently get through them as fast as possible. Thanks to the video, I can see he's still struggling with getting his feet to go in the right direction and pattern. At one point, he is actully crossing his front feet to clear the poles! But he got himself back on track so that the pole is at his shoulder and the foot closest to the pole is brushing past and around each pole.
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He is going to be wicked fast! I'm making sure I name each agility obstacle so I can mostly just call out the course to him. No way I'll be able to keep up with him! But courses are still a ways off. I'm looking forward to a book that is going to come out early next year by the people that are teaching agility at the ClickerExpo. I'm only dinking around with the agility training till I read that book. Mostly I'm working on the foundation training like targeting and self-control. Right now, his stays are really solid. I'm hoping it stays that way! :-)
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Here's the video of his weave pole training thus far including some video taken when he was 13 weeks old and video of todays session, plus slo-motion of one of his passes through the poles toward the camera.
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VIDEO: Weave pole training
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOmLic_3CnE
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Once he can hit the entrance from any angle and he is smooth and consistent with his feet, I'll start removing the guides from the center and work toward removing the ones at the ends.
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I also did a training session with Coyote, playing around with teaching him to shake his head "no" just by using the clicker (freeshaping). He did great with it! I got it on video and tried to upload it, but YouTube didn't like the music choice even though it's a song from the 60's (It's been over 40 years since it was released!) So open two browser windows, one for the video below and one to listen to this music:
MUSIC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtJoGdujYo
VIDEO: Coyote learns to say no
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnUn5io_-7U
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