Weavin' Dog

Since my last post on Ember's weaving progress, we suffered a setback that I think was caused by trying to push for too much too soon. I moved the set of twelve to a new location, and everything fell apart :P. After that, Ember started to stress a bit about the poles, and couldn't even do six, let alone twelve.  

Well, crap. 

I knew she knew how to do it, but she is a dog that likes to be right. So I decided to take the challenge down a notch, and work on building speed and confidence before trying twelve poles again. So far, it's working out beautifully (knock on wood). 

I love her grin :)

I took a day or two off from training weaves at all with Ember. Then, I spent a session working entries on just a set of two. After she could do that reliably (pretty much right away), I moved up to four poles. I could see the lightbulb really start to turn on at this point. She was driving to and through the poles like she hadn't been before. Once she could do four poles reliably (took us two sessions), I tried six again. She was perfect. We worked six poles for a few days, then I added the second set of six back in, and gradually moved them together like before. A few days ago, I moved the two sets together, and we've been doing twelve ever since. She is a much faster, smoother, prettier weaver than she was before. I'm so proud! 

Here are a few pictures taken showing her newfound confidence and enthusiasm for weaving! She begs me constantly to go outside and train :P 

Such a good girl! 

Driving through with focus and happiness!

Starting to single-step! 

Here are a few video clips showing her progress. This is before the re-training:

And after! See how much faster she is, and how much more confidently she drives towards the end?