Training Contacts and Weaves

Jemma

We started with tugging on the contacts and making sure they were nice and speedy. Jem struggled a bit to start with to stay on the dog-walk whilst playing tuggy but quickly remembered the training we had been doing at home on the board! all her contacts were really speedy and I got told I was driving her more than I ever have before (something I have kept being told to do but havn't been doing because of the poles dropping) and she didn't knock many poles. We also worked on her weaves with me reving her up lots before and playing tug after and she was really good when I didn't run off stupidly far ahead of her!! She struggled quite a bit on a 90degree angle entrance because of where she landed after the jump but we eventually managed it :D


Elliot

He took longer to remember that he had to stay on the dog-walk when tugging and kept doing his "go back up the contact turn around, go to the bottom, come off, go back up, turn around, go back down" dance, but once I made the decision that if he came off he had to do the whole thing again and wouldn't get rewarded if he put himself back on he stopped doing it, tinker!! His contacts were also much speedier than before bless him :) He struggled with his weaves again, especially when we added jumps before them, he was also getting quite tired so next time we are going to start with the weaves :)

This "new" training methods definately seem to be making their contacts faster, it is just a shame that I have to do soooo much running!!!