Sizzle's weave training

I was inspired by Zeki's weave training. I know I kept holding it back training weave with Sizzle as I wasn't sure how to train him as he does not pull on the lead to his food pot. I have tried that at Club but no success and last week, we tried at Bernadette and it wasn't great either. I have been practising sending (or pulling) to his "food pot" separately, I have to say, as long as Saturn is there, he will DASH to it, once Saturn is out of sight, he just walked to the food pot on a slow phase!! Arrrggghhhh ...

Then, on Friday, I thought I will open up 6 v-weave poles wide, then run Saturn through while Sizzle was on the lead watching. Of course he was jealous and barking mad. I thought this will be great as he is so excited, so I took him off the lead and run the weave with him, again, he just walked through it. How frustrating? At the end, I thought I am giving up and have all the dogs run loose and have a play in the garden, then everything change. I sometimes play with the dogs using the equipment, like sending them to jump or do contacts or anything, so I sent Saturn to weave and that follow by Sizzle in speed trying to catch him up. I thought that is great! If I can somehow input the idea into his little head, he might be able to weave. I know this is risky as I may "damage" the training but I gave it a go anyway.

After a few runs with Saturn and Sizzle in the weave poles, I managed to control Saturn to pretend he is going into the weave but actually stand and stay (can you imagine how hard it is for Saturn and me? He was such a good boy and listen to me all the time!). Of course Sizzle got trick but that works, he weave in speed without any hesitation. The poles were open really wide so he basically jump over the metal base but I don't mind to start with, I just want to get the speed out of him to do the weave. Later that day, we had another go, also with Saturn around.

We got to practice again on Saturday evening after we came back from our Flyball competition. He still have lots of energy left! I tried running him with Saturn with me for the first couple of time then put Saturn away, so basically he was the only one out there with me. We did a few runs then I closed up the poles very slightly, I am hoping to stop the jumping and the close poles didn't bother him, so that was good. I am very happy with him. I've got Colin to film us so I can watch what we were doing.

We were at Sheltie Show yesterday so no training for him. I took him out again this morning, his entry is not great but his way of weaving has improved, at least no more jumping on the metal base and I can see he actually built up a nice rhythm weaving. I am very please with I am doing. The next stage, I would like to improve his entries and maybe add a couple more poles.

here is our practice video: