It's Been A While... The Letter "W"!

One of a few layouts for the letter "W" from Alphabet Drills by Nancy Gyes.

So, it's been a while since my last post. Life, as usual, has gotten in the way a bit :). I have felt the pressure of the impending trial, my impending internship, and a current petsitting that requires me to stay at some one else's home (away from our training equipment) for a week and it has caused a huge distraction for me. I was, however, finally able to choose a drill from our Alphabet Drills book and chose the letter "W":

One additional set up for the "W" drill

I chose this drill to work on adding distance and independence to our weave pole performances. There are many different layouts and a few different set ups for this letter which makes it last a long time. I did find it interesting and confusing that, after phenomenal memory and performance of weave poles in class and at run thrus after our summer hiatus, Monster seemed to have no idea how to collect and forgot his footwork when we started this drill. I am still new to dog training and I have been told this stuff happens with young dogs but I have never understood the timing for issues like this. Regardless, I threw our guidewires back on and even that took a few tries before success. We were able to make it work, and I chose to leave the wires on so that I can reprogram his body to weaving "so to speak" this week. I also decided to leave the wires on when I started working with Shawty because distance in weave pole performance is one of our weaker challenges. We started strong and then, for some reason, he started trying to wrap around the first pole when he was on my left (which is a wrong entry AND guide wires were there) so he had to jump over the first guide each time. Another confusing training "qwerk" that I have yet to figure out. Overall, the rest of the jump handling challenges went well. And, I'm glad I saw this issue in training and not at a trial. Hopefully, we can get it resolved before then. 

Another suggested layout for the "W" drills

As I write this, I also feel like I may have brought less energy and enthusiasm for training that day. I hadn't really intended to train that morning but knew I might not get another chance for a few days. I was tired and stuffy from allergies and as much as I tried to throw out some energy, I don't think I did well. We will attempt the same drill today or tomorrow before I alter the layout. What I love about this letter drill is that Nancy provided a few different ways to set up the "W" drill. I have shared some pictures of those layouts above. One last perk that I wanted to mention earlier in the blog about this book is that in the back is a chart of handling sequences that may challenge handlers and/or dogs and which letters work those challenges the most. It has really helped me quickly choose which letters I want to set up depending on what skills I want to work! :)