Ring Rental

This past weekend was gorgeous, so I decided to rent a ring at teamworks to run Clover. Lately, OK, she always has slacked off with weave poles in the sand ring. So I thought I would try to work on weave proofing. At first I set up a set of 18 weave poles to help prevent Clover from "counting" weave poles. I then set up a set of six weaves, a tunnel and set of 12 weave poles.

Clover didn't do as well as I was hoping. She went through the weaves well one or two times then she started slacking off. When she gets tired, she starts skipping the 3 rd pole or one in the middle. I may be inconsistent when working on weave poles with her. If I make her redo the weaves, it demotivates her and she performs even worse. I may have made a mistake in the past by just pushing her through the weaves even if she missed one. I may have inadvertently reinforced her to miss poles.

When working on 6 weave poles at home, she is usually flawless. In the sand ring, she usually does fine 1 or 2 times in practice then slacks off. During trials, she doesn't do weaves on the first attemp, she herds the first pole and looks at me. I then have to restart her, which confuses and demotivates her. If any one has any Ideas on how I can more efficiently train weaves, speak up... I am all ears.

Last week we purchased a new digital camera, a Canon Digital RebalXT. So you may start to find more pictures on Flickr.