A dog who loves her job

corbinam said:
Last night during our class Lexi kept making a lot of weave mistakes (it's been going on for awhile). Anyways, I have approached this many different ways and keep getting the same result. Lexi goes too fast to slow down and get her entry correctly. We can circle around and do it over and over again and she just barks and does it wrong over and over (and it's not for lack of knowing the right way to do it).
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I start this by saying I do use NRM in training but most in obedience training after the behavior is understood completely and in those black and white situations. No drop, no sit , no retrieve etc. I use it in a manner of meaning try again. I use yes as the equivalent of a clicker. Information feedback that's it.

I used to use it in agility but I found the biggest fall out was a more cautious control performance. If your dog has alot of natural speed than it isn't a big deal. But if you have an over thinking(Justice) or an overly sensitive/cautious dog(Ember) it can totally ruin their speed. It doesn't mean they don't like it because both my dogs do but they are very aware of not making mistakes. Personally I think I could hit Diva with a sock of marbles, it wouldn't matter.

Now I'm not the expert but Diva sounds a like like Lexi and she did the can't find the entry and spinning barking thing too. It was mostly frustration of not being allowed to move on. The more I ask her to do it again the more she freaked out. I also realized most of the time, she missed the entry if I was too close , I found I needed to slow myself and send her to the weaves about 2-3 ft ahead of me and I needed to be at least 3 ft away(to the side). I guess I was driving to the weaves too much and I needed to decrease my speed so she would collect too. But I could not do this close to the weaves. I would spin her and she would do it again and then it just seemed like she went into a temper tantrum. I found the instead of putting her back in over and over when she gets like this. I would ask for another behavior, a down. count to 5 and release her. This gave her some time to collect herself and reset her focus. Break the cycle if you will. I guess you could call it a punishment but instead of an random concept of "don't do some behavior" and leave the dog wonder what behavior should I not do, weave? pop out? bark? spin? I give her a behavior she knows what to do and I can praise her for complying with. Once she settled down, I would then take her back 2-3 obstacles and do the sequence again and then break off and praise like heck.

Each dog is different of course. But after been there done that with Ember especially and having to work so hard to get that speed back I am very cautionous about this.
 
Lexi is a great dog and definetley has speed to boot.She is young and very green so don't rush her.Listen to your instructor and it will all come together for you.
 
I just wanted to post and thank everyone for all their thoughts and ideas. This entire thread has given me a lot to think about. I am still digesting a lot of what has been said which is why I haven't responded with more information (or detail) about the specific problem.

I also emailed another instructor of ours that knows Lexi really well. I wanted to see what he thought the issue was, or what his suggestion might be. His thoughts were that it is just another example of where Lexi is rushing to get things done and not paying attention to the details. He said he'd give me more information at our upcoming seminar...

Again, I'll post more in response to everyone's advice after I've had more time to consider the issue.
 
Also, to me and its JMO that you tend to race Lexi.I learned the hard way with Shadow while young from my intstructor at the time was don't race him cause things like bar dropping or missing entries will happen.
 
I am already using the time out stratagy with pretty good success with Storm at 10 months, It seem to be the only way that I can get her to focus and pay attention. She is just so eager to go right now as I mentioned in another post right now I have to start her in a full down & even then she will start creeping to go alla border collie. I basicly give her a chance to
do as she should, because she is so young I will give her a few of shots at doing it correctly if she is at least paying attention. If she's not & she continues to be crazy wild barking, running around, and not paying attention then I remove her from the training ring right away, and work with Cosmo, that's usually enough to tick her off to the point that when I give her another shot at it she's much more attentive and seems to respond to the training much better the next time out. I started this because she was a big nipper as a pup and when we started training flatwork she would try and nip my hand as I was giving her directional signal or sometime even take a shot at my heel, as soon as she did this at all training stopped immediately, she got removed from the ring and leashed. it took about 3 sessions and volla no more nipping. She still is a very Mouthy puppy it just seems to be her nature... Like when greeting me when I get home after work she will try and mouth my hand not ever biteing just mouthing and I am working on stopping that too but not as hard as I did on the agility field, she learned real quick if you want to run with daddy and have fun you had better not touch him period at least not out on the field,it certainly has not seemed curb her enthusiasium for agility any. Now with Cosmo a simple NO thats wrong lets try again was all that was ever needed, in fact too verbal a disipline was enough to shut him right down and cause him to have an anxiety crisis and still is to this day.
 
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Am glad you are not getting mad :winkgrin:
There is another brilliant observation shared in my course
"punisher is only effective if you recognize and build reinforcement program around whatever caused that problem so you won't have to use that punisher otherwise if you keep using that punishment, /lets say "time out" in that scenario/ it will become reinforcer"
So questions I would ask are- does Lexi barks and spins only at weaves or any other obstacle will do? Does she bark from excitement or from frustration" oh yeah, once again you are standing in wrong spot lady"? Does she get "high" from 10-15 obstacle but capable of clear performance when only 2-3 involved?
If she indeed self reinforcing from repeating weaves, self reinforcement has to stop, right away. I really like answer Justicemom given about using controlled position, down i.e. balance the situation. It is something I found works well for my boys.
 
I also tend to agree with the approach Justicemom has taken. I'm really glad Ashley posted this - it's been a topic that has been skirted a few times before (it's obviously a bit of a sensitive topic), but it's great to have a discussion about it and to see the varying points of view.
 
I haven't read all comments, but I just wanted to share my experience with face.

You know, she's a pretty fast dog and and for her one more obstacle is a better confirmation than every threat or toy.
so for example in the beginning, when we trained the weaves she started to ignore it completely (it slows down to much in her opinion :rolleyes2:) and just ran into the tunnel (if there was one). if there wasn't a tunnel after the weaves, it wasn't a probleme.

you could see, that she just wanted to concentrate on it. that's why we trained it at home to see: just the weaves and the tunnel after it. the same procedure... the weaves alone or with jumps, no problem.
so we decided to give her a break, if she flips into the tunnel and rocky (our other sheltie) is allowed to do that practice. and what should I say: it didn't take long time and she made the weaves perfectly WITH tunnel :lol:


BUT I would always differentiate, if the dog doesn't pay 100% attention to make its job right, or if the obstacle, etc. isn't trained good enough. in the second case it isn't the fault of the dog.

I also would train an difficult obstacle like the weaves always with a lot of different entries (close/far; easy angle/heavy angle) until the dog can do the weaves perfectly on its own.


by the way: Face really likes to make mistakes with the jumps. she is jumping pretty flat and sometimes just concentrates on the next obstacle, so she knocks the bar. in training I ALWAYS break of. the result: maximum ONE knocked bar in the lesson, because she then tries to give her jumping more attention.
 
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