Frustrating

I've been working with Dax rather intensely on training her weave poles. For the 99.9% of the world not involved in agility - one of the exercises is a series of 12 poles, set 24 inches apart, that the dog is supposed to weave through. The most important part of the weaves is the entry - the dog must start with her left shoulder at the first pole. Once that entry is made correctly - the rest should be a cinch.

From the beginning of our training, our instructor Dee (check out her website ChicagoAgility.com) has taught us that weaving is the dog's job - we're not to do the "weave-pole hula" (even if it is fun to watch), or distract the dog from her "job" by motioning, signalling, or doing any other silly thing that will cause our dogs to look at us rather than where they're supposed to be going.

Dax has been pretty reliable at the weave poles - but slow. We've been working on speeding her up to "squirrel-catching speed." We know she's capable of speed - we're not kidding about "squirrel speed." But the training is slow going, if you'll excuse the expression. One day she'll dash over to the poles and stop dead between them, just shy of putting a foot over center. The next time she'll get it right, but slow. And the next she'll forget entirely which side she's supposed to enter.

Sigh. I guess if it were easy, everybody's dog would be perfectly trained.