suemckee wrote: I started on the 2x2 weave method but we never really gelled with that one, he doesn't have a great retrieve so it was hard to do, he would prefer to "take away" rather than bring the toy back
Yeah, Buster didn't really get the 2x2's either. I started it with him and he just thought it was dumb. I ended up just shaping his weaves with a clicker and treats. I've shaped the entrance to the weaves from every angle imaginable! For a while, Buster was popping out consistantly at the 10th pole, and so I started back chaining and he's getting better about doing all 12 now.
suemckee wrote:Having him from six months old has been another dimension we've had to sort through.
If it makes ya feel any better, I got Buster at one year old, spent 6 months undoing his bad habits, another 6 month teaching him the "correct" behaviors and another year training him for agility! We started competing when he was 4 and a half...he'll be 6 in June.
suemckee wrote:How have you/are you going to make the transition to competition with the food - I don't know about US but here we cannot take food into the ring, so I have to get him to love the weaves in competition as much as he (hopefully) will do in training. We weave night and morning for his meal, which gets him going but once again can't do that in the ring situation. Should I be removing him from competition do you think, and give him a break until he grows a brain?
I do a lot of fun matches with Buster, where I CAN bring treats in to the ring in a competition evnironment. The shows in the US are the same as for you...no food in the ring. Now that he's finally getting weaves, I think I'm going to start givng up Q's to reward weaves for a while. We'll go in the ring, run our course, and if he gets his weaves, I end the run and we'll run out of the ring and get treats...he's more in to that than finishing the run. Gamblers is a great class to do that in. I haven't pulled Buster from competition, because that's where his issue is and we'll never get through it if we're not showing. He has fun in classes without weaves or where weaves are optional, and I use the classes with weaves for practice. Yeah, you end up eating some entries, but oh well.
Another thing I've learned with Buster is that I can't drill him endlessly on an obstacle. He gets bored too quickly and goes off to sniff. So, I never do weaves more than 3 times in an hour of training and I try to space it out. I also don't practice weaves every day. Two shows ago, in our standard run, Buster NAILED his weaves...got the entrance, all 12 poles, and at a decent speed...we hadn't worked weaves in over two weeks. Sometimes I think he stops doing an obstacle because he's just tired of it!

RIP Madi
Charm-future agility champ
Britty- RIP March 27, 2014
Buster-CGC, OA, OF, NAJ, APK, APJ, APG, APR, PD