First of all thanks to all of you that took the time to give me your feedback by filling out the survey I posted last week. For those that intended to take the survey but didn’t get around to it, you can still do it by clicking this link http://ponyurl.com/wphpde. I don’t think I will get perfect scores from the survey design staff, so thanks for your patience while while I perfect my skill at survey writing.
However, I got lots of great ideas and that was the many purpose of the survey. I now have a much clearer vision of what I need to do next and I wouldn’t have had that understanding without your feedback. So I am now going to get busy preparing content for all of you. Some will be free tools for you, some will come with a reasonable price tag, but all will be very worthwhile content since YOU guys have been the ones that have helped to designed the products!
I did promise prizes to randomly drawn survey participants. I picked the 3 big winners by logging into the survey results and choosing participants number 35, 135 and 1035 (if you have read the stuff about me in a previous post you will remember I have an unexplainable obsession with the number 35:). So I am sending out a really cool Say Yes Dog Training sweatshirt with “Positive is Not Permissive” printing on the front plus an autographed copy of “Ruff Love” to . . . .
Kim Oatway
Barb Giudice
and Wild Bill McFarlin
Thanks to all, this was a fun first attempt at survey taking.
Some interesting tidbits from the survey.. Most of you that participated (more than 70% of you) have been doing agility for more than 4 years. So potentially there are alot of newbies out there that have not found this blog or my newsletters so please SPREAD THE WORD. If each of you encouraged 3 newbies (doing agility less than 3 years) to sign up for my newsletter think of how many dogs you would be helping to get a more positive start on their agility careers! Anyone can sign up for the newsletter by going to my website (www.clickerdogs.com) and filling in the form there or by emailing [email protected] with the subject line subscribe. It is that easy.
So back to the survey, the next interesting fact, can you guess what was the number one reason people put down for not qualifying? If you are like me, you would guess wrong. The answer is weave poles! When I combined the 3 categories of entries, exits or popped poles, it made weave poles collective be the number one reason most of you don’t qualify! Ok folks, there is this great new DVD out that WILL help you with your weave pole training. Seriously, I will be posting more free weave pole help this week so send or re-send your pressing 2×2 questions and I will try to get to them.
I am happy to see that most of you are book and dvd junkies and that more than half of you owned all of my books and DVDs (next step is to take the shrink wrapping off and put them to good use people!:)).
As for the content, I got thousands of thoughtful replies explaining where you need help with your agility training. I am listening to what you are asking for and I have already set things in motion to get you the direction each of you have asked for. I am not going to say anything more than that, but I am excited and you should be too. It will take me a while to get all my ideas out of my head and out to you but some of it will be out to you this week (in the form of another free 2×2 webinar to be posted here).
Thanks again everyone for all of your input and for your active participation in this community. We are in it together, the more you write, the more I learn about you. . . as you read and learn more about me. It is like we are becoming one big happy cyber-family!
Today I am grateful for all the ideas you all have sent me, I am stoked!
Hi Susan,
Survey plans – great news.
Looking forward to it!
Gail
Hi All 🙂
My dog has a bit of an unusual weave problem. In the survey I wrote he had a problem with weave exits, but that is really just a symptom of our real problem.
Originally he was taught to weave with alitle bit of every method I knew at the time (didn’t know about 2×2’s then) he always had decent enough entries and was usually reliable but slow in the poles and had no independance.
He has never worked out good footwork. I believe his problem is he really wants to bounce the weaves but he is too big to do it (belgian shep) so sometimes he trys to bounce and by the end of the set of poles hes too far ahead of himself and can’t stay in anymore and so pops at 9-10. He is really sensitive, and he always seems to know hes messed up even if I act like its all good, so then he goes really slow next time in the poles, and will be slow for the next 10-20 sets of poles where his confidence will get back up and he will try to bounce and then pop out again, its a really frustrating cycle for both of us.
I believe he really needs to single step his poles, and I did spend some time with him on V weaves to try to teach him this footwork, but our success only lasted until I tryed to put him onto a normal ridgid set of poles where he couldn’t push them out of the way anymore.
Then your 2×2 dvd came out and I retrained him with that, his entries are now beautiful! and he has much much more independance in the poles, but we still don’t have footwork, even after working through the “fancy footwork” section in the DVD.
Sorry for the essay, Susan, or anyone else reading this if of you have any ideas I would really appreciate it.
Hello!
My question is about weaves also. My young dog learned weaves by the channel method and the channel was left open too long. Inprinted was the running by them. Was able to weave fine until we got to Excellent level AKC. We have spent some time running by the poles and then re-try and still not getting all of them, but our success rate has been getting better lately. I can say we have a 99% accurancy in practice, but no the same in the shows. We have tried the 2×2, any other suggestions to go along with that? Targeting the weave poles?
Thanks
Hello
I have a question about 2 X 2.
My first agility dog is a 4 year old BC. Our first classes in agility were of learning to do weaves while luring a piece of food in front of the dog and some other rather weird things. Three years ago, when I started trialing, I found a whole other world out there, including about the 2 x 2 method through one of your articles and I retrained my dog. Obviously not very well as he still sometimes misses his entries and pops out (yes, I was one of those that mentioned that in the survey). Do you think that at 4 years old after being trained 2 different ways it would help anything to start 2 X 2 from the beginning again? I do have the DVD as I am starting another little BC in agility and started the weaves this week.
How did you know about all of my shrink wrapped DVDs and books? LOL I am will be watching for more info about the 2X2 webinar.
I wish I had taken my border collie to her first trial before the survey. She did a great job- all except learning to scream while waiting for her turn! I need some behaviors for her to do while waiting. That was a surprise from my girl!