For some reason we haven't been doing much agility in the last few days. Somehow whenever I think of it and am home it's dark out. Luckily in less than 3 weeks the days will start getting longer again. Anyway, today Jonah and I did some basic practice.
We're in a funny state of motivation: he gets most excited about the stick (rather than food), but if I throw the stick as the reward he won't chase it because he just wants food. So I can rev him up with a stick, but then the reward needs to be food. Of course, either one alone works, too, although only having food lacks the super excited state.
Jonah's contacts looked fantastic today. All three of them. His DW was fast and solid into the 2o2o, his teeter was speedy and confident, and his A-frame was consistent no matter what kind of an approach I gave him. Sweet!
The big focus of today was working on on-side weave entries, since those are hard for him. He missed quite a bit. I'm a little bit unsure of whether I should be letting him find the entries very independently and move the angle of entry progressively more difficult or if I can try any angle and just help him more with the tougher entries. I think I'm erring on having him find the entry independently, but I do push the line a little bit at times. The best thing about all this was that he was never losing enthusiasm even when he missed and had to try it again. I tried to keep rewards really high when he got it and not be negative when he missed, and it seemed to be working.
Jonah's table was also great today, even though it's been a little shaky lately.
I think we're going to meet with Grace on Wednesday to work on developing a long term training plan and learn some good exercises to do at home. Should be fun (as always)!
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