Right hand weave help

Can anyone give me some advice please, Jack is fine with left hand weaves no problem what so ever, he gets his entrance perfectly everytime, he barks his way through but other than that fine, but when Chris is on the other side of him, he misses his entrance, jumps out, misses poles, jumps up barking at Chris, is there anything we can do to correct this, or is it just a question of practise, practise, practise and one day he'll get it

I`m going to take a guess that when initially teaching him weaves it was all done with Jack on Chris`s left ok an easy guess as that`s what almost everyone does at first

I treat it as a completely new element fwiw, because the handler being on the left does change the dogs recognition of it completely. The body movement from the handler is very different except those few who are completely ambidextrous so it can be confusing for a dog to learn it one way, [ on the left of the handler ], then everything about it changes.

So, now that he is getting weaves with Chris on his right, I would start from scratch with the left and have Chris handle it in a different way to how he worked on it first time round.

Most likely he will have taught the weaves with Chris facing forward and using his left arm and hand to guide Jack.

So, have him try walking backward for when he`s on the other side, [ sounds weird but when the handler gets the hang of it, it works a treat ]. It will really help the initial weave entry as Jack will be able to see much more clearly where he`s being directed and Chris will automatically `block` Jack from trying to enter the weaves from the wrong side, [ as he will assume he is supposed to enter the weaves on the side that his handler is on at the time ].

That way, from Jacks perception, Chris would still be using his left arm and hand as the guide which will help give him the familiarity of what he`s already learned, then as Jack realises that its ok to weave without his handler being on his right which at the moment he thinks is how its supposed to be, Chris will be able to then start going forward as usual.

Well worth introducing a new weave entry cue as well so that when he hears his usual cue he will go in as normal with Chris on his right and the other cue will let him know that Chris will come up on his left - make sure its just the entry cue which varies though, then as soon as he`s made a good entry carry on with the usual way to keep him going.

The reason most likely that he is skipping poles or coming out of them is that he is probably trying to tell Chris that he is on the `wrong side` because that`s how Jack will perceive it from how he will have been taught weaving at first, that`s all

[ Gawd I hope I`ve explained it ok, its easy to say and to demo but not so easy to put into written word ]

WOW, thanks Patch, we really hadn't looked at it that way, we hadn't thought about teaching it from scratch, but it does makes sense now you've explained it, and although we didn't think Jack was having a lark, we didn't consider that maybe he was getting different comands so to speak, or telling Chris he was in the wrong place

On a far better note, Jack has finally conquered the see-saw, it's taken probably over a year, but he's got it he's still a wee bit tentative finding the balance point, but he goes up it no problem, so we will definately be doing agility comps this year