Practice tips for chute?

[Kyoko]

Today, Charlie worked on Chute for the first time. She went through a couple of times, but she looks as she rather not do it... Few other time, she just walked along to come to me instead of going through...

Do you have any practicing tip for us? I though she would be OK doing this since she often go through my dresses and other draped materials without problems....

[Jeremy]

Kaiya wouldn't go through it either at first. We had to break it down into little pieces for her.

First, we rolled up all the fabric around the barrel, so she was just running through the barrel. Someone would hold her on one end, and I would call her through the other end. Once she was comfortable running through just the barrel, we let out a small amount of fabric, but held it open, so she could see all the way through it. Once she was comfortable, we extended the fabric all the way out, but still held it wide open. We gradually made the exit smaller and smaller. First it would just hit her in the back as she was running through, then she would have to use her head to open it a little bit, and eventually, she ran through on her own.

Anytime she made it through the tunnel, she got a BIG reward, whether it was lots of treats, or some tug time with her favorite toy.

[Kyoko]

Oh, this makes good sense!!! Thank you!!!

[Kyoko]

Yeah, please!

[Linda and Murphy]

We didn't start the chute until Murphy had the tunnel down...and he loved the tunnel. Keep it fun.

We shortened it as Jeremy said and then someone held it open. Make sure they are straight and not tangled.

One issue I saw at different trials was that some of the chutes were made of much heavier material. Dogs that never hesitated before, had issues with the heavy material.

[Kyoko]

Oh, that is a really good point.... Heavier materials ---> drape down on them more, and feel heavy.
I can see some dogs may not like that at all....