No more NRMs

Today, I tried not saying anything to Morgan when she messed up her weave poles and it was like night and day. If she missed her entry, I would not throw the bumper, but I would smile at her grab her collar and enthusiastically send her again. She seemed to stop and think, why no toy? Then she would actually alter what she was doing the second time and fix it. It seems my NRM must have interfered with her problem solving. All she could think about was what she did wrong. With no reward and silence from me, she started thinking about how she could get me to throw the bumper again. YAY! After all, isn't that the point? I thought by saying something I would let her know when she was going wrong but it seems it is better to let her figure it out for herself. I started seeing her think about her mistakes much more today. I hope it continues.

A quick note

I've been doing a tiny bit of training on the weave poles. Two weeks off has made me go back to where we were three weeks ago. I probably realized this before but it is finally sinking in, Morgan does NOT like no reward markers. What they do is to turn her completely off. "If I'm wrong I don't want to play." I'm really not sure what to do about that. I have heard people say that we should make training so that the dog is never wrong. Somehow that does not make sense to me. I think we learn best from making mistakes. I go back to the Diane Bauman advice I got 17 years ago. If I see that the dog gets something wrong 3 times (or that she is confused), then I make it easier and then work up to the next level. The trouble I have with Morgan is that I cannot do many repetitions so the learning is SOOOOOO Slow. Now I can't tell her she's wrong? WTF? Okay, I'm getting frustrated here so I have to sign off. I'll sleep on it and see what I come up with in the morning.