As I said, I don't doubt that it *can* be done. I just think there would be a very, very long period of transferring value to rewards that would work for the training method before I could use them successfully. And this is someone who spent an entire winter drilling contacts on planks - hundreds of reps a week! Teaching Meg to care that I'm throwing something along a line just doesn't inspire me. Until it becomes acceptable to throw a cat or rabbit, we will stick with what worked for us!
It may be partially the area I'm in, but I do still see a lot of spectacular weaving dogs trained through other methods. I'm curious Mandy - did you ask the people how they trained them? I actually did ask quite a few people at Cynosport this year (the ones I wasn't too intimidated to talk to
), and while there were a lot of 2x2 fans, there were certainly some serious top weavers who were taught in other ways. I'd bet it is probably 50 - 60% of top dogs on 2x2, and the rest split through other methods, just from my very non-scientific poling. But granted, it was almost all BC people I asked, so not a good cross section.