While any piece of dog agility equipment can be challenging to teach, most handlers will say that agility weave poles are the trickiest obstacle to teach. This may be true, but with a bit of patience, perseverance and a few helpful tips, your furry friend can become a master of the agility weave.
There are several different philosophies regarding how to teach dogs to handle weave poles, and there’s no wrong or right way to teach your dog. The following tips are simply some of the most popular methods of teaching the weaves, and you can opt for the one that makes the most sense to you. If that method doesn’t work, just try another one until your dog gets the hang of zipping through those weaves.
- Try Channel/Chute Training
At Carlson Agility, we sell several different sets of agility weave poles. We sell training weaves with a PVC base, stick-in-the-ground weaves and weave chutes. The chutes can be a good option if you are just getting started with agility weaves and we have a weave chute with 12 weaves as well as a weave chute with just six weaves.
The chutes make it easier for your dog to understand how they are supposed to run through the obstacle, but to get started you separate the weaves to form a channel. The dog will get used to the weaves by running through the channel, then as they gain confidence you simply close the distance as demonstrated in the photos below.
The photos show two positions of the weave chutes, but you can begin with the chutes even farther apart for a wider channel and as time passes, you can create a narrower channel. Eventually, you will close the gap and they will be able to run through the weaves and you can work on speed training and proper entrances and exits.
- Consider The 2×2 Training Method
With this method, handlers typically would use our stick-in-the-ground weave poles. Set up two poles in the ground with enough space for your dog to move through the two poles easily. Once your dog understands how to navigate between two poles, add two more but set these a few feet ahead of the first two poles.
Once they can handle navigating through two sets of two poles, add another set and then another until you reach a set of 12 agility weave poles. Then you can close the distance between the weave poles just as you would with the chutes eventually getting to a point where the dog will understand that they must “weave” or maneuver through the poles.
- Use Guide Wires
In addition to agility weave poles, we also sell guide wires that help your dog understand how to weave in and out through the weave poles. These can be a good option once you’ve closed that gap between the weave poles after you started channel training or 2×2 training, but they also can be a good item to have on hand if your dog seems to have forgotten their weave skills and needs a bit of a refresher.
- Consider Weave-A-Matic Training
With weave-a-matic training, sometimes called WAM training, you will need weave poles that can be slanted at opposite angles from each other. For this method, you move the weaves at far angles and gradually bring them together until they are in a straight line just as you do with other types of weave training.
- Treat Training Can Work
There’s always a lot of controversy about using treats for agility training. After all, you can’t use them on a competition course, and you will need your dog to learn how to use all obstacles without treats and by simply obeying hand and voice commands. Still, some dogs need a bit more motivation, and treat training can be an option to consider if nothing else seems to work.
With this method, you will hold a treat in front of your dog’s snout as an incentive and guide them through the weave poles. Don’t reward with the treat until the dog has successfully navigated through to the end of the weave poles. You can keep repeating this process until the dog seems to have the hang of it and then start leading them through with a hand signal and rewarding with a treat at the end rather than holding the treat in front of them the entire time.
How To Get Started With Agility
In general, weave poles usually aren’t the best obstacle to consider when you first get started with agility training because they can be so challenging. We recommend saving agility weave poles until much later in training, but it’s entirely up to the handler how you decide to train. This may be our recommendation, but there’s no set-in-stone order of training agility obstacles.
Typically, dog agility equipment such as single dog agility jumps, a dog agility tunnel and the pause table are the easiest to train. Contact obstacles such as the a-frame, dog agility teeter and dog walk can be a bit more difficult because of the height and the movement of the teeter, as well as ensuring that your dog makes contact with these obstacles at the correct points. Still, these obstacles can be easier to teach than weave poles.
Once you’ve taught four or five other pieces of dog agility equipment, your dog will already have the agility mindset so it can be easier to teach weave poles after they have successfully figured out the tunnel, tire jump, agility teeter and other pieces of equipment. Keep weave pole training times short, perhaps five minutes twice per day, and within a couple of weeks, your dog should have the hang of weaving.
Our Dog Agility Equipment
At Carlson Agility, we sell just about any piece of dog agility equipment that you might need for competition training or just for backyard fun. This includes agility weave poles, pause tables, agility a-frames, dog walks, teeters, a dog tunnel and all types of jumps. Our agility equipment is handmade using the highest quality components. If you have any questions about our equipment, please don’t hesitate to contact us at any time.
