Every piece of dog agility equipment can be fun, but there’s just something amazing about watching a dog zip through the weave poles. Perhaps we handlers love to watch dogs complete the weaves because we know how difficult it is for dogs to learn this skill. While it takes some time to learn, most dogs end up loving weaves. Here is some basic information about weaves along with some handy training tips.
Types Of Agility Weave Poles
There are several types of weave poles, but the ones you’ll see on most agility competition courses are the stick-in-the-ground type of poles. We do sell these types of agility weaves at Carlson Agility in two sizes. We have 24-inch weaves and 40-inch weaves depending on what you need.
While those are the type of weaves you’ll see on a course, it’s often best to start with training weaves. These weave poles are mounted on a sturdy PVC stand. One of the advantages of using training weaves is the handler can start out with just a few weaves and add more as the dog progresses in training.
We also have guide wires, and these can help your dog better understand how to move through the weave poles. Additionally, you might consider our training weave chute, which also helps guide your dog more easily through the weaves.
Most of our dog agility equipment is built to competition standards, but with weave poles, we feel that it is important to offer both training weave sets and competition weave sets. While any piece of dog agility training equipment can be difficult to master, the weaves truly are challenging, so we recommend using anything you can to help make the learning process easier.
Owning your own set of weave poles can be a fantastic idea, even if you belong to an agility club that already has a variety of top-quality equipment. This is simply an obstacle that needs lots and lots of extra training and having a backyard set can make a huge difference when it comes to performance.
Teaching The Weave Poles
Generally, we don’t recommend starting out your agility training program with the weaves. You could start out with some jumps, the pause table, perhaps even the dog walk, but weaves require an extra bit of patience and persistence, so it’s really more fun to start out with something easier, such as a tunnel.
Once your dog has mastered a couple of jumps and one or two other pieces of dog agility equipment and gets the idea about verbal signals and hand signals, it might be a great time to introduce the weaves. Your furry friend already understands quite a bit about agility at this point and is probably having a fantastic time learning these new skills and will be more enthusiastic about trying out this challenging piece of equipment.
Start slow, perhaps with just two weaves. Guide your dog into and around the first weave and then guide them around the second weave. You may want to do this with the leash on as the dog might be a bit confused at first. Once you’ve guided them through a few times, you might try to provide a signal and see if they can follow through.
Once your dog can navigate two poles, add two more and work on the skills again and again. You can keep adding poles until you reach 12 weaves, and once your pooch has mastered the actual skill with 12 full weaves, you can start working on speed and distance training. Keep in mind; it can take hundreds of tries before your dog truly masters this skill. In fact, one of our dogs needed 300 repetitions before he finally was weaving correctly.
We recommend spending no more than about 10 minutes per day on this skill, as dogs don’t have huge attention spans. However, we do recommend getting outside and practicing with those weave poles every day. You will need to show some enthusiasm and provide plenty of love and praise, as this will motivate your dog to keep trying.
At Carlson Agility, we have just about every piece of dog agility equipment imaginable. We have all types of dog jumps, dog a-frames, agility tunnels, dog walks, pause tables, teeters, handy training tools, and, of course, weave poles. Whether you just need weaves or many pieces of agility equipment, we provide the highest quality, handmade agility equipment on the market. If you have any questions about our agility equipment, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at any time.
