Wiggle,
wiggle, wiggle.
It’s
fun to watch, dogs seem to enjoy it, it’s time consuming to train and an
integral part of agility…what is it?
Weave poles.
Of
course some dogs do it better than others and our lovely Goldens are no
exception to that rule. Some Goldens
fall in love with the weaves and others seem to plow along slowly as if they
were looking to find something on the ground between each pole.
Others just blast through throwing each pole out of the way like it was a
piece of straw. I have the good
fortune of having 2 that lie somewhere in the middle of those descriptions and
one that is a “blaster”. The big
question here is what made the difference, breeding or training.
A lot depends on the inherent ability but most goldens have a natural
prey drive so bringing out the best of that drive and good training play an
important role in how well and how fast they can do the weave poles.
Equipment:
I
use channel weaves now but our first dog was trained on weave-o-matics.
I believe the channels work best, especially the type that you can adjust
each pole independently. Agility
Works in
Style:
Most
people will tell you that one-footing the poles is the quickest and most
efficient. My recommendation is do
whatever is most efficient for your dog. Meg’n
was trained on the slanted Weave-o-matics and does the two-foot method and she
does them quickly and consistently. She’s
a short, bulky bodied Golden and this is what works best for her.
Kenzi, does the one-foot method most of the way but she’s a longer
bodied dog and sometimes her pace just isn’t right so she switches mid poles
to two-foot. It’s not nearly as
efficient as doing one method through the entire 12 poles and has cost us time
in competition. Kenzi learned on
channels but I feel I could have done a better job on her training.
The youngest, Tar’n, is my blaster.
She hits the poles with such a force that I frequently have to replace
them. The problem here is that in
some trials she has hit them so hard that it throws her out of the poles and
caused refusals. I’m hoping that
she will grow out of that and learn a little more control as we go but for now
she just mows them down as she goes through.
OK, on to #4 agility dog, as much as it pains me to admit this to all of
you #4 is one of those “other” breeds. We
call him Fl’n our Black and White golden.
He and Tar’n were trained exactly the same on weaves and for the most
part do them exactly the same style and speed.
If anything, Tar’n is a bit faster but she’s been practicing longer.
About the only difference is that he is more flexible so as he plows
through the poles they stay attached and so far he hasn’t broken any of them.
When
to start and how:
I
begin weave pole training almost as soon as I begin playing games with them.
I start with the channels far enough apart so that I can walk through
them. (Trust me folks that’s FAR apart) With
the pup on leash I walk through the weaves with pup following behind.
When we get to the end I bring out the toy and we play.
I’ll repeat this a few times for about 5 minutes then stop and come
back again later in the day.
As
soon as the pup is comfortable inside the “channel” I let Norm hold her at
one end and call her through so she runs the channel on her own with huge toy
reward at the end. The puppy loves
the game and learns to run straight through the weave channels without giving
any thought to those poles that outline the channel.
I play this game for many months adding in restraint and making
the channel smaller and smaller until finally the poles are just touching the
widest part of the dog as it runs through.
I do recalls from the far end, run beside on both sides and send the dog
to allow her to run the length of the channel herself and then return to me for
the toy play reward or throw the toy about 10 feet from the end of the weave
exit to get her to drive out beyond the end.
This begins to also teach the dog that weaves is an obstacle with 12
poles and all poles must be completed in order to obtain the reward.
The whole idea during these sessions is to encourage speed through the
channels. During sessions where I
have someone to assist I use gentle restraint by holding the dogs chest against
the palm of my hand and having my training partner tease the dog with a toy from
the other end of the polls Once the
dog begins to push against my hand I release her and
let her run toward her reward. A
similar one person method can be done by rolling a ball down the channel in
front of the dog as you restrain it however this requires good aim.
As
you continue to reduce the width of the channel the shoulders begin touching the
poles and this is probably the most important phase, as now you have to be
patient. I keep the poles at this
spacing for a LONG time. By this
time the puppy is around 6-8 months old and has a pretty good idea of how to run
fast in a straight line through the channel but too young and under-developed to
close the poles any further (as tempting as it may be).
I continue to play the run through the poles game with big rewards to
keep it fun and now is the time I start training entries.
I draw an imaginary half circle at the start end of the weave poles
Starting
at 6 I gradually move around the circle on both sides until the dog can enter
the weave poles correctly from all points on the half circle.
Sometimes I use weave guides on the first 2 poles to give the dog the
correct entry. Once the dog can
enter the poles from all these points I’m ready to move the channels closer
together. By now the dog is a few
months older, used to the polls hitting their shoulders and I move the poles in
slowly leaving them at each increment for a week or so until the dog has
mastered this distance with speed and ease from all entry points.
I’ll often add a jump or tunnel at the beginning to incorporate
sequencing and build more speed on entries.
Sometime after the dog has reached 13-14 months old (I don’t begin
competition until they are around 16 -18 months old)
I’ll begin to bring the polls into the narrowest setting but not yet
straight. I repeat the above
exercises from all entry points until the dog is mastering all entries. Now
it’s time to train for the straight poles. I’ll begin by moving the middle
poles together and leaving the entry poles apart, then I’ll close the far end
and open the middle, then I close the entry a little and open the exit.
I keep mixing it up and playing the game until finally they have mastered
the closed poles in all segments and I finally bring them all in line and train
them closed. It usually takes no
time at all for them to master the closed polls but sometimes I need to add the
guides for the entries as they are in such a hurry to perform the weaves they
don’t want to slow down to hit the entry.
This is OK, it shows they have drive and desire to do them fast and with
a little more work around the half circle on entries they’ll get it in no
time. I continue to train the
half circle method during all of our training sessions making the entries harder
and harder as I go. My half circle
becomes a three-quarter circle and I train as far up the circle as I can.
It’s
important to teach the weave poles as one obstacle and require the dog to
perform them as such. You wouldn’t
let the dog do half an A-frame and put them back on the top or half a teeter and
put them back on at the middle if they jumped off so the weaves should be
trained the same. If the dog pops
out half way make them go back from the start and do it right, this will
reinforce that the weaves are 1 obstacle and need to be performed as such.
Stuffing a dog back in where they came out does not teach the dog to do
them right in the first place and will only cause you problems on course later
on.
The
biggest problem I see with training weaves is patience.
For some it’s like a badge of honor to profess to your friends that
your dog can do straight weaves. Yeah,
but can he do them well? MACH dog to
novice dog I train with weaves more often set in a very narrow channel than
straight because I want to encourage confidence and speed when we train.