Another example for you of the extreme moves the dog must do in the weaves, although he is an exceptionally large dog! My chiropractor has used this photo as a example for her students!

My pup is a year old and has only just started to do the weaves, other than just running through with them open. You really don't want to subject soft puppy joints to that sort of stress!

I always use channel weaves as you can start these slightly earlier than straight upright weaves. I started my latest young dog at about 11 months and she is now weaving happily on proper weaves at 14 months. You cannot compete at KC events until 18 months anyway so there is plenty of time to learn all the equipment by then. It is the control and handling that is more important to start with.

I don't think there is any need to start learning weaves until the dog is over a year old. All of ours have learnt the weaves within a couple of weeks (usually doing two or three five minute sessions per day) and are *touch wood* reliable weavers. Oliver didn't learn until he was fifteen months, he's twenty month now and finds 99.9% of entries by himself without help.

I'm not sure as I don't use channel weaves but I thought the idea was to get a fast and reliable entry and get them running through whatever the handler position then close them. I would think if you spent to much time on an open channel (as in the months it would be before the pup was at a suitable age to start bending) it might be harder to close as the dog thinks thats the whole obstacle rather than part of the learning process

We normally start puppy agility at about eight months, doing a contact plank on the ground, tunnels, and working on jumping with the poles on the floor then sitting on the jump feet. The more work you put into the basics and groundwork before using full equipment the better your dog will be.

Closing channel weaves is done very gradually anyway and I could only do these 2 or 3 times a week at home depending on the weather! The transition from these to real weaves in different places is one of the hardest parts and also needs to be taken slowly.

Even with an older dog, we break up training sessions with lots of games, especially tug.

As a thought, you could start training entrances to the weaves with the 2x2 method. We first began with only two poles and would get the dog to drive through them and then continue forward.

Eventually we added two more, but a good 5 feet or more away from the first two, so that they'd drive to the first two, run forward, and then go through the second two. There was no bending of the dog and it taught them to get to them from all angles and with great drive.

What if you keep the spacings much wider rather than tilting the poles.

I have seen where they are trying to get the spacing standard widened to 24 inch to avoid long term injuries

Hi, new here! This will be the 4th agility pup we've trained - well, third really, as poor Ilse was a crossover dog, and we made lots of mistakes with her, but she seems to have coped very well... Our latest is a "small" dog, and the weather has been so awful, he's been getting trained in the house. From the word "go" (literally), we've been training him towards agility in a fun way. He has his very own plank, which he runs along to get his dinner (hoping to do running contacts with him). We started off with a very small bit of plank that he just had to stand on to be rewarded, and he picked this up very quickly. He also is being trained to "go" only on the word "go" not any other word. He's also got a small tunnel, a hoop, and a very small jump that we use singly, or in combination, at meal times too, so that he is familiar with them. We've also got a set of objects that we use to set up a prototype wide channel weave to teach him to go through them quickly to his dinner (yet again). We have just moved him onto training on the garden dogwalk (on the ground) outside, and he has taken to it immediately, so I don't see a problem with moving him onto the outside channel weaves (stick in the ground poles). Consistency, for example, on contacts, and "proofing" the dogs to train amidst all sorts of distractions and from all sorts of positions seem to be the lessons we've learned over the years. We are retraining Ilse on the contacts hopefully to do running ones, and it is evident from the consistency we are looking for now, that she has been totally confused as to what we have expected of her, because she has never been proofed or encouraged to be consistent. So, I think there is a lot of training, especially groundwork, that can be done when the pup is quite young, which is a lot of fun for both dog and owner, before weaves proper need to come into the picture, for the physical maturity required for them as graphically portrayed in the pictures on the thread. Che loves his ready, steady, go (giraffe/gosh/jiffy) game, and sticks like glue till he hears "go" and then he is off - whoosh! He also shoots along his plank or the dogwalk at great speed when he hears the words "walk it!". It is all a game to him... He's learned loads right from the beginning, and is just turning 7 months now.