Weaves

What are the best weaves to train beginners on, straight with guide straps, channel or V.

Ohh....that depends.

Jasper was channeled on straight weaves, he was 100% consistant would recall throught/left/right or even retrive through, but never had much speed.

Tassle and Trip were back chained, again both very good (although Trip not as reliable) but faster.

Haven;t really spent time training Siren yet but have started her with back chaining.

What is back chaining?

Starting at the end and working back to the beginning,

I start with 3 weaves and the dog going through them and rewarding, then adding another and another etc.

I can tell you what worked well for our Beagle, but you must bear in mind that we don't intend to compete with her and we don't go to classes - we just do it for fun. It's possible that our approach wouldn't be the best in the long term if you were taking agility seriously.

The first stage was to teach her to weave between my legs. Initially I used a treat to lure her between my legs, but very quickly we weaned her onto a treat only when she'd completed a few weaves. Then we introduced the weave poles. I started out by getting her to weave between my legs. Next I'd 'walk' beside the weave poles so that she was weaving through the poles and my legs. It didn't take long to get her weaving through the poles without the cue from my legs. From that stage it was just a couple of days of practice to get her flying through the poles with confidence. I don't really remember doing anything special to teach her to always enter with the poles to her left shoulder - but she picked that up somehow and will always enter from the correct side.

Here's a clip of her weaving between my legs:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27172079@N08/3220842528/

She learnt to weave with me walking beside her within 1 week (excuse the floor - we'd had a flood!):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27172079@N08/3267491626/

By the second week we could recall her or send her away through the weaves:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27172079@N08/3282165294/

We haven't really practiced it much since - just perhaps as part of a course now and again. Yet she doesn't forget it. Here's a recent video of her practicing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3vb9...=http%3A%2F%2F

I would have thought you need to know your dog and what makes it tick. Beagles are supposed to be one of the most difficult breeds to train, but ours likes to figure out how to earn food. She was motivated to 'solve the puzzle'. Approaches that don't require her to work it out in her head probably wouldn't have worked so well for her (so channels etc).

I would never try that with my dogs for fear that would resort back to my legs !

I train dogs to weave through my legs for HtM but i have different commands for eah exercise as I have worked SO hard to get everything on a verbal cue!

I tell her 'weave' for both but she doesn't get confused. She's quite a modal little dog - she always knows what activity she's taking part in and acts accordingly But I'm sure that would be a problem with some!

It would with Tassle. I often train with equiptment around so she has to listen to me not do what she thinks is right. Siren is not there yet, but I would have the same problem as I often will mix doing HtM then swap to agility then to freestyle etc - It keeps them on thier toes

I have worried that mine will get confused and weave my legs but I forgot to do a different command and they seem fine with it - although I say 'GO weave' for the weaves so I guess it is slightly different

Dont tell Carol - who wanted us to teach just by guiding the dogs through with hand on coller - which just wasnt going to work for my dogs but I used a version of the weave walk to teach it on straight poles in the house - great winter activity
and I always made sure to chuck the reward out so he comes out of the weaves and isnt looking for me

TBH I wasnt in a hurry to teach it, just a few times every now and again so it did take a wee while to teach - and now he has picked up some speed we are having problems aagain - just weeks before his 1st outside show!!

I have had trouble with Max with straight weaves although am going to be working harder with him to get him off followng a treat! Fine at training but not possible in comp (only done 1 but it didn't go well!)

Connor has been taught with channel weaves and aside from having jumping the last few moments seems to be doing really well.