Dog Agility Training: Weaving

Series Summary

Dog agility is a sport in which a handler directs a dog without a leash through an obstacle course in a set amount of time. It is somewhat similar to an equestrian competition, but has its own obstacles, rules and scoring system. It has been growing in popularity since the 1970’s, and spectators seem to love watching dogs display the highest levels of athleticism and training as they race against the clock. Several national organizations, including the United States Dog Agility Association (USDAA) and American Kennel Club (AKC) have more information on programs, tournaments, rules, performance standards and everything else you might need to get you and your dog on course to becoming agility champions. In this series of free video lessons, veteran dog trainer Kim Amatucci shows you the basic information you need to start agility training with your dog. You’ll learn what dogs are best for agility training, how to set up the obstacles for a dog agility course and obtain tips on maintaining focus and giving your dog positive reinforcement. Your dog will be in better shape than you by the end of these videos.

Video Transcript

"What we're going to be doing today is we're going to teach a beginner dog how to do the weaves. The weave poles are a series of usually twelve weaves but with a beginner dog, we're only going to start with eight. You can sometimes start with four if the dog is having problems with it. But eight is sufficient to get them started. How we're going to do this is we we're going to take a treat, we're going to have them follow the treat through. There's different ways of teaching them this but if you want to go progressively fast, you can start with the hard way. And basically what you do is take your treat, the dog always has to enter the weaves with its left shoulder entering the weaves first. So what we would do would be to guide the dog with a leash through the weaves, one by one, having them follow the treat. Good boy! Good boy! Lots of praise and lots of treats at the end. Same thing if you went the opposite way. Bring him through. Left hand side. Weave, weave, good boy, good boy. They make a mistake, correct them, bring them around the right way. Almost. Good boy! What this teaches them is muscle memory. If you repeats this over and over and over, switching sides, entering at different directions, their body starts to memorize the weave motion and the muscles gets that muscle memory, which makes them weave quicker and faster."