Wonderful Weaving

It seems everyone has a favorite way to train weave poles. Weaves are a pain in the you-know-what to train with many dogs, since they’re not as natural as jumping, running through things, or over things, or up onto things. How do you choose a method? Is there one true way?

I don’t think so. I think some are inherently better than others for the majority of dogs, but I don’t think one method works all the time for all dogs. That’s why we offer so many different training sets! One dog learns by the channel method and learns it perfectly. They never pop a pole. They never slow down. They’re machines! Others get the same results via 2X2’s or weave-o-matics. I’ve even met a few very effective weavers who were blatantly lured their first fifty million times through the poles! A good trainer recognizes differences between dogs and realizes that not all dogs motivate the same or learn the same.

But none of that helps me decide, you say! Yes it does. You have to work with your dog to find what works best for you. Work with any set of weaves you can to see what makes sense for you and your dog. Beware of set-hopping, though! Just because something isn’t working immediately doesn’t mean that it’s not working at all. Weave training takes time and patience. Give any method you decide on enough time to tell if it works or not- there’s no set time for that, but two weeks seems a fair trial to me!

Don’t choose a method just because it’s what everyone else is doing if that’s not how you want to do it. If you’re not going to commit to a method, then don’t even try it. Try another way, or figure out your own method that works! (Who knows- it may just be the new ‘best way to weave’!)