If you’re not an agility person, you probably don’t know what weave poles are. If you ARE an agility person, you know that it’s one of the toughest obstacles on the agility course. Weave poles come in sets of 6 (usually only at the novice level) or more commonly, a set of 12 that the dogs must weave in and out of as quickly as possible. They must enter from right to left, and do them consecutively, without skipping any.
Weave poles pose lots of challenges for dogs: some dogs are going so fast when they enter the poles, they neglect to collect themselves (slow down) in order to hit their entry, and they miss the 1st pole completely. Some dogs seem to pop out before they get to the end of the weaves. Some pop out in the middle. Some large dogs have a particularly difficult time twisting and turning their bodies in order to make it through the challenge. Tessa was one of those dogs.
One of my very favorite trainers, Susan Garrett, has just released a DVD on her new method of weave pole training, called the 2×2 method. It’s very cool! Brilliant in fact!!! It’s creating quite a stir in the agility world.
2×2 Weave Training DVD Set
Instead of teaching dogs to go through a set of 6 poles, she uses poles that come in sets of 2 (hence the name). It is a completely different method, and one of the advantages is that it teaches the dog the correct entry into the weaves up front - before you worry about doing a whole set of poles. You can then reward (for the correct performance) or Not reward, without having the dog continuing on with the weaves. You work the dog from LOTS of different angles and relationships to the poles. It focuses on ENTRY! Did I mention, it’s brilliant?
Micah and I started re-training our weave poles on Friday, after watching the DVD on Thursday night. We are starting over from scratch, and are VERY excited that this new method will work for us.
We were doing great while we could work on the patio, and I could use food as a reward. But when we started to need more space (to work having him go into the poles from many different entry positions) we needed to move it to the grass, and that meant that I could no longer use food. (Food is WAY too hard to find in the grass!!) So I needed to use a toy as a reward, and he needed to be able to run and get it and bring it back to me for a quick game of tug. Hence, the problem. Micah LOVES to tug, but bringing the toy back is not his best thing. So we needed to take time out from our 2×2 training to work on retrieving. AUGGGGHHH! Bad trainer mom… he probably should have known this already. But whatever, I digress. He’s not doing too badly, but it did put us a bit behind schedule.
We’re still working on the perfect retrieve, but in the mean time I started using a stuffed toy that has Velcro on the belly, so you can put treats in it. So now I throw the toy on the “reward line” and then we both run to it, and I open it and give him his treat. I think that’s still acceptable for rewarding him.
We’ll be here - working on our 2 x 2 method, along with about a million other things. If you’re into agility at all, you may want to check out Susan Garrett’s new DVD, or even scope out her blog. She has lots of great agility video on it.
Tags: Agility, Susan Garrett, weave poles
