I recently attended a training course given by Steve Drinkwater an Australian Agility Instructor and thought that the method he uses for teaching the weaving poles to be of interest.

Dogs should be clicker aware before training starts. You then set up three weaving poles and using food as a lure coax Fido into the first pole, round the second and out. You then Click and Treat.

He suggested you do not stick to only left hand entries but do it from both sides from the word go!

You practice and practice until the dog gets the hang of what is required and does it on his own. You should NOT use the word weave at this stage but just use the word POLES as your cue word.

When you feel confident on these three you then add a further TWO poles to the FRONT of the sequence, not the end, and continue as before, using both sides.

When you think that you have 'cracked it' then is the time to use a complete set of weaving poles, once again adding them to the front section.

The cue word can now be changed to WEAVE. Continue perfecting on both sides and from different angles.

Seems to be a sensible approach and will report again when I have positive results from dogs trying this method.

At a later date I will also report about his method of speeding dogs up when going through the weaves! Again it is clicker based.