Thinking about weave pole training? Whether you're troubleshooting a problem or beginning to teach weaves to a new dog, in this episode we dive into Nancy's thoughts on how to approach things... and where so many teams seem to go wrong.

 Transcription

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Nancy Little about building a strong weave pole behavior. Hi Nancy, welcome back to the podcast.

Nancy Little: Hi there Melissa. Excited to chit chat about this a little bit today.

Melissa Breau: This will be fun to start us out. You want to just remind everybody a little bit kind of about who you are.

Nancy Little: Absolutely. Nancy Little I live in Minnesota and I have currently four dogs. We have five here. My husband has a toller and we have cats as well. Lever is 12, 12 and a half and he's retired from pretty much everything except he doesn't know he's retired and poses his daughter.

They're both border collies and she's seven years old which shakes me up a little bit. Differ. My little tiny 8 pound dog is 5 years old and my young border collie is 20 months old and I am a full time FDSA instructor and I can't believe I've been doing it for, for this long, but since 2014, is that when the school opened? It's like, wow. It's like time flies by.

My main emphasis or love is training and agility. I used to do a lot of obedience. I was obedience judge and love. I still love training obedience. I still train obedience, I still coach obedience students. I will always train obedience just because I love that precision and building the enthusiasm into it. So I do that. I just don't compete as much anymore. But my love is agility. That is usually a winter like fall, winter, early spring sport of mine.

And in the summer I do a lot of herding. I still train agility and with my young dog Vici, I'm really working on, I'm continuing to work agility with her because I need to get her ready for the ring. And that's how this class has come about is just my thoughts on training her. And because we have winters here, you know, there's not a lot of opportunity to train weaves except at the I also teach at a really nice local training facility on the run and so I had a lot of time to like think about it, experiment, try a little bit here and there.

There's not a lot of opportunity to do a lot of training. So. So that's kind of how this class came about through Vici and lots of thought.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. So as you kind of alluded to and I mentioned in the intro we wanted to talk about weave pole training. So let's start with why is it that so many teams kind of struggle with building like a really consistent, reliable weave pole behavior?

Nancy Little: Yes, really good question. It's been on my mind for like years, even before, like Vici, long before Vici is. I'm always kind of looking at what's going on in the industry, what's going on out there, just kind of being open and watching things. And then it's also like my dogs as well as, you know, as students and what's out there. But the top competitor, if you watch some of the top competitors, even, even the ones that aren't doing worlds, just really good trainers locally or nationally, their weave pole performance is amazing with their dogs.

They can do it, they can send them and go. And it's, I mean, it's gotten better and better. However, like the average competitor is struggling with the same problems they always have struggled with. And I just don't see that their training has improved. Has, but not, not as much as I think it could. And so been kind of wrestling with why this happens and what's going on before, you know, trying to figure out how to solve that problem.

One is just noticing that, you know, the way people train, they, they train basically, you know, the easy entries, you know, just giving the dog easy, the easiest ones. And then they build from that, they shape it, they help their dogs, you know, they're always there. And to create weave entries or weave behavior, it's. The training is mostly focused on building up the 12 poles. 12 poles are what's required for agility competition.

And in AKC Novice they start with six. But that is the goal for most trainers is build that those 12 poles. And there's no thought in what's going on into that from the start. There's no distractions because the focus is getting those. Because there's so many failures if they provide, if they, if anything happens, they can't build those 12 poles. And then what happens is there's cues by the handler.

You know, just basically the, the dog starts becoming familiar with where the handler is and they can't do it when the handler is in a different place. There's also lots of lack of focus by the dogs. There's focus issues. The dogs have to be really focused to be able to do weave pulls. If there's a split second of them thinking other thoughts, there's going to be a mistake somewhere.

Also kind of just the way I'm watching competition and people training weaves, there's far too many mistakes and assumptions that the dogs do understand when they withhold reinforcement. So the dogs make a lot of errors. There's lots of handling errors, there's lots of reinforcement issues. And then ultimately, this isn't one that I really thought of until much later is I hear so many people that don't even like to train weaves, and that's going to impact weave training if you don't enjoy it.

Melissa Breau: So there's a lot going on with weaves. I mean, it certainly sounds that way. If. If somebody feels like they had a good weave performance so they've. They've kind of gone through things and they thought things are pretty solid, and then they started trialing or started, you know, competing, and things start falling apart. Is that part of that same problem? Is there a different problem there? What are we talking about? Can you kind of dig into what might cause that situation?

Nancy Little: Sure. So basically what happens? And yeah, it's all goes back to what I just talked about with the struggles. But what happens? You know, it's like now we're talking about kind of the effects of all of this where, you know, previously we were kind of talking about the causes and. And we just.

A lot of times we don't really know exactly what's caused it, but we can see the effects really easily. And one is like, the dogs start getting a little slower. You know, some dogs, that's going to be their response. That's going to be the way their mind works, is they have to slow down to process it, and they become really so. And thinky. I call it thinky, in that, you know, it's not a bad thing.

But we have to also get these dogs to understand how to speed up or, you know, to use their speed to be successful at speed. There's also stress issues that are happening because of the slow. The slow is a lack of confidence and could be caused by stress. Then we get. We get pop outs. So dogs that don't complete the weaves, that's another effect. And that's going to be caused by a few different things.

One would be lack of focus. Maybe the. The dog's just not focused. Right. And that can happen with the best dogs. I mean, that's going to happen occasionally anyway because we're just, you know, we're all individuals, and something's going to happen to catch our attention. And some of the best dogs in the world are gonna have an issue occasionally where a thought pops in or something catches their focus.

And that's gonna get them a mistake, a pop out. But in general, like handler movement can cause it. Dogs that like to scope ahead and they, they're thinking about the next thing that can cause a pop out. Just confidence issues and just mentally having to work really hard. Not so much physically, but mentally. This is a very much. It is a physical obstacle where they really have to be able to use their body.

So they've got to be in good condition too. And that's one thing I haven't talked about that I'm just assuming is that these dogs are already in good condition. There's no injuries because that's going to be a totally different issue. But skip cold pop outs can be also caused by reinforcement issue. So they're expecting reinforce a reinforcer and, and that causes them to just lose their focus on the task.

The other one is skipped poles. Poles. You know, the dog is just weaving and then all of a sudden can't navigate their body correctly and they miss a pole or maybe two. Sometimes they end up exiting correctly but they've skipped a couple poles. And usually that's just a dog that can't, they can't move their body correctly. They can't control their body at the speed they're going. And that's really, really normal for dogs.

They've got to learn to really self regulate their body or their mind to be able to prepare their body to do the work. So entries we talked about that previously with handler too much help. Again, the entry issues where they can't make the ent at the angle they're coming from or at the speed they're coming from, that can be caused by them not being able to control their body at speed.

It also can be lack of understanding. They just haven't been presented with that angle before. And then of course you get the dogs that run by. I've had dogs like that. A lot of that is just caused by confidence or stress. I know my retired dog lever, whenever he would get a bit stressed, like maybe the speed was too much for him and he knew he couldn't control it, he would not try.

Which, you know, Pose will. If she's coming at the weaves and it surprises her, she will just rack her body to try to get into it, which is not a good thing either. So, so that can be just stress, it can be confidence, it could be just a mistake, just they misjudged, you know, and they couldn't get their mind self regulated enough to prepare their body to get in.

Or it could just be a dog that just quit trying because maybe there's too many mistakes. So we don't really know. But those are like the major problems that I see that pop out for people that have started trialing or even this can start in classes. Generally, people have a lot of success at home and. And they're not seeing the issues there because it's too easy or they're not understanding what's actually causing these issues out and about.

Melissa Breau: I know there are lots of different methods out there for kind of teaching weave poles. What method are you using right now? How or why have you kind of landed there first?

Nancy Little: I want to mention too, that everybody uses different techniques, methods, procedures, mixes of it. And I do the same thing as I all kind of like depending on, like, I always start with two by twos. Now I've kind of landed on that.

I really like it. I like the soft approach to the weave entries that my dogs get. That doesn't mean that the people that start on channels or other methods are not. I mean, it works for them. They have the same performances, so they have a good insight to how it's done and the progression. So I just want to emphasize that there's no right or wrong way. And actually some dogs can really do well on other, you know, methodologies.

So what works, I just. This is just working for me, and I've always kind of built off of it is Susan Garrett's two by two method that she put out long, long ago. Just brilliant, brilliant method. And there's plenty of people that have taken that and kind of, you know, just tweaked it a bit, because there's lots of ways you can change it to make it work for you.

So that's kind of been my go to is I've always used that. But what I have done is I've started to experiment with it a little bit more. I'm always trying to improve it. Over the years, I've tried to put more movement into it. And the. The I'm trying, you know, based on my dogs and what I see happening out there, I just keep trying to improve. I know we're kind of getting in.

I'm kind of. What I'm hesitating about is, I know it's just kind of bleeding into your next question. So I think, okay, go for it there now. Yeah, sure. You know. Oh, one. One thing too, I want to mention is over the years, too, I've kind of had my own little drills that I've used later on, you know, but not at the beginning. I've. I've always kind of used them.

Okay, we have an issue here. Let's. Let's use this. I have some really fun co drills that I use with weaves, and now I'm. I just started earlier with them. And, and especially in this class, I've really pulled some of those drills into this, and they're really fun, especially when you have a new dog. And. And so I've kind of pulled that in. And I know your next question is, what have I done to tweak it? So I'll just go there.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, let's talk about what you've done to tweak the two by two method.

Nancy Little: Yeah, so what I've done is just based on what I'm seeing and some of the things out there for trainers that are struggling and maybe they don't even know why. So I'm trying to put more movement in and out of the weaves. And the movement actually serves many purposes for teaching weaves.

It gets the dog learning how to use their speed better. And it's also more fun for the dogs. So I'm reducing mistakes, which I think was. That was my issue too, is I felt I had too many mistakes with my dogs. They overcame it because I would notice it maybe earlier than others and deal with it then. But I think other people assume their dogs understand more than they do when the dog is really screaming that they don't understand.

And then you get all these avoidance behavior. So I'm really reducing the mistakes that can happen. And the way I'm doing that is allowing the dogs to really understand more what we're asking them and how to use their body. The other thing I'm doing a lot different now is really emphasizing focus forward for the dogs. Not so much the, the physical focus forward that people work on with jumps is just those thoughts in the dog's head about continuing on.

You see their head check a little bit when there is a question. But that. That's just for us to recognize. What I really want them to. What I want to do is really instill that behavior of, you know, just kind of keep. You keep on task, keep doing what you're doing and, and deal with the thoughts that are coming back to the handler. So that's what.

The other thing I'm adding really early on, and then commitment. A lot of people don't work on commitment. They have to help their dogs where they're going. And I'm working on that right from the start, whether it's a little dog like Differ. People don't work on that with little dogs because they. It's too easy just to take their little dogs there. It's way better for the dog to understand how to go without help, and that's going to help the weaves as well.

So we start that right at the start and continue to work that through. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I really want people to work on that because that's what's going to help them with weaves. Also, I introduce a lot more distractions right from the start where we. When we can help them by. Because we're preventing a lot of mistakes early on, so I want them to see it.

And we just gradually layer more and more distractions and the dogs just learn to tune that out. And obviously every dog is going to be different with the amount that they can deal with. So we. I mean, you can't just go and do the distractions that some other dog is doing, because that might not be relevant or helpful for your dog. So then the other thing is, I have a really big different.

I have a very different approach to handling mistakes than others do based on the framework that I set up to do the wee pulls. And it's really difficult to cover here, but basically it really works on these dogs committing, focusing forward, and we're rewarding effort. So we build on that, recognize the mistakes, adjust the setup and then continue on so that these dogs are more confident. And then I, because of the way it's set up, it's much more reinforcing for the handler.

And that is a thing out there. There's so many people that just don't. How can you teach anything? Well, unless you, you know, if you don't enjoy training it, you're going to put it aside, not want to work it. So this, this, this class, this procedure, this methodology really helps the handlers enjoy training the weaves and it should make sense to them. So I think that's all. Yeah, those are quite some things.

Melissa Breau: Yes, yes. A little bit different. So you mentioned in there kind of that you do add some other pieces earlier and whatnot. So how are you deciding, like, when the dog is ready for you to raise that criteria or for things to get a little more different? How do you decide when?

Nancy Little: Okay, I need to actually go backwards and maybe make things a little bit easier. Yeah, and that's a really good question.

I do. When the dog is successful, I give them two successful attempts at this sequence that we build in for teaching weaves. And if they do it successfully twice, both directions, we move on, we make it harder. I don't sit around and if, if, and then again, if we make it harder and they have two fails and I might, depending on what I see, if I see a lot of confusion, I'll just do one fail, I'll make it easier.

It might not be going back to the last step. It might be just a minor adjustment to their speed instead of like going back a little bit further so we can take the speed out of it and then we can put it, and I put it back right away when I see that they can do it. Even if they're doing it slowly and thinky, I'll put it, I'll put the speed back in and see if they can handle it.

That's how I handle both sides. I really want to progress, but I, I want, I want handlers to really learn how to pay attention to, to the, the errors and how to adjust. And it's going to be really hugely different depending on the size of the dog and also the individual dog.

Melissa Breau: I know you said you kind of start to layer some of this stuff in a little earlier. What are, how early are we talking? What additional skills are you specifically kind of layering in, you know, and then above and beyond, you know, just trying to get them to do the full set of weaves. What do you need before you're willing to consider weave polls? Actually really ready for competition, you know, how are you, I guess, how early are we talking about introducing some of these additional pieces of difficulty and then what do you really want on board for your, like, okay, let's put this in a competition setting.

Nancy Little: Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's the question of the deck. All right, so I, every one of these things I'm going to be talking about, I build in right from the start. Right from the start. Now it might not be very easy to see, but it's there and we build on it. So I don't want every, anything to be a surprise to the dog or the handler, but we're going to continue to train these dogs to think about focusing forward.

And this isn't just like I said that it's the thought of focusing forward. So some dogs are going to be a little more handler focused. We got to work harder at getting them focused forward and, and, and not so much just the look of them, but just their mind thinking forward thoughts. Otherwise they're just not going to be successful. You're going to get pop outs all the time.

So that builds right from the start again, all of these build focus on tasks. So in other words, every dog has to learn how to do it. It's a bit of commitment really is. It's just focused on tasks. They've been given a cue. They do it. In spite of what's happening around them, they continue to do it. And that is just, that's going to give a complete set of weaves.

Because what dogs are going to do is they're kind of, they're. They're going to scope differently. They're going to. Maybe they're gonna. They might get more distracted by the handler and pull out. They might scope ahead. For some of the fast dogs, they want to scope what's ahead and they see it and that causes them to quit working. What they're doing, their mind is not on that. They, you know, there's just different responses.

So then handler position and movement, we, we do that when the dog is ready. But because you can't really start, you can start the handler position right away. Meaning where are you when the dog enters? Are you behind? Are you ahead? Are you lateral? You know, that is going to start right from the start. We're going to vary that right immediately from the start. Movement we will come to a little bit later.

That can be harder. And I think more than anything we need to like take that movement out because handlers start helping too much when they're moving. So I try to keep the handlers fairly still while the dog is navigating the poles just so that the dog is learning on their own without having to deal with handler movement. So that starts right from the start and then we just change.

And as the dog is more and more successful, we challenge them in the way that they need. Again, crosses, front crosses, blind crosses, rear crosses, rear crosses are easy to put in right from the start. The speed of the handler, that's really hard for dogs in weave. So that, that for every dog is going to be slightly different than layering different things. That again, it can be hard, harder for a little dog, you know, not so not as much challenge for a bigger dog, but still some of that.

So that will get put in a little bit later during the training, definitely before competition. And then the other thing is just sequencing in, in and out of the weaves, mostly sequencing in from different lines, different speeds. And that creates more focus, you know, self, self regulation in that in the dog's head is more, really more important than the dog learning how to move physically because that controls their physical movement.

So all of this stuff is really important. To me to get, get at least started before they get in the ring. And almost all levels of agility are ridiculously easy at first, maybe. Well, mostly AKC is very. It's like you just want to get in and out because it, the spacing is different, the number of obstacles is different. There's six poles, which is actually, I like that it's harder to see for the dog, but at least they're not weaving a lot and doing a lot of mistakes.

So. But anyway, that, those, those are right from the start and sometimes you have to start trialing to see what coals are there for them because, you know, if you're training alone, you may not know that. Oh boy, these fast entries at this angle are not, not good or wow, I'm getting pop outs. Those are things we need to know. And then I have drills to help you with those that come in the phone, you know, just at the.

During the learning part. We can pull those out. Yeah. So it can be hard, it can be tricky to know. But the main thing is, is the handler has to just move on if it's not going well and know that the training will happen at home or in class and know what to do. So. Yeah.

Melissa Breau: So a big part of why we're talking about this. You kind of mentioned at the beginning that you've got a new class.

It's going to be in the August term and specifically on weave polls and teaching weave polls. Can you share a little more about the class, kind of what you plan to cover, maybe who should be interested?

Nancy Little: Yeah. So for the, for this class, it's going to be open to the people that are. Should be interested. Are people that have dogs that need retraining. Like just say you have some stress issues.

You have, you have a new dog that, that hasn't learned weaves yet and you, you want to do things differently or you want to learn a different methodology, different way of doing it, different way to handle mistakes. That's. It's for you. If you're an instructor and you want different ideas, this be great for you. Or the retrains are really interesting too because they, they work through this, they work through the early stages pretty easily.

It's mainly for the handlers to figure out how to set it up. The important thing for retrains is just to make sure that they're not doing weaves during the retraining. So find a time that, that you don't. You're not going to be working weaves to, to do that. And then what was the Other part of the class of what I'm going to be covering, I'm going to be going.

It was kind of tricky for me to organize this because there's lots of different ways to kind of move through the knowledge and the drills and the exercises for this there. But I think I have a. A good way to do it. It. It and how I. The one thing I want to mention too, is because I was experimenting with Vici, I went down some bad paths. Not bad, but realizing that, oh, this is going to be hard to fade or this isn't going to work for the average trainer.

And so I kind of switched gears a lot. It did nothing for her except build more history, reinforcement, and desire to learn. So. So that's the cool thing about teaching anything is you can go. You can. You can, you know, figure out this is not working. And the dog shouldn't be any different. They should still be happy to try a different. They're just used to changing criteria. We're always doing that when we're training somebody something.

They don't really know what the end result is. There's never, you know, that we're always kind of changing things and they're adapting to be more efficient. This should help you and your dog understand that, you know, because you're going to go through mistakes and just kind of learning how to handle them. That should help that. Now I kind of lost track of where I was because I kind of went to.

Melissa Breau: No, I think. I think you've got it. Because I wanted to know kind of what you're covering in the class, maybe who should join you and anything else you kind of want to share about that organizing of the class.

Nancy Little: That's kind of where I went off on a tangent is it was a little bit tricky for me to figure out how to organize it. And so, you know, so I think I have a good way right now.

But I realized too, that people are going to move through it at different rates. So it might. Might. The syllabus might change a little bit, and I might kind of bring some other exercises in. Depending on which gold students get in. I might switch things around a little bit, but it's generally going to stay pretty much the same. It just might need some tweaking because it'll be the first run.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Any other, you know, kind of final thoughts or key points you want to leave folks with?

Nancy Little: I do. Like, one thing I really wanted to mention is the. The issue on speed, because what I'm finding is that in general, people really want to help their dogs. They want to help them too much and they don't know they're helping. They're trying to cheerlead them, they're trying to make them that.

Because they see their dogs slowing down to become successful. And so what they want to do is they want the dog to speed up. They want them, they, they see that slowness as a sign of confusion. That's such an important skill for these dogs to have. It's really a self regulation skill. It's not always stress. Well, training is stressful. It's just we minimize the stress. But the dogs have to learn to self regulate.

And in order to do that, sometimes they have to like with their mind. They're controlling their mind. Their body's gonna follow. We don't fix the body first. If you fix the body first, you're never gonna solve the problem. It's gonna look like you do, but you're not. So they have to kind of use their brains and figure out in their bodies, follow through. And that might mean that they're slow.

That doesn't mean you panic and say, oh my God, my dogs were always slowing the weaves. It's going to be horrible. Blah, blah, blah. We want to allow these dogs to do that. A really important thing for them. And what I see with Vici is she learned at the start to do the weaves and do it fast. It's not hugely fast. It's not like going to be what it looks eventually like in competition, but she's doing it fast.

But when she makes an error, what she does is she mentally pulls herself back and slows herself down and gets thinky and does it. But then when she goes back and does it again, it's faster already. And you don't see that when you. We interfere because we, we get the dog's mind incorrect and they can't regulate their body, they can't, they can't adjust their body. So we have to, you have to really be willing to let them learn that self regulation skill on their own.

And the same goes in terms of, I think more people panic when they slow down because they think they're going to have a slow dog or they're not going to, they're not happy, and you have to let that go. That is a huge handler issue. That, that really needs to be worked on and I'll be helping people with that. The other thing too is that the dogs can go too fast and handlers want to slow them down and we have to allow them to do that and see that it's going to cause issues.

And they will understand because we've set the, the training up so that it. It's going to be really difficult to make errors so we can adjust and then show them without having to slow them down. They will do that on their own. So that's a huge important thing for me is really having them work their brains. One thing that trainers will say is they will say that my dog doesn't know how to collect.

So they don't know how to collect. They're always missing entries because they just. And I have said for a long time that dogs that don't know how to collect are actually that dogs don't need collection to get in the weaves. If you watch some of the amazing dogs that can do them at speed, they are not necessarily collecting. I mean, maybe they will, but what they're doing is self regulating.

They understand what they're doing. They're very focused ahead, see what's in front of them, self regulate their brain and then their body follows through. They weight shift and they navigate that gap like they should. They prepare their body for it because their head is in the right space. So that is something that is really important to me is, is. Is allowing the dogs to figure it out on their own. So, yeah, so that's. That was the one thing that I felt I wanted. I needed to add.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's interesting. And I think it's interesting to think about the difference between collection and just like a mental space. Right. Like the, the different piece there. Yeah, yeah. And they. The. The main thing is, and you know, this comes from my herding training too, is like.

And I see it in agility. I see it's in every dog sport. Obedience as well is people, handlers, are they seeing what they think it should look like and they assume that the dog is doing it correctly, but the dog hasn't figured out mentally how to do it. So you've got to get them thinking on their own without us aiding them. So part of that is incorporated into the weaves.

Melissa Breau: That makes a lot of sense. I think it's really easy for us to accidentally be influencing behavior more than we think we are.

Nancy Little: Absolutely. If we're training something consistently and then we make a change and then it stops being as consistent of a behavior. We tend to go back to doing what was working just the same way our dogs do. I know. We handle panicking. Yes. Yeah.

Melissa Breau: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about this, Nancy.

Nancy Little: You're welcome.

Melissa Breau: And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available.

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by BenSound.com the track featured here is called Buddy. Audio Editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.

 Credits

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!