PVC agility weave poles course

Posted by dogblog

Posted: June 19, 2009 - 3:58 pm

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PVC weave course
PVC weave closeup

They had these weave poles set up in a practice area at the NADAC agility trial last weekend, and I thought it was ingenious. I was looking for a traveling weave course, and this is it.

My first thought was that the brackets at each pole would be distracting, but Eddie raced right through it first try. And the way the legs are positioned in alternating fashion seems to encourage him to go the right direction at the start.

I'd be interested in the opinion of some of the agility gurus who stop by. Liz? Robyn? For a simple backyard course, would this be helpful? Would it lead to any bad habits I'm not seeing?

I built one in about an hour, and that included cutting the poles to length. And I'm a typist, not a builder. Here are some tips:

* Each of the six brackets is made up of two T's, two elbows and three spacers (a small piece of PVC to connect a T to an elbow, etc.

* NADAC guidelines for distance between poles is 20 to 24 inches. Another course I have at home is 20", so I just went with that. I'm not sure of AKC standards.

* Pole height is supposed to be 41 to 48" in NADAC, but for a practice course for a Yorkie, I just made everything 20". I found that if I cut the poles to 20", the space between weaves would still be exactly 20" once the T's and elbows were added.

* I'm going to use some PVC glue on each of the brackets for more stability, but I'll leave the poles loose so the course can be taken down and packed away.

NADAC has some other guidelines that I didn't worry about, but if you're curious:
* The base of the weave poles shall be no more than 3/4" in height and no more than 2" in width
*The width of the poles shall be 3/4" to 1" in diameter.

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