Ruutu Agility :)

[Justicemom]

There are a lot of opinions about this. My trainer now doesn't even start her dogs until a vet has told her that her puppy's growth plates have closed. This can vary from around 10-14 months, I believe. A vet would likely know more.

With Lexi we started when she was exactly a year old--though she did go through a few open channel weaves in class. It just didn't make sense to push her through it when we would hit a wall and have to wait.

I had Birch do wide open channel weaves during a foundation class at 6 months I think he got 4 weeks of it in class only. Just a run and chase sort of thing. We never did anything more than that. I started him in beginners at 13 months. He remembered the running though the channel immediately and pretty much had the weaves down in 4 weeks. Now always hitting the entry everytime at speed has taken longer and in fact we are still working on that.

Birch didn't grow after 9 months, he had no knuckle left. I didn't xray him which is the only way you know for sure when the growth plates are closed but I was certain he was done growing. I myself would not ask for the weaving motion before 1 yr.