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The basic stride cavaletti provides your dog with essential gait training, balance, body awareness and strength.
Gait Training Tips
Cavalettis improve body awareness, balance, strength, range of motion, stride length and flexibility (depending on the set up) all at the same time. Cavaletti exercises are low impact, which means they are low risk and easy on joints.
Body awareness: The dog has to place their paws between the rails as they trot over them. They HAVE to know where their paws are in relation to the rails to do this.
Balance: The dog shifts their weight to balance as they lift up their paws to go over the rails.
Strength: Weight shifting is a strength training exercise. The dog is bearing weight on limbs on the ground, while the other two limbs are in suspension.
Range of motion: The dog has to put paws between poles. We place the distance of the poles equal to the dog's stride length in a trot. This trains the dog proper reach and drive as their front and rear leg swings back and forth.
Coordination: The dog has to time their foot placement and spacing correctly while lifting their paws off the ground.
Brain power: the dog can't just jump and be crazy as they go through the poles. These exercises and set ups require the dog to think about where their body is in time and space.
The video below is a tutorial for the Basic Stride Cavaletti, which is the most popular. It's also the foundation for more advanced set ups.
How to set up the basic stride cavaletti:
Measure your dog. We need to know how far apart and how tall to put our poles. Place your dog in a square stand and measure from the back of the front paw to the top of the shoulder, or the height at the withers (the blue line in the photo). That's how far apart you put your fun poles. Measure your dog's height of the ankle joint (orange line). Divide by 2. That's how tall you'll set your poles. Placing the poles in the lowest cut out on your cones is usually the right height for medium and large breeds. There's a tip below for small and toy dogs.
You can watch this short video for more info about how to measure your dog for cavalettis.
Pick your workout area. Make sure your ground is level. I like to use tennis courts for cavalettis. This is one exercise we don't add elevation to make things more challenging. We adjust the spacing and height of the poles instead. There's more on that later.
Set up your poles. Set your poles in a straight line. For the basic stride set up, the distance between poles equals the height at the withers and the height of your poles is 1/2 height of the hock (the orange line in the top photo).
Warm up your dog. Let them go potty, followed by a short walk to trot, then 5 reps of sit, stand, down. You can do some left and right spins to break up your reps if you want.
Run your dog over the poles. Reward your dog for correct foot placement and speed at the end.
Here's Nike showing you what this looks like:
Video at least 25% of your cavaletti training sessions with your dog. This lets you see your dog's movement in slow motion, which is fascinating. It also lets you see any changes in your dog's movement, so you can see when your dog is making progress or if they need to see a vet.
Training your dog for cavalettis:
If your dog has never played a cavaletti set up before, we need to teach them the game. Spend a few minutes teaching your dog the "rules". This goes very quickly. Your dog should understand how to play the game after 1 or 2 sessions that are 5 minutes or less.
Set up your poles.
Place 3-4 small treats between the 1st and 2nd pole, and lots of treats between the 4th and 5th pole. These are the poles your dog is likely to skip when they first learn. The extra treats should slow them down. Place one treat between the poles in the middle.
Reward your dog about 2 stride lengths after the last pole.
Start fading the treats between the poles, leaving 3-4 small treats between the 1st and 2nd and 4th and 5th poles. Continue rewarding the dog 2 stride lengths after the last pole.
Place 1-2 small treats between the 1st and 2nd and 4th and 5th poles. Continue rewarding the dog 2 stride lengths after the last pole.
Reward the dog 2 stride lengths after the last pole.
You can watch this tutorial of the Breadcrumb Method listed above:
Besides just being fun, cavalettis have tons of other benefits for our sport dogs!
Conformation dogs: teaches a proper trot in the breed ring. If you have a conformation show dog, they need cavaletti training, at least once a week. Twice is better if you have the time.
Obedience dogs: enforces body awareness and foot placement in heel. Heeling is a very complicated behavior and cavaletti training does wonders for an obedience and rally dog's awareness of their paws.
Scentwork/tracking dogs: yep. Scentwork and tracking dogs NEED body awareness, strength and balance to navigate search areas on uneven terrain.
Agility: this is more obvious. Agility dogs who know how to balance and have good body awareness are more likely to have a good dogwalk performance and hit contact zones on dogwalk, A-frame and teeter. If your dog struggles with contacts, I recommend adding a couple cavaletti training days to your training routine.
FastCAT: I like an extension cavaletti for maximum reach and drive for our fastCAT dogs.
Small and Toy dogs: small dogs can do cavelettis too! Replace the PVC pole with a wood dowel rod from the craft store to decrease the diameter. Lay the cone on its side and use the top hole to decrease height of the pole.
Senior dogs: senior dogs lose balance, body awareness, strength, range of motion, flexibility and mental capacity as they age. Remember the benefits of cavaletti training? It checks all the boxes with ONE exercise. Cavalettis are great for senior dogs. I highly recommend the basic stride cavaletti, the weave and the cone spin, box or figure 8 set ups for seniors.
Puppies: starting at 6 months, it's safe to start introducing your puppy to cavalettis. This is about the age where we can start adding strength training exercises to a puppy's fitness plan. Make sure to watch your time and don't overwork your puppy. You can play fun poles with your puppy for 2-5 minutes 3 times a week. Set up your poles on the ground if possible.
Use a high rate of reinforcement with your puppy to build confidence, forward drive and train body awareness. Even if your puppy's foot placement is not perfect, reward your puppy for trying and for moving forward through the set up. We're thinking about building confidence and body awareness here, not strength.
Other Cavaletti Set Ups:
There're tons of variations you can do with cavalettis. The dog should ALWAYS trot through the poles, with independent forward drive, unless the set up says otherwise. Read on for more set ups.
Before trying any of these, make sure your dog is proficient with the basic stride cavaletti. To do the setups below safely and efficiently, your dog should have independent forward drive and correct foot placement 85% of the time when running the basic set up. Once your dog can do that, you can try some of the others.
Check with your vet first to make sure your dog is sound and has no restrictions for a canine fitness plan.
Arc: (Advanced) You can put your poles in a semi-circle, or arc, so your dog has to bend their torso a little bit to trot through. This changes the balance challenge, because we add a curve it changes how the dog balances and weight shifts as they trot through the poles.
When you measure this out, start with the pole in the middle. See where the black connector is in the middle of each pole? The distance between those connectors is the height of your dog at the withers. We want the dog to trot through the middle of the poles, over that connector.
For more info about the benefits of this exercise, please watch the video below:
Collection: (Advanced) You can move your poles 1-2" closer together and raise your poles so they are as tall as your dog's ankle, (the orange line in the top photo) so your dog has to lift their paws higher off the ground.
This set up improves flexion and builds muscle in the dog's hips and shoulders. It's really good for building muscle around your dog's knees and preventing CCL tear (cranial cruciate ligament, the canine equivalent of our ACL). It also increases the weight shift challenge, since the dog's limbs are off the ground for more time compared to other set ups. For most medium and large breeds, placing the pole in the middle cut out is a good height.
*Be careful with this one. Doing it wrong can cause your dog to tilt their pelvis and lower back too much and cause lower back pain and tightness.
Collection Walk: Use 4 poles, set your distance equal to your dog's point of the shoulder (green line in top photo) and at ankle height (orange line in top photo). The point of the shoulder is your dog's stride length in a walk. Ask your dog to walk through the poles. The walk is a 4 beat gait, so we only use 4 poles for it. This variant is done at a walk, not a trot.
For more info about the benefits of this exercise, please watch the video below:
Extension: (Advanced) You can increase the distance of the poles by 1-2" so your dog has to stretch out more to meet criteria. Dog's can't flex and extend a joint at the same time. Leave your poles as low to the ground as possible.
This really increases your dog's range of motion (reach and drive for my conformation handlers) in the hips and shoulders, because they have to stretch to put their paws between the poles. This set up increases the balance challenge, since the dog's center of gravity is a little different. This is also great for agility, fastCAT, dock diving and flyball dogs who work and play in extension.
For more info about the benefits of this exercise, please watch the video below:
Weave: (Adds flexibility) You can place your poles in a straight line and ask your dog to weave in and out through the cones. You can use right and left directional cues, a hand touch or a nose target, depending on your dog. Your dog is not trotting through this set up. This adds some flexibility because we're turning around the cones. Your dog still has to think about where his paws are because we're still asking them to step over a pole.
Try to keep your lure or hand target at the level of your dog's nose so the muzzle stays level. This way the dog gets benefits of weight shifting from the exercise and not from reward placement. This keeps them balanced and prevents weight shifting to the front or rear.
This is one of my favorite set ups for senior dogs.
For more info about the benefits of this exercise, please watch the video below:
Cone Spin, Box/Figure 8 Cavaletti: (Adds more flexibility for tighter turns) Lure your dog around a cone with cavaletti poles around it. Or place your poles in a square and lure your dog around the cones.
This is similar to the Cavaletti weave exercise, except we're adding more flexibility by asking for a tighter turn. Try to keep your lure or hand target at the level of your dog's nose so the muzzle stays level. This way the dog gets benefits of weight shifting from the exercise and not from reward placement. This keeps them balanced and prevents weight shifting to the front or rear.
Don't have room for a full box set up in your living room? Use one cone and put a pole coming out of each side. Ask your dog to spin around the cone. (Do the same amount of spins in both directions, keep muzzle level)
For more info about the benefits of this exercise, please watch the video below:
Cavalettis are great exercises for all dogs. Sport dogs and senior dogs especially reap all the benefits from cavaletti workouts.
For all the cavaletti setups, please see the Paragon Pups Cavaletti Chronicles worksheet:
Are you still wanting more? Enroll in our Cavaletti Chronicles Short Course!
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Detailed instructions to set up the cavaletti poles
Detailed explanation for the purpose of each exercise
Troubleshooting tips if your dog makes a mistake
Signs of fatigue
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Note: My hound and collie are senior dogs with hip dysplasia and arthritis. Set ups they show were cleared by our rehab vet.
My cattle dog has no exercise restrictions.
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