How to Teach a Guinea Pig to Weave Walk

Weave walk is a really cool trick and one of my favorite guinea pig tricks. It involves the guinea pig weaving around your legs as you walk. It is a lot of fun once your guinea pig has mastered it, but it sometimes takes a bit more time than other tricks.

First of all, I highly recommend that your guinea pig be significantly tame and comfortable around you before attempting this trick. They will learn much faster if they're not nervous of you moving around and above them. If you think your guinea pig still needs a bit of work, check out the Taming & Bonding page for some tips. Otherwise, read on to get started with this fun and quirky trick!

How to Teach a Guinea Pig to Weave Walk (Video Tutorial)

For this trick, you will need....

Step 1

Take some time to get the guinea pig comfortable around your feet.

Start off by sitting on a chair or bed and dropping pieces of food around your feet.

Also offer food whenever they approach on their own.

Repeat the same things while standing up. Also practice luring the guinea pig around your feet with a piece of food.

Step 2

Lure the guinea pig into a starting position at your side and reward.

Take one big step forward and lure the guinea pig through with a treat.

Go back to the beginning and practice several times.

Gradually use the lure less and less each time, until the guinea pig will go through the first step on their own.

Step 3



Start from the beginning again. Let them go through the first step on their own and reward, then take another step and lure them through the second step.

Keep practicing this (using the lure only as needed) until they will go through both steps without any prompting.

Step 4





Keep adding one step at a time until the guinea pig can go through three, four, five, etc. steps all together.

Step 5





Gradually start making your steps a bit smaller, using the lure only when needed as a reminder.

Optional: Teaching an Extra Twist

You can also teach your guinea pig to weave through your legs while you walk backwards. You can teach this in a similar way to the regular weave walking. The guinea pig should be able to pick up on this new twist fairly easily.

How to Teach Backwards Steps





Start by luring and rewarding after every backwards step at first.




Gradually use the lure less and less each time until the guinea pig can do the backwards steps all together without a lure.
Once they can confidently weave walk in the backwards direction without a lure, try putting the frontwards and backwards weave walk together into one long trick. When you are putting the frontwards and backwards weaving together, use the lure at first (as needed) to encourage the guinea pig to keep going. Practice until they can do the whole trick without hesitation.

Completed Trick!

Speeding Up

When your guinea pig first learns this trick, you may notice they like to slow down or pause each time you take a step. You can encourage them to speed up by reinforcing them selectively. In other words, choose the best times to reward them. Have your guinea pig do the weave walk pattern and pay attention to when your guinea pig happens to go through a little faster or without pausing. Reward them whenever they do this. If you repeat this several times, your piggy should limit their pausing behaviour and become much faster at completing this trick.

Additional Tips For Teaching This Trick

  • Make sure your guinea pig is sufficiently tame and comfortable around you before starting on this trick. Cutting corners can really slow you down with training, particularly with this trick.

  • If the guinea pig is going through some steps and not others, try to anticipate what they're going to do and encourage them to go through before they miss the step. Give them an extra treat when they get through their "sticky spots."