How to Teach a Guinea Pig to Weave Walk

Weave walk is a really cool trick and one of my favorite guinea pig tricks to teach. 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 often takes a bit more time to teach than other tricks.

It’s much easier to teach this trick if your guinea pig is pretty tame and comfortable around you first. They will learn much faster if they’re not nervous about 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, keep reading to learn how to teach this cool trick!

Special Note

Be extra careful where you’re walking when teaching this trick. Take very slow steps, and shuffle your feet as you walk. Since guinea pigs are so small and delicate, they can be seriously harmed if you accidentally kick or step on them. Keep your eye on them at all times and be very cautious about where you step.

How Long Does it Take to Teach Your Guinea Pig to Weave Walk?

This trick is simple to teach, but it often takes some time for the guinea pig to learn and remember it completely. Patience and repetition are the names of the game! Generally, most guinea pigs can learn this trick in a couple of weeks, though.

If your guinea pig is nervous about you walking around them at first, it will take some extra time to get them used to this first. Take slow, deliberate steps and reward your guinea pig frequently for approaching you or staying close.

What You Need for Training

Peach nibbling on a bell pepper.

To teach your guinea pig to weave through your legs, all you’ll need is your guinea pig, some of their favorite veggie treats, and a safe enclosed space that is free from distractions.

Choose vegetables that are low in calcium and well-loved by your guinea pig. My piggies love green leaf or romaine lettuce, cucumber, radicchio, bell peppers, and carrots the most.

Once you have some favorite treats, break them up into small pieces to use for training.

You’ll also want a quiet environment to train your guinea pig. Choose a space that is familiar to your guinea pig. A room that you use for your guinea pig’s floor time is usually a great option. It’s a good idea to block off a smaller area of the room, so there are fewer distractions. If you have multiple guinea pigs, it’s a good idea to separate one at a time for short training sessions.

You can do both of these things with a foldable exercise pen. Personally, I love to buy a pack of wire grids and zip-tie them together to make a pen in the exact size I want. The wire grids also fold like an accordion for storage, as long as you don’t zip-tie them too tightly!

It can also help to have a waterproof floor mat to protect your floor or carpet from messes while your piggies are running around. My favorites are these waterproof splat mats made for kids. They are washable, easy to sweep clean and do a great job of preventing any pee from seeping through.

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

The following is a video demonstration with my guinea pig Ace, showing the steps to take to teach your guinea pig to weave through your legs. You can find the rest of the tutorial by scrolling down below.

How to Teach Your Guinea Pig to Weave Walk – Step by Step

Follow along with these steps to teach your guinea pig to weave through your legs as you walk. Remember to reward frequently and progress at your guinea pig’s pace.

If you have a confident guinea pig, they may move through these steps more quickly than a guinea pig who is shy and reserved. Take as much time as you need on each step, and don’t hesitate to go back a step if your guinea pig gets confused or off track.

1. Get Your Guinea Pig Used to Walking Around Your Feet

Take some time to get the guinea pig comfortable with you standing up and with them moving around your feet. You can start off by sitting on a chair or bed and dropping pieces of food around your feet. Also, bend down and offer food from your hand whenever they approach you.

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

2. Lure the Guinea Pig Through One Step and Reward

Lure the guinea pig into a starting position at your side and give them a small treat. 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.

3. Add a Second Step

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.

4. Gradually Increase the Number of Steps

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

If you’ve been taking larger exaggerated steps up until this point, you can gradually start making your steps a bit smaller as well.

Teaching an Extra Twist

You can also teach your guinea pig to weave through your legs while you walk backward. You can teach this in a similar way to the regular weave walking. Guinea pigs usually pick up on this quickly once they’ve mastered the forwards steps.

How to Teach Backwards Weaving

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

Gradually use the lure less and less each time until the guinea pig can do the backward steps altogether without a lure.

Once they can confidently weave walk in the backward direction without a lure, try putting the frontwards and backward weave walk together into one long trick. When you are putting the frontwards and backward 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!

Hesitation Between Steps

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 keep going with less hesitation by choosing the best times to reward them.

Have your guinea pig do the weave walk pattern and pay attention to the times when they 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 behavior and start weaving much more fluently.

Additional Tips For Teaching This Trick

  • Make sure your guinea pig is tame and comfortable around you before starting on this trick. If your guinea pig is nervous of you standing and moving around them, it will really slow down your progress 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.”

If Your Guinea Pig Isn’t Getting it

If your guinea pig is really hesitant to walk around your legs, take some time to walk around a little and feed some treats to your guinea pig. Teach them that walking around isn’t that scary after all. If they are not comfortable with you walking around at all, you may need to spend time standing near them and feeding some treats without moving. Take your time and go at your guinea pig’s pace.

You may also want to try teaching your guinea pig to follow you before teaching weave walk. Following you is a bit easier and still helps you to build up your guinea pig’s confidence around your feet.

What’s Next?

I hope you found this tutorial helpful! Trick training is so much fun, and it’s also a great source of exercise and mental stimulation for guinea pigs. After you’ve taught this trick, you may be looking for more inspiration and awesome trick ideas to teach next. If so, check out this article on 7 coolest tricks you can teach your guinea pig.