Heeling Towards a Championship

If you're interested in the higher levels of competition obedience, heelwork needs to be smart and precise.

It is just as easy to train your dog to heel well as it is to train them to lag or heel wide - so why not aim for perfection to begin with? .

For starters, WunderDogs don't wear a collar and lead to learn to heel because we don't use corrections - I can't "correct" something that my dog hasn't yet learned. So I start by teaching my dogs to sit close and square at heel. When they can do that, i move a little and ask them to come up close to me again - back into heel position. When they can do that reliably sideways and through 90 degrees clockwise and anti-clockwise, i ask them to take it around through 360 degrees in both directions. When they can do that and wag their tails at the same time, they're ready to starting working on some straight lines - both backwards and forwards.

When I teach heelwork starting from the static heel position, I don't have to teach an "automatic sit" because it is already there - the dog learns that heel means "sit square by my side unless i'm moving, in which case i want you to move square alongside me and resume heel position when i stop". So i teach heel as a backchained exercise.

The bottom line for heelwork with my dogs is - it must be FUN. I like to see my dogs animated and having a good time when they work - i'm not interested in producing another sad robotic obedience dog with flattened ears and a low-slung tail. In the ring, a wagging tail and a cheeky grin from my dog assures me that regardless of what the judge says about us, we're having a good time and that is the most important thing.

Working With Distractions

Today's exercises were directed jumping and some heelwork. Ieper gets very excited at the dog club when she sees other dogs and it is hard for her to concentrate. She pulls and wants to go talk to the other dogs. If she's off lead she wants to chase and play with them. It can be frustrating and embarrassing trying to get her back to me and paying attention. When she finds a dog to play with she is fast and furious in pursuit and her playmates need to be robust to withstand her herding and roughhousing - she's not nasty or mean in her play, she's just strong and boisterous, full of life.

Last week in obedience class, after doing a perfect recall, she wanted to run off and play chasings with a Cocker Spaniel. She started with a lovely play-bow, then herded the poor Cocker, shouldered it into the ground, tipped it on its back and left it screaming in fright. Wimps need not apply to play with my puppy - sorry - she's not aggressive or a thug but, like most Bouviers, she's not a dog for the faint of heart.

I'm not sure why she gets so excited by other dogs at the dog club when she manages to stay quite self-contained at dog shows - there are many more dogs at dog shows.

But this makes the dog club a good place to practice paying attention and working through distractions. It helps, too, that there is a mob of hereford cattle in a paddock at the end of the working ring - they are interesting for a young working dog - another good distraction.

At home in our training yard we have no distractions - so her work is wonderful and focused. How many times do you hear someone lamenting "but my dog does it perfectly at home"................

Today we had cattle at one end of our working area and two small dogs playing in the adjacent paddock. Excellent distractions!

We started with sendaways and directed jumping - eepie was watching the small dogs playing in the next paddock and i had my work cut out to get her attention back onto the job which was simply to go out to the box and sit - and then to watch me for the signal to jump either bar or solid on the way back to me.

I stayed calm even though i was nervous about letting her off lead. I didn't want her to run away and scamper up and down the fence line and rehearse "bad behaviour". It is important to learn to trust your dog - to expect the correct behaviour and set the dog up to succeed rather than fail. I have been training her to Watch Me - so i asked her to Watch as we headed out to face the box. And because she was so interested in the dogs playing next door, i shortened the distance to the box to make it easier for her to succeed at the sendaway. Once she was in the box i walked backwards to the full distance before asking her for the jumps. When she was in the air over a jump i added the command "Here" so that she would look at me and not be tempted to take off and run to the fence to investigate the dogs-next-door. When that worked i could praise her for getting it right. Little by little i will be able to remove these "props" and she'll be working happily with other stuff going on in the background. It is important to build her confidence and mine by rehearsing successes.

The extra work on my part meant she did well with a high level of distraction - i was surprised - and i reflected that her beginners Agility class is probably also helping her to handle the pressure of working to me and paying attention to me when there are a lot of interesting happy chaseable dogs close by.