Teaching the focused healing.... - Page 2

She is out of wendelin farm

Navar Hronovsky Pramen X ora ze stribrneho kamene 

my suggestion is for focusing period....I use no food when teaching focused heeling....the focus is already there before movement is entered into the equation:-) I need no food after that...

I agree with the above.  I  build the focus with a puppy while they are young and worship me (and food!).  Once we teach heeling, focus and position are natural.  My dog basically went from nothing to BH routine heeling in about a week once I decided to start heeling.  With the puppy I train focus in front and basic position, rear-end awareness on a perch, and use a food lure with the puppy pressing up into my hand to train the dog to keep his body straight (rather than wrapping or crapping) and "collect" his rear.  Then when he is old enough and has a good foundation, I switch to a prong and do a few sessions using some corrections to train the dog where I want him, but by then the drive has matured in the dog and the focus is already there so the heeling comes very easy.

9 weeks


3 months


4 months


5 months


12 months, one of the first sessions "real" heeling (as you can see he needed some more work with tight left turns, didn't help that one of my helpers was doing the video and the dog looked at him a few times).



Note - the method will also depend on what style of heeling you want.  I just want a nice, fairly tight, focused heel with NO forging!  I hate forging.  To me most heeling I see in SchH is forging.  I am more picky than SchH I admit.  Also while I do use toys for training I do not want an absolute neurotic nut of a dog that would jump off a cliff for a ball.  No problems with that sort of drive I just don't encourage it to that extent.  For the focus, I don't want the dog staring at my armpit or doing a really exaggerated prance.

wow lovely video's!! Thanks so much for sharing :-)

No problem!  I should probably add while I do SchH and a half dozen other dog sports I'm no top level competitor, this is just how I find works for me and the type of dog I like to train.  There are as many ways to train it as there are end results.

Just now saw them, thanks for sharing the pictures.......:)

VKGSDs,
Those videos are awesome and a super nice dog, good luck with him.  Your skill, hard work and dedication really show.

Jim

Excuse my ignorance, but what is 'forging'?

Forging is when the dog is too far forward, lagging is when the dog is too far behind.  I like the dog's shoulder at my hip.  In SchH lots of dogs heel so that the handler's body is more even with the center of the dog, not the shoulder, and when these dogs are really well trained as far as turns/pivots, it doesn't matter.  "Crabbing" is when the dog heels in a crooked position (like how a crab moves sideways...I don't know if that's where the term comes from but that's what I think of) and "wrapping" often happens when the dog is forging a bit, crabbing, and turning his head in such a way that he "wraps" the handler and looks unnatural (like the handler is kneeing the dog to move forward), also known as "crowding".  My other dog, not the one shown in the videos, sometimes wraps.  It's really annoying!  That is why with the young dog in the videos, I'm being much more particular about keeping him back in position.  He has a really low threshold for prey drive, so if/when want I can add more drive and flash to his obedience, but when he gets that way he tends to lose his mind and not really think, so I am being careful to work him pretty low key for now and make sure he has a good foundation for the position.  Just last night we went back to doing more perchwork and lateral heeling in the basement, hoping to really tighten his left turns over the winter.

Jim, thank you for the compliments!  I've always enjoyed and respected your posts on here so that means a lot to me as a SchH novice!

VKGSD's,
 You are very talented and far from being a novice.  Excellent posts.

Jim