The Many Ways Of Teaching Heel

[Leema]

There's no doubt that everyone teaches heel differently, and often with a combination of methods.

I was just wondering what way you like best?

I like to use the method that is often called the 'perch method' or Silvia Trkman's method, where a dog is taught to spin in the spot first, with feet on a centre target (a 'perch'). Basically, you're teaching a flip finish first, and then from there asking for the dog to follow you.

Here's a series of videos:

So what method do you like most? Or the one you find you use the most? Or the one you find is the most useful?

[Lollipup]

I like Michael Ellis and Ivan Balabanov style training for heel.

With Ellis, if he has a young dog beginning heeling he will use a lure to get the dog used to the movements and then he rewards for focus in position and then ads movement.

A very basic description there but he has heaps of youtube videos you could look up :)

[Ptolomy]

I used Kamal's (Fernandes) way of teaching heel for my last boy (with your arm out wide and teaching the dog to target or focus on your hand) and it produced very lovely pracey heelwork which looks fantastic. My latest dog, who is 11 months old I did this method for about a week and have gone off on a tangent and taught her lots and lots of other things and will go back to heelwork sometime soon.

Just back from a trial where we scored 30/30, 30/30 and 28/30 for heelfree - so yep we can teach heelwork but the three dogs all failed SFE so back to the drawing board........

Edited March 22, 2013 by Ptolomy