The military finish is much more difficult to teach because the dog must learn exactly where heel is and then it must also learn the totally unnatural crabbing movement required to get it there. In the traditional finish the dog, by virtue of the fact that it goes around, winds up at heel basically parallel to its handler. All that is needed is to stop its forward progress and get it to sit. In contrast, a dog that does a military finish must turn its body 180 degrees and then line itself up as exactly as possible with its handler.
Despite the added difficulty, we invariably teach our dogs the military finish because it teaches the animals such a complete understanding of where the heel position is.
Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal
1. Finishing for food
2. Finishing for the ball
3. Pairing compulsion with the ball
The handler begins by sitting his dog and then stepping around in front of it so that the dog is in the come-fore position. He interests the animal in the food enclosed in his right hand, and then abruptly steps backward with the command “Heel!” In the same motion he turns at the waist and draws his hand, and the dog with it, off to his left and as far back behind him as possible. Then he steps forward again to his original spot, looping his hand in toward his hip so that the dog turns toward him and steps forward to the heel position.
The instant the dog is precisely at heel, exactly parallel with the handler and even with his knee, the handler stops the dog and sits it by lifting his hand abruptly straight up, so that the dog’s eyes and head lift and its hindquarters drop; the handler simultaneously commands it to “Sit!”
The hardest thing about the military finish is inducing the dog to get its body turned all the way around, so that it is parallel with its handler. In the beginning we do this by getting the animal to spring well back past its master in order to give itself room to turn. Later, when the animal is a polished obedience dog, we will expect it to do it by “flipping” to heel—jumping into the air toward its handler’s left shoulder, flipping its hindquarters around under it and landing like a cat at the master’s left knee.
Both of these methods of returning to the heel position depend upon one thing, energy, and that is where the ball comes in. Once the dog is finishing well with little help from the handler and shows a good understanding of exactly where the heel position is, we begin to work with the ball.
The handler plays with the dog, gets it very excited and wound up and then abruptly sits it. Before the dog’s excitement wanes the handler steps quickly in front of the animal to the come-fore position, shows it the ball in his right hand and commands it to “Heel!” while simultaneously sweeping the hand up and off to his left. The dog will leap after it, its momentum carrying it well behind its handler, and then turn around and jump forward to the heel position. The handler sits the dog precisely on the right spot by raising the ball up high near his left shoulder, lifting the dog’s eyes and head and dropping its hindquarters.
Despite the precision the dog learned while finishing for food, the pull of the ball will be too strong and will tend always to draw the dog’s head in toward the handler and make the hindquarters swing wide, so that rather than being precisely straight at heel the animal is instead crooked.
We cure this problem, and put the finishing touches on the finish, with force. Just as before, the handler finishes the dog with the ball but, when the animal reaches the heel position and before it sits, the handler strikes it sharply and quickly with the flat of his left hand on the left hip. The animal will flinch away from the slap, draw its hindquarters in toward the handler’s feet and sit tight and straight. The handler then rewards it with a quick toss of the ball.
GOAL 7: The dog will heel precisely and with spirit.
For the average dog owner the “Heel!” command is of little importance. He makes far more use of “Come!” and “Down!” and some sort of loose walk on leash command. The fact is that heeling is not a terribly practical skill, as we teach it for competition. The proof of this is that a competitive dog trainer avoids using his dog’s heeling in everyday life if at all possible, for fear of wearing the polish off it.
Heeling is, pure and simple, an attention exercise. We use it to create attentiveness and absolute obedience in the dog, and in trial we use it to exhibit to the judge how we have been able to create this attentiveness and obedience without killing the animal’s liveliness.
Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal
1. Heeling for food
2. Heeling for the ball
3. Pairing compulsion with the ball
4. Teaching the Schutzhund about-turn
5. Heeling in the group
6. Heeling under gunfire
In order to teach the dog to walk at heel, we must be able to attract it and draw it along with us as we move. We accomplish the attraction by using food.
The handler begins with his dog sitting at heel. Holding the food enclosed in his right hand, he reaches the hand across his body and touches it to the animal’s nose so that the dog can smell the food but not take it. Then with a bright, encouraging “Heel!” command he steps smartly off into a tight turn to his right.
As he goes, he holds his hand and the food it contains down low and just ahead of his left hip so that, as the dog pursues it, the animal will move perfectly along at heel. The handler continues around in a small circle, ruffling the dog’s head and neck with his left hand and praising it extravagantly with, “Good! Heel! Good dog!”
When he reaches his starting point, the handler stops abruptly, commands “Sit!” and lifts the hand with food in it sharply up, so that the dog quickly sits straight at heel without forging or swinging in toward the handler. If necessary, the handler can give a little tap with his left hand on the dog’s left flank to gather the animal in tight as it sits. The handler then feeds the dog, pats it and sets off quickly into another right-handed circle, perhaps feeding the dog a tidbit or two as they move along.
For the first few training sessions, the handler practices only small, right-handed circles while heeling. Later he begins walking a straight line with a right about-turn at each end (like the path that a sentry walks). Eventually, he will expand the heeling patterns into rectangles and figure eights, taking care to move quickly and talk excitedly to the dog to keep it moving along tightly at heel.
When the dog is heeling precisely and well for short periods of time, we begin to increase its animation and the intensity of its focus on its master by going to the ball, which the handler holds in his hand in place of the food. Instead of feeding the dog as the reward for good work, the handler gives it the ball every now and then, throwing it quickly against the ground so that it bounces a short distance ahead with the animal in hot pursuit.
The result will actually be less accurate work. The dog, aroused by the sight of the ball, will probably “mob” its handler somewhat during heeling, leaping against him and bumping in its eagerness to get the prey object.