This unruliness is fine. If the animal heels happily, with intense concentration upon its handler and approximately at heel, we can at any time easily get it down on the ground and teach it to be more precise. If, on the other hand, the dog learns to heel precisely but with that hangdog look, we will be put to endless trouble in the effort to bring it back into spirit. At this stage in training, the only real concession that the handler makes for the sake of accuracy is that he makes a point of never throwing the ball for the dog unless it is on the ground with all four feet and heeling reasonably precisely.
We can sometimes obtain extremely good results in heeling using entirely inducive methods. However, with the vast majority of dogs we must eventually resort to using the leash to polish this skill.
The handler corrects his dog for inattentiveness of any kind with instantaneous right turns or right about-turns accompanied by sharp jerks on the collar. He corrects going wide with right-handed turns and circles and gentle corrections, combined with encouragement and praise when the dog closes up to heel. He corrects crooked or slow sits with abrupt halts and instantaneous corrections upward and back for the sit. He corrects forging with tight, somewhat punishing left-handed circles in which he presses in on top of the dog, banging into it with knees and feet until the animal comes back into station.
The trick is to make the dog precise, but without losing the delightful spirit it showed when its work was unruly. Therefore, the harder the handler must be on the dog in order to polish the heeling, the more frequently he brings the ball out and plays with the animal. Still using the leash, the handler keeps the dog perfectly in station while the animal learns the changes of pace—from normal to slow to normal to fast and back to normal.
We prefer sudden changes of pace to the slow, gradual transitions that many trainers use to make the changes easy for the dog and keep it in station. Fast transitions are difficult, and we use them because they keep the dog’s interest and require it to watch its handler closely. In addition, fast transitions show the judge that the dog is really working instead of just daydreaming at heel.
The Schutzhund about-turn is utterly different from the AKC about-turn. In Schutzhund the handler turns to the left into his dog, while the dog turns to the right, going entirely around its handler and back to heel.
The most straightforward way to introduce the about-turn is to simply guide the dog around with the leash, changing it from one hand to the other behind one’s back. The handler can also use the ball to lead the animal around the turn, switching the toy from one hand to the other. If the handler makes his turn smoothly and decisively, the dog will quite naturally go around.
It is common to see dogs in competition that run wide on their about-turns or come around slowly. In training, their handlers often accentuate the problem by slowing down and pausing a beat in the middle of the turn in order to give the dog time to catch up.
Instead of pausing a beat, the handler should actually speed up in order to teach his dog to hurry. He should snap a fast about-turn and then sprint forward five or six steps. The dog will be left behind and will hurry to catch up. When the animal comes perfectly into station, the handler throws the ball for it. The animal will soon pick up the habit of hurrying through the about-turns.
The group poses difficulties only for dogs of unsound character. These animals are nervous in the group because they are afraid of the people who comprise it. For dogs of sound character, the group is merely another distraction.
In either case, whether we are preparing a fine young dog for competition or trying to compensate for the deficiencies of a mediocre animal, we train for heeling in the group about the same way. The main focus is to have the handler move very briskly and make many abrupt turns in the group. He simply keeps the dog too busy to look about and become either distracted or afraid, as the case may be. The handler corrects any momentary inattentiveness or break in eye contact with a quick right turn and a sharp pop on the leash.
Heeling under the gun is normally less demanding for the dog than holding a down stay while shots are fired, because during the heel the animal is preoccupied with the work and close to its handler. Therefore, since we have already finished work on the dog’s down stay under the gun, we should expect no problems with heeling under gunfire.
11
Obedience: The Exercises out of Motion
After The heeling pattern in a Schutzhund III obedience routine comes a series of four closely related exercises that account for thirty of the 100 points available in the obedience phase. We call them the exercises out of motion, and they consist of (1) the walking sit, (2) the running down, (3) the walking stand and (4) the running stand.
We use the phrase exercises out of motion to refer not only to the skills listed above, but also to the recalls and finishes that the dog must perform after the down and the running stand.
GOAL 1: The dog will stand out of motion instantly on command.
Schutzhund obedience requires a number of difficult skills, and one of them is the stand out of motion. The average dog has little trouble learning the sit and down out of motion. But with the introduction of the stand things can go mysteriously wrong. The animal may simply seem unable to comprehend the stand, or may catch on to the stand just fine but in the process lose either the sit or the down—or both!
It sometimes appears as though the dog can only handle two possibilities in the exercises out of motion. Because it is called upon to react so quickly and decisively when it hears a command—and has so little time to decide which command it is that it is hearing—the stand often becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
To prevent this problem, we introduced the stand itself very early on in training, and for the same reason we will now begin teaching the stand out of motion before introducing either the sit or the down out of motion.
Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal
1. Standing from a walk
2. Standing from a run
The handler begins with the dog on leash and wearing a flank strap. He heels the animal very slowly along and then abruptly commands “Back!” and corrects somewhat sharply with the leash, at the same time stepping away from the dog. If the animal tries to follow him or take a step in any direction, the handler corrects it again and repeats “Back!” If, on the other hand, the dog becomes confused and attempts to lie down or sit, the handler prevents this with a tug on the flank strap.