Schutzhund: Theory and Training Methods

The Traditional wisdom handed down from Germany is that one should never begin obedience training a Schutzhund dog before the animal is at least one year old and both biting hard and tracking confidently.

Protection and tracking are—in contrast to obedience—somewhat independent activities. In a sense, the dog tracks on its own and bites on its own. In both these phases we are forced to rely upon the animal’s initiative to carry it through a task that we have prepared it for but in which we cannot help.

According to tradition, early obedience training kills the dog’s initiative, and should therefore be avoided. Some trainers, both German and American, carry this idea to an extreme. They neither obedience-train their young dogs nor give them any commands that might inhibit them, not even “No!” They forbid their puppies nothing, and basically the animals run wild, free of any obligation, during their first year of life. These trainers believe that the dog must first develop adult strength and resiliency before it can withstand the stress of obedience training.

Their assumption is that obedience training is a demoralizing experience and, in the context of traditional German training methods, this was often the case. If we think about it for a moment, we realize that a young adult dog that has never been forbidden anything in its life, and is completely new to the idea that anyone might place restraints upon its behavior, is hardly likely to enjoy obedience. Not only has this animal never learned to take pleasure in doing for its handler but also, because it has now grown tough and headstrong, a great deal of force will be required to obtain its “cooperation.” German training techniques are therefore traditionally very forceful, and only the most willing dogs retain their spirit and liveliness when suddenly encountering these methods after a puppyhood spent in freedom.

The drawback in waiting until the dogs are one year of age before beginning obedience is that this practice virtually wastes the entirety of the animals’ young lives, when they are at their most impressionable. When they could be learning to be willing and eager, they are instead learning to be willful and independent. When they could be learning how to learn from us, how to quickly grasp what we teach them, they are instead learning to be headstrong and inflexible.

At the same time, it is sheer folly to begin obedience training a young puppy using conventional compulsive techniques. However, the inducive training revolution provided knowledge and techniques that enable us to begin meaningful work on obedience early in the dog’s life, with absolutely no fear that we will damage the animal’s ultimate potential for character.

We therefore begin teaching puppies their obedience exercises as early as eight or nine weeks of age. At this time we also begin rudimentary tracking and the rag play that will eventually lead to formal agitation. All the obedience training is inducive. The pups are rewarded by being patted, played with and fed tidbits, and they are punished by not being patted, played with and fed.

This does not mean that the youngsters are not disciplined in everyday life. In order to not resent and fear discipline, the pups must experience it as a normal, consistent and predictable part of their lives from the very beginning. They are housetrained, physically punished for mouthing and physically punished for indiscriminate chewing. All punishment is impartial—that is to say it does not take the form of vengeance or arise from anger. In addition, it is consistent and predictable so that the puppies know when they are in trouble and why, and it is always appropriate in severity to very young dogs.

Unfortunately, this book does not allow the space for a treatment of puppy training. But we do describe in some detail how we introduce older dogs to obedience training. Because we perform the teaching phase of any dog’s training entirely inducively—no matter what its age—the reader should be able to get an idea of how we perform the same work with puppies.

GOAL 1: The dog will learn to play before it learns to work.

Our discussion of obedience training is based on the assumption that we are working with a naive adult—an animal that knows nothing of obedience, but is crazy about its handler and plays intensely and joyfully. This animal, no different than a puppy, should be worked inducively in the beginning—while it is learning to understand the concepts and skills involved in training—and then more and more compulsively, if necessary, in order to hone its performance and make it absolutely reliable.

Important Concept for Meeting the Goal

When we acquire a new adult dog, or when our puppy grows to an age when we will begin training it formally in obedience on the practice field, our first task is to train the dog to become aroused in response to the context of the training field. Quite simply, before we ever teach the dog to work on the field, we teach it to play.

The handler arrives at the field and, rather than bringing the animal out on leash and then standing around with it so that they both gradually become bored, he leaves the dog in a crate or in the car until it is time to work. Always be aware that dogs need adequate shade and water and should not be put in cars where ventilation is limited.

When ready, the handler goes to the dog, excitedly brings it out of the car, runs onto the training field and then plays with it vigorously for three or four minutes. The two can wrestle and run, or play tug-of-war with a sack, but most of all their play centers around some kind of prey object that will be included in all further obedience training. The authors prefer to use large rubber balls or kong toys.

All retrieving is entirely in play, meaning there is no control of the dog by command. The animal is not heeled onto the field or off, it is not made to stay while the ball is thrown and then sent to get it and it is never told “No!” If the animal must be restrained, this is done by physically taking its collar.

After a few minutes of vigorous play, the handler returns the dog, on the run, to the crate or car. In a while he will return and repeat the whole process. A visit to the Schutzhund club thus involves for the animal a period of waiting punctuated by brief, extremely arousing and gratifying trips onto the field.

After a few days or weeks, the net effect will be to teach the dog an intense arousal response in association with the context of the obedience field. When it comes out of the car or crate at the Schutzhund club, the dog will automatically be in tremendous spirit. This spirit will be our main fuel, our primary source of energy for work.

GOAL 2: The dog will sit on command.

In obedience training, we make use of four major classes of stimuli in order to reward and punish the animal’s behavior:

1. Praise and petting

2. Food

3. Prey objects

4. Physical punishment (correction)

Praise and petting are always used in conjunction with three other classes of stimuli. Taking this into account, we present the schooling of each of the basic obedience skills in three stages:

1. Work for food

2. Work for the prey object

3. Pairing of the prey object with compulsion

The work for food stage is part of the pure inducive phase of training—the teaching phase—in which we bring the animal to understand a command and the skill associated with it. This work is normally performed at home, away from the excitement and distractions of the training field. Food produces a moderate level of arousal and the dog, although excited, is easily managed and manipulated.

The work for the prey object stage begins after we have taught the animal a number of skills, and also after we have conditioned it to become aroused in response to the context of the obedience field. We are still in the teaching phase (the work is still almost entirely inducive), but in place of the desire for food we have substituted the prey motivation associated with retrieving the ball. The dog’s level of arousal is much higher, providing abundant energy for work, but also making the animal harder to manage and manipulate.

Pairing is the stage at which we bring compulsion into the picture—the training phase. In pairing we begin for the first time to use force to correct errors, enforce immediate responses to commands and increase precision. However, the force is paired or coupled with the use of a ball. For example, we might correct the dog sharply three times in a row for slow sits; if, on the fourth attempt, the animal sits quickly and there is no need for a correction, we throw the ball for it. The advantage is that prey arousal desensitizes the animal, making it hard and resilient. As a result the corrections, while retaining their power to alter the dog’s behavior, do not depress its spirit.

Again, in all three stages of training the reward properties of the food or ball are enhanced through being accompanied by a great deal of verbal praise, encouragement and petting.

As we train them, the obedience exercises progress independently of each other—they are taught separately. But there is no need to perfect one before progressing to another. For instance, we may be teaching a particular animal to heel at home for food while we are working it on the finish at the training field and perfecting the sit, down and stand by pairing leash corrections with the ball.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Sitting for food

2. Sitting for the ball

3. Pairing compulsion with the ball

It is a comparatively simple matter to sit the dog by making use of its orientation toward food. The handler lets the dog smell a very small piece of food in his hand, and then lifts the hand up and over the animal’s head toward its rear, at the same time commanding the dog to “Sit!” The dog will strive for the food, jumping up at it and perhaps pawing or barking. The handler ignores all undesired behaviors (remember, the dog must have free choice in the teaching phase of obedience!) and waits, signaling with his hand and occasionally repeating the “Sit!” command. Eventually—out of puzzlement if for no other reason—the animal will sit and the handler immediately feeds it, at the same time praising and petting it.

It is a relatively simple matter to teach the stay by feeding the dog several times in succession, pausing a moment or two between each reward. Once the animal is sitting the handler commands “Stay!” He holds the food high over the dog’s head to provide a focus for the animal and keep it still. Then, after perhaps three or four seconds, he bends down, feeds the dog and again commands it to “Stay!” The handler performs several of these brief stays and then releases the dog with the command “OK!” and praises it.

As training progresses we can easily prolong the stay to thirty seconds or a minute by waiting a little longer each time before feeding the animal.

Once the dog sits instantly on command and stays put, waiting for the release, we can begin working the sit with the prey object.

Just as he did before in order to condition arousal to the context of training, the handler runs his dog excitedly out onto the field and begins to play with the dog using the ball. At some point when the animal is very stimulated, the handler holds the ball up out of reach and commands the dog to “Sit!” Because the context is different, and because the animal is so much more aroused now than it was in the work for food, it may not do so immediately. The dog will probably leap and bark and strive for the prey object for a while, but eventually it will sit. The instant that it does so, the handler throws the ball for it.

When the dog returns with the ball, the handler plays with it a while more, perhaps sitting the dog two or three more times before taking it back to the car. The animal will gradually become quicker and quicker to sit when it hears the command, and also its sits will be energized by the arousal of prey motivation.

It is here that we begin the important work of coupling retrieving, and the intense excitement that it brings, with obedience.

As training progresses the dog will learn to switch from a frenzy of leaping and barking in one instant to a tightly coiled and energized sit in the next. The animal will begin gaining the ability to hold its energy in check, guiding it into the behaviors its handler indicates in order to obtain the object of its desire—the ball in its master’s hand.

However, the dog’s excitement will interfere with precision. It will frequently make errors, such as jumping at the ball after the command has been given instead of sitting immediately, or breaking the sit on those occasions when it is carried away by its enthusiasm.

We clean up these errors and polish the sit and the stay by pairing compulsion with the ball. The handler uses a leash in one hand to correct the dog into a quick, clean sit and then make it stay perfectly in place. At the same time, he shows the dog the ball with the other hand in order to preoccupy it so that it is not upset or inhibited by the corrections. As soon as he has what he wants from the animal, the handler releases it with an “OK!” while simultaneously dropping the leash and throwing the ball for the dog.

GOAL 3: The dog will down on command.

Along with the recall, the down is one of the most important commands in obedience. Through the course of training, the down takes on a very powerful character. It is the command we use as the last resort to control the animal. If it wants to fight another dog, we down it. If it refuses to let one of our guests into the house, we down it. If the dog habitually rebites after the out, we teach it to release the sleeve and then automatically lie down at the agitator’s feet.

Although it is to become a very compelling command, we must introduce the down inducively, rather than with force.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Downing for food

2. Downing for the ball

3. Pairing compulsion with the ball

In the beginning, we always down the dog from a sit, never from a standing position. Once the dog is sitting, the handler does not feed it but instead encloses a few tidbits in his hand so that the animal cannot take the food but only smell it, and then places his hand on the end of the dog’s nose to call its attention to it. A hungry dog will “glue” itself to the hand, snuffling and licking at the food. The handler then lowers his hand very slowly to a spot on the ground about six inches in front of the dog’s forefeet. The animal will follow with its head and, in the effort to get the food, crouch so that its elbows touch the ground. If it stands instead, the handler merely lifts his hand up high so that the dog sits again, and then he tries again to get the animal to lie down by lowering his hand to the ground. When, eventually, the dog downs, the handler feeds it several pieces of food in a row and then releases it with the “OK!” command.

In order to get a stay the handler, rather than trying to stand up, which will almost certainly attract the dog up out of its down, instead remains kneeling. He downs the animal and feeds it one piece of food and then, with the command “Stay!” he very quickly shifts his hand and the food it contains away from the dog. Keeping the hand near the ground, he holds it at arm’s length out in front of the dog in order to provide a focal point and keep the animal still. He pauses for one instant and then, before the dog breaks the down and moves toward the food, he quickly shifts his hand back to the animal’s head and feeds it.

The dog will soon learn that the down, like the sit, must be held until its handler releases it.

Now we are ready to add the down to our play sessions on the field. In the midst of retrieving, the handler occasionally asks the dog to first sit and then lie down in order to get the ball. The animal will initially be reluctant to drop when it is so excited, but it will soon learn that the faster it hits the ground the quicker its handler will throw the ball.

The handler can then begin shuttling the dog from sit to down and back to sit again, and also downing it from a standing position without first sitting it.

Just as with the sit, after a while the handler begins to insist on near-perfect work, so that the dog downs on precisely the spot where it heard the command and in exactly the same orientation, so that there is no delay before it lies down and no skewing of its body as it does so.

The handler can experiment with various forms of compulsion in order to bring this about. A leash correction down at the ground and back toward the dog’s rear end can work well; with some dogs a quick slap on the skull between the ears is effective. However, the handler should absolutely avoid trying to push, crush or wrestle the dog to the ground because, unless this is done with overwhelming force, it just breeds resistance.

As always, when the dog does as we require, the handler releases it with “OK!” and throws the ball for it.

GOAL 4: The dog will hold the long down.

So far, we have worked the down as a spirit exercise. The handler used the ball to teach the dog to lie down as dynamically as possible, and to remain energized in the down, like a coiled spring.

Now, however, we have the long down to worry about. During the dog’s obedience performance it will be required to lie down on a spot indicated by the judge and remain there for approximately ten minutes, despite the presence of another dog-handler team working the field, and despite two gunshots. Rather than aroused, for the long down we need the dog calm and rock-steady.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Forcing the stay

2. Habituating the dog to gunshots

3. Combining gunshots with the down stay

We begin to work seriously on the down stay only after the dog lies down quickly and eagerly on command. Teaching the down stay involves physical punishment. We will be obliged to make use of compulsion in order to make the “Stay!” command a strong and vivid one for the dog.

We begin by concentrating on the “break” itself, the act of rising from the down without permission. By standing near the dog on the correction leash the handler can punish the animal as soon as it stirs with a quick jerk on the leash and a “No!”—making crystal clear to it that it must not move from the down.

We proof the stay by putting the dog down in very distracting or stimulating circumstances (among a group of other dogs running free, for example). The handler remains near the dog and watches it closely, ready to correct it in the act of getting up.

Sooner or later the handler will have to walk away from his dog and out of sight. With the dog all alone on the field like this and off leash, the context of the exercise will be completely different. Provided with some enticing distraction, like a ball thrown for another dog, the animal will be sure to break the stay at least once. Of course, when it does, it is impossible to catch it in the act. We will instead be forced to punish it after the fact.

The handler does so calmly and quietly. He does not scream with anger and run at the dog to take vengeance upon it. This is neither necessary nor advantageous. By charging at the animal we risk frightening it and making it shy away from us. Above all, we risk teaching it to run away in order to avoid correction. If the dog learns to wait until its handler leaves it and then breaks the down stay and runs about the field, avoiding anyone who might catch and correct it, then we will have created a serious training problem for ourselves.

Instead the handler sharply tells the dog “No!” at the instant that it gets up from the down, in order to mark for the animal the exact moment where it went wrong. Then he strides calmly over to the dog and lays hold of it by the scruff of the neck forcefully but not violently, drags it bodily all the way back to the spot it was left to stay and mashes it back into the down, taking little care for the dog’s comfort or dignity in the process. He then lets go of the animal, turns on his heel and walks away again. During the entire procedure, he says only two words: “No!” when the dog gets up, and “Stay!” as he turns the animal loose after the correction.

The correction itself, while unpleasant for the animal, is not violent or vengeful. The handler depends upon persistence rather than retribution to convince the dog that it is in its best interests to stay where it is left. As many times as the dog breaks, the handler calmly and forcefully drags it back and mashes it down, a little more harshly each time. Eventually the animal will give up and hold the down stay in spite of the distractions we offer it, and then the handler goes to it and praises it.

For a steady dog with good character, gunshots are not frightening or in any way a problem—certainly nothing it must be trained to withstand. However, in dog training it always pays to be careful. Once created, problems with sound sensitivity can be maddeningly persistent and even insurmountable.

Therefore, we take some trouble introducing a dog with even a very sound character to the gun, and definitely not in the context of a down stay where it has nothing to think about but the gunfire. Instead, we introduce the gun during play.

The handler brings his dog onto the field and begins to arouse it and play with it using a ball. When the animal is very excited, an assistant fires the gun several times from a distance of seventy-five to 100 yards. The handler watches his dog closely, and if the animal shows any sign of a startled response, he waves the assistant even farther away. Only when the dog shows absolutely no sensitivity to the sound of the gun will the assistant begin to advance, coming progressively closer to the dog as he shoots the gun. After just a few training sessions, he should be able to fire the shots just fifteen or twenty feet away while the handler keeps the animal preoccupied with vigorous play.

Once the dog appears to be totally oblivious of the sound of the gun during play, we are ready to fire the gun over it during a down stay. However, to avoid any potential problem, in the beginning we take two precautions. First, the handler remains close to his dog and watches it for any sign of anxiety in response to the shots. Second, the assistant goes back out to 100 yards to fire the first few shots, advancing toward the dog only when the handler tells him to.

GOAL 5: The dog will stand on command.

It is important to teach the stand right from the beginning, rather than wait until the animal is two years old and ready to advance from Schutzhund II to Schutzhund III. Too often, we delay introducing the stand until the last few weeks before the dog’s first Schutzhund III appearance.

The choice of command is also a consideration. The two most obvious choices—“Stand!” or “Stay!”—are not ideal because they begin with the same sibilant consonant as “Sit!” and are therefore likely to be confused with it. Consequently, we use the command “Back!” for the stand.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Standing for food

2. Standing for the ball

3. Forcing the stand

At first we bring the dog to a stand only from the sit. The handler sits the animal and then, with a piece of food, he leads the dog forward one step from the sit, at the same time commanding “Back!” Once the dog is standing, he feeds it, steadying the animal if necessary with a hand on its loin and against its stifle.

Soon all that will be necessary to bring the dog to a stand will be a small gesture that leads the animal out of the sit or down. Over time, we then progressively “fade” the hand signal out, so that the animal stands in response to the voice command alone.

Of all the obedience skills, we make little use of prey motivation for rewarding the stand. This is because the stand is inherently less stable than either the sit or the down. All the dog needs to do to break the stand is to take a tiny step with one foot. Once it takes this step it is then natural for it to take another. In short, the stand easily turns into a walk!

Therefore, we try to keep the animal’s response to this command very calm and quiet. We do not incorporate prey arousal into the stand because any excitement or strong attraction toward the handler will pull at the dog irresistibly, making it take that first tiny step.

Therefore, we reward the dog for stands only with food, praise and petting, not the ball.

Polishing the dog’s stand with force is a ticklish proposition. Because of the animal’s previous schooling on the sit and down, it will tend to quickly do one or the other any time we “get after it” and the dog becomes confused. We must find a way to use force in such a way that it teaches the dog to freeze, to lock its feet into their tracks when it hears the “Back!” command.

We concentrate particularly on stopping forward motion—getting the animal to halt and stand instantly. For this purpose a slap of the handler’s foot broadside against the animal’s forechest works quite well. Leash corrections, on the other hand, usually do not work because the dog strongly associates them with the sit and the down.

The handler runs the dog onto the field, plays with it a little and executes a sit or down or two. Then, with the ball in hand, he turns slowly in place or walks backward so that the dog, whose attention is riveted upon the ball, follows him. Abruptly the handler commands “Back!” and taps the animal gently on the chest with his foot in order to stop its forward progress. Any movement of the paws, fidgeting or creeping forward will be corrected with this same soft but smart rap of the foot.

If reflexive downing or sitting in response to the correction is a persistent problem, the handler can try using a flank strap, a cord tied snugly around the animal’s loin. The handler can prevent the animal from dropping its hindquarters when it is corrected by applying a gentle tug on the flank strap.

GOAL 6: The dog will finish quickly and precisely.

There are two possible types of finish. In the traditional Schutzhund finish the dog goes around its handler to the heel position. In recent years more and more Schutzhund dogs have been taught the military finish, in which the dog flips to its handler’s left side directly from the come-fore position.

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.

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.