How would I go about teaching them directions?

As most of you might know, I own two Siberian huskies. I take them out of a nice run on my bicycle once each day. They love that to bits and its good exercise for me, too.

Anyways, I just read on another dog board about someone wishing to teach their huskies how to pull. First things first though, the dogs must know directions.

My huskies are not weight pullers or sled dogs by any means, I don't have those sorts of activities around where I live. Anyways, I just thought it would be fun though to teach them directions. It is tough sometimes though to get them to turn around to go back home while we are having a run.

So how would you all go about teaching a pet husky to know directions.

I do know that "haa" means left and "gee" means right. But how can I do some fun training and teach them what each word means? What do you think?

-Tara

Hey tara,

Do you have one of those bikes that you stand on the back that they pull? I think that would be great fun...

I was wondering myself how you can teach them the directions you need them to go in.

First of all you need the dog to be pulling ahead of you on lead. You then pull the dog from your position at the back to the desired direction. So, you pull the leash to the right for "gee", and to the left for "haw" (not Haa). I have never needed to train direction in this way, but I would think that you would need to get the dog obeying, to a good standard, one directional command as the pull is given before trying to teach the other.

I am sure there are dedicated sled dog forums available which would give you expert advise.

You might find this article of interest:
http://www.clickersolutions.com/arti...01/mushing.htm