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Location: Yorkshire, UK
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 877
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Does he know what heel means? Also, there's a big difference between associating the word 'heel' with the correct position, and maintaining that at walking pace, particularly as our walk is a little slow for the pace most dogs want to go at.
What does he do when you ask for a heel, does he actually go to the position? There are quite a few ways to train heelwork, one of my Labs will walk either side, and isn't at all a puller, the other one is a little more driven, so I play games with her to keep her attention on me as we're walking along. Heelwork is one of the things I see such a lot of people post about, because they fail to train it and end up with a puller, which is harder to untrain.
With the pups I've got here at the moment, there's hardly any heelwork being taught, just rewarding good manners, one is six months old, but she just walks beautifully to heel, the other is about 20 weeks and he isn't quite there yet, but I'm working on him. But then I only actually train heelwork, when I know I am setting them up to get it right, so I can reward them. I don't train heelwork (or anything) when they can become confused and get away with pulling, which is the mistake most people make, taking a small pup out and allowing the pulling on the school run, walk to the park etc, I did this with one of mine, the one I have to keep more focussed now.
If you've got a gundog or obedience class nearby, it might help to go to some training sessions and help get the basics in there with him. Good handling really does help with heelwork, I know I used to be so frustrated when I'd hand Tau over to an instructor, and she would do beautiful heelwork for them, and yet pull like a steam train for me. I used to hate training heelwork, but actually, now it's one of the things that I understand more, I enjoy, and treat it as a game with them.
As for the stick thing, it wouldn't work for Tau, she'd just try and bite it, same as if you swing the end of the lead in front of her nose to stop her from going forward, she'd grab it.
The biting for me is just manners, and needs consistency, Labradors are mouthy, they are retrievers after all. Reward the good (calm) behaviour, it will get there, honest, Tau was similar, she still likes to hold my hand in her mouth and wiggle like a lunatic, but now she's learnt how hard she can hold.
The medication the guy was on thins the blood, prevents clotting, which is probably why he bled a bit like a stuck pig.