![]() ![]() Your hands start at his nose luring him around as you direct his pivot with your legs as a rider would do for a horse. Put food in both hands as you do this and alternate the hand from which you feed him. Remember that this component also follows the scheme of lure – reward – variable reward. Reward often as you lure him in each direction. Do the opposite direction. If it’s difficult for him, don’t move too many degrees around the circle you pivot. With the dog in the middle position, put food on his nose in your fist and pivot to the left, and as he moves with you, mark and reward. Once the dog will come around behind you into middle from any position around you, if you want to get even more fancy, lure him from his normal heel position around to the left and up in between your legs, so that eventually you can call him to middle from heel (then lure him from middle on command back to heel position). Your K-9 friends will think you are some kind of wizard as you move the dog from one basic position to middle and back on command. It’s handy to have the ability to call him into middle from any spot around you but not necessary. Understand that in reality you only really need him to come into position from directly behind. ![]() Keep going, but now that you changed the game, don’t stop luring too quickly, your hand target will bring him around your legs and each new position must have a sufficient number of repetitions before moving to reward without luring with your hand position. Vary him being in a down first then a sit. Next, start luring the dog around your legs as you change his position relative to where you want him to go. If you start him at six o’clock behind you and lure him straight up, now start varying the dog to seven o’clock then to eight o’clock, and then do the mirror image from five o’clock, four o’clock, and three o’clock. If you don’t want this, practice stepping over and reinforce the down, and then step back out and randomize the times you call him up into middle. Repeat this simple move about 80-100 times over the course of a few days to get the dog coming up reliably. You may find that as you step over him he automatically comes to the position on his own, and this anticipation reflects his learning. We will use “middle.” Lure the dog through your legs and up so that his shoulders make contact with your thighs as he comes through. Place the dog in a down and step across the front of the dog with your feet at a little more than shoulder length apart, take a piece of food and drop the palm of your hand into the space between your legs and give the command you choose (“center” or “middle” or whatever you like as a command that sounds very different from your heel command). ![]() Although once on reward or variable reward, a toy can be substituted for the food. ![]() We recommend some kind of marker to signal to the dog he has done the correct thing – either a clicker or a verbal marker which has already been “charged” or classically conditioned so the dog understands the marker. Food works very well for this skill, which has a number of separate components. As he becomes more and more proficient, we move from luring to rewarding the dog assuming the position, and then the reward moves from a 1:1 fixed ratio to a variable reward schedule. We use something of value to lure the dog into position at first. The lack of verbal commands and visual focus needed on your dog as you move is what gives this position its tactical value you feel where your dog is rather than need to visually confirm his position as you move together.Īs with teaching any skill, we use the methodology of the lure-reward system. You can move, turn left, right and about, halt, and kneel with the dog downing automatically, and resume movement with or without verbal commands. It allows for tactile communication rather than verbal communication. The dog maintains position in between your legs as you move, turn, halt, or kneel as situations may dictate. Approaching a building search or area search deployment position or calling your dog up to your engine block for deployment on a felony vehicle stop are some examples of its utility. This style of tactical heeling allows for you to “feel” the dog in heel position as you approach tactically sensitive situations. In this installment, we are going to discuss how to teach the police K-9 how to heel in between the legs for a tactical contact heel. In our last installment ( Tactical Obedience: Attention Heeling – Aug/Sept 2015), we discussed teaching the focused heel position and why that can provide some important tactical advantages by owning the dog’s eyes when you don’t want him to be distracted by his immediate environment. pdf version with images from K-9 Cop Magazine Article by Jerry Bradshaw & Sean Siggins ![]()
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