Doug Goodman

There are five basic commands all dogs should know:  sit, down, stay, come, and heel.  The better your dog knows these five commands, the more easily the pup can handle the more advanced commands.  Sometimes, though, cadaver dogging and obedience get in the way of each other.

When I first got Mojo, my family lived in an apartment, so taking Moj for walks outside was mandatory.  As a result of all that walking, Mojo is pretty good at the heel command.  He was so good, it got in the way of his HRD training. See, when Moj first started training, he didn't want to lead me to a scent; he wanted to heel at my side.  It took a little work, but after some consistency and a few weeks, he began to work away from me.  (However, from time to time when he gets tired or frustrated, he will still revert to the heel position and want me to lead him around.)

Because of this issue with heel, I didn't train my next too pups, Princess and Ryder, to heel.  I taught them "Walk With Me," which means stay in my general area.  Lately, though, I've gotten the idea in my head to train Ryder and work with Mojo on the heel command.  Despite not heeling for the past 3-5 years, Mojo did a pretty good job staying at my side.  I did one thing wrong, though.  One key thing.  I used my hand to motion for him to stay with me.  As soon as Mojo saw that hand move in front of him, his nose dove down into the ground like it did at HRD training on Saturday.  Whoops!  Don't need Mojo confusing "heel" with "find dead guy!"  I'm going to have to find another way to get his attention.  (Probably slapping my knee to begin with.)

Ryder did much better, though she hated when I worked her on the Sit command.  I could get about 340 degrees behind her when she would spin to face me.  I growled a correction, took her by the scruff of the neck, and repositioned her.  Again, though, I couldn't get past 340 degrees.  This time when I corrected her, she went back down and paws up.  Okay, pup.  We'll have to build towards 360.  She did really well with fetch, though.  Moj, who thinks the only way to keep a game of fetch going is to bark loudly and incessantly until the ball is thrown, didn't fare so well.  He also wanted to play his other favorite game, called "I growl at you until you rip the ball out of my jaws, then I will start barking incessantly at you again."  This is why he couldn't do frisbee competitions.  Okay, not the big reason, but part of it. 

I am going to have to work with the dogs tomorrow on obedience, but this time I need to be mindful not to direct Mojo to cadaver dog when I want him to heel...