Follow State of Mind: Two Dogs Learn to Heel

What you're seeing

Arie and Effie are two rambunctious, highly intelligent dogs. They learned to rush ahead and pull their owner around on walks, and they started defending the home against visitors in ways their owner couldn't control. In this video, their owner walks them on the command "follow", and both dogs settle in behind her in a calm, submissive frame of mind, on a loose leash, with no treats in her hand and nothing on their collars but a tag.

The problem this solves

Smart dogs with no clear leadership invent their own jobs. Pulling on the leash and guarding the door are the two most common ones, and they are really the same job: deciding where the family goes and who is allowed near it. Two dogs make it worse, because they back each other up and feed off each other's excitement. A harness or a head halter manages the pulling without stopping it; it does nothing about the decision behind it, which is why the pulling comes back the moment the equipment comes off, and why the door guarding never went away in the first place.

How it was trained

The transformation started indoors with Proximity and Movement, two of the five P.R.I.M.E. concepts. The owner claimed the space around her and decided who moves and when inside the house, where the dogs had been running things. Once the dogs accepted that, the next step was the walk. When the owner insists on controlling space and proximity to herself, the dogs drop into what Shawn calls a follow state of mind. It is not a heel position held for a treat; it is an attitude, and because it is an attitude, it carries over to the front door and everywhere else.

Get this with your dog

This is our in-home dog training program, and it works with two dogs as well as one. If your walks are a tug-of-war, read Stop Dog Pulling on Leash or get a free phone consultation.