Zeus can heel! Ok, now what?

YAY! Zeus can heel now! He's got it down now. I can even put him into a stay, walk away, and tell him heel. He'll run right up to me and sit in exactly the right position by my left side. I'm so proud of my boy! Thank you Chaz! I never would have figured out how to teach him without everyone's help.

Now, my next question. My goal is to teach him everything necessary to succeed in all levels of AKC Obedience, even though we can't actually compete. He knows sit, stay, down, down on recall, recall, and heel. What should I move onto next? Hurdles? How do I go about teaching that? How high should the hurdles be?

First off, Congrats! My puppies won't even sit haha.

Zeus is a pretty big dog, so you don't want to give him hurdles that he can just walk over. He'll get bored! Just start small, then go bigger. At most agility courses, the jumps are as high as their withers.

Good Luck and keep us posted!

Thanks! I could use all the help I can get. To be honest, I've never had a dog progess this far in obedience before. I'm kind of unsure on how to continue on. Oh well, it'll be something new for the both of us.

Start walkng with him at heel.

Put down 2 cones and do figure 8's.

Then put down a cone course made up of few turns, circles, etc and do that

gempress, check out morgan spector's book on obedience. i don't know if you do clicker training, but even if you don't, it will still be useful since it describes all exercises up to utility level.

Figure 8's is a great exercise and is used in obedience trials. These are used to teach the dog that sometimes they have to adjust their pace to keep in a heel position with you even when you haven't changed your own pace. Always start out going to your left (which is the slower turn for the dog) and as you come back thru the center Zeus should pick up his pace to keep up with you while he is making a larger swing around that end. With Zeus being a large dog make sure you don't make your turns too small around each end as he will need room but don't make them too huge either.

Where you have said you can put him on a sit/stay, walk away and call him to heel you can also vary that up to teach him that no matter where you are he also has to adjust to end up in a heel position. Put him on a sit/stay and you can alternate using the following: 2 giant steps to the right, 2 giant steps behind him, 2 giant steps ahead of him and on each of these call him to heel.

You can also work on the "finish" which is used in competitions. Put him on a sit/stay, pivot around and stand directly in front of him right up close. When you tell him to heel he can accomplish this one of 2 ways - he can move to your left, spin around into sitting heel position or he can move to the right completely behind you into a sitting heel position on your left.

There is also a stand for exam, broad jump, flat retrieve using a dumbbell, high jump retrieve.

CD level has on & off lead heel patterns, on lead Figure 8 and everything else is off lead. CDX level is completely off lead. Utility is completely off lead and he will need to learn hand signals (instead of verbal) and directional retrieves & jumps as well as scented retrieve.

You are doing a wonderful job & Zeus sounds like a star pupil!

Great info, Poodlesmom! Zeus is great off-lead, but I haven't taught him hand signals yet. I think I'll work on that next, and maybe then polish his stand for exam. He does the stand great for me, but I haven't found a volunteer to run their hands over him. I'll look into that. He's certainly not a show dog, but I'll be the vet will love me forever once he gets that down.

Congrats to Zeus!!! And who said a hound couldn't do obedience? He sounds really motivated and eager to be learning! Well done Gempress!

Poodlesmom, that is really super information. Thanks for going through all that.

gempress, i'm not sure if we've talked about this before or not, but you might be able to get into UKC obedience trials with him if you have any in your area.

UKC obedience handbook

UKC limited privilege registration form

that's what i am doing with quigley.

Some local obedience clubs may also have "fun" matches where they don't require dogs to be registered or to be purebred. There aren't usually alot of them but you could inquire and see if there are any in your area.

Doberluv, I love obedience training and am happy to share!

All the events in my area so far are AKC, but I'll keep an eye out and see if there are any UKC events in the future. I'd love to try Zeus in the obedience ring.

keep an eye on this.