Video: Obedience Training Basics for Drug Dogs

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Learn the first steps in training your dog to be a drug dog in this free dog obedience video from our professional trainer.

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Video Transcript

Hi! I'm Captain Ray Varner with the Page Police Department. What we want to teach you today is the dog being put in the heel position to start off basic obedience. When the dog is in the heel position, what we want to see is the dog's front shoulders right by the handler's leg. The dog is in that position and when he praises him, he is pushing that dog into your leg, which is conditioning him to sit there. This is like a security blanket to him to be right here in the heel position. As you can see, he loves that position and its total praise all the time. Anytime the dog is in this heel position is where he get physical praise. So he gets love and attention and the hugs and everything, but what we want to make sure he is as you can see, we want the but right behind him. We want him to be perfectly straight and parallel with you so that he is right there no matter where he goes. Then we want him to stop and then we make sure that muscle, this shoulder muscle right here, is right here against your leg. Once you get it into his system where he feels that all the time and he feels comfortable there, then you can bow your leg, make him sit out a little bit, and not lean against you so there's actually a gap between his leg and the dog. Just like if you had a mosquito that landed in your hair, you can feel that. You know even as a little as a mosquito is, you know it's in there. He has guard hairs that are on his shoulders. You can see them all sticking out there. One of those guard hairs all it has to do is touch his leg and he knows where he's at, so that's what we're trying to do, but we're trying to get him conditioned. Right now, we're molding him into the position so we pull him and we mold him in here and we praise him. After a while, he can be looking at a dog playing with a ball and if you say heel he'll slide into that heel position till one of those guard hairs touch your leg and he knows where he's supposed to be at. I can move forward; I can move back, and he'll just keep adjusting because that's where he's supposed to be. So that's what you want to look for when you're first putting your dog into the heel position.

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Obedience Training Basics for Drug Dogs

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