Teach Your Wheaten Terrier to Heel Using These Dog Obedience Training Methods

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village. It’s time to work with a Wheaten Terrier. Now it’s time to work on the heel command with this Wheaten Terrier. Ms. Maddy is getting very distracted by people walking around the parking lot here. So this is a good time for us to work on the heel. We want this Wheaten Terrier to be checking in with me as we work on the heel command. Now the heel is a position. It’s when her right shoulder is even with my left leg. A lot of Wheaten Terriers like to surge ahead but you should be in control of the walk not her, if you haven’t already please check out the video on relationship and leadership. Maddy, good. Our name game is still excellent with this Wheaten Terrier, so I’m going to give her the command and start walking. Now, Maddy is outfitted with a no-pull harness. I don’t know if she has ever used one before. But it just puts a little pressure in a place that causes dogs to back up. Traditional harness those do not work well to teach a dog to heel. Please check out the video on equipment if you haven’t already. Maddy, good. Heel, good. I want the leash to be totally loose and see there, I put a little pressure on the harness to get her to pause, heel. Every time she looks at me I’m going to give her praise. Good. Maddy, good. Now that’s a really good example of using the name game when you’re working on heel. Heel, now there she was trying to get ahead of me, so I simply used my body to show her where I want her to be, heel. Good. Now a lot of people like an automatic sit, when you stop walking. That’s totally fine. It can be a little annoying though if you’re a runner. The important thing is that when you stop that your dog stops too and you may need to give your Wheaten Terrier many reminders of that. So they don’t take the opportunity to forge ahead. Heel, the way you do that is just to put a little pressure when you start to show your dog exactly what you want her to do. Heel, excellent, loose leash, she stopped when I stopped. This Wheaten Terrier has an excellent heel."