How to Teach Your Husky to Heel

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village, and today we’re going to talk about training dogs. Let’s talk about huskies and heeling. Huskies are pullers. We want them to pull; that’s why they are the ones pulling the sleds up in Alaska. However, when you’re walking down the street, you don’t want your arm dislocated by your husky. So it’s important to teach your husky how to heel, what is also very important is choosing the proper equipment for your husky. One thing you definitely do not want to use is a traditional harness, one with a hook in the back, those harnesses put pressure on a place on a dog that triggers what we call an opposition reflex, which huskies really have in a big way, and it will encourage them and teach them actually to pull harder. Instead what I recommend, if you want to use a harness, is what is called a no-pull harness, which doesn’t trigger that reflex in the same way. Now we’re here with Ms. Gloria, the husky, and I’d like to try to work on heeling, but I don’t have the right type of equipment with me right now. If she starts pulling hard on this collar, I’m going to stop, release the pressure on the collar, and then not start moving again until she responds to walking by my side. So the heel command is with her shoulder even with my leg. Huskies like to be two or three feet ahead. Gloria, good, pretty girl, heel. She’s starting to pull, now I don’t want to pull her back, I simply release, see the pulling is causing her to pull more, my little secret here is going to be run forward to get her attention, make a quick turn and get her back in the heel position. Good, very nice, so see how loose the leash is that is your ideal. I’m setting Gloria up to fail here because she’s constantly pulling on this black collar; that can cause some damage to her trachea, so I’m going to postpone the heel session. But I felt it was important to talk about heeling in huskies in this section of Expert Village, so you understand how important it is. Please consult the local trainer if you need more help with the heel and your husky, or you can check out one of the other breed videos for plenty of tips on heeling with your husky. "