How to Train Your Rottweiler 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. So let’s talk about teaching Rottweilers to heel. Rottweilers can be very powerful dogs and very big pullers, but Rottweilers can be taught to walk very nicely on the leash. You need to make sure your Rottweiler is paying attention to you and taking cues about the appropriateness of her behavior from you before you try walking her in a crowded place. So remember, with any training, you start small and gradually add distractions and levels of difficulty. Now I have what’s called a no-pull harness on Ursa because she’s a not a big puller. She likes to be by my side, partly because she knows that I’m the cookie lady, but also because we had been working on a relationship for this morning. So what I want to do is to say the command and start walking. If she starts pulling, I just put a little bit of pressure on the harness. If you’re not familiar with equipment, be sure to check out that video before you proceed. Now she’s intent on other… oh! good girl… she’s paying attention to me, so heel, I want to teach her that heeling is a position. She keeps her right shoulder, heel, even with my left leg. Now there she started getting a little bit ahead. So I put a little bit of pressure on the harness, then repeated the command for reinforcement, and every once in a while Ursa, good, I’m going to get her attention. Let’s go, good girl. I’ll get her attention either with the name game or with just a little sound. Good, now, good, one way to teach dogs to pay attention to you is to vary your speed. Sometimes speed up, slow down, now she’s ignoring me because there are delicious acorns on the ground. So I’m going to use some food to get her attention. Good, I don’t want to keep saying her name over and over. I don’t want to keep saying heel over and over, and I definitely don’t want to pull her bodily. I want her to work for me because she wants to work for me, heel, good, Ursa, good, good girl. So there I kind of walked into her because she was trying to tell me where she wanted to go. Good girl, heel. A little patting of your leg can help her know to turn, good girl. And some time just walking into the dog teaches them to pay attention, good, sit, good, very nice. If these methods don’t work for your Rottweiler, check out some of the other training videos. There are different methods that work for different dogs. "