When it comes to keeping your puppy’s attention sometimes it can be challenging.
It never fails, we see older dogs pulling on the leash, with dog owners that have never trained their dogs. We don’t want to be one of them.
We want our puppy to heel on a leash. Not pulling us down the road every time we go for walks, in our neighborhood or anywhere else we take them. A trained German Shepherd puppy is a happy pup!.
Dog training focus exercises and technique:
Today, I’m going to teach you how to train your puppy to heel on a leash and how to build your puppy’s attention with this simple training exercise.
The heel command. The heel command is the most powerful command in dog training. If you can’t teach your puppy to focus, how will they ever learn?
After watching the video, keep reading below where I will explain everything you need to know if you are thinking about teaching your dog this training exercise.
German Shepherd Puppy Training Video:
How to train a 7-month-old female German Shepherd Puppy:
Meet Lika. Seven months old. Black & Tan Pup!
This is the owners’ first lesson with her new puppy. How to keep your puppy’s attention when training the heel command. This is the most powerful command to teach your dog. We are teaching our puppy not to leave the left leg.
This is one of the hardest commands for most professional dog trainers to teach. They all think they know, but after seeing so many German Shepherd dog owners that contact me for training.
Most of them have already been training with other dog trainers and they all got it wrong and their German Shepherds are still breaking away from them, with a leash, and without a leash. Why, because of not teaching their puppy to follow the left leg.
“Puppies learn body language first, commands second”
How to get started: If you are trying to train your puppy this way, that’s amazing. Now you’ll have the training skills you need to move forward with your puppy.
1. You first start off with your left leg when giving the heel command. We want our puppies to learn how to follow our left leg every time we give them the command.
2. The only time your puppy leaves your left leg, is when you give them a release command. Most trainers use, words like, yes, ok, break, free dog. Whatever you decide, be consistent with your command.
3. You never tell your puppy to sit or stay when you stop. We are teaching impulse control. Your puppy will learn how to control its own impulse control without you telling them to sit/or stay, every time you turn in different directions.
You’ll see your puppy start to sit every time you stop. Praise them for doing the exercise correctly.
We are teaching pure concentration and focus with our puppy. Your puppy will learn the automatic sit command on its own fast.
You see this style of training done in competition training.
Watch this video with a trained dog:
The Girl in this video has done an awesome job training her German Shepherd. Watch how her dog does the automatic sit when she stops.
This is part one of her obedience exercise for her IPO 1 title.
I loved this video so much, I had to share it with you. I hope you enjoy it too.
Week one: Important when training.
We only want to spend 4 to six-minute training exercises when you first start teaching this to your puppy. Puppies have a short attention span. To get the best results with your puppy, you only need to practice a few times a day.
Week Two: Two training sessions: Two 15 minute training exercises a day. If you want to train more, make them 10 minutes each, and that’s okay too.
Conclusion: There is a lot of dog training information online. You may have read somewhere else how to train this, and that’s awesome news. I have noticed that different dog trainers make it harder than it needs to be for someone just learning.
I’ve been teaching dog owners for over 25 years. The biggest problem they all share with me, there is so much information offline and online, they are overwhelmed with everything they read.
I hope this article and video have given you a better understanding of how to teach a puppy the heel command that builds strong attention. Just keep it simple and stay consistent in your training.
You can start teaching this with puppies at 8 weeks old.
PS: Watch me train a Nora at 10 weeks old puppy. This is her first leash training exercise. Attention and focus.
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions.
Best of luck with your training. Dennis.