Do "here" And "heel" Sound Too Similar?

[J...]

Even though they have completely different hand signals?

We've been working on heel a lot with Darcy, my long term suspicions were correct in that she really didn't understand what "heel" meant. To her it was stay within cooee of my left leg (no distance or direction criteria). All well and good for CCD but pretty useless for Novice. ;)

So today we did a bit of everything required for Novice, and discovered that her recall has suddenly fallen to pieces. I've always used "here" for recall, today she come towards me at a fair pace, but was sitting diagonally to my left instead of straight in front. Barely managed an acceptable recall at all when its never been an issue.

So are the two words too close? Do I retrain the recall with a different word? Or is it purely because we've focussed so hard on heel recently that she thinks thats maybe what I'm asking for and just requires a bit of persistance and great rewards for the right answer?

[Erny]

Or is it purely because we've focussed so hard on heel recently ...

I suspect it is this. Often when you focus on a particular exercise, a dog can hesitantly anticipate that exercise (or a partial similation of it) when you then return to another known exercise.

Practice the recall but make it simple (eg. short distance; low distraction) to give her the right idea. Reward well. Do a couple then randomise with the heel exercise.

Try this before you resort to changing command word.

[Shazbot]

I use the word 'come'. Once I started to use this word my dogs always come to me.

[Rusky]

yes they are the same sound, use come for here or close for heel, change one.

[TangerineDream]

I use 'come' for the formal recall, but I use 'here' for a non-formal call to me and 'heel'. I have completely different intonations on the 2 words so Tango never gets muddled...

heel = upper . . .hee lower = l (makes it sound enthusiastically multisyllabic)

here = here (monsyllabic) in a lower register

[ness]

Hmm actually i use front on my recalls and in open for a DOR the first command is come the second comand after the drop is front.