Competition Heeling

[Kavik]

From what I have seen IRL and in videos, the style of heeling in competition obedience is quite different to Schutzhund/IPO. Schutzhund heeling tends to be more animated/enthusiastic but less precise - I have seen dogs jumping and what would be considered crowding but seems to be OK for Schutzhund.

So why the difference in style? And do you think it would be possible to get a heeling style that would work in both? (not that I'm planning on it, just interested ;) )

[MonElite]

I dont think that sch heeling is less precise.

Yes dogs crowd a lot more tahn ANKC, but they are very fast on the turns, sits, drops etc.

And there are no hand signals, only voice comands.

Also the left arm must not be held near the pocket ;) .

in both there are no specific rules as to the animation, or the dog looking up at the handler.

So all in all I belive that there is a happy medium ;)

[dogdude]

In short.........heel is heel. The way that its taught is the difference between Schutz and what we produce.

In Schutz they tend to teach "find the leg", and get the dog to be aware of an active (with the leg) position compared with what we teach (more of a static position with our shoulders type) Their dogs also have loads more drive than our food trained ones too, hence the difference in animation.

You can do a little test with your own dog: Give your dog a heel command, and without moving your feet......turn your upper torso left and right.....i'll bet you that most dogs will follow your shoulder movement left or right! A Schutz dog will only follow the leg and won't move no matter how far you twist.

Their dogs work off voice cues only and tend to teach focus on the face where most of our dogs will take their position cues from lower points of our bodies to allow for the sighting of hand signals.

If you watch the Balabanov dvds, his dog is never out of position, and have a lazerbeam consistency with their heeling position and the sloppy work you may have seen elsewhere may be just a handler fault?

Edited April 22, 2008 by dogdude

[Kavik]

Yeah I noticed no hands near pockets ;) Many ANKC people heel with a static hand held in a certain position ;) - I may well do the same! ;)

Mine would be fine with voice commands only, actually I often got in trouble in class for not using enough hand signals. A habit I picked up from training with security people for several years!

When I saw the Sch nationals one of the dogs bounced through the heeling!

[Sparty]

also they dont shoot guns during ankc heeling!! lol i thought it looked like a bad case of BO watching the schutz healing but it is a different sport

[Arya]

In Sch. dogs are not meant to bounce thru the heeling either but as it is a points deduction not huge and taken into the overall context it depends on what is gained or lost by trying to correct this. It is often seen with extremely high drive Malinois that have trouble hanging on to their drive. This is where I have seen it. My dog can heel both ways, with static hand or with regular hand movements. But the head position and body position I try to keep same for both. Head turned up looking at me. Not crowding but in close. This is acceptable for both sports as long as is consistent.

[Lablover]

I think we all agree, better than a bored and lethargic looking dog.