05/14/2026
The first clip is Zim in a heel I only use for dog sport trials. It was taught with tons of reinforcement and a great game of tug. If I needed to manage him by putting him into that heel I could. But he isn’t really making any choices, he’s focused on a mission that he knows leads to a reward.
In the second clip he’s just hanging out not being cued to do anything. In fact if I started to cue him to do things he would be happy to. But I also want him to make choices without being constantly handled and managed.
I hear it all the time, my dog did great in this group class, but once we go home or I’m outside with just a leash everything goes out the window. I find a lot of the dogs with owners saying that are highly motivated and love doing the work. However, they then struggle when they aren’t working for a reward.
With dogs like this if we start telling them TO DO things, sit, come, place etc they will start performing like Zim in the first clip. That is why I believe it is appropriate to make sure we have a way to tell dogs to NOT DO things.
