Police Dog Training, Heelwork and Distance Control

This post is the first in a series of short video clips of me training Police Dog ‘ACCO’ back in 1984. The quality is not great, it was shot on VHS throughout the course and includes rare footage of me with hair. A client kindly put the tape, which was showing it’s age, onto DVD for me.

The clip in this segment shows Acco walking to heel both on and off the lead. This is very early in Acco’s training and although not the most exciting footage it makes several good points for owners struggling with this basic but very important skill.

We start out with Acco on the lead. Things to notice, the lead is not tight. Anyone can can get a dog to walk next to them if the lead is only three inches long and the dog is unable to breathe. Note my style of walking, like ‘Del Boy’ from ‘Only Fools & Horses’ . The bounce and swagger make me more interesting to Acco and keeps his focus on me. If, when you walk your dog you move as so many people do, like an undertaker with depression, then your dog will either, act in the same manner or take complete control and drag you all over the place. Throughout the exercise my left (or kind) hand is used to give affection at every halt. You cannot train a dog successfully without mutual respect and affection as well as a huge amount of patience. If you want a well trained dog and can’t do patience then keep your money in your pocket and get a goldfish instead.

After a short period on the lead we go off the lead. Again it is noticeable that Acco happily walks alongside me. He regularly checks with me to see that all is well but he is still alert to what is going on around him. You will hear in the background an instructor giving instructions about pace, turns and positions for Acco to halt in. As you will see Acco is very happy at ‘normal pace’. Watch what happens when the pace changes to ‘slow pace’. almost at once he displays signs of boredom, he walks in front of me, sniffs the ground and jumps up at me. This is exactly how millions of dogs get their ‘exercise’ everyday. We then change to ‘double time’ , what a difference, he perks up, his whole body picture changes ‘Wow, this is fun!’ The pace you see here is the pace that wolves and dogs in the wild would set out on their walk or should I say hunt. At one point in the double time Acco does jump up at me but he is still a puppy and it is just an expression of enthusiasm so I wasn’t too upset. These things take time to perfect, I did mention patience didn’t I? We are in an age where we think we can always have instant gratification, it doesn’t work with a dog, if you don’t put the work in then you will suffer the consequences.

During the double time section you will see me put Acco in the ‘Down’ and carry on running. This is a safety feature, he must learn to drop into the down at once and remain there until I give him a further command. This is early in his training and so needs a repeat down command but then is rock solid as I run past him again without stopping. He stays firmly in the down until I rejoin him and put him in the sit before continuing the exercise.

The section finishes with a very basic introduction to distance control starting with me only 10 yards from Acco. Over a period of a few weeks the training will progress until I am able to control him over a period of several hundred yards. The intention is to enable me to get Acco to move into a number of positions by voice command and/or hand signals. The positions are the sit, down and stand. Once those are well established further commands are introduced to enable a dog to be sent away from the handler a considerable distance and then to go left or right as directed. For now we are dealing with early days and basics. Acco does very well for a novice. The hardest of these positions to teach is the stand because it requires them to make a forward movement to get into position. This means that they are moving towards their handler and sometimes the desire to re-unite is too great. At this point a ‘traditional’ trainer would drag the dog back to his start point and do a fair bit of bellowing, making a negative connection with something that should be fun. How much better and less stressful for both dog and handler just to tell the dog to stay and back up a short distance to have another go. Remember this is very early days. I don’t know about you but I didn’t do advanced calculus at kindergarten so why should we expect dogs to?

And of course at the end of every training session, particularly obedience, a game and a love in!