Since so many people here have lots of experience training their dogs at a high level, I'm hoping for some help in this little problem I'm having...

I started teaching my (almost) 9-month-old GSD pup to heel. He's already excellent with the sit, down, come, stay - obeys under distractions (doesn't get easily distracted anyway ) and always performs very quickly and enthusiastically. I very rarely have to correct him, as he's so eager to please and so focused.

I watched the Leerburg "Training competition heeling with Tom Rose" DVD many, many times (could probably quote the whole thing in my sleep, haha) and am precisely following the methods shown there to teach my dog to heel while maintaining eye contact.
So far, Tom's methods are working very well - I'm extremely impressed with the DVD, it covers each step so clearly and intelligently!
At the moment we're doing maybe 5-10 steps at a time (straight line, normal pace) and my pup will watch me intently as he heels at my side and will catch the food when I spit it out, just like the dogs on the DVD.

The problem: my pup is highly enthusiastic in his obedience with super drive (food & toy), which is great fun for both of us , but he tends to jump up at me a lot while we heel.
In the beginning of the video, Tom says that one should NOT correct the dog for jumping up.
He says that we want that kind of enthusiasm from the dog and that the jumping up is "an easy thing to correct later on".

Unfortunately he never does go into how to correct this on the tape.

Now my pup is already in the 95-100 lbs. range at 9 months and when he jumps up, he actually reaches my face and will happily try to grab the food from my mouth (he stays in a perfect heel position the whole time though!).

I tried (using only a flat collar) to hold the leash in a way that would prevent him from jumping up, but as Tom warned in the video, this is causing my pup to lose some of his drive and to lag a bit. He's not even a soft dog, so I don't know why this would happen. I use a prong collar on him for the correction phases on other exercises and that doesn't seem to affect his drive at all.
(My guess is that he learned to back off when he feels pressure on the leash - I taught him since he was a pup to walk without pulling on the lead as shown by Ed in his basic obedience DVD).

Any suggestions as to how I can stop the crazy jumping without dampening my pup's enthusiasm? Heeling is a brand new exercise for him and I want to keep it all motivational until he learns it.
I'd be happy to ignore the jumping, but as I said, Taro is very strong and big and I don't want him to grab my face in his mouth or to knock me over

Hi Yuko. My reply is probably on the level of the "blind leading the blind." I'm new to all of this too. But we have a really good trainer, and several dog/handler teams are facing issues such as yours at this particular time. Also, we have a few of the DVD's sold here, and Bernard Flinks in particular is popular with our trainer. That being said, I have not watched the video you referenced.

When I read your post, one particular team we train with came to mind. Sue is probably 5'2" if she's standing on a board or something, and her GSD male (Truman) is up there towards the top of the SV breed standard at the withers. So.. when he comes up, he is almost as tall as her with his back feet on the ground.

The tug toy is Truman's fave reward, so that's what's used in OB work. Truman was really getting nuts with his jumping up. There are other subtler things that were recommended to work with this problem, but a real obvious and relatively ease thing was speed adjustment - and more right turns (fast ones).

The objective was not to take Truman's drive and interest off of the toy. The goal was to get Truman working harder to get his reward - AKA less opportunity for jumping up for it and trying to just "take" it. We have introduced correction under distraction which is all part of this - and too hard to explain over an internet post now that I'm trying to do that.

Fast right turns force the dog to speed up - hence more attention on the fuss and less on trying to earn/steal/snitch the reward. But in our training program, you have to be ready to "pay" the dog very quickly when they do it right. OK - LOL it's getting even more impossible to try to share this tip over the net.

Another question - is food as a reward what you are committed to (or more importantly, what your dog is committed to?) or could you use a favored toy? And possibly speed at specific points in the routine to get more of the behaviour you are looking for?

Sorry this post is probably nonsensical..

Beth

Lol, poor Sue! I'm 5'8 but my pup can JUMP and I have to lean away from him to avoid having him grab my face (counterproductive when heeling)!

Your suggestion sounds great, but the problem with speeding up and doing more turns is that my pup doesn't know the heel yet! We just started (like, 3 days ago) and are only at the phase of doing a few steps in a straight line before rewarding and releasing.

If I start throwing in turns or speeding up he'd just break the heel and would start jumping around me. It would definitely confuse him at the stage we're at.

Haha, I just pictured myself trying to work my pup with a toy instead of food. I can't use a toy in the initial steps of learning a new exercise because my pup's toy drive is off the charts.
He'll just start leaping at me to try and get it and there's no way I could get him to focus on learning something new. I only use the toy when he really knows an exercise, so that I can increase his speed and intensity. The toy also works great for distraction training (in which case I would give him a prong correction for jumping at me instead of obeying the command).

His food drive is high, but not to the point of distraction. It's the only thing I can use to teach him something new.

How did you and your club members go about teaching the heel for the very first time? Or more specifically, how did they deal with the jumping up in the initial stage (before you got to all the turning and such)?

Your post made perfect sense Beth, thanks for the ideas! Now I'll know what to do when we reach a higher stage of heel training!!

Oh Beth, I forgot to mention: I definitely understand what you mean by rewarding more quickly and not giving the dog the chance to get too excited by the reward.

Thing is, I'll place my pup in a sit at heel position. He knows the sit so he'll sit still and watch me without jumping up for the treat. He'll hold the sit & watch for 10, 20, 30 seconds.

The second I say "heel" and start walking, he starts jumping.

Today I tried doing the training after a long walk and it went a little better. Less leaping up, just a little bit of "bouncing" while walking in heel. It was very cute

I wish I could just ignore the jumping, but it's impossible to walk in a straight line with that thing leaping at me!!

Hey Yuka. That HAPPY HEELING as we call it here is no easy to achieve, by any stretch.

If your dog MIGHT be interested in a toy rather than food, how about rewarding with the toy after 2 or 3 steps of nice heeling? That's totally how we all got started. Don't know if it's the best way, but that's the way we're doing it and it's working for us.

The speed up stuff I mentioned comes WAY after you already have happy heeling for a reward on a few steps.

Even though Sue's dog seems "big" for her, I believe they will take the field next season for a BH, and possibly a SchH1. Her dog might look out of control right now, but she's having fun and so is he. And he is in that control zone where he's having fun, but will never, ever, hurt her.

If you want to see some pics you can download them from http://www.JolietSchutzhund.com. Sue is the gal in the red coat. We hope to get the pictures better organized someday, but that's it for now.

Beth

"Happy heeling" is a perfect way to describe it!

Nice photos... I wish I had such a good club to train with. It must be so helpful to see others working on the same issues you have with your own dog and to have a real trainer around for help.

Good news; my pup is finally getting the hang of the exercise and has pretty much stopped jumping up (still bounces along as we heel though, so cute)! We're still only doing a few steps at a time of course, but they're very nice heeling steps

I tried what you suggested, rewarding with a toy instead of food, and wow, the intensity in his heeling just shot up!
Thanks for your help Beth - I can't wait to get some "happy heeling" out of him with turns and all, like the dogs in your club