puppy training

[mercedes]

I am in the process of teaching Mercedes how to heel. She does not do good at all. She jumps around and wines and is just horrible. She doesnt mind the leash being on her, so I don't know why she throws such a fit. First, I tell her to sit, and she does this fine. Then, when I try to get her to walk along side of me, she goes crazy and just doesn't want to do it. Is there a way that I can get her to do this? Also, how many times a day should I be working on this with her?

[tugger5000]

My opinion only here, I may be wrong, but I think it may be a bit early?
We didn't do the heel command until after 4-5(?) months after running Dante through sit, down and getting him used to holding the positions for long periods of time with distractions.

Our trainer had us put the dog in a sit, move to the side, show the dog a piece of food, but hold it at your hip (or whatever height is good for the dog) and have the follow you for a couple of steps and stop. rotate your hand back to the outside to move the dog into a sit and feed once the butt hits the ground... Once she "gets it" introduce the voice command.

[Rott-Wiley]

How old is she now? At around 4 months old, I would;

If her attention span will take it, 3 or 4 times a day for 5 minutes (or so) would be real good. I would much rather see her do a real good short lesson that she enjoys than get bored and jumping around and acting horrible (picking up bad habits).

I would try to work with her twice a day on heeling for about 3 days. After that try to slip in another session and see how she does.

[moondog]

The puppy is only 9 weeks old. At this age your goal should be limited to encouraging her to follow along happily on a lead. She's far too young and full of puppiness to expect any more than that from her. Baby steps for baby puppies! :)

[mercedes]

She is alot smarter than she seems, though. She has got sit down almost perfectly already, which is pretty amazing to me. My family raises and breeds Maltees, and they never learn that fast.

[Rottnlove]

I'll agree, Rottweilers are quite intelligent! :)

If she's only 9 weeks, she's too young to teach the heel command. I would maybe work on sit and down, and focus on potty training. That should be your main focus at this stage. Let her just enjoy being a pup at this point. One of the things I had my pup do at her age is drag her leash to get her use to it. It was on all day where I could watch her and give a light correction if she was doing something in the house that was not allowed. It worked out pretty good.

[Luvs]

Puppies are learning everytime you do anything with them. I totally agree that a 9 week old puppy is too young for any serious training but you can still work on heeling if you make it totally fun for her. I started my puppy young and by 10 weeks she would heel for a short distance. With her I started the heeling work off leash since she was still getting used to the leash. I used treats and alot of praise. I would get a treat ( I used puppy milk bones because I could break them up really good), I held the treat by my hip to start and would say her name and give her the command and show her the treat. Of course she would follow me anywhere as long as I had that treat lol. I had to make sure that she saw the treat the whole time and sometimes I had to put it in front of her nose so she wouldn't lose interest. I would go a few steps praising the whole way to encourage her to keep going and then give her the treat and stop. I did that several times a day and she quickly learned to heel.
What ever you do don't correct her if she is not doing it right!! I never, ever corrected Akasha for not heeling correctly at that age. She was way too young for corrections. I just used the food to guide her back to where I wanted her to be. It needs to be fun and you really need to encourage her.
To get her used to the leash I would leave it on her around the house and let her drag it behind her until she started to ignore it. Once she got used to the leash and was heeling all around the house off leash I added the leash to our heeling and she never even noticed.
I have been very fortunate. Akasha has been very easy to train. Rotties are such smart dogs!