Being Subordinate

The first likelihood would be that he is not willingly working as your subordinate. In this instance, he may be trying to establish the 50/ 50 equality we discussed earlier in the heel command.

Remember, when he comes and sits in front of you, he is looking up to you as an appropriate authority figure, thusly subordinating himself. We know that dogs do not do things for no reason, so if the has chosen to incorrectly perform this command, but for reasons other than to simply challenge your authority, perhaps in his opinion for security measures, he has changed his orientation to your command.

Were that to be the case we might allow this discrepancy so as to permit him to observe the suspected or perceived threat. If that were the case, asking him to return to heel would cause him to back himself into the heel position, without taking his eyes off of the front view.

That would be O.K. under certain circumstances. On the other hand, we'll look at this as an example of simply not performing the command correctly, simply because of inexperience. This is why we have not covered how to get your dog to sit. It's important to understand that accomplishing a command is not relevant to our criteria. So, the first thing you must do is hurry up and relax.

When we ask our dog to sit, let's say, from any position, it is our ultimate goal to get him to sit exactly where we indicate. Therefore, whether he sits or not, is secondary to our ultimate goals. This is important mainly to enforce strict discipline. In other words, we have the option to cause our dog to work harder and harder to satisfy our request. We will apply the knowledge and techniques we have been working on, to format a routine for training and temperament development.

This routine is the heeling pattern exercise, which will give you the ability to exercise your dogs mind in a manner that cannot be accomplished through any other means. The heeling pattern will exercise the dominant and submissive nature of your dogs personality, and it only requires about four minutes of work. .