Walks to heel beautifully......when I have treats

[feesh]

My 9-month old dog can walk to heel really beautifully when she wants to i.e. when she knows I have treats. And I mean really beautifully - competition obedience standard according to our trainer.

The trouble is, when I don't have treats, she is a bit pully and generally ignores me in favour of sniffage/cat spotting.

She's not too bad, but we are trying for a baby and I don't want to have to struggle with dog + pram when the time comes.

She pings to my side whenever I say 'heel' but if I don't have treats with me, she soon forgets this and starts ignoring me.

I should be weaning her off treats I am sure, but how do you do it? Will she naturally get better as she gets older?

The trouble is that she is prone to getting the squits at the moment and seems to have a food allergy, so I want to cut treats out for a couple of weeks until I can work out what the problem is, so I don't want to be taking treats out with me on walks.

Sometimes I walk her on our usual walk on the Flexilead and don't need/want her to heel - is this a problem re mixed messages? Should I keep walking her on a short lead until she gets it 100%?

She heels well when you have treats and not when you don't I think you have your answer!

Why do you have to wean her off treats?

You need to make her default behaviour walking to heel - if you achieve this with treats you are doing well. Gradually expect her to walk a bit longer at heel before she gets a treat.

Re the cutting out of treats due to allergies just take the treats from her normal food allowance so she will not be getting any more food but just having it spread over the day. Introducing different treats is a great way to find the food she is allergic too. Keep her on one food for a while including treats, gradually introduce a very small quantity of different food via treats and you can easily find which one is causing the problem.

I hate flexi leads with a passion (so you will get different views from others) but I would never use one. The dog does not get any more exercise on a flexi lead they are still walking the same speed as you. I would use a long line if I had a dog with a dodgy recall or needed chase recall training.

My 6 month old (after 4 weeks of training, he's a rescue pup) will do most things reasonably well for treats

And not at all without them.

So am relieved to read Minimuu's post!

I know people hate Flexileads, but I really like them and will continue to use it - we live in the Middle East and she is walked on random patches of wasteground we can find between busy main roads (there are no pavements where we live!) so it suits us really well in this environment. She can scoot around sniffing in the sand, I don't have to walk as vigorously in the heat, and I can reel her in closer to me if any locals come along who hate dogs.

Her recall is good, but I can't let her off lead unless we are on the beach because of local sensitivities.

When I used to socialise Hearing Dogs, they knew that when they were on their red Flexilead they were allowed to scoot all around doing sniffs etc, but when the yellow short lead was on, they had to walk to heel - this is kind of what I would like to achieve with our dog, but I have no idea how Hearing Dogs taught the dogs to know the difference!

The reason I can't use treats at the moment is because she is on a raw food diet and I am about to take her right back to a basic chicken-only diet while I try and work out what the problem is - I was using cheese and dried liver as my main treats, but I am pretty sure she has a cheese allergy, and the liver is too much for her delicate tum at the moment. Any treats I use need to be home-made as you can't buy proprietary treats here. I could use cooked and shredded chicken breast - it's not ideal in this heat because it gets very stinky and rancid over the course of a half hour walk, but I can cope with using it if you think the answer to this problem is that I MUST use treats on every walk.

So, do you ALWAYS have to have treats on you for walks then? Forever or until the dog is a certain age and finally 'gets' it? How long does this take?

I don't want a robot dog, I am happy for her to pootle around on the end of the lead sniffing, but I want her to be able to do a perfect heel when a local man walks past to avoid offending anyone (which, to be fair, she is bloody good at already) and I don't want her to actively PULL. Like I said before, she's not actually too bad, but if we have a baby I would like a slightly more relaxed walking pace from her! In this heat my tolerance for an annoying dog can be low!!!