A few weeks ago I made a blog post about only being able to teach your dog two skills. We received a lot of great feedback from our readers with their input on what skills they would teach their dogs if they could only pick two commands. Now it’s my turn, if I could only pick two things to teach my dog, they would be heel and down; and here’s why.
Heel - Many people think heel is simply walking with their dogs, and it is, but it also can be so much more. Heel can and really should be taught not only when walking, but rather as a position relative to your body. This means that regardless of movement, starting position, distance or anything else, heel means to get into a certain position. Because of this extended definition, heel can be used when walking with your dog, but can also be used as a recall command as well!
Down - I chose down because this skill has a lot of control built into it. Not only does down mean put your belly on the ground, but it also means keep your belly on the ground until you are told to do something else, so down is also your “stay” command as well. So why chose down instead of sit? Remember, we have to enforce every command we give to our dogs, so unless you expect your dog to sleep in a sit and relax at home always in a sit, down seems like a better option to me.
In my opinion, there are no two other skills that give us more useful control of our dogs then these two commands. If you have another view on this subject, please respond with a comment, I would love to hear different perspectives from everyone!
So what’s the point of all this? Yes, obviously we teach more then just two commands to our clients and their dogs. The point is that obedience should be used as a functioning tool that allows us to control our dogs in a wide variety of situations. The more we build into our commands, the more our dogs will get out of them and the more control we will have over them. Increased freedom comes with increased control, and that is always a good thing!
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