Whether it’s heeling past another dog or telling your dog to come, the position of your dog’s head can tell you a lot!
Take a look at the picture above, feel free to click on it to enlarge it if need be. The photo shows Gus, one of our board and train dogs, during a recall. You can see his head is pointed straight ahead in photo #1. You can also see that photo #4 has him completely off task and headed a different direction.
The position of Gus’ head has clearly changed from photo #1 to photo #4 and somewhere along the way he was no longer “on task” and coming. Somewhere in photos #2 and #3 is your training moment. In your opinion, which photo indicates the first sign that he is not going to make it all the way into you?
Some of you may have said photo #3 as his body is starting to change directions. Just considering the head (and eye) position, I think the very first indicator is photo #2. Although his head is mostly still pointed in the correct direction, he is clearly looking off to the side already. If you can catch your dog when they are only thinking about something, it’s easier to fix before it turns into something that we see in photo #4.
Learning to read your dog is so important, we hope this helps.
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