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Week One - Sit Out of Motion

In the BH, the handler starts with the dog in Basic Position, heels for 10-15 paces and then stops in heel. The dog sits, handler pauses a couple seconds, then the handler leaves dog for 15 paces, and then turns around with legs together. The handler waits for judge approval, returns to dog, waits for judge approval before proceeding to the next exercise; down in motion.

For IPO 1-3, the handler starts with the dog in Basic Position, heels for 10-15 paces, cues sit without any body language, dog stops and sits, handler proceeds 15 paces, etc…

The difference is that in the BH, there is a pause, in the IPO obedience routines, no pause.

Here is Reik’s sit out of motion in a trial.

Generally you want the dog’s butt to hit the ground within 2 steps of you saying the cue (if not before!), and for the dog to look at the handler the entire time, not check out his environment like Reik does here. (more on that in the sit stay under distraction part!)

Steps your dog needs for a good sit in motion:

• Tuck sit (Fundamentals 1)
• Sit while halting in heel
• Sit stay under distraction

Sit while halt:

The dog learned basic position and how to get there in Fundamentals 2. I like to do one step, halt, mark reward, that sort of thing to give the dog practice. Sitting quickly after heeling for a long time is a different skill than sitting after one step of sort of heel.

Footwork for the halt and sit:

I like to come down on the same foot when halting each time. We’ll get further into this skill in the heeling class, but let’s just say I want you to stop the same way every single time you halt. I don’t care how or what your footwork is, I just want to point out how important consistency is. I tend to stop very fast, braking slightly on my right foot, and drawing my left foot up so my legs end up together. I find that my dogs move faster when I move faster and this forces them to pay attention and look snappy. Other handlers have more success at taking a half step before they stop. Practice both ways without the dog, figure out what is comfortable for you, and then ask what is comfortable for the dog.

Here is a video showing footwork without the dog. There are 3 halts each way.

How to teach the footwork:

A half second before you come to a complete halt, cue your dog to sit, mark and reward in sit position. Food is good for this because you can feed easily in sit position and the dog usually doesn’t move out of sit position. Why a half second of pausing? Whatever you do a half second before stopping should become your dog’s cue to sit. My dog’s cue is my braking right foot. So my training would go like this:

Heeling along happily, brake right foot, verbal cue to sit, come to stop.

Here is a video of Reik and Ones showing you training and various sits at halts.

Sit stay distraction:

Distractions will be moving legs, handler moving away, handler returning, and handler either going around and behind dog to return, or next to him. Other distractions will be crowd, environment, and a judge standing next to or behind dog.

Count how many seconds it takes you to walk 15 steps away from your dog, pause 3 seconds, walk back to your dog, and pause 3 seconds. It takes me about 25 seconds. (I walk fast!) Therefore my dog has to know at absolute minimum a 25 second sit stay under distraction. Being me, I would train for at least a minute.

Steps:

Quick stop in heel: for those dogs who aren’t great heelers yet, it is just important they know a couple steps and how to sort of stay on your left side.

Halt and move in place (make sure you include not looking at dog)

Halt and move in place, pause, and then move away

Here is Ones showing those 2 steps and also showing how he has to get used to my moving legs. See how he looks at them at about the 26 second mark?

See how I deal with his mistakes (not quite sitting, sitting, and then scooting forward.) Reset and try again. I also go back to an easier form of it when Ones shows that it is hard for him to stay sitting when I move away.

Here is Ones a couple weeks later showing where he is at.

Seeing how slow he was on the second one, I would probably go back to pausing a little more until he is more fluent and quicker. However, I like how once the butt does go down, he is down, and the tail is still.

Next step would be to fade the pause. Now you are just working on you walking away and duration, as well as the return. Here is Che showing the returns. I am showing both returns, but in trial I always return in such a way that I don’t go behind the dog.

A note about the heel cue “trumping” the sit cue. It is actually good to start the motions practice before you have spent much time teaching heel and increasing the value of being in heel position. I think a common problem while teaching the out of motions is that heeling trumps the stopping. For this reason, I also (especially for the down and stand) practice asking for the motions out of heel but while the dog is in motion. Which leads to your next skill, wrapping or fly.

Homework:

Work on these skills. Remember to keep your training sessions short and fun, and successful. Don’t jump ahead!