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Hi Everyone,

I am feeling much better today, thank you. However, I am still not completely well, therefore, today’s tip will be short, but an important approach for improving basic obedience and socialization German Shepherd Dog training classes.

Make it entertaining for the owners of the German Shepherd Dogs, puppies and adults in the class and challenging for the dogs by incorporating obstacles while performing the heeling exercise.  The perfect obstacle to add is a little jump where you can have the class start out a low level and then add height to the jump every few times that you heel around your training ring.

German Shepherd Puppies Heeling Through a Jump Obstacle

Increasing the Height of the Jump Obstacle

Notice how once the obstacle has gotten too high for the people to step over the boards, they simply go to the side and allow the German Shepherd Dogs to jump over the obstacle. Adding an obstacle to the heeling part of the class keeps the German Shepherd Dogs engaged and allows them to actually to perform better at the other class’ exercises.  Once you have reached a certain level, you can find the champion jumper of the class by having elimination rounds.  This is very exciting and gets the entire class enthusiastic and the German Shepherd Dogs feed off of this enthusiasm by performing better at all facets of the class’ exercises. Our best classes at Keystone German Shepherd Dogs have been when we have had added a challenging obstacle.

Try adding an obstacle to your class to keep the training exciting and challenging for the owners and the German Shepherd Dogs.

Ask me a question and I will provide my opinion.

Sincerely,

KeystoneGermanShepherds