Teaching "get back"

[mjbgsd]

I am just curious as to how people have taught there dogs this command, ie where the dog backs up with the handler, more known in Rally Excellent where you have to step back 3 paces.

[Liesje]

I started doing perch work with Kenya to get her more aware of her back end, and show her that she can pivot with me backwards or left. Once she was getting the hang of it, I taught the back up along a wall or bench, slowly moving farther from the bench. Sometimes she has a tendancy to back up and turn in toward me so once in a while I will kind of hike my right foot back and tap her back legs to keep her straight. Now she does it pretty dang nice! For our BH and FO heeling I want to use a pivot style left about rather than around my back so we've done a lot of work moving back and in. So much so that at our last rally training session ALL she would do is back up and pivot! It was kind of funny, I'd stop and she was supposed to sit but instead she would look up and me and grin and take a step backward. So don't practice it TOO much at once, lol!

[Lauri & The Gang]

Is the dog still in the Heel position? If so then I wouldn't teach it as anything different.

To me, Heel is a position - not so much an action. So it wouldn't matter if I'm walking forward or backwards - the dog still maintains the same position.

[amjrchamberlain]

LOL Lies, that's a cute note about over practicing!

I teach it the same way as Lies. I put the dog next to myself and a wall to start, use a food lure, and give the "back" command. I give the command each time I take a step back (3 times). Eventually, the lure goes away but I continue to use the same hand motion and reward continually. We start moving away from the wall about 2-4 feet and then after that they pretty much "get it". You can switch to a variable reinforcement schedule, of course.

Now that Apollo has done it so much, he maintains heel position no matter whether walking backwards or forwards (as mentioned by Lauri), but it took us teaching it against the wall with a lure to start the behavior.

[mjbgsd]

Nice.
cody understood it right away when I taught him heeling at a young age. He understood that the heel position means you have to stay by my left side no matter if I'm heeling foward or backwards. Isa on the other hand was slow at learning this. She understands it now but has a hard time doing it because of how her back is structured.

[IliamnasQuest]

My dogs all learn to heel backwards - in fact, I've been practicing a whole heeling pattern in reverse with Khana .. *L* .. the straight backing is easy, the left turns are easy, the about turns are easy - but we stumble over the backwards right turns. Khana heels almost as well backwards as she does forward.

I don't teach the backing up with anything to guide them. I just shape the behavior. I do a lot of work on teaching the heel as a position and not just a forward movement, so my dogs naturally want to stay in position and when I first back up, I basically lean slightly back (shift my weight back without actually stepping) and my dog shifts back too. Gradually we add in more movement until we're stepping backwards.

I use the command "get back" for the left pivots - to my dogs, this means they're going to back around me. I use "scoot" (or "scoo" with Khana because the "t" sound made her want to sit .. strange dog .. *L*) for backing straight. Khana had really high praise from the rally judges in excellent level for her backing up - she was obviously the best one shown at our trials and the judges pointed that out during the ribbons. I was pretty proud .. *G* .. she's a CHOW, for doG's sake! None of the BC's or goldens or labs came even close to her smoothness when we did the "back three steps" exercise.

Missy, you mentioned that Isa has a hard time backing up due to her structure. I found that Trick - who was a wonderful backer when she was younger - has had more and more trouble with it as she's gotten older. She didn't enter rally until she was more than ten years old, but she had learned to back up when she was quite young. I had to really warm her up before we went in the excellent ring, though, or her backing was very awkward. Now if I ask her to back up she kind of curves her spine and sometimes ends up backing into a sit. I'm sure it's not very comfortable for her (she's almost 13) so I don't have her do it anymore. I think that shepherds - with their longer backs - may sometimes have more problems with some actions than other dogs (like my short-backed chows .. Kylee, even at the age of 16, could still back up nicely).

Melanie and the gang in Alaska

[BlackPuppy]

I was just working on this last night. I think my food lure is too high because I though Ciana was going to do back flips to get it. LOL!

I saw the "dog in a basket" method on my Yahoogroup. I haven't tried that yet because I don't like to use physical force to get the dog to do something.

There are some videos on YouTube also.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLY0EgF5vjY

[amjrchamberlain]

Melanie - Neat idea! The shifting weight and then adding backwards step idea. I'm going to have to try that!

[mjbgsd]

Nice info.

[bookjunky4life]

I've never heard of the dog in a basket method. What is it exactly?