New Blue Heeler Tips

[apotheosis00]

Hello all! My girlfriend and I have adopted a Blue Heeler that we found abandoned at my girlfriends farm.

She is about 1 years old roughly and we are currently trying to train her.

Does anyone have any good tips on training her to do the following:

Sit, come, drop/leave it, and stay.

She does okay with these but gets very distracted easily.

She also jumps a ton, when I play fetch and have the ball in my hand, she jumps and tries to grab it out of my hand. How can I stop this? She accidentally bit me a little doing this.

I am going to have a ton more questions but I figured I’d start with this.

One last thing, it’s a unique living situation for her as my girlfriend and I don’t live together, so Mabel (our dog) splits time at our houses. Figured I’d mention that.

Any tips or comments appreciated as she is already 1 and I fear it’ll be hard to train her.

 

[jeff56711]

@apotheosis00 It definitely wont be hard to train. I have a one year old red heeler and she loves nothing more then a good training session. Just find some tasty treats as a reward and that should work just fine.

I dont have specific recommendations on training tips; i usually just watch a few youtube videos on positive training techniques for what i want to train on and then do a session for like 10 mins every day or so. As for the jumping i would step back when the dog jumps up and say off as a command. They should get it pretty quickly that jumping means they dont get what they want (i.e. attention). Also if she is jumping at the ball in your hand have her sit everytime you throw the ball so that she knows she has to sit and then the ball gets thrown.

 

[apotheosis00]

@jeff56711 This is a good tip to have her sit when I have the ball in my hand. Will start implementing this

 

[saren911]

@apotheosis00 Check out cattledogacademy.com. Totally worth joining.

 

[truthpaste]

@apotheosis00 I really like Kikopup’s training videos on YouTube. They are super clear and easy to follow. https://youtube.com/@kikopup

Heelers are super smart so they catch on quickly. I would really avoid trainers who use aversive methods like prong collar or shock collar to train. This makes dogs shut down, and since at least my heeler is smart and sensitive it doesn’t work well for them, imo.

 

[handsome2212]

@apotheosis00 Lol I've had my guy since puppy and he had these same issues. I used treats and lots and lots of time, like at least hour a day of training.
He has bit me 3 times and it always happened when playing ball. Imo he thinks he is doing a job and I am in the way. Slapped him once by reflex he latched on to my inner thigh. Past 6 months he's been great. I now make him drop and wait (sit) while I pick up the ball. I make sure he isn't close, just have to work around his quirks.