Teaching Your Dog the ‘Right’ Command
This is the order given to a dog when you wish him to come to heel at your right side.
After having learnt to come up on your left-hand side, the dog is next taught to come up on your right-hand side. It is necessary that he should learn to walk on both sides because, if you are accompanied by someone who is on one side of you, you will want the dog on the opposite side, or you may be walking on a narrow footpath where it is to the advantage of both dog and handler that the animal is on the inside should the handler wish to step off the kerb; if the dog is on the outside, in stepping off the kerb he may tread on the dog.
‘Heel’, therefore, means heel on the left, and ‘Right’ means heel pn the right.
For this lesson, start with the dog sitting on the left side. On he command ‘Right’, your actions will be the reverse of those used for ‘Heel’. That is, the lead and meat will be transferred to the right hand and the dog drawn behind you to your right. Make the dog sit after each ‘Heel’ and ‘Right’ command, and be sure to reward him each time he obeys the command successfully. Don’t expect the dog to ‘Right’ when he is sitting in front of you; he must previously have been on the left and in the heel position.
Once you have got him to perform the transposition from left to right hand side successfully, practice, when walking, getting him to transfer from left to right on the command ‘Right’ and back again to the left o the command ‘Heel’. By this time he will need no rewaed for obeying orders.