K9 Valkyrie is destined for skijoring adventures with her handler. Today, after her competition level obedience lesson, we worked through some preliminary pull lessons. Val is a GSD that is doing phenomenal with her obedience - ‘pulling’ is now is a foreign concept. To clearly define when pulling is appropriate we began condition pulling to a harness. We started with her handler encouraging her dog to pull the empty sled, then I jumped in the sled so she got used to some weight, then eventually we switched roles so Val could get used to her handler being behind her as she pulled. Some dogs naturally pull (huskies and such), some dog need to be conditioned through training procedure and markers like Valkyrie here.
