# Heelwork With Music?



## GSDLuverForever (Jan 8, 2013)

I have an 8 year old, female GSD named Keeli. She loves to learn and I've always wanted to do heelwork with her. I had a really good idea for one but I wanted to know if it was possible to train her to do heelwork with music? I am not going to do competitions with her, just something to entertain my friends and family. I don't want to do fancy moves like flips off of the people or anything since she is old, just simple moves like walk backwards, tilt head from side to side, things like that. Is it possible to train an 8 year old German Shepherd how to do this? Like I said, she loves to learn!


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## Merciel (Apr 25, 2013)

Absolutely you can do it with an older dog, and it's a whole lot of fun!

Heelwork to music (HTM) is one of the two main branches of canine freestyle; if you do a search on "canine freestyle" or "canine musical freestyle" you should be able to find some good youtubes to get you started. Pamela Marxsen and Emily Larlham (kikopup) have a lot of good tutorials available for free. Mary Ray's book "Dancing With Dogs" has some good stuff too, as does Kyra Sundance's "101 Dog Tricks."

One of the great things about canine freestyle is that it's easily adaptable to older or physically disabled dogs. Just choose the moves your dog can do comfortably.


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## GSDLuverForever (Jan 8, 2013)

Thanks! I can't wait to get started! I'll look up them up on Youtube and check out some books. The song I'm using is 'This Is War' by Thirty Seconds to Mars. Since she is a German Shepherd and all. I like the song and I thought of some really good moves for it. The problem is that Keeli has her moments where she decides she'll be stubborn... lol.


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