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One aspect of giving advice, on anything, is trying to remember the thoughts and considerations that went through your own mind when you were doing it for the first time yourself and probably knew nothing about it. Dog training is no different. Walking to heel, or rather failure to walk to heel is however the one dog training problem I just don't get. I had a Cairn/Lakeland cross called Bimbo as a pet for a few years when I was very small. He walked to heel. I obviously didn't train him to do it but I think my Dad did. Now his attitude would have been the boy doesn't want to have to take the dog everywhere on a lead and I haven't got a lot of time to worry about this. I don't actually remember Bimbo ever being on the lead and we used to go for a walk most Sunday afternoons along the Dublin Road out of Omagh. I do remember being down by the river one day and we were sitting on a rug, my Dad, sister Lorna, and myself. Bimbo growled at me and my Dad thumped him. Just the once. He never growled at a child again though he would growl at strange adults, especially those poor souls who seem to have to shout rather than talk. He was never disciplined for growling at adults, probably because he never actually bit one, but no strange adult was allowed near me without a warning. This is just about as untrainable a mongrel as I can now imagine but he was a mongrel that knew his boundries. Recently I have found myself writing that how you would solve a perceived problem with a dog is not necessairly how you would train a dog to do it in the first place. I seem to be writing it quite often of late. Probably the only reason Bimbo walked to heel was that he was a disciplined dog in general therefore walking to heel was no big deal. I try not to use tricks to train my dogs but a dog that is made to sit before it is allowed out of the kennel, a dog that is made to sit before it is allowed to either jump in or out of the dog box in the car, that sort of dog will adapt to discipline more readily that one that won't carry out these tasks. Walking at heel is a discipline orientated task.