Episode 54 - Tails You Win: The Big Picture on Show Puppies and Tail Carriage

9/21/2026

This episode is inspired by a fan comment on Episode 51: Teaching Show Puppies to Sit: Will The Real Show Stack Please Stand Up?

"I have found that even thinking about sitting in a breed like mine (Lakelands) leads to a slight relaxation of the tail which must be vertical or with slight curve toward head when baiting in the ring. It's a minor thing, but can make the difference between Winners and Reserve"

What a great comment. She’s not wrong, if your puppy is thinking about sitting in the show ring, there’s going to be that bit of relaxation in the tail.

But, why is your puppy thinking about sitting in the ring? Plot spoiler, it’s not because he has learned to sit on cue ;).

Tune in for my recommendations for and analysis of the “ups and downs” of puppy tails.

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

Transcript - Episode 54

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist., and this is a Puppy Culture Potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

This episode's question is a comment, actually that, a follow up on episode 51? Will the real show stack please stand up? If you have not yet listened to that episode, I recommend you go back and listen to that, because I fully discuss the topic of whether or not it's advisable to teach show prospect puppies to sit.

And as you might guess, I do come down on the side of teaching puppies to sit. Sit and stack are two distinct behaviors. The fact that the puppy happens to know how to sit does not mean that he can't learn to stack in that context. And truncating your puppy's education based on the fact that you're going to have this reductionist attitude toward getting the show stack, it just it doesn't make any sense, and it does not lead to the best performance in the show ring, either.

That's the Reader's Digest. Again, it's episode 51, and I highly recommend that you go back and listen to the whole discussion. But here's the comment:

I mostly agree with you about teaching the sit. But I have found that even thinking about sitting in a breed like mine, Lakelands, leads to a slight relaxation of the tail, which must be vertical or with a slight curve toward the head when baiting in the ring.

It's a minor thing, but can make the difference between winners and reserve, especially when up against professionally handled competition. I prefer to teach down and stand and leave sit for after they get their championship. That little bit of relaxation in the tail, when the dog anticipates that sit can make a difference. I remember helping a friend with the dog that wasn't supposed to have a high tail carriage, but would if she got too exuberant in the ring.

The owner told me if her tail started to go vertical, just gently tell her that dog and the tail would go back to the pump handle configuration required of the breed. Then praise effusively.

Okay, me again. Wow. I mean, she's not wrong. And this is an interesting topic, but this is one of those cases where she's not wrong about the potential issue, but I don't think she's correctly identifying what the problem is.

She's thinking the problem is that the puppy has learned to sit. And I'm going to say the problem is not that the puppies learned to sit. It's that the puppies thinking about sitting in that context. Let me explain. Definitely anticipating a sit can get a lowering of the tail, but this is why I train a pure verbal release from the stack.

So if you've seen my show series, you know that there's two things that I don't do. Okay? Number one, I don't step into the dog to get them to fix their feet because that gets them posting and rocking back. And number two, I don't lure them out of a stack. I teach them a pure verbal release. So they're going to stay in that stack.

And then I can adjust their head position with the bait and not worry that they're going to come out of their stack and it gets them over their front end the way I want them to be. If you haven't seen my show handling series, there are three videos Killer Free Stacks, Stack and Deliver, and Winning in Motion. And I follow a litter of puppies from five weeks old when I'm just starting them on, stacking through to their grand championship, so you can see the whole process.

And I do cover the verbal release there, but the tail thing is interesting because I don't really talk a lot about tails in my show handling videos, but I am always cognizant of tail carriage. The bull terrier breed standard says that the tail should be set on low and carried horizontal to the ground. So I do want to be able to adjust tail position when necessary for my dogs that have a higher tail carriage.

I do not use a toy. A toy with a verbal release gets a tail like an exclamation point. Because remember when you have a true verbal release, okay, not a stay. A stay is something different, but a true wait for that release. Every bit of that dog is up and at the ready for that moment that they're going to spring out of that stack.

So having that toy, it's going to elevate them, and just every bit of them is going to be tight and wound and up waiting to get at that toy. Now if you want that, if you need that tail way up in the air, because the tail is going to be part of that physically wound up and almost vertical.

Great. But if you have a breed that's supposed to have a low tail carriage or a tail carriage horizontal to the ground, you need a different strategy. So for my higher tail carriage animals, which again, remember I'm looking for a horizontal to the ground tail carriage in my breed. I'm going to be using not a limbic toy that's going to make them crazy, but a moderately valuable treat that they're going to be interested in but not overly excited by.

If I have a dog that tends to droop their tail, I'm going to use a toy with that verbal release and it's going to work like a charm. The verbal release coupled with different bait toy versus food, and also within those categories, ascending and descending values of toys and food gives me very fine control over tail position. I mean, if you want to go to school on this, okay, go to some of the big terrier shows.

And I mean, obviously this woman who wrote in has been to big terrier shows, so I'm not preaching to her. But for those of you that might be newer at this and still thinking like, you know, why don't I. I don't want that tail to come down. I don't want to teach the sit, go to a terrier show and look at some of the big handlers.

It is an unbelievable team effort to put that dog in just that amazing head space where that tail and the entire body carriage is going to be just such, to go in there and knock it out of the park at a big terrier show or a top level competition like Westminster. And if you are not just in awe of the pure chops of these professional handlers, you need to take another look because they're not winning for no reason.

It's like taking a seminar to be in the group ring with them and if you want a really good education, go by these professional handler setups and watch them working with these dogs. There is a tremendous, endless amount of work and training that is put into these dogs to get them to that mental state where that tail is going to stay up and the dog is going to be on fire, and the dog is going to come in and own that ring.

So would teaching one of those dogs to sit make a difference? Really? I do not think so at all. What I'm trying to say here is that this woman is not wrong. That if the dog is thinking about sitting down, there could be a lowering of the tail. And she's not wrong. In terrier competition, where a breed like Lakelands, where you're just being killed by professionals all the time, and not because there's favoritism, but because the professionals are really good and they really prepare their dogs.

Yeah, that could mean the difference between winning and losing, but not teaching the dog to sit. I think if you are reaching for that, you're grasping at straws. Okay. I think that if the dog is thinking about sitting, that's diagnostic of your show game, okay? It's not diagnostic of it's the fault of having taught the dog to sit.

Now he's thinking sit and otherwise he would be perfect. If your show game is not strong enough that the dog is thinking about something else. I mean, you haven't trained your show game. Now, that having been said, I have sympathy for breeders. Okay, I understand you place these puppies in pet homes and then you're doing a ringside pickup and the puppies sitting because that's what the puppy's been taught to do.

And I get it. You think the solution is, let's just not teach this puppy to sit so they'll just stand and I can finish them. And then the owner can, you know, teach them to sit afterwards or fill in the blanks. The tail, the tail is lowering. I think we have to establish that if the tail is lowering or if the puppy's thinking about sitting, it's a failure of training.

Okay. The puppy does not understand the show game. Your show game is weak. But the counterargument is for these breeders, I listen. This is all I got. I'm picking up the puppy ring side and it just can't sit. I'm not here to throw shade on the people that feel that way and the breeders that that's just how they've always done it.

And and they going beyond that box is too much for them. Okay. What I will take issue with is anyone who says that it can't be done, that you can't do both, or that doing both is not better, because doing both, teaching all the rally, competition, obedience, agility, nose work and breed handling at the same time is always going to be the best.

It's going to get you the best performance in the show ring. It's going to get you the most confident animal. It's going to get the best relationship. It's going to be the best for the puppy owner. So there's no question that teaching a puppy to sit should not affect their show game. But if you truly, just honestly are not going to take the time and effort to teach the puppy, I get why you wouldn't want the puppy to sit.

But back to that tail thing. It's interesting because I go through this in, stack and deliver, where I'm talking about hand stacking and how the way that you touch a dog, okay, can activate their back muscles. So depending on how you want that dog's top line to look, and that includes the tail set. Okay, what I talk about in the film is how with puppies, especially when they're overwhelmed by new environments and they're in sensory overload, which is basically every puppy ever at a dog show.

I use a lot of deep body pressure when it's not our turn to be examined. So I use a lot of, flat hands pulling the puppy into me. Again, this is very dog specific because some dogs are not going to like that deep body pressure, but many do respond to it very well. It's like, a squeeze machine for autistic people.

But then when I want to activate the puppy again or the dog again, when it's going to be my turn again, light rapid touch across the top of the dog will activate those back muscles. So that's just one example of how you can affirmatively control your dog's not just body position, but how their muscles are activated or not activated.

Things like ears, tail set, expression. Are they pulling up over their front or not? You can control all of this, and the more you work on learning how to manipulate these things and control these things and bring them out instead of reductively trying to prevent the dog from doing something, the better you're going to be, you're going to get an objectively better show performance from your dog, doing it that way.

I just want to say, in closing, thank you so much to this woman for writing in, because it's a great topic and something that maybe I haven't addressed very specifically before. So thanks again to her for writing in. Our website is puppyculture.com. I already talked about our show handling videos, but here's some exciting news. We have a brand new course, a one hour course demystifying ovulation timing for breeders.

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You know, timing is one of those things that can be very intimidating for breeders, but it does not have to be. And that's what this course is about. This is a course by a breeder for breeders, explaining a complicated topic in a scientifically rigorous manner, but in plain English, with clear animations and graphics that are fun and easy to watch.

And you can understand, it's designed to empower you as a breeder to have intelligent discussions with your repro vet or your regular veterinarian about reproductive matters and ovulation timing. Again, it's available at puppyculture.com.

Well, that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.