Owings Mills' Helman Tames the 'WoofPak'

This is the final part in a series about Owings Mills resident Bill Helman, who trains and drives Huskies in Baltimore County. Read the first two parts: and .

In 1996, when Hudson was brought home as a companion to Czar, Helman learned a tough lesson about the social skills and hierarchies of Huskies.

To prevent the vicious territorial fights, Helman was forced to feed and play with the dogs separately. After harnessing them to his bicycle, and taking them for long runs, he realized that when the dogs were tired out, they were more likely to accept each other.

But he still needed to form a pack, so the dogs could bond with each other, and him, together.

Salvation came in the way of a dog trainer, introduced to Helman through an employee.

Helman was lamenting that he couldn’t bring his dogs to work. Stubborn, energetic, and not always responsive, Helman knew he couldn’t stop them from jumping on people and making a wreckage of his warehouse. Then his employee spoke up.

“She said, ‘But you can! You’ve got to go see Jon Collins!’” Helman said. “She’d told me about him before, but I’d said, oh I don’t want to hurt the dogs.”

Helman was worried about hurting his dogs because Collins was pioneering the use of an electric collar in dog training. Helman assumed it was painful and worried whether it was potentially cruel.

But Helman used an invisible fence, which is electric, on his own property. The fence surprises the dogs with a buzz when it’s activated, but does not hurt them.

Reassured that the technology was the same, he gave Collins a shot. His life changed, and so did his pack’s.

Collins, a professor of health and fitness at the Community College of Baltimore County Catonsville, trains therapy dogs for children with autism and adults who are blind. He also trains police dogs.

He sensed Helman’s reticence, and guaranteed him he could train his dogs in three sessions.

“But these are Huskies,” said Helman, knowing his dogs’ stubborn, insubordinate streaks and willfulness. “They don’t come back.”

The two dogs were like naughty children, selectively disregarding Helman's voice when he called for them or issued a command. But he had nothing to lose, so he gave Collins’ method a shot.

An electric dog collar allows the dog to roam off-leash and yet still be controlled by a hand-held remote. The collar can deliver a series of tones, vibrations and shocks, not at harmful levels, to condition a dog to respond to commands.

Helman saw the benefits immediately.

“Once you gave them the freedom of being off-leash, they gained trust. It helped them to sow their wild oats.

"They could sniff all the smells they wanted, they could go anywhere they wanted, as long as they listened to your voice and stayed in contact with your commands.”

After the first two sessions with Collins, Czar and Hudson were walking off-leash and returning when Helman called them. Helman, amazed, wrote on his website that it was the moment when his dogs became his true best friends.

"Now my dogs could go almost anywhere it was legal to take them. A whole new world opened to me," he said. "I was no longer concerned about their behavior—they were both perfect gentlemen now.”

Now, Helman takes his dogs “free ranging,” as he calls his controlled, off-leash countryside walks. He considers exploring the countryside with his dogs, off-leash, to be the essence of freedom.

He rents more than 100 acres of farmland near Windsor Mill with trails, woodlands and streams, just to give his dogs—and himself—free-range time.

Helman has not stopped there. Constantly looking for new ways to challenge his dogs and bond with them as a pack, he rents yet another property, a pasture near the Maryland-Pennsylvania line, and uses four acres for lure coursing.

Helman calls lure coursing the “Mazing Chase.” His dogs chase plastic lures, attached to strings and threaded through pulleys, that are pulled just faster than they can run, about 40 miles per hour.

The Huskies’ keen eyesight and boundless energy keeps them sprinting after the elusive, colorful plastic lures for hours. Their desire to chase is instinctive.

Teaching other dog enthusiasts about lure coursing, electric collars, dog-driving and free-ranging is one of Helman’s goals. His website, woofdriver.com, elaborates on all of his pack’s activities and helps people incorporate such bonding and healthful exercises with their own dogs.

He even has a section on his website called “Bloopers,” that shows him riding less than gracefully on his rigs.

“I like to document and have fun with what I’m doing,”  Helman said.

His website encourages anyone to contact him with questions.

“I really wanted to do this to give back to the community and maybe get people involved, and see where it landed.

“If I had a bunch of people following me and wanted to do more, maybe we could get together, whatever. I’m doing it for fun, to spread my word."