How Did You Teach Heel?

[whitka]

Im trying to teach CJ the heel but am stuck at 1-2 steps. She's got the postion and watches me before we go off but thats what were at right now.

Any tips and suggestions would be great :D

[Jaxx'sBuddy]

Im trying to teach CJ the heel but am stuck at 1-2 steps. She's got the postion and watches me before we go off but thats what were at right now.

Any tips and suggestions would be great :D

i know this might be an odd question but what sort of heel do you want?

casual walking heel or totally focussed heel?

[OSoSwift]

Im trying to teach CJ the heel but am stuck at 1-2 steps. She's got the postion and watches me before we go off but thats what were at right now.

Any tips and suggestions would be great

i know this might be an odd question but what sort of heel do you want?

casual walking heel or totally focussed heel?

Not an odd question was going to ask the same thing

[whitka]

I want focus heeling for trials.

[Mas1981]

I battled teaching my dog until I got help from a trainer, what he said to do is take a favorite toy and hold it ( or food) at your hip so that they look up, click and treat when they do. I used a soft toy and would play with him when he looked at me, it takes awhile for them to get heelwork but when they do its awesome and my dog heels now when I never thought he would!

[huski]

Having done a massive trial and error with Daisy I feel confident with the next dog I will start by teaching position and back end awareness. There's nothing worse than seeing people put their dog in heel position and start walking forward when the dog didn't even have focus at heel or lost it after the first step or two. I would rather have a dog who really knows heel position and can 'find' it well, and gives a few steps of 110% focus than a dog who loses interest and only gives sporadic focus throughout a heel pattern. Take it slowly and make it a fun game.

[corvus]

With a clicker. We got bored of it, though. Erik is pretty short, so he kept swinging his butt out so he could look up at me. So I taught him to pivot his back end around with a box to put his front feet on. I did that for way too long, so it took me longer to get him to pivot on flat ground. I ended up having a folded blanket and a phonebook and heeled between them so he had something to pivot around when we turned. Learnt from the box and took them away as soon as he'd got the idea. It was about that point that we mutually decided competition heels were tedious and let's do some tricks instead. I still use heels as a "settle down and concentrate" kind of exercise for him, but have probably let the precision slip quite a bit from the far-from-perfect initial sloppyness. I never finish anything!

The fun thing about pivots is it looks really cool. And sometimes I can get Erik to heel backwards, which I think is freaking awesome. If I were going to persist with the formal heeling I'd be clicking lots more and only when he's in good position and looking at me. You get what you reinforce. And I'd be generalising that position with lots of sideways steps and backwards and pivots. And I'd practice my footwork without him! Hmm... maybe I'll go back to heels and perfect the backwards and sideways heels. :D That sounds fun.

[OSoSwift]

I use a clicker as well because I find it the easiest way to capture the exact moment I want.

I teach the dog to focus on my face and teach heel position a lot before I actually heel.

When I was teaching Lewis to heel I held a treat in my hand but as he had been highly reinforced for looking at me as soon as he looked at me I C/T. Then I would take one step C/T and so on until we could heel around for a good few minutes with unbroken eye contact. If he stops eye contact I stop moving.

Rommi is a little harder and she will drop her head so we still do lots of work on look at my face to earn a C/T. When she does it and does it well she can look at my face for 10 minutes with moving her eyes or head away at all, others days well, not so good.

[jesomil]

I start by having the dog sitting at my side and teaching eye contact. You must have a reward they want and will work for. I will use food as an example.

I then show the dog what I want. I hold the food to his nose and take a few steps with the dog following the food in perfect heel position. Gradually you move your hand higher and increase the steps you take as well as the length of time between rewards once the dog understands what you are after.

You must have the dogs attention and he must want what you have before you step off. If the dog is stopping looking after only few steps then I would be starting again and upping the rewards so the dog gets excited about it and understands that he will be rewarded by heeling. Only then do you gradually space out rewards.

Some people find heeling boring but only because they make it that way. If you dont enjoy heeling, the dog wont either. I find heeling to be the most exciting exercise and it is a huge thrill to handle or watch a dog that heels beautifully with extreme handler focus.

I dont teach anything other than straight line heeling until they have that down pat.