The layers to achieving great heeling....

"Attention, Precision, Animation & Team Work"

Each piece is a chunk of heeling and is worked on differently. I call them layers.

Layer One: Attention

Heeling WITH Attention is what we are after, but heeling is NOT attention and Attention is NOT heeling. I cannot make this clear enough. Think of Attention as it's own exercise and work to achieve a dog who is engaged with you in any position, stationary or in motion, during moments of silence and in utter chaos. When you have those, blending this layer into heel work is very easy! This is actually the "Have to" phase of dog training. Attention is developed by habits that happen domestically as well as expectation in training.

Layer Two: Position

Good Heeling is exact. It is a position that is maintained regardless of change of pace, turns, halts, sideways motion, backwards motion, etc. The dog knows how to get to this position and maintain it.

Layer Three: Focal Point

A focal point is the place the dog should be looking during the position of heeling. This is a blended piece of Layers 1 & 2.

Layer Four: Mechanics

How does the DOG move it's body? Does the dog understand how to use it's rear when needed? Does it dog get up on starts correctly? Does it use his body correctly to maintain Focal Point? Position? Attention? This is a blended layer of 1, 2, & 3 with the addition of body awareness.

Layer Five: Handling

This is where the handler decides what heel work should look like in their sport. Body cues are established and choreographed so they can be taught to the dog once the dog's heel work is built through layer four. The Handler should present the dog a consistent picture in all phases of heel work.

Layer Six: Engagement

This is a tough one, but this is the layer where silence must take over. You must learn to engage and connect with your dog in slence. If you cannot engage your dog without words, heeling can be a challenge, regardless of the layers set up previously. You need to learn to connect with your dog through subtle body language like eye contact - building with your eyes and posture.

Layer Seven: Attitude

This is where you create a dog who loves to heel. Once you can tell your dog how to move, to keeps it body and head in one place, to take cues, and is engaged, this is where you ask the dog to beg to work. You teach them that heeling is the best thing in the world and they must believe it. You incorporate games, fast movement, exciting rewards, use motion for attention that is intense and build your dog up. This may mean letting your dog do some naughty things - like bark, jump up, etc.

Layer Eight: Variables

This is a maintenance layer - this is where you constantly keep your dog guessing what is next, you drill pieces and change them often. You offer food rewards, life rewards, toys, and much more of yourself in these small broken off pieces.

Layer Nine: Trust

This layer evolves through trial and error. One day in the backyard you may ask the dog to heel when they are hot, tired, distracted, when you have no motivators and you will find a dog who brilliantly responds - You have arrived to the trust phase. This is the layer where you realize you can trust your animal to perform when you are not at 100% and when they may not appear to be at 100%. When you get this, you are ready to start showing.

When you look back through these layers - ask yourself how many of them do you truly have? Maybe your layers were added in a different sequence. One of my friends trains them backwards to what I do, and she has beautiful heeling dogs. All great heeling dogs have these layers. You need them and need to foster each layer. When you work your dog - ask yourself which layer you have mastered, which ones you are lacking, and which ones you do not have and build those in, make each one stronger and maintain the ones you have!

Heeling shows the relationship you ACTUALLY have with your dog and is my favorite exercise to work on. Few people give me chills with their heeling, but when I see it - I can appreciate the work, the trust, the relationship they have with their dogs. Great Heel work is beautiful and comes in many forms - once you have it, you never forget the feel of it.

Those Pesky Stays

At every dog show, seminar, judge’s dinner, on multiple facebook posts, phone calls, attached to many pigeons, in smoke signals concerning trial dogs, stays always end up the topic of conversation. Always. While it may be the easiest to actually train and the most black and white as far as criteria, many trainers struggle with the concept of "stay". I have heard a plethora of methods used to teach and maintain them – many of which make me either roll my eyes or cringe. I felt is was time to talk about the hard facts about stays.

Stays are Black and White

Its such a simple concept – DO NOT MOVE. However, many people fail to realize movement is what should be corrected in stays. FEET movement. If the dog moves their feet go in and put them back. That is as simple as it can get.

Stays are EASY to build Value to

It is easy to go in and reward stillness. A lot. It’s easy to introduce variable rewards to a dog that is sitting still.

Stays should not be made HOT

Stays are all about confidence in understanding the task at hand. Adding too much pressure here can be a disaster. For that reason, I do not correct anything but movement. So if the dog’s feet are still, but it is sniffing the ground – I do nothing. If the sniffing was excessive – I would put a line on the dog and when he went to sniffing I would pull them out of position and correct for movement. All stay corrections need to be for movement and nothing else.

Stays do not need additional behaviors added in

Laying their head down, not getting comfortable by switching sides on the dog, etc are all additional behaviors that are unnecessary for a good stay. Just keep this simple.

Stays RARELY need props

Put the dolls (for beating) away, get rid of your platforms, what is needed is for you to stop pushing the dog too fast and build value – there is no quick fix and many of those methods do not carry over to the ring anyway.

Stays need Success

If you want solid stays – set your time and stick to it until you accomplish it. If I set my watch at 2 minutes and my dog goes down at 1:59 seconds, they will do another 2 minutes over until they give me the duration I seek. This is a must. Never let a dog break and move on to something else.

Stays need Effort

If your dog continuously goes down and stops giving effort, time to up your game. I do “Law and Order” stays for my “lazy’ dogs which means I put them on a stay during an hour long program AND WAIT for them to go down, when they go down, I will correct for the lack of effort, then ask for the duration I was after again. Again, the only correction comes from moving.

I don’t thinks stays are hard, but once trained many people fail to go back and keep a variable reward system in them and forget to mix it up time wise. Stays are important so get out there and train them!