Friday, May 15, 2009

Heeling Starts

You are ready to begin the heeling pattern. You are waiting for the judge to say "forward", your dog is seated in heel positing looking up at you with attention, waiting for you to say "heel" and to take that first step forward, likely with your left foot, --"FORWARD" and.....

The first step (the start or heel-start) of a heeling pattern is an important but often overlooked topic.
Many dogs don't start heeling well.
* They don't start at the same time as the handler and than hurray to caught up,
* They start striding with their front legs but leave their back legs and rear behind, or
* They lurch forward along with the handler's first step, dropping their head.

For a dog to go from a sitting position with head up to a trotting position with head up is NOT easy, it requires a lot of practice and has to be taught to the dog. If you don't believe me try doing this yourself. Also it is worth pointing out that the head position a dog maintains when sitting by your side is different than the head position of that dog when he is standing (or trotting) if the dog is maintaining the same focus spot. So you are also asking the dog to CHANGE head position here.
Even so these ugly bobbles at the beginning of the heel pattern are not necessary.

The dog must do Three Things to have a beautiful heel-start.
The dog must:
(1) Maintaining head position
(2) Push up an forward using their rear (using back legs)
(3) Hustle (go immediately from stationary position to a trot)

There are many methods to teach a dog heel-starts, however few of these methods address all three issues above.

The method I have found most useful for teaching heel-starts, that addresses all three of the above issues, is to teach the dog to jump (up and forward) from the seated heel position into the trotting (moving) heel position.

I teach this by teaching the dog to target my hand with his nose (using a clicker and/or food as needed). I also put a word to this targeting action (I use "touch" or "up"). Once the dog will target my hand on cue whenever I present it, even if it requires the dog jumping to reach it, the foundation is set.

I than begin asking my dog to jump (up and forward) at the start of heeling. Such that my first step elicits the, up and forward, jump from my dog.

By asking the dog to jump (up and forward) into my hand initially and than on his own at the beginning of a heel pattern the dog learns to:
(1) Maintain his head position - Remember the hard part here is going from a sit (with head up) to a trot (with head up) especially since this requires the dog to change his head position slightly. By having the dog jump (up and forward) the dog is always looking up and pushing his head up and forward. This teaches him, and lets him practice maintaining, the head up position while transiting from sitting to trotting.
(2) Push up and forward from rear - If the dog's rear stays sitting while the dog starts reaching forward with his front legs the dog's movement will not start along with yours, and likely the dog will not be starting in the right gait (which should be a trot). Instead he will go from a sit, to a walk, and only than to a trot, all these transitions may result in a lag at the heel-start. To remedy this problem I was taught to "pop the dog forward" using the leash on a heel-start. The problem with this technique is it teaches the dog to lurch forward and often exacerbate just the type of exaggerated striding by the dog using his front legs that we are trying to avoid. By instead asking the dog to jump (up and forward) into your hand, you are forcing him to push from his rear, to use his back legs, this in turn frees his front legs and lets him immediately transition from a sit to a trot with ease.
(3) Hustle - Most dogs find jumping at the start of the heel fun. I always get more attention and quiet a bit of anticipation from dogs after I start playing this "jumping heel-start game" with them. The last thing you want is a dog that is slow to start heeling since, among other things, with such a dog you run the risk of "loosing" them right at the beginning of the heel pattern and at every halt thereafter. A dog that is taught a jump heel-start builds the habit of really driving into the heel from the first step.

Fading the jumping. Any unrewarded behavior will disappear. At first I give food when my dog jumps into my hand, next I give lavish praise, than I stop using my hand and I give occasional praise for a nice jump start, and finally I begin to ignore it. Once the habit is established the dogs will always start their heel pattern driving up and out, and over time they will just do less and less jumping (leaving the ground). If your dog does jump in the ring on the heel start ..... so..... it is at most a few points off and I guarantee you will have some nice, happy, and enthusiastic heeling. (see video below)

When I started teaching utility signals to Lola and she saw my hand (giving the heel command this time) appear above her head on the heel-start she immediately started jumping again. I found this endearing, she remembered the foundations! It also just so happened that this jumping heel-start behavior ended up working out well for teaching the heel signal for utility. Despite the other problems she has with the signal exercise, Lola is never slow to respond to the utility heel signal!

Below is a video of Judy and her Newfie Flip earning a CD leg. You can see Flip is jumping up and forward for all his heel-starts. His jumping is very obvious, remember that you can do more to fade this jumping behavior so that your dog's jumping heel-starts are not as obvious. However because Flip does have such a obvious jumping heel-start it really lets you SEE what I mean.



And here is video of one of Flip's CDX legs. Again notice the heel-starts.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting as I have been teaching this exact same behavior for a few years now. My current personal dog is now standing up before we move forward. It has something to do with me being in a wheelchair. he is cued by the slight click of the controller and anticipates before the chair moves. There is always something to to work on in Obedience. ;-)

    ReplyDelete