The Spaniel Annals

Once Brian and I progressed to moving circles in his heeling, a lack of clarity emerged in his training: his commitment to heel position. Small dogs especially tend to heel wide, to get away from those big human feet and to be able to look up and see the handler/trainer’s upper body. I’ve been sloppy with this in the past and allowed it with several dogs, and really want to fix this with Brian.

But now that I’m committed to shaping his heeling, I lack the tools I’ve had in the past to train this. Sure, I can get him in position and moving by luring, but I don’t want to do that anymore! So we’re going back to our fundamentals for the next month and wait for Shade Whitesal’s “Moving Foundations” class for June. I could use an instructor’s eye on us as we move to the next stage.

So here’s what’s in the list of fundamentals: find heel on and off the pivot disk; 1-step right and left turns, with a platform on the right turn to help with his butt swinging out; laterals; 1-step touch; 1-step halts; and serpentines thrown in for fun! He gets lots of rewards for landing in a close position, and I’m cutting myself off from my tendency to repeat after success. If we’ve done it 3 times, we’re done. If he gets it right, we’re done. Anything after that, he starts losing motivation and/or starts getting creative.

After just about a week of focusing on these aspects for our heeling, I’m very happy with the results! His concept of heel position is much better, and I sense a rise in attitude and confidence too. Here’s a compilation of some of the fundamentals above, with musical accompaniment:

After watching this, I also realized it’s time to pare down my talking. For the most part, I need to just use my “yip” word to mark the behavior, and more often keep my yakker shut, so he doesn’t get voice dependent. Always something to refine, but I’m thrilled with his progress!