Puppies by nature prefer sitting out in front of and facing a person. It doesn’t naturally feel comfortable to sit beside a person facing the same direction as the person. To counteract this uncomfortableness, we can create a conditioned emotional response (CER) to heel position that feels good to them. We want to change how our puppies feel about heel position from feeling uncomfortable to feeling good about it. We do that with heavy positive reinforcement for simply sitting still in that position.
Before working on heeling, position your training pouch to fit at your right side. This position will get the pouch out of your puppy’s view and will also enable you to pull treats out of the pouch with your right hand while your puppy is taking a reward from the left hand. Initially, you will want to keep a treat in your left hand at all times so that you are ready to mark and reward quickly. By pulling treats out of the bag with one hand and rewarding with the other, you can mark and reward much quicker.
You are going to be working on two different skills. The first is getting into heel position. The second is staying there. Alternate between work on getting into heel position when the puppy is out of position. Then when the puppy is in heel position, work on teaching him to stay there. This work is similar to how you alternated between training the puppy to get into a down and teaching him to stay in the down.
This work will be done with your puppy between you and some kind of straight barrier. I use a fence, but you can use a wall, a couch, or anything straight and at least six feet long. We start this work with the puppy in between you and the barrier in order to keep him straight and relatively close to you.
We train one aspect of behaviors at a time. There are many aspects of heeling. The dog must move when you move, face the same way you face, sit when you stop, look at you, stay relatively close to you without getting under your feet, not get ahead of you, not drag behind you, not crab in towards you, and go the same speed as you.
Working up against a barrier will keep the dog straight and it will keep the dog relatively close to you. With these two aspects being taken care of by a fence, we can focus on only one aspect at a time. For now, we’re working on eye contact only while remaining in heel position.
Luring into Heel Position
Initially, when teaching your puppy to get into heel position, you will be using luring. Just like everything we teach, the goal will be to fade the lure as quickly as possible so that the puppy doesn’t get dependent on the lure. However, luring will teach the puppy some muscle memory for the exercise that is necessary before we shift from luring to shaping the behavior.
Lure your puppy by holding the food in correct position between your first two fingers and under your thumb. Hold the lure out in front of the dog’s nose and keep it at about his nose level. Guide your puppy to make a counterclockwise loop at your left side and behind you that will end with the puppy sitting directly to your left facing the same direction you are facing. In order to get the puppy to loop back far enough to end up straight, you’ll need to twist your body at your waste and move your pointed finger back behind you as far as you can get it.
As you complete the loop with your pointed finger, make sure you do not bring your finger forward past the plane of your body. When your finger reaches the seam of your pants, stop forward motion with it. Pull up with your finger if your dog is taller than the height of your dangling hand. Mark and use reward placement to encourage the puppy to sit in the correct spot. Give the food to your dog with your palm down to encourage the dog to look up to take the food. The puppy will probably take his food and then get up because this position does not initially feel good to him. Lure him again when he gets up. Unless you are an experienced trainer, you will need some practice luring your puppy as much as your puppy does.
If the puppy ends up in a position of facing slightly towards you instead of facing the same direction as you, you need to lure your puppy the next time behind you more. When I am luring an untrained puppy in heel position, I twist my body as far to the left as I can to get the puppy to loop far back behind me.
When training heel position, whether just sitting there or moving, you will always be battling against a puppy’s instinct to face you. I never worry about a puppy ending up facing away from me. It just doesn’t happen unless a trained puppy is trying too hard.
Once you get your puppy in heel position, wait for him to look up at you. He will either look up at you or he will get up. It would be an unusual case for him to continue to sit there without looking at you because at this point, the puppy has been trained that reward comes by looking at you. If he does just sit there without eye contact, just wait until he either gets up or looks up at you. If he gets up, lure him back into position again. Practice luring your puppy into heel position over and over until you can capture that millisecond of his sitting in heel position and giving you eye contact. When that happens, mark and reward quickly using rapid rewards.
Initially, you will have to use the rapid rewards technique that we discussed for training those puppies that have a hard time staying in a down without repeatedly popping up. Most puppies don’t necessarily need this technique when training the down/stay. However, when training puppies to stay seated in heel position, almost all of them need it. Most puppies instinctively will want to get up and move to face you rather than staying facing the same direction that you are facing. If you don’t use this technique, most puppies will develop a habit of getting up every time you get them in heel position so that they can turn to face you. It is easier to prevent habits from developing than to stop them once they are in full force. Therefore, I begin heavy reinforcement for giving eye contact and not getting up right from the start.
At this point in the puppy’s training, I only reinforce sitting when there is eye contact. I don’t want to reinforce a roaming eye. Therefore, the puppy may sit in heel position and get up multiple times. This will give you opportunity to train the puppy in the mechanics of getting into heel position over and over. Then when the puppy sits well with eye contact, work on reinforcing staying there.
The Finger Touch
Once you are able to lure your puppy into a down well and the puppy will stay there with good eye contact, it’s time to fade the lure. The first step in fading the lure is to teach your puppy a finger touch. Most of them have already learned to target your finger when learning the down. Teaching the puppy to do a finger touch to get in heel position should be easy. However, it is different since you will be presenting your finger in a different place.
For the down, we presented a finger by pointing it to the ground. When getting in heel position, we’ll present the finger slightly on our left and behind us. Hold the food at the base of your first two fingers and covered with your thumb. Hold it in such a way that you can still point with your index finger. Initially, hold your finger close to your puppy’s nose while he is on your left. Wait for him to touch it. Then mark and reward. If he doesn’t touch it, give him a couple of seconds, then start giving verbal encouragement. If your puppy still doesn’t touch it, mark when he looks at it. Touch his nose gently with your finger before the puppy takes his food. The next time, he will be more inclined to touch the finger.
When the puppy understands that the game is to touch your finger for reward, begin presenting the finger at your side. Repeat the finger touch at least 6 or 7 times until the puppy clearly understands that a hand presented to your left side means to touch it for reinforcement.
Using the Finger Touch to Shape Getting in Heel Position
Now you will begin presenting the finger in the furthest point behind your back that you were previously luring your puppy. Twist at your waste to your left. Present the finger behind your back. Mark when your puppy touches the finger and then use reward placement to encourage your puppy to get in heel position. He should get in heel position fairly easily because he would have already practiced getting in this position with a lure. Once you’ve practiced this several times, you can name the “touch”. Say the word “touch” from here forward as you present your hand behind your back.
Continue Practice Getting In Heel Position and Staying In Heel Position
Practice these behaviors the same as you did with a lure except use the finger touch instead.
