Attentive Heeling

The nicest thing a judge ever said to me was, “your dog looked so happy.” I don’t remember my score or placement, but I remember that compliment. For me, training and trialing is all about having fun with Maisy, so when I watch others compete, I’m impressed not by technical perfection, but by the teams with the alert, happy dog. Picture this dog with me: He’s in heel position, and while he may not be perfectly aligned with his handler’s hip, his tongue is hanging out, his front feet are prancing, his tail’s wagging loosely, and above all, he is so into the game that his eyes never leave his handler’s face.

It’s a beautiful picture, isn’t it? I think so, and indeed, so many people want that focus and attention that they purposely teach their dogs to make eye contact when heeling. You might expect that I would teach eye contact as part of my heeling criteria, too, but the truth is, I don’t. It’s not that I don’t want her attentive and happy, because I do, but I have two reservations about constant eye contact heeling, and both are rooted in the fact that she’s short.

First, in order to maintain eye contact, the dog needs to move forward far enough that he can look up into your face, which can create forging. Of course, it’s not impossible to keep a short dog in the proper position and still maintain eye contact. They can do it, although they often either go wide or they have to lift their heads much higher, which leads me to the second (and more important) reason I don’t want to teach constant eye contact for heeling: the possibility for injury.

In the March 2008 issue of The Whole Dog Journal, there is an article on canine chiropractic. In a discussion of cervical problems in dogs, the article quotes veterinary chiropractor Dr. Sue Ann Lesser as saying, “and then there are all the problems that come with always heeling on only one side… any unilateral activity creates muscle imbalances that can profoundly affect the dog’s gait.”

Now this would be enough to concern me on its own, but last summer, I noticed that Maisy had a slight, subtle limp. We never figured out what caused it, only that because of her conformation (long back, short legs, and her hips are higher than her shoulders), she is prone to back and neck issues. As a result, I have decided that eye contact, no matter how flashy, is not part of the picture I’m trying to create with Maisy.

So, what is my criteria for heeling? To be honest, for a long time, I didn’t think about it much. I knew that Maisy needed to be on my left, that she needed to be in the proper position (which I define as having her collar line up with my pant seam), but I didn’t worry much about where she was looking. As a result, she’s learned that she can look around or at the ground, and she sometimes finds other things more fascinating than me, especially if I’m not handing out treats. This does not make for great scores.

Earlier this week, I created a training plan, and quickly found that I had conflicting ideas about what I wanted. I originally said I wanted to reward for eye contact, but not the entire time. Just that I wanted her to pay attention. But I couldn’t define what that meant, only that I knew it when I saw it. Well, that really left the criteria pretty subjective, and ultimately, that means that I’ll likely be inconsistent and confusing. So, after a lot of thought, I think I’ve nailed down what “attentive healing without eye contact” looks like.

When sitting in heel position, I do want Maisy to make eye contact. Sitting in heel is often a predictor that I’ll be cuing a new behavior, so I do need her focused on me and watching for my signals. Like this:


Pretend she isn't forged in all these pictures, okay? It was hard enough to get the head position right that I wasn't paying attention to her body position!

When we take the first step of heeling, I want her to maintain that eye contact. This isn’t because I’ll be cuing a behavior, but rather because she has a tendency to rush off. She almost always forges the first 2-3 steps of heeling, even though I’ve spent a lot of time clicking for perfect position in that first step. I suspect this is because she gets so excited that we’re Going Somewhere! that she forgets to pay attention. So, this week I started clicking for eye contact during the first step. It’s still too early to tell, but I think it’s working. She seems to be much more focused for the duration when we start with eye contact.

I do not require sustained eye contact, though. After that first step, she may move her head into a more comfortable position, as long is she’s still attentive. A lot of small dog handlers talk about teaching their dog to be attentive by looking at a different body part than eyes- their hip or their knee, for example- but I’ve never quite figured out how to train this; it’s more difficult to determine where the dog is looking when it’s not making eye contact. It’s just not something that I can easily observe, which makes it hard to click.

So, what does attentiveness look like? Attentiveness requires her head to be held higher than normal. Maisy normally walks with her nose pointing to the ground. If you were to measure the angle of her snout, it would be pointing down roughly 45 degrees. From the top, you can see her head, but very little of her snout:



When she is attentive to me, though, her head is held higher, so that the angle of her snout is 90 degrees or even angled slightly upwards. She will often lift her head and make eye contact, and I think she’s “checking in.” From the top, this head position allows me to see most or all of her snout. It would look more like this:



So. That’s what heeling means to me. What does it mean to you?

Revised Training Plan

In my last post, I set up a training plan for the next fortnight. Laura and I had a nice conversation in the comments about my criteria on heeling, and as I've both worked with Maisy and thought about what she said, I've revised my plan slightly. I'm still training each exercise for 2 minutes, but I've changed some of the criteria and testing slightly.

Exercise: "Get-ins" (sitting in heel position)
Criteria: Sit straight. Position and closeness do not count.
Testing Method: Put Maisy in heel position. Pivot 90 degrees to the left. If Maisy sits straight, click and treat. If not, try again. See how many trials out of ten she does correctly.
Notes: Unchanged from original (but I've seen a 20% increase!).

Exercise: Eye contact during first step of heeling.
Criteria: Maisy must maintain eye contact when I take the first step of heeling.
Testing Method: Put Maisy in heel position and get eye contact (she offers it the vast majority of the time). Step off. If Maisy maintains eye contact for the first step, click and treat. If not, try again. See how many trials out of ten she does correctly.
Notes: This is a pretty big change. Originally, I said I wanted to do 300 peck heeling with eye contact, but I've changed my mind. I don't want eye contact the entire time, just during the first step, and then intermittently afterwards.*

Exercise: Fronts
Criteria: Maisy must sit straight in front of me. She doesn't have to be centered or close, but she does need to be between my feet (so, generally centered).
Testing Method: I call Maisy front, and then pivot 90 degrees to the right. If she moves and sits straight in front of me, I click and treat. If not, I try again. See how many trials out of ten she does correctly.
Notes: Same as originally set up.

Exercise: Heeling with duration.
Criteria: Maisy will maintain attention* while heeling.
Testing Method: I am teaching this one with the 300 peck heeling, except the pecks don't correlate with a single step but rather in roughly 8-10 foot increments. (The reason these increments vary is because I have a large circular route I can follow through my house. Well, it's more of a square, really, and each side of the square varies slightly.) So, I set off in heel, and if Maisy is attentive for one side of the square, I click and treat. Then we do 2 sides, click and treat, then 3, and so on. If she loses her attention at any point, I start over at one side. We do this for two minutes during the training phase. During the test, we work backwards. We try for 3 sides. If she makes it, the test is complete. If not, we try for 2, and so. I record how many sides she completes during the test.
Notes: I know this sounds complicated, but it's not, really. The reason I chose to do it this way is because I wanted to set her up for success. Previously I was going to see how far she could go until she lost attention, but that meant that in order to measure her progress, I had to wait for her to fail. This way, I can build on success, and then test to see if she maintains what she achieved during the training phase. If she doesn't, I lower the criteria and try again. This way, she is always rewarded for doing well, and thus is set up for success.

*Laura rightly pointed out that I had two different criteria for heeling: eye contact and duration, and you're never supposed to work on two criteria at once. Since I don't want eye contact for the entire time we're heeling, it was kind of pointless to do 300 peck heeling with eye contact. Still, I need Maisy to pay attention during heeling, so I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about what attention looks like if she's not making eye contact. I'll post later this week about why I don't want constant eye contact, when I do expect eye contact, and what "attention" looks like. (Sorry to be such a tease, but it really deserves its own post!)

Training Plan!

One thing this weekend really drove home to me is that I've been incredibly complacent in our training. Oh, sure, I train a lot, but I suck at raising criteria. This is kind of silly, because I understand ways to do this: click only better efforts, ask for more duration before clicking, etc. And yet...

So, I've devised a new training plan for the next two weeks. I chose two weeks as my timeline for two reasons. First, we have a trial in two weeks, so I'd like to see some improvements before then! And second, because it seems like a nice amount of time to reassess our progress.

In addition to devising a training plan, I've also developed a method to track our success, so that at the end of our two weeks, I can see exactly how much progress we've made. (This also appeals to my geeky graph-making side.)

I'm going to work on four main behaviors. I will work on them in two minute increments (I have a timer and everything, and let me tell you, two minutes is a LONG time), once or twice a day. The behaviors are:

1. Sitting in heel position ("get-ins"). The criteria for a click is that she is sitting STRAIGHT. In the future, I'll work on straight AND the correct position, and then add in closeness. For now, though, she just has to be straight. I chose this as the criteria because she often wraps around me or sits crooked. The way I'm going to train this is to do 90 degree pivots (then 180, then 270, then 360) in both directions (working on one direction at a time, and eventually including finishes), clicking only for straight sits.

2. Heeling with eye contact. I'm going to use the 300 peck heeling method. I do not require strict eye contact for heeling in general, however, I am going to require eye contact for the first 5-10 feet because I often lose her at the first step.

3. Straight fronts. The criteria is that she must be sitting straight. Okay, there's a second one: she must be sitting straight, and somewhere between my two feet. Closeness and centeredness doesn't matter; as long as she's sitting straight, she'll get the click. I'll reset the exercise by pivoting 90 degrees (and then 180, etc.) to the right (and later the left).

4. Duration heeling. My house is laid out such that I can make a giant circle through five different rooms, for a total of about 40-50 feet. The criteria here is that she stays roughly in heel position (position and closeness don't matter much as long as she's roughly at my left side) and paying attention. I won't require eye contact, but I will require signs of attention- ear set, head position, etc. It's hard to describe, but I know it when I see it.

I'd also really like to work on fast pace heeling as well, but I have no idea how to teach it. Ideas? I've tried throwing toys and treats ahead of us, and she's terrified of a target stick... I'm not sure what else to do, other than just click and treat when she changes speed with me. And... maybe that's enough? Thoughts?

After we've done our training session(s) for the day, I'll wait at least 30 minutes, and then do a test so that I get some data. For the fronts and get-ins, I'll do ten trials and count the number of clicks she gets. I'll increase the difficulty when she gets a 90% success rate.

For the two heeling exercises, I'll do one trial, and measure the distance she covers before failing (and then, of course, do an easier version so she ends on a good note). I'm a bit uncertain about doing the test this way- I hate to set her up to fail- but it seems like the best way to see what her maximum duration is each day. Any thoughts on this?

I won't be updating this every day, but here's today's baseline:
1. Get-ins (left, 90 degrees): 40%
2. Attention heeling: 2 steps
3. Straight fronts (re-set with a 90 degree pivot to the right): 60%
4. Duration heeling: 1.25 laps

I'm really pleased with how well she picked up the attention heeling for even one step. I've never required that before, and she's never really offered it either, so it's cool that I got two steps! I'm also surprised by the number of straight fronts she got. I did feel that she was frustrated with the duration heeling, which means it's good I'm working on this, although I'll need to be careful not to raise that criteria too fast.

Anyway, I'd love some feedback! Does this sound reasonable? Is there anything you'd do differently, or not at all? Let me know!

UKC Rally Trial, Day 2

As you can see, we qualified again today.

It was a pretty good day. Maisy was tired this morning- she didn't really want to get out of bed- and as a result, she was a little edgy initially. She had shark teeth, and was wuffing a lot more than yesterday. She even through a little lunge in there! I thought that I probably wouldn't even bother going in the ring unless she calmed down significantly. Then, I gave her some Rescue Remedy and dosed her with DAP. Remind me that I just need to do that no matter what at trials. She almost immediately calmed down and began taking treats softer. (Incidentally, I also used Rescue Remedy both days, and it really helped me feel calmer. I like this stuff.) She even began to offer "flat dog" (where she lies on her side), so I knew she was feeling okay.

I tried warming her up, using fewer treats to make sure she would be able to transition to fewer treats. She did really well, and gave me lots of attention, even when we heeled the length of the ring and back without anything other than verbal praise. I decided we would go in the ring. I asked the judge if we could excuse ourselves if she was stressed, and he agreed that was fine, so in we went.

I decided that if I saw any stress displacement behaviors- excessive sniffing, yawning, scratching- we'd just end the course there. Otherwise, we'd go for it. And we did. She was distracted, and definitely not her best, but she looked pretty happy. I got video, and on playback, I agree: much happier, though definitely distracted. (I'll try to upload the video later and post it this week.)

So, we have our second leg towards our URO1 title, and she scored a 90, which is an improvement over yesterday. But the more important improvement is that she was able to run the course without being stressed. Since that's what this weekend was all about, I'm pretty happy.

Defining Success

Today was the first day of the UKC trials, and Maisy and I were entered in level 1 of rally.

How did we do? Well, it depends on how you define success. If you define success by ribbons and placements and scores, we didn't do so hot. She scored an 88, which was well below the placements, and frankly, well below her abilities.

Still, I'm going to call the day successful. Sure, I'm mildly disappointed with our score, but Maisy was surprisingly relaxed for being at a trial! She only "wuffed" twice, which is her "I'm on alert" noise, but she was controlled and didn't display any reactivity. For most of the time, she had relaxed body language- looseness through her whole body, a slow, soft helicopter tail, and a happy, open-mouthed expression on her face. She warmed up well, very attentive and snappy, and while she wasn't quite as precise as she is at home, she had excellent enthusiasm.

I'm not sure what happened when we went in the ring. She became distracted and disengaged from me. She sniffed a lot, and twice she had to stop, sit and scratch herself. Those are stress displacement behaviors, and I haven't seen the scratching in a long time.

If we'd been at an APDT trial, I would have whipped out the treats to help transform the ring into a positive space. Since I couldn't do that, I simply waited patiently for her to finish scratching, praised her like crazy for her moments of attention (and really, she had some nice moments), and kept smiling. I knew our score was going to suck, and it didn't matter. Perhaps I should have left the ring. If she was so stressed that she disengaged from me, there wasn't much point in continuing. But I didn't think about that, and I'm not sure how to leave the ring gracefully.

We show again tomorrow, and I need to give some serious thought into going in, doing one or two signs successfully, and then leaving. Of course, I know that if we get a couple of really good signs, I'll want to push for more, for the whole course, so I'm going to have to decide what to do in advance... I'm not sure what my other options are.

What would you do if you were in this situation?

Happy "Gotcha Day," Maisy

Three years ago today, my life changed forever.

Trial Management

Maisy and I are going to a trial this weekend- we’ll be making our UKC debut in level 1 rally- and I thought that this would be a good time to review our trial management strategy. I didn’t fully understand the importance of this when Maisy and I began trialing, but over the past year, we have gone to a number of trials, in a number of locations, and I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t to keep her calm and relaxed.

In the week leading up to a trial, I’ve found that there are a couple of things that contribute to a good trial experience. The most important thing is that I need to ensure that Maisy is getting adequate exercise. There have been lots of studies that link exercise with the production of endorphins- the feel good chemical- in the brain. Some sources even link exercise with a reduction in cortisol, a stress hormone. No matter how it works, it does seem that Maisy is calmer when she gets regular exercise.

Along these same lines, I try to avoid any high stress activities during the week leading up to a trial. I’ve heard (but can’t find any sources right now) that following a reactive episode, the stress hormones remain in the dog’s body for several days. Since stress tends to accumulate, I try to keep things low-key around the house for Maisy in the week building up to a trial.

I also try to keep Maisy to her regular training routine as much as possible without overtraining. The week before a trial is not the time to try out new approaches, hand signals or exercises. We continue to practice what we know- Maisy goes bonkers without mental stimulation- but I don’t drill or introduce new concepts.

On the morning of the trial, I try to keep things as normal as possible. I will give her breakfast, but I go a bit light because I know that I’ll be using lots of treats later in the day and I don’t want her to get an upset tummy. I also take her for a nice long walk. Again, this helps to produce endorphins, but it also ensures that she “empties out.” We’ve never had any embarrassing “ring fouling,” and I’d prefer to keep it that way.

Something I’ve been playing with is giving her a dose of Rescue Remedy, as well as spraying her collar with DAP. I’m not sure how much either of these things help, but they don’t have any negative side effects, and if they ease her anxiety even slightly, it’s probably worth it. I’m also considering giving her a small dose of pain reliever to alleviate any discomfort, since pain really plays into her reactivity. I need to discuss this with her vet, though, since there are plenty of potential side effects to common pain relievers.

My management really goes into full swing once we arrive at the trial site, since I need to minimize stress while still helping her to cope with a busy environment. The biggest and most important thing to do once we arrive is to minimize her exposure to the chaos.

When we arrive at the trial site, I leave her in the car and check in without her, which means I need to park in an out of the way location to minimize stress while I’m gone. Then, I find an isolated spot to set up her crate. This spot needs to be away from other dogs and pathways, and away from the warm up areas. Maisy does really poorly if I leave her in her crate- even if I’m next to it- so I plan to use it only if it’s absolutely necessary, in which case, I’ll leave her with a stuffed Kong.

I’m going to add something new to our car crating routine this week: the CD Through a Dog’s Ear, which we’ve used at home when relaxing. The music itself has been designed and researched to calm dogs. We’ve also used it during calm times at home, so hopefully she’ll also have a conditioned emotional response to it.

At the trials where she’s been most successful, we’ve spent a lot of time walking. Again, the walking helps boost endorphins- for both of us. I’m more relaxed when we’re out moving and connecting together. This reduces my ring nerves, which in turns reduces the possibility that Maisy will pick up on my stress and worry as a result.

We do have to come inside at some point, though, and I plan to do this gradually. We’ll go in for a few minutes, walk around so she can see where we are, and play “Look at That” with a high rate of reinforcement. After a few minutes, we’ll return to the car or go for a walk. We’ll do this several times, increasing the amount of time we spend inside, while hopefully reducing her stress at the same time.

Hopefully, we’ll be later in the running order so that she can wait in the car while I walk the course. If we’re first, I’ll put her in her crate or leave her with my husband. I’m very lucky to have a supportive husband, who often hangs out with Maisy to help keep her calm.

For our warm-ups, I like to start with about five minutes of clicking for eye contact and connection. Then we play “get into heel,” where we do pivots in both directions. Next, we heel straight lines with a high rate of reinforcement. Finally, we practice any of the “tricky” signs in the course. This weekend, I don’t anticipate any of those, but at APDT trials, we might practice a moving down or a stand for exam, just as a refresher.

Finally, one of the most important things I will need to do is to watch her stress levels and be ready to scratch our entry or walk out of the ring at any time. If she’s too stressed to work, it’s not worth trying. This is an area I’m still working on, and hopefully I can live up to it!

All of this management is about being sensitive to Maisy’s needs and connecting with her. The thing I really love about dog sports is the way she and I can come together as a team, as friends, and work together. Some people call it focus, but I call it connection. Our relationship is really what’s at stake here. Each time we interact, we can build our relationship. My whole training philosophy is built on relationship and respect, so I do take my commitment to keeping her calm and relaxed to heart.

So, fellow competitors, what do you do to keep your dog calm and relaxed at trials? Have I missed anything glaringly obvious? Have you found something completely different that works for you? I’d love to hear about it! Drop me a comment on your management strategies.