Healing Your Heeling, Part 2

A few months ago, I attended a heeling handling skills class presented by Nancy Little, a popular local trainer. Earlier this week, I posted about her general strategies, as well as information about pace changes and halts for heeling. (If you missed it, you can find it by clicking here.) Today, I'll share what she taught us about all the turns, including the figure 8 exercise.

Get it Right (and Left)
While it might seem that the right and left turns have little in common (they do require very different skills from the dog, after all), Nancy actually had us handle them almost identically. Her biggest advice was that neither turn should be too sharp. She said you don't want to do a “military turn”- a very tight 90 degree turn- because that makes it extremely difficult for the dog to maintain the correct position. At the same time, if your turn is too round, the judge is very likely to deduct points.

Therefore, what you need is a very mild curve. Nancy used the visual of a street corner. I don't know what it's like where you live, but here in Minnesota, most street corners have a defined right angle while still being rounded off. Alternately, check out the way a notebook with rounded corners looks- that is the kind of gently curved path you should follow.

Since Nancy isn't big on exact footwork, she said you can start the turn on either foot, but recommend taking three steps through the turn. On the first one, your foot should be angled at roughly 30 degrees, the second at 45, and the third at 60. For those of you who struggle with math concepts, it will look like this:

Badly drawn Paint diagrams for the win.

Do a 180
About turns can be tricky for the dog since they can look a lot like right turns. As a result, it's not uncommon to see a dog go wide on the about turn. You'd think that the solution would involve very particular footwork, but that's not how Nancy taught it. In fact, she said not to worry too much about your feet; while they do have to do some work, it is more important to think about how the rest of your body moves through space.

As you enter the about turn, above all, you need to stay balanced and keep your feet directly under your shoulders. You should plant a foot facing straight forward (Nancy said it's generally easiest to do the right foot). As soon as that foot plants, look to the right. Your shoulders should follow, and this, more than anything, is what your dog will look at as his cue. Your feet should then rotate in place (envision yourself standing on a paper plate, and try to keep your feet in that area). I found this much easier than trying to remember how to make my feet form a “T” or do other fancy footwork! Don't get me wrong- you can do the “T” if you want- it's just that she doesn't think it's a deal breaker if you don't.

Figure it Out
The figure 8 exercise is possibly the hardest of all the heeling exercises because it has so many components: the dog needs to move fast, slow, turn both right and left, and halt several times. That is a lot of work in a very short amount of time! To handle this exercise well, you need to make sure that your dog has time to transition between each individual skill component.

Start by setting up several strides away from the midline of the figure 8. You want to get several strides of heeling in before you turn so that the dog is up and moving with you. If you starting turning or curving from the sit, he will likely lag or forge (depending on which way you go) from the first step, which will also impact his performance on the rest of the exercise.

You can choose to go to the left or the right first; either direction is acceptable according to the rules. No matter what you choose to do, you need to make sure that your circles are the same size so that your figure 8 is nicely balanced. Everyone's circles will be slightly different based on their dog's size and flexibility, of course, but as a general rule of thumb, you will probably walk approximately 2 to 3 feet away from the stewards. Whatever this distance is, make sure it is the same in both directions. Both circles should be the same size.

At this point, I must point out that using the term “circles” is a bit misleading. While you do want to make your turns nice and rounded, you also want to have straight lines, not curving ones, when you're moving between the two stewards. This is because straight lines give your dog the time he will need to recover and adjust his speed from slightly slower on the left turn to driving forward through the right turn.

There is a sweet spot in which you switch from straight line to turning and from turning to straight line again. To find this spot, mentally draw a line between the two stewards. Then draw a line perpendicularly between the stewards. Your spot will be 2 to 3 feet away from the steward (depending on the size of your circle) on this line.

When you get to one of those sweet spots (indicated by the blue dots in the diagram below), you should walk in a straight line to the next spot. The path you walk will walk something like this:

As you're moving from spot to spot through the figure eight, you need to make sure that your body supports what you're asking your dog to do. The easiest way to do this is by directing your gaze in specific places throughout the exercise.

As you are approaching a circle, you should look at the sweet spot; that keeps your gaze straight ahead, and as a result, your shoulders will be straight, too, which tells the dog to match your pace. Once you've entered the circle, you should look at either the steward's feet or the sweet spot on the other side of the steward (again, indicated by the blue dot on the diagram above). When you're going to the left, this drops your shoulder backwards, which tells your dog to slow down. When you're going to the right, this rotates your shoulder forwards, which lets your dog know he should speed up.

As you are exiting the circle, you should change where you're looking to the next sweet spot by the other steward. Again, this keeps your gaze and your shoulders straight forward, letting your dog know that he should match your pace, and giving him time to recover and prepare for the next change in speed. It will also help you to walk in a straight line. Make sure that as you move from one steward/circle to the next, you cross over the invisible line between the stewards as close to the middle as possible. This will help you keep your circles the same size.

Truthfully, this is all pretty tricky, both to do and to describe! We practiced quite a bit to make sure we were getting nice straight lines and evenly sized circles. While it is important to practice each handling skill before you introduce it to your dog so that you know what you're doing (and look natural doing it), it is especially important to do so with the figure 8.


As I said in part 1, this is not the only way to handle heeling. There are many options, and it is more important that your method feels natural and is understandable to your dog than it is to adhere to any particular style. I do like what I learned from Nancy, and I will be striving to teach these body cues to Maisy. Still... I'd love to hear what you do with these specific exercises. Do you do something similar, or completely different? Share in the comments!

Healing Your Heeling, Part 1

A few months ago, I signed up for a dog training class without my dog. It sounds weird, I know, but Nancy Little, a popular local trainer, was doing a two week class on handling skills for heeling right when I was struggling to figure out how to cue halts with my body, not my voice. The class was well worth my time. I'm going to share a little about what I learned, but honestly, if you live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, you should contact her. Nancy is incredibly nice and encouraging, and she's a great teacher. No wonder she's so popular!

You'll notice that I described the class as a handling skills class, not as one on footwork. This was deliberate, as Nancy doesn't do footwork. Surprised? I sure was, but her explanation- that dogs aren't looking at your feet- made a lot of sense. Almost every dog is trained to look up as part of the heeling picture. As a result, Nancy taught us to use the way we move our bodies to cue what's next in heeling.

That said, you will see a lot of notes to what your feet are doing. This is partly because it's what makes sense to me. Some of what I'll write here is not exactly what Nancy said, but rather how it got translated in my head. (I guess I think about my feet a lot or something, but the point is that any stupidity in this post is probably my fault, not hers.) But I also write a lot about feet because they are part of your body, and there are times where what they do matter. You just shouldn't obsess over them; Nancy has found that excessive worry over feet tends to make people tense up. This throws off the rest of the body, which defeats the purpose.

Before we dive in, a reminder: handling is not training. You need to focus on your job, and let the dog do his. You can't compensate for the dog in your handling; if he makes a mistake, he needs to fix it, not you. You should always be predictable and clear in your handling so your dog knows what's coming next.

Going along with that, we had a conversation about whether or not you should make (and keep) eye contact with your dog when heeling. Nancy's preference is to avoid doing so. She's found that people who maintain eye contact struggle to walk in straight lines, which is a critical heeling skill. Also, dogs can't see your body as well when they're busy looking in your eyes. As a result, she prefers to look slightly ahead of the dog, keeping him in her peripheral vision, and looking up/where she's going regularly. That said, she knows people like to make eye contact, so if you're going to do it, you need to remember it is an indicator that the dog is in the correct position. If the dog forges or lags, you should break eye contact, and instead look where he should be. This will make an error in heel position very clear to your dog and it will help him know when he's right again.

The Basics of Heeling
For Nancy, almost everything revolves around the shoulders. They are the biggest, most obvious thing that the dog sees when he looks up. She emphasizes keeping your shoulders over your hips; not only will this help you keep your balance, but it will also keep your dog in line with your hips- which is, incidentally, where heel position is. You should never twist your torso forward or back unless you're turning, because this will pull your dog forward or push him back, too.

This applies at all times, including when you're stopped, waiting for the judge's command to heel. Many dogs- Maisy included- will forge on the first step or two, and then fall back into correct position. Nancy explained that this happens when the handler leans forward during the first step and fails to keep her shoulders over her hips. Make an effort to lean back slightly on to your heels, and step out with your feet first. (Of course, if your dog lags on the first step, you might want to lean forward slightly on the first step. Know your dog.)

It is also important to make sure that when you're heeling, you're making smooth, rolling steps. Nancy shared that many people tend to walk flat footed or even with their toe hitting the ground first. This causes something like a shock wave to go up and through the body, creating jerky movements that look to the dog like a cue to STOP.

Nancy advised us to avoid this by walking so that our heels hit the ground first. The step should roll through your feet: heel-ball-toe-heel-ball-toe. This feels a bit awkward at first- at least, it did for me- but it provides for a nice smoothness and helps the dog understand that forward motion is expected.

A Change of Pace
Going faster is usually easy for most dogs, but even so, giving very clear body language will help support your dog. It's also pretty easy: lean forward, so that your shoulders are ahead of your hips, raise your eyes/head so that your focus is higher, and bend your elbows to bring your arms up into a running position. If you heel with one hand resting on your belly, move it to the side in order to do this. When it's time to return to a normal pace, your shoulders should go back over your hips, your eye gaze will go back to its normal location, and your arms will resume their usual place.

The slow pace, on the other hand, is typically more challenging for dogs. Not only do most dogs prefer speed, but they also tend to get confused about whether you're simply slowing down or if you're going to stop. If you've ever seen a dog do that butt thing where he keeps almost sitting during the slow, it's because he isn't sure what's coming next.

Make it clear to your dog that you're going to keep moving forward by remembering your heel-ball-toe foot movements and leaning backwards slightly. Then quickly ease into the slow pace. Wait, what? I know that sounds confusing, but here's the thing: if you suddenly slam into a slow pace, it will look like a halt to your dog, no matter what your feet are doing. At the same time, if you take too long to change pace, you will need to go that much further at the slow, leading to the risk that you'll get "run into the wall" before a turn. Nancy suggested that we move into the slow pace over the course of two to three steps. Doing this allowed us to be prompt about the pace change without confusing the dog.

Stop Right There
If forward movement is communicated to the dog by rolling foot motions, then it only makes sense that the halt is cued by breaking that smoothness. We need to roughen things up a bit, and Nancy had us do that with our feet. Again, it's not so much about what the feet are doing, but rather, about how they are doing it. As a result, it really doesn't matter which foot does what.

The tricky part about the halt is that you don't want to slow down, because the dog will adjust his speed, thinking you've simply changed pace. If that happens, the dog will either sit very slowly, in a forged heeling position, or even fail to sit entirely. At the same time, you don't want to be too abrupt, because again, your dog will sit in a forged position. To combat both these problems, Nancy uses three distinct steps to clearly communicate to the dog what's expected.

The first will be what's called a break step. Nancy often shuffles this foot- you land on the front part of your foot and kind of slide so it causes a slight scuffing noise that acts as an auditory cue. The second step will be a half-stride in which you step flat; the whole foot should hit the ground at the same time, and it will remain planted. Finally, you'll “close” with the first foot by stepping in line and stopping. It takes some practice, but I found that it was pretty easy to do when I thought about my footfalls as: roll-roll-roll (judge calls the halt) break-step-close.

These are some of the basics of heeling. Again, this is not the only way to handle heeling, but it is one that Nancy has found to be quite successful. I really what I learned because it emphasizes a relaxed, natural feel. I also like it because it relies more on counting the number of steps than using the right foot or the left foot at a particular time. (True confession: I am awful at remembering the difference between left and right, especially under stress. I'd be in a lot of trouble if rally signs didn't have arrows or the judge didn't demonstrate the heeling position ahead of time. Oddly, I am amazing with cardinal directions.)

I'll post again soon on how Nancy advised us to handle all the turns, including Figure 8s, but in the meantime, I'd love to hear how others handle some of these same moves. Do you do something similar? Completely different? Do you even think about how your feet (and body) is moving? I'd love to hear what you do!

Magical Heeling

One of the really cool things about obedience is that if you and your dog are having a good day, it looks effortless. You walk around, and your dog is right there, paying attention to your every move. If you're really good, you shouldn’t even need to speak a word. Your dog should be able to anticipate your every move, somehow knowing when you’re going to stop, speed up, or make a turn. In short, to the casual observer, it should look like magic.

Except it’s not. Instead, the hours upon hours of work you have put in with your dog has created a common language that you both understand: body language. Every move you make is intentional and has meaning, or at least comes close. The way you hold your hands, move your shoulders, and even the way you walk all can have deep meaning to your dog.

I’ve struggled for a long time to make my footwork clear and consistent. For one thing, a lot of the movements are kind of unnatural, and they simply require practice in order for them to become part of your movement. Once you figure it out, you have to do it every time, so that your dog comes to associate that plant-right-foot-close-with-left-foot as a cue to sit.

For a long time, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I was doing with my feet while Maisy and I were heeling. I knew where my shoulders and hands ought to be, more or less, but I didn’t even know where to start with my feet. However, over the past year, I’ve started to become more comfortable walking in weird ways (I often practice in the hallways at work- is it any wonder my co-workers think I'm a bit odd?), and I’m finally starting to see the payoff!

Because I thought it would be interesting (and it is, or at least, it’s interesting to me), here’s what some of my footwork and body language looks like these days:

Heel: Step forward with left foot, left hand hanging naturally at side. If she starts to forge, I drop my shoulder back slightly, which also brings my hand back a bit.

Sit: While heeling forward, slow slightly, then plant my right foot, and close with my left foot. It’s hard to describe what’s happening when I “plant” my foot- I’m sure the rest of my body changes somehow, and I know it feels differently than if I just stop walking, but I’m not sure how.

Stay: Left hand moves in front of her nose in a stop type of gesture, with the fingers pointing downward. I leave by stepping off on my right foot first. When I return from the stay, I walk around her, making certain that as I step into heel position, I put the left foot next to her, and close with the right one. If I do it the other way around, she thinks it’s a sit cue, and will break a down-stay.

Exception to the above: There is one time I break all these rules: On the 1-2-3 steps forward exercise in rally. When you do the odd number of steps, it’s impossible to both step off on the correct foot and give the correct auto-sit cue. In rally, you’re allowed to talk, so for the 1 and 3 steps forward, I step off on the right foot and give a verbal cue. This allows me to use the correct footwork for the sit cue, which is the part she has more trouble with, anyway.

Moving Down: We’re still working on teaching this one, but I pause mid stride, with one foot in front of the other, and kind of curtsy so that my left hand moves close to the ground in front of her nose. I should pay attention to see if she responds better depending on which foot is out front. I bet she does.

Moving Stand: No specific foot work yet, but I do give her the stay hand signal to indicate she should stop moving. What do you all do?

Pivots: Pivots should be done so that you don’t move in space, so I pretend I’m standing on a paper plate and move my feet. I don’t think much about it. I either drop my shoulder back, or bring it forward depending on if I’m pivoting left or right. I also point to the spot I want her to sit.

Right Turn: Still working on this one. What do you guys do?

Left Turn: Slow down slightly as I approach the turn for about 1-2 steps, then drop my shoulder back, and point slightly behind me. No specific footwork yet.

About Turn: Slow slightly, then plant my right foot before bringing the left foot up and placing it perpendicularly in a T shape. Then move right foot so it is next to the left foot, and step off on the left foot. Shoulder should be slightly forward.

U Turn: Still working on this one. I drop my shoulder more or less like the left turn, just further.

Fast Pace: Plant my left foot, lean forward slightly, and move off faster with the right foot.

Slow Pace: Lean slightly backwards, take a half step, and then slow down.

Normal Pace: Relax into a neutral body position and walk normally.

So… what did I miss? I’m sure there’s something. And what do you do differently? I’d love any guidance you guys have since I’m still learning (and occasionally switching things up as I find out what works better for us).