OB380 Unstick the Stuck Heeling: What's Keeping you from Trialing?

Week 1

• How Do We Get Stuck?
• Student Assessment
• Common Areas Where Stuck Heeling Occurs
• Clean Mechanics
• Event Markers
• Ready To Work, Beginning of Work, End of Work

Week 2

• Training Goals
• Eliminate Unwanted Behaviors - Clean Loop Training
• Transport Procedures
• Reinforcement Procedures
• Remote Reinforcement - Initial Steps
• Remote Reinforcement - Take it on the road

Week 3

• Remote Reinforcement - Move Away From Rewards - Add an Entrance
• Building a Heeling Training Framework
• Training Framework for Common Areas Where Stuck Heeling Occurs
• • Building Duration-Reduce Reinforcement
  • Maintain Consistent Heel Position
  • Maintain Attention or Focus in Heel Position
  • Maintain Performance Everywhere
  • Maintain Performance Off Leash
• Training Framework for specific heeling skills
  • Left pivots/left turns
  • Right turns
  • About turns
  • Halts
  • Fast pace
  • Slow pace

Week 4

• Move Away from Reinforcement – Add Work
• Execute the heeling training plan
• Evaluate
• Develop another plan

Week 5

• Continue from Week 4
• Heeling Patterns

Week 6

• Continue from Week 5
• Develop a plan to continue.

Prerequisites:

Your dog should have heeling knowledge. This class will not teach heeling from the ground up. The focus of this class is to help students that are struggling with progress in any area of heeling training.

OB600 - Healing Your Heeling Handling will help clear up many of the issues related to handling. If you think you might need some help with parts of handling, OB600 will be available for purchase until October 15th. We can work on the handling and the dog training pieces if you have this class in your library.

Equipment:

Depending on what issues have you and your dog stuck, there might be a recommended prop to help move your training forward.

Ring entrance or gate - you will need a simple ring entrance. Nothing fancy is required! If you don't have something handy, there are many creative ways of doing this.

Training Space:

You will need enough space to work the heeling concepts that have you, and your dog stuck.

How Do We Get Stuck?

There are common issues that cause dog trainers to get stuck without progress while training dog sports skills. Social media can create feelings of lack because success is gauged by comparison to littermates or other dogs of a similar age. In addition, the little voice inside of your head can introduce negative self-talk and feelings of inadequacy when you don't know how to proceed.

Other issues are caused because the trainer moved through steps too quickly for that particular dog. Reasons for that might be that that same procedure worked for a previous dog. Or, else, it could be that you did not recognize the signs that the dog was confused at the time. Or perhaps you don't know how your dog got to this point, but here you are. And that's probably the most common cause of being stuck.

Another frequent way you might have gotten stuck is that your dog started to make mistakes when things were going well previously. Then, you decided to return to how you handled your dog before the errors started to occur. And of course, then your dog was perfect again. That perfect performance or perfect skill is your reinforcement. It's what we all aim for when we train our dogs. We wouldn't continue training if our dogs didn't make progress. But now that your dog's performance is perfect, you don't want to move forward again - the risk is that your dog might start making mistakes again. What a dilemma that becomes!

Other possibilities might be that you don't feel comfortable trying something different. You are following the guidelines or instructions from the same person or group of people. You sense that your dog needs something else. Dog training can be very creative, and there are times when trying something completely novel and different might work. I had heard of some crazy ideas (they seemed unlikely to help) that trainers thought of and tried when their dog struggled with a skill. And low and behold, it worked for that dog and handler. Unfortunately, most dog trainers lack the confidence to experiment and change things up. Having the confidence as a trainer to try something unconventional or unusual takes a lot of courage.

And if you feel stuck because you lack confidence with your dog training, you are normal. Confidence comes with a training plan. Confidence comes from little successes that build into significant improvements. The key is to take small steps. Then, with success and support, both you and your dog's confidence will improve.

Do you see your situation in any of these examples? If you feel like it, let's talk about it. If you have other reasons you feel stuck, let's talk about them.