If your dog is forging, wrapping around your leg, sitting crooked, or drifting wide in heel position, take a look at where you're delivering your reinforcement.

Reward placement in heeling matters. A lot.

Dogs are very good at figuring out where reinforcement happens, and they'll adjust their position to get themselves closer to that spot. If your treats are consistently delivered too far forward, your dog may start forging. If you're reaching across your body to feed, you may end up pulling your dog's front end toward you and pushing their rear end out. Even small changes in where and how you deliver reinforcement can make a big difference in your dog's heel position.

When I'm troubleshooting a heeling problem, reward placement is one of the first things I look at. Sometimes we spend a lot of time trying to fix the dog's position when the way we're reinforcing is actually contributing to the problem.

 Pay Attention to How You're Delivering the Reward

One of the most common things I see is handlers keeping treats in their right hand and then reaching across their body to feed the dog on the left. As that hand comes across, the dog follows it. Over time, that can contribute to wrapping around your leg or crooked sits.

Another common method is spitting treats. This works well for some dogs, but it can also encourage a dog to move forward in order to see your face. If you already have a dog who likes to forge, that's probably not the direction you want to reinforce.

There isn't one reward placement that's right for every dog. Where I deliver the reward depends on what the dog in front of me is doing and how I want them to change their natural tendencies.

In this video, I demonstrate some of the mechanics I use when reinforcing heel position and how I think about where the reward is delivered.

And in this video, I'm showing some of the reinforcement cues that I use for heeling.

 What Is Your Dog Doing?

 Before you change your reward placement, take a good look at your dog's heel position.

Are they forging? Lagging? Rear end swinging out? Drifting wide? Wrapping?

Knowing what your dog tends to do gives you a much better idea of how you should change your reward strategy.

 Use Reward Placement to Help the Next Repetition

This is one of the biggest things I want people to understand about reward placement in heeling. You're not just reinforcing the behavior your dog just did. Where you put that reward can influence what your dog does on the next repetition.

If your dog tends to lag, try delivering the reward slightly ahead of position. That can help encourage them to move forward.

If your dog tends to drift wide, deliver the reward close to your left leg rather than reaching outward toward the dog. You want the reinforcement to happen where you want your dog to be.

If your dog's rear end swings out, you can use your reward delivery to help straighten their body. One option is to have the dog turn away from you before coming back into position for the reward.

If your dog tends to forge, I often like to send to a reward behind me. Now the dog has a reason to think backward rather than constantly pushing forward.

For sustained head-up heeling, I also use bounce. This allows me to deliver the reward under my left armpit right in heel position.

The important part is that I'm choosing the reward placement based on the dog I'm working with rather than using the same delivery every time.

This video shows several different reinforcement options, including bounce and touch, and how I use them to help maintain heel position.

If you have a dog who really likes to push forward, rewarding behind you can be especially helpful. Instead of reinforcing that forward momentum, we're giving the dog a reason to stay back and think about maintaining position.

 What About Small Dogs?

Reward placement can be a little more challenging with small dogs simply because there's a much bigger distance between your hand and your dog's mouth.

That doesn't mean the same concepts don't apply. We just have to think a little more carefully about how we get the reinforcement to the dog without changing their position in the process.

These videos show how bounce and touch reinforcement can be adapted for smaller dogs:

 Keep Watching the Dog in Front of You

Reward placement isn't something you decide once and then use forever.

As your dog's heeling changes, your reinforcement may need to change too. If you've been rewarding behind you to help with forging, for example, you may eventually notice your dog starting to hang back. That's useful information. It means it's probably time to adjust again.

Dogs can also overcorrect when we change something. A dog who was forging may start lagging. A dog who was wrapping may suddenly get a little wide. That's okay. You're gathering information and making adjustments as you go.

Keep watching what your dog is doing and ask yourself two questions: Where am I delivering the reinforcement, and what is that placement encouraging my dog to do next?

Sometimes a very small change in reward placement is all it takes to make a big change in heel position.