Connection & Emotional Anchor When fully-trained, heeling is a dance. It’s just you and the dog. Communicating without words, completely in sync. Nothing else exists. For this to occur you must be connected with one another. Personally, I use eye contact. My dogs love it. I like it. It works for us. For me, I can see EXACTLY what they are thinking in real time. And I can respond to that, instantly. Which is important because timing is everything in dog training. My dogs rely on the connection. It provides them with emotional support. It’s concrete and clear. Look at my face, don’t look around. If the dog is looking at the environment, the dog’s attention is split. Which means their work won’t be as good. If the dog is looking at me and engaged, the environment disappears. We can take that connection into the ring. Everyone doesn’t like eye contact and with smaller dogs it’s often not practical. I still teach them a focal point and have them interact with the focal point. Again, it’s an anchor. It’s very concrete and provides them with a strong anchor. If you watch teams in the ring, the second they disconnect the dog looks worried and/or confused. Once that happens, it’s really hard to get them back in the game mentally and emotionally. Humans have a hard time concentrating for an extended period. It takes practice!! Lots of practice. Connection starts during your warmup. You must stay connected while you reward your dog, immediately after until the dog is set up to continue heeling. No disconnect at all. No looking around the environment, looking at the “judge”, or looking around if you hear a noise. 100% connection 100% of the time. This is something to look for in your videos. Once you become aware that you disconnect, and what causes it, you can fix it. Awesome! Trust me, your dog will thank you!!
Reinforcement Off Body. Trainers are often giving out treats for no clear reason. Sometimes the dog does a simple behavior, and you give them three treats. Why? Sometimes trainers just give the dogs random treats..why? Sometimes they use treats as a bribe. Most of the time they are not even aware that they are doing it. If you want your reinforcer to be powerful and meaningful to your dog, use it wisely. Often, I will ask a student, “why did you just give them a treat?”. Often, they will respond “I don’t know”. Keeping treats off your body makes you more aware of when you are rewarding and why. And it teaches the dog that when food is not on you, they can still get reinforced. This is the first step to reducing reinforcers in preparation for the ring. This is a good time to start working on this. Depending on how advanced your dog is, you should work with food off your body for some of your training sessions….or for all of them.
Be Unpredictable. We are creatures of habit. We are wired that way by design. If something is a habit, it requires minimal thought freeing our brain to think of more pressing matters. Our brain has limited bandwidth. If we need to think of every single thing we do, we run out of space. For the most part habits serve us well. Until they don’t. We often form habits in training that we are not aware of. But the dogs are. If we always reinforce when the dog halts, the dog expects a reinforcer there. When they suddenly don’t get one, they are confused. Confusion leads to a decline in performance. And often to stress. If I always practice half a heeling pattern, then reward. The dog expects that. IF you really pay attention, your dog will clearly tell you where you usually feed them. We need to randomize when we reward. Randomization is the most powerful form of reinforcement. If we really and truly constantly vary when and where we reinforce, dogs will keep working…because ANY MINUTE they COULD be getting a reinforcer. It’s why people gamble and play the lottery. You just don’t know…. Be mindful of WHEN you are reinforcing. Video is an awesome tool for that. When you are preparing your video for submission, note when you reinforce. Is there a pattern? If so, great! Now you know and you can come up with a plan for mixing it up.
Silence is Golden. Dogs’ primary mode of communication is NOT verbal. We must learn to speak their language. The less we talk, the more our dogs hear us. Too much verbal information and dogs have trouble figuring out what we want. AND we don’t talk much in the ring. Yet we chatter away in training. Boy is that a huge difference for our dogs!! Get in the habit of talking LESS in training!!! Literally just give the cues and mark. Once you mark and the dog is released, then you can praise away. But the rest of the time?? SSSSSHHHHHHH!!! QUIET PLEASE!!!!!!! We must challenge ourselves to TALK (with words) as little as possible. Talk with your face, talk with your body, talk with your energy…THAT our dogs understand!
Remember, DOGS ARE VISUAL!!!! They rely predominantly on context and visual cues. Dogs notice the tiniest movements our bodies make. And humans are typically NOT self-aware, especially when it comes to our bodies. Quite often we are inadvertently causing mistakes and/or confusing our dogs.
Our signals for different behaviors look similar, we are moving an arm or hand, we are leaning into our dogs, we are shifting our weight and pushing them out of position, we put our hands in pockets, move the toy, sway, make facial expressions, etc… When you review your video, always look at the environment and yourself. When my dogs make a mistake, I’m always asking myself if I did something to cause it. Often, I will redo it, make sure my handling is super clean and…voila! Error fixed.
For most of this class, I want you to be quiet. Yes, once you mark you can praise away… IF ….and that’s a big IF … your dog likes it. Believe it or not, some dogs don’t. Some even perceive it as pressure. How do we know? Look at the dog! They will tell you with their expression and body language.
Instructor: Petra Ford
