To avoid this, begin asking for SIT/DOWN/STAND positions while you’re moving… jog in place, windmill your arms, sit in a chair, kneel on the ground. The verbal commands should be followed regardless of what your body is doing. Remember: verbal command, then physical cue!

Stationary Watch with Distractions

With the dog sitting in heel position, hold the toy or food in your left hand. Tell the dog to WATCH and slowly move the toy/food near your dog’s head. If the dog looks away from your eyes, use your non-reward marker “OTT” or “oops”  and wait for the dog to look back. Tell him “GOOD” and then MARK then REWARD. Play with the toy, or step back and give the treat actively.

Sit in a chair and with the dog sitting or standing in front, give the WATCH command. Slowly stand up. Reward if the dog maintains eye contact. The dog should maintain eye contact regardless of your position or location. Can you kneel? Move your arms? Otherwise slowly change position?

HEEL: Attention & Position

Position and attention are separate skills and are taught with different commands. Use one command such as WATCH when working on attention; use a different command such as HEEL when working on position.

HEEL: Moving Watch

In the first stage of moving attention, you look at the dog, and the dog looks at you. Don’t worry about correct heel position: we’ll be working on position separately using a different command.
Begin in heel position with the dog standing at your side. If you have a fence or wall you can stand next to, that will passively help keep the dog in heel position without you having to think about it. The toy or food should be held visibly near the dog’s head. Work on the first few tiny steps of movement with attention. Take small steps and move slowly.

If your dog has a tendency to dip his head as he takes the first step, then lean forward and reward any movement on the dog’s part where his head doesn’t go down. Ask for just momentary attention as you take the first step.
Use both your reward and non-reward markers as warranted. If the dog looks away, let him know that’s not correct and a reward isn’t coming: tell him UH-OH or OTT and begin again.

Gradually increase the duration… begin with just a slight leaning forward, then one small, slow step, then two slow steps. Use your secondary bridge word — your “keep-going” command — to tell the dog when she’s doing well: “good… YES!” … then reward.

Heel: Position

Continue working on BACK. With the dog facing you in front, give the command, pause, and then move into the dog. Give him a chance to respond to the verbal command before giving the physical cue. If the dog responds well and shows understanding, the next step is to work on back from heel position.

Against a fence or wall, have the dog standing in heel position.  Cue the dog by putting both hands together with the treat held with the thumb and forefingers of each hand, and pushed against his chest. Take a step backwards with the dog. Mark then reward the slightest try.

Once the dog can take a step back with you, take a step forward while asking for attention.

SIT STAY

Stays are difficult, especially for young dogs. Stays require self control and a long attention span. Don’t begin the STAY until your dog knows SIT well:

• SITs without a lure.
• SITs on cue (command).

STAY has several components:

• position,
• location and
• duration.

The dog needs to understand each concept separately.

The dog needs to learn both what he needs to do:

• stay in the correct position (SIT, DOWN or STAND) and
• not move from the location in which he was left;
• stay until released;
• stay regardless of distractions and temptations.

and he needs to learn what NOT to do:

• whine, shift, wiggle, move his front feet, sniff, scratch, etc.

Techniques
The stay builds out of delaying the reward for SIT and DOWN. When you start to use the word STAY, you can help your dog understand better by freezing your own body movement, including holding your breath, and giving the command in a low, calm voice.

Stay close to your dog: we won’t be moving away at all until he can do 3-12 second stays, maintaining attention, with you right next to him.

If he gets up, don’t correct him — he doesn’t know this yet! Just help him back into the stay position. Stay close. Try to release with an OKAY before he has a chance to break again. Reinforce success, don’t punish failure.

Before walking across the room, see if you can pivot in front. Move so that you’re in front of and facing the dog; then move back to heel position.

Begin to delay the reward. After the dog sits, wait a few moments, then say  “good stay” before marking and rewarding. You can help your dog understand STAY by freezing your own movement: hold your breath as you count the seconds “one-two-three” then mark “yes” and treat.

Once you start to add duration, use a release word such as “okay” instead of your reward marker. Praise more frequently and treat less. As the stays get longer and longer, go back and give a food reward occasionally during the sit and not after the release.

Once the dog can stay for some length of time with you next to him, begin working on distance. When you introduce distance, keep the time short.

Proofing:  Slowly begin to add distractions, practice in new locations, etc. Each time you do something new, keep distance and duration short. Again, reward success before punishing failure.

HEEL has several components: ATTENTION & FOCUS, POSITION, RHYTHM, SPEED, ATTITUDE

BEGINNING HEELING DEVELOPS OUT OF ATTENTION

• STATIC WATCH — FRONT
• STATIC WATCH — SIDE

These are different concepts for the dog. Don’t get stuck working on static attention for too long, as it becomes more difficult for the dog to transition to moving attention.

I prefer to work on “watch” with the dog standing, either in front or in heel position. If you teach an automatic sit this early, it will become the dog’s default position, making it harder to work on concepts such as “back”.

BACK
We will teach your dog how to find correct heel position with a few verbal cues. “Back” will tell him to move backwards when he’s forging in heel position. Dogs taught to heel with focused attention often forge because they’re trying to maintain eye contact.

FOCUS ON A TARGET & HAND TOUCH HEELING
I prefer eye contact because… I like looking at my dog’s eyes. But this can become a problem as training progresses and the trainer stops looking at the dog and focuses ahead. The dog, used to seeing the trainer’s eyes, starts to forge to keep that eye contact. Pretty soon, the dog is heeling forged and wrapped around the trainer’s legs.

To avoid this, the dog can be taught to focus on a target which is placed on the trainer’s left side at a height that will help the dog stay in correct heel position.

Techniques

Attention & Focus

Step 1: Doggie Zen
Food is a great motivator — so much so that it can be painful at times for the trainer! Doggie Zen is a way to teach the dog not to take your fingers along with the food.
Hold a piece of food in one hand between your thumb and index finger. At first, close you hand so that it hides the food from sight, but let him know you have it. Depending on how food driven your dog/puppy is, he may sit back and wait for you to offer it to him, or he may start biting and pawing and otherwise trying to mug you for the food. This is great! — an opportunity for learning!
Hold the food so that your thumb and fore-finger are near the dog’s nose. Don’t move your hand around; keep it still and in one place. (If you try to move your hand away, you’ll turn on his chase and catch instincts, defeating the purpose of this exercise!) If he roughly tries to take the food, you can turn your hand so the back of your hand is in front of his nose and the food hidden in your palm. Be still and don’t move your hand away. Ignore any of the pawing or biting unless it escalates; then pop him lightly in the nose with the back of your hand. At some point your dog will back away in confusion, as if to ask “what do I have to do to get the food?” As soon as he stops mugging you, mark “YES” and open up your hand and let him have the food.

We’re ignoring the bad behaviour — biting, pawing, licking — and rewarding the good behaviour — waiting politely or backing away.

Step 2: Wait for eye contact
Continue as above, but now when he moves back or waits politely, wait for eye contact. If absolutely necessary, as when the dog sits and stares (and drools) never taking his eyes off your hand, you can make a kissing or smooching noise to draw his eyes upwards. Mark YES and treat the moment his eyes dart upwards, even if he looks back down immediately.

Step 3: Two-fisted eye contact
Put food in both of your hands. Hold the treats near his nose and slowly bring your hands apart until they’re 6-12 inches apart. We need them close enough that he’s encouraged to sniff one hand, then the other. Hold the food so it’s easily visible and very attractive, but be ready show the back of your hand or bump his nose if he gets too greedy. Wait patiently while he tries to figure out how to get to the food, going from one hand to the other. The moment he makes eye contact, even fleetingly, immediately mark YES and reward.

Continue this until the dog makes eye contact the mooment you offer a treat. Once this occurs, you can now “put the response on cue”.

Step 4: “Watch”
Say “watch”. Pause just a moment, then present the treats in your hands. Mark YES and treat the moment he makes eye contact.

BACK

With your hands close together in front, hold your treat in both hands at your dog’s nose level. Lean into your dog’s space. In the beginning, don’t even take a full step into him; reward small increments. When you lean over your dog, he should move backwards. If your dog even leans back, MARK and reward. Reward the slightest try your dog makes at this point.

Dynamic rewards help build drive and motivation

Food rewards can be as exciting and dynamic as toys — it’s all in the presentation.
When you’re rewarding a static exercise such as focused attention, you can be a pez-dispenser, doling out one small treat after another until the dog breaks eye contact or you release him. But when you’re trying to build drive and motivation, make your treat presentation exciting and fun. Make your dog chase you backwards for the treat. Draw short, straight lines with the hand holding the treat away from your dog while you move backwards, making him chase and catch the treat.
Throw in a SIT command, and the moment his butt touches the ground, mark YES and race backwards.
Have him chase you in a circle to catch the treat. With the dog on the outside and you at the centre-point of the circle, hold the treat with the back of your hand facing forward and the palm facing back, with treat held in your finger-tips. Move the treat away from the dog so that he chases it in a circle. Only draw a quarter-circle in the beginning — we don’t want your dog to lose interest because he can’t catch it.
Throw the treat up in the air for the dog to catch, or when you mark YES, race the dog to the treat pouch or a bowl on the table to get his reward.
Rewarding in this way helps satisfy your dog’s chase and catch instincts and makes the reward more fun than just eating food alone. ,

Hand touches

Hand touches are a silly game that allows you to connect with your dog while asking for him to be engaged. It can help turn your dog on before being asked to work, whether you’re going into the obedience ring or playing agility. It is also one method that can be used to teach head-up attentive heeling.
End behaviour: the dog touches her nose to the palm of your hand where ever you hold it: “up high or down low” or right at nose level.

Technique: In the beginning, most dogs will investigate your hand naturally if you just hold it out a few inches away from her muzzle. As soon as she moves to sniff your palm, mark “yes” and treat. Don’t move your hand any further away than a few inches until you see the “light bulb come on” — that is, you see recognition in the dog’s eyes that she understands what she’s being rewarded for. At this point, you can start moving your hand further away, up high, down low.

We’re looking for active engagement. The dog should enjoy the game and be actively pushing her nose into your hand.

Game over

We’ve “turned on” your dog… now we need to turn her off. Consistently use a command such as “we’re done” or “that’s all” to let he know the game’s over. Put her on a leash and ask her to sit or lie quietly at your side. Break eye-contact. Look away from your dog with “soft eyes” that allow you to take in everything.

When you’re ready to work again, make eye contact and ask “are your ready? Let’s go!”