Hi All

I am after some advice re clicker training my pup , i have done the usual - sit, down, stand, recall etc but am a bit stuck on the heelwork . What i am doing so far is when she stands on my left hand side i say 'heel' then click and reward , now she is doing that everytime i ask her , i can recall her and ask her to 'heel' and she goes to my left straight away which is great, BUT as soon as i put the lead on she seems to forget it as she is so excited, so i wait for her to calm down etc. My problem is that as soon as we start walking forward she starts to pull again. I stop and ask her to heel which she does straight away so i click and reward but then as soon as i move again she pulls! So, what am i doing wrong?? And also when i do eventually get to start moving and she stays at heel, how often do i click, every couple of paces etc or not??

Hope that makes sense, look forward to hearing your replies x

What sort of "heel" are you looking for? Just loose lead walking for your walks? Pet Obedience? Competitive Obedience? Working Trials?

It depends very much what your ultimate goal is to pick a good potential method. 

Hi, as she is only 4 months, just for now i want loose lead walking but still want her to be close to my leg. At some point i would certainly like to do comp obedience with this little madam though lol.

Practice with the lead on indoors. To start with you may only be able to take one step before you need to click, so you gradually increase it. When rewarding after the click move the dog behind you, never reward when its ahead of you.

Thanks Marianne for your reply, yes i am rewarding behind me, she is such a quick learner and can walk quite a few paces without her lead, it just all goes to pot when i put the lead on, haven't even attempted going outside the house for this yet , we are still practising in the garden.

Have you tried a different word for when walking, if heel means to come and sit by your left side to get a treat she might be getting confused as to what is asked of her - could you use "close" for when walking meaning she needs to be beside you.

Well i did wonder that but it seems more that she is just getting over excited when we actually start moving. When i say ' heel' she stands at my left and looks up at me which is the position i want her to walk in, i think it may be more about the excitement of seeing her lead than anything else as she can manage quite a few paces off lead . Thanks for your reply x

I know very little about clicker training but I wonder are you holding the lead, what does she do if you have the lead just trailing on floor and take a few steps asking for heel?
just a thought :-)
Chris

It sounds as though she is doing exactly what she has been clicked for in the past - standing close to you on the left hand side- so I would now treat her moving forward with you as a separate manouevre and introduce a separate word to get her to do that. As Marianne has said reward her after just one step forward and then gradually extend the number of steps  and use a different word for this.

Ooh now thats a thought Chris, i will give that a go , then i spose when she is good at that i can start holding the lead, thanks x

Hi,

I wouldn't be adding in a seperate word for the heel position unless you are training something different.  So if you want heel to mean walk close in the position that she starts in then I would stick with heel, it just needs to be generalised to moving forwards.  It's just the same as teaching sit to mean the same thing, infront of you and at the side of you at a distance etc, you use the same cue but just geberalise it.  If you are happpy to have her in any position just don't want her pulling then I would maybe add a different cue.  The way you have done it so far, by getting her to understand the heel position while stationary is the way I would teach it, then to progress I would work with one step at a time, clicking and treating at each progression and not being tepted to try and progress to quickly.  I would also work seperately with desensitising her to the excitement of the lead, getting it out several times a day.  I would also try practisiing first in the living room or kitchen as the garden will be more exciting than indoors :-)

Thanks Karen , thats what i thought. I taught my boy this command in exactly the same way and he grasped it so was wondering if i was doing something wrong this time round. She understands clearly that when i say 'heel' she is to stand by my left about an inch away from my leg and look up , i think maybe i was taking too many paces forward before rewarding her. Yes you are right about the garden, i just tried it in the living room and she was great, until we had to do a turn but hey she is only a baby lol.

I will work on her lead excitement too, thanks x