Teaching Your Dog to Look When Heeling

A dog must focus on its handler when heeling.

When teaching your dog to look when heeling, it's important to build the exercise in steps. When a dog “heels,” its position is up against your leg, moving in concert with you. To do this, the dog needs to concentrate on your body language for commands, and when it heels, it will take commands from your left hand. You can teach the dog to look at your hand for its signals. This is a gradual process, but if you work in short training sessions using repetition, your dog will learn quickly.

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1. Teach the Basics

   • A dog in heel position should either be looking at the handler's left hand or up at his face. Begin training by teaching the dog to look at your hand, and build on that if you want the dog to look at your face. Hold a high-value treat in your left hand. Let your dog know it's there, but keep your hand closed and held high enough that it's out of your dog's reach. Move forward two steps and call your dog's name.Treat and praise when the dog moves and stops with you. Most dogs won't understand right away, and you'll need to repeat this several times. The dog will realize the treat is in your hand and will watch your hand. This exercise should be repeated, gradually increasing the number of steps until the dog performs it without a treat.

   Heads Up Heeling

   • Teaching the dog to look up at your face as he heels next to you can be built on the basic heeling training. Once the dog heels at your side, move the treat from your hand and hold it in your mouth. Use pieces of hot dog, cheese or boiled chicken for this instead of dog treats. When you stop, take the food from your mouth and feed it to the dog. This will teach the dog to look at your face. Practice this with repetition, increasing the distance and number of steps before the dog gets a treat.

   Watch Me

   • Your dog can be trained to look at you before beginning obedience training or heeling. This will improve his focus and is useful in any type of training. Hold a treat in front of your dog, and then move it up between your eyes. Give the dog a command such as, “Look,” or “Watch.” When the dog looks at your face, give the treat. You can also hold the treat in your mouth and teach the command. Use a command word rather than your dog's name, so when he hears that word, he knows to focus on you.

   Focus for Obedience

   • Teach your dog to focus on you before beginning training.
     

     Use the focus exercise and ask your dog to look at you at times other than when you're training. Use positive reinforcement and praise when the dog performs correctly, and make the training fun. Teaching your dog to focus on you is a valuable tool for many forms of obedience.

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