Heeling Your Dog For Dummies

00:00 — Kati Peppe opens the episode and asks listeners to subscribe.

Welcome to Off Leash and Unfiltered Trigger Warning. I'm Kati Peppe, delivering the Truth in Dog Training.

Hey everybody, this is your host, Kati Peppe. Before we jump in, I just wanted to take a quick second and remind you to hit the subscribe button because that helps us so, so, so much. We appreciate every subscribe and follow, and we have so much valuable information we wanna share with you. So we don't want you to miss an episode. Without further ado, let's jump in. Hey everybody, we are talking about the heal command today. One of my favorites, and I think this command is so great because it benefits the dog in so many ways I think people don't even realize.

So it's also one of the commands that I, I think it's just way underrated. Um, I think people tend to think of heel as being very militant and rigid. And I mean, it is rigid, but they see it as unfun. You know what I mean? Uh, they see it as sometimes unnecessary. Um, and it's not everybody's favorite, I guess is what I'm saying. So a lot of people, when we're showing them the heel, um, for instance at their Go home lesson, one of the common questions that we'll get is, do we always have to walk in a heel?

And my answer to that is kind of, why wouldn't you want to <laugh>? So I love the heel command, the heel. So we tend to view everything from the worst possible perspective when it comes to our dogs. Like anytime we're asking them to do anything, it's, oh, poor baby has to do this, has to do that, right? We just wanna let our dogs be free and do whatever they want all the time. And in our mind, that's happiness. Um, first of all, it's not <laugh>. It's not fulfilling to just do whatever you want all the time with no rules, no boundaries, no need to achieve anything.

No standards, like that's not happy. Um, but also, you know, and dogs, they need a job to do. They need work. They need something to pour their brain into besides just being frantic all the time. Um, but more than that, I think the benefits just get missed.

Like how good a lot of these things are for your dog. Like, we tend to just completely and totally overlook, um, the benefits and the good that's coming out of it and go straight to the fact that it's work. It's no fun. Um, and it's, you know, again, militant, pushy, um, rigid, that sort of thing. So let's talk about the heel command. Why we use it, how we use it, and what good is it really doing your dog? And is it okay to not walk in a heel sometimes? So let's talk about that. 'cause the answer isn't the same for everybody.

03:00 — The episode explains what heel means, how to teach it, and when dogs should…

Um, and I have somebody whining out there, no <laugh> probably Dony Dony just came in yesterday, so, and he's been here before, but he was here as a puppy and now he's a big boy. And so it's been a while. And so he is in his kennel out there. He can't see me and he is like, what the heck's going on? What are we doing <laugh>? Anyway, so the heel command, we teach to every dog that goes through our program. Um, now when we're talking about puppies, we don't usually teach a tight heel. Um, we do and we don't, right?

I teach them to respond to leash pressure and to walk nicely on a leash. And if they're an older puppy, I might hold them a little more accountable for that heel position. Um, but usually when I say we're, we're doing a heel, we're teaching a heel, we're talking about a dog that's over six months of age, not that they have to be, right?

That's somewhat arbitrary. But our adult dog programs are six months and up, and we always teach a heel in those programs. So what we're doing when we say we're teaching a heel is we're teaching the dog to walk next to our left leg and actually slightly behind, right? Because that's what heel means. It means at your heel, right? So really, their head, their nose should be at your heel. So they should be slightly behind you. Um, that's my preference. And not just that, right? So it's not just a positional command, but they're also not allowed to pour their brain into other stuff, right?

Their brain is supposed to be pretty much devoted to doing a heel. That's their job, right? So heel is a job when your dog's in heel. Um, so normally we like to see the dog walking slightly behind you on your left side.

And we don't want them walking with their nose to the ground. We don't want them walking with their head on a swivel, scanning the environment, right? Especially if you have like a reactive dog or a nervous dog. We don't want them constantly looking for triggers. Um, we don't want them cring their head around to see what's behind them, who's behind them? What's that noise? Who's that guy? Where are they going, right? No crane the head around. Um, so there's really no sniffing anything, right? So there's no like sniffing the fire hydrant on the way by, or, you know, the tree, the bush, um, the trash can, any of that stuff.

Uh, we don't, we want the dog to resist that impulse every time they walk by something that's smelly, uh, to just keep walking with you and to maintain that position. So I see where people are coming from when they ask.

06:00 — The dog must maintain position and continue walking past distracting smells.

We always have to walk in a heel, right? 'cause it sounds like a lot of work. But here's the thing, once you teach your dog to do it, it's not a lot of work. It's not hard. It shouldn't be hard. And it has amazing, amazing effects on your dog. So think about it from a meditative perspective. I always talk about this comparison, um, in the go home lessons and why I like heal so much. It has a very meditative effect. And if you think about it, it's almost exactly the same thing as telling a person to focus on their breath, right?

And obviously you don't do it all the time, right? But you do it sometimes. Maybe you do it every day, maybe you do it multiple times a day, right? But just doing it for 30 seconds isn't gonna help much, right? It's something you have to actually spend a little time doing <laugh> for it to be of any benefit.

But if you tell a person to focus on their breath, right? You've probably done this before. It doesn't take too long before your mind starts to drift away and you start focusing on something besides your breath. Maybe it's a noise you can hear in the house. Maybe it's, you know, something you have going on with one of your kids that you're worried about. Maybe it's a deadline you have at work. Maybe it's what you're having for dinner. Maybe it's the stops you need to make on the way home, whatever it is, right? Your mind drifts to that.

And this is a great way to get in touch with like, what's really bothering you too, or some of the things that are like weighing on you or just occupying your brain is like your, your brain will tend to float away to the same place, like over and over and over again.

And you find you have to keep going out there and grabbing it and dragging it back. Um, so it's a great exercise even for humans. But we're talking about the dog and it's the same, it's the same thing. So we're saying, Hey, do this job and I want you to focus on this. I want you to devote all of your brain to this right now. And they do for a minute. And then it's like, oh, and they get pulled away by a smell or a sight or a sound, and you have to keep pulling 'em back.

And we are usually using the eco for this. And so we're using what we call eco pressure, which is just turning on eco stem at like a load of motivating level. Like whatever is enough to just pull the dog's attention back to heal right back to the position, back on the walk and away from whatever the distraction was that grabbed their attention.

And so each time you do this and you pull the dog back and you pull the dog back, they start to exhale, right? It starts to get easier. They start to become less aroused, less concerned, less stressed by the things going on around them because they're not allowed to devote their brain to that right now, right? So it might be nervousness, it might be excitability, it might be reactivity, any of these things, they all get toned down, right? 'cause the dog has to focus on just walking with you, which as things go is not so bad, right?

09:00 — Focused heeling redirects attention and can reduce nervousness, excitability, and reactivity.

Um, so it does have a very meditative effect on your dog, and it does help dial down arousal, which of course then makes everything easier and more pleasant. So nothing wrong with that at all. But one of the other things I really like about the heel is that it is mentally draining, right? Because it's hard work to keep focused on this thing. Like I said, your brain wants to keep drifting away. You gotta keep pulling your dog back, right? And they gotta watch you and they gotta follow you. And they have to stop if you stop.

I didn't mention that earlier, but normally when we come to a stop, right? If we're healing and we come to a stop, the dog has to stop with us. They can't walk past us, and they automatically sit down. Not everybody does it that way. And that's okay. I like the automatic sit. I just feel like it's a little bit higher of a standard. It's a little bit more dr. Brain draining <laugh>, right? Um, and it's a little bit more geared toward calmness rather than having a dog that's up and ready to go all the time.

Having a dog that's quick to put their bum on the ground and lower that body posture and lower that arousal. To me, that's better for most of the dogs that we have come through here. It's certainly better. So I like that auto set.

But you know, we meet a lot of people that rely on exercise to keep their dog, uh, behaving and being good, right? They're only good when they're tired. Everyone knows that, um, that saying a tired dog is a good dog, and it's like, okay, your dog should be good even when they're not tired. Um, but my point was going to be that your dog can get just as tired from walking in a heel for 20 minutes as they can, running around frantically for an hour. Because instead of just physical ca like just being frantic, right?

Just frenetic energy, running around chaos, no rules, no thinking, just flat out physical exercise is one thing, but combining that physical exercise with something extremely mentally draining, right? That really takes a lot of brain power that you have to focus on. Um, that my friend is real exercise that's draining and, and it's much more productive, right?

So we're strengthening our brain and we're improving our, uh, our behavior and our wiring and our level of arousal and our, our baseline of arousal. All these things are improving, right? So it's a real productive means of exercise rather than just being frantic, which is kind of practicing the stuff we don't really like our dogs doing. I'm not saying they can never do that. Um, there's a time and a place and that's fine. But if that's all you ever rehearse for, exercise is like letting your dog go crazy and just run, run, run, run, run, run, run, and chase, chase, chase, like balls or frisbees, whatever.

And there's no real rules. There's no boundaries. There's nothing they have to think about. There's nothing they have to exercise brain-wise. Sometimes that can almost be more counterproductive, right? Whereas you're walking in a heel, you're doing a nice long walk that way. They're getting the walk, which is physical exercise, and they're getting to exercise in all kinds of ways. Mentally learning to tune out the environment, not worry about it, not care about it, resist impulses, prioritize you over the impulses, like all these things. And then this magical thing happens where the walk becomes a thing you're doing together.

13:00 — Heeling transforms a walk into a shared activity where the dog follows the handler.

<laugh>, which is what I love the most about it. And I'll tell you, there is nothing better than taking a walk with a dog like out in the country at like sunset. And you're just silent.

Just a completely silent walk with a dog next to you is like the most magical thing in the world. One of my favorite things anyway. Um, because you actually feel like a unit at that time. You're, you're like an actual pack, right? It's like we're walking together. I don't need to blah, blah blah at you to try to manage you saying all kinds of things to you, you don't understand, right? We have one command, you know what it means? I say heal and we're off. Um, and we can just walk together and we're on the same page and we know exactly what's happening.

We're both gonna do the same thing. Dog's gonna follow me and it's gonna be great. And if at some point I want to, I can break the dog and let him go and sniff and potty and do dog stuff, which, you know, if these are, if your dog is pottying on the walk, like that's where when they go, then obviously <laugh>, you need to do that.

And that's fine. Nothing wrong with taking a break and breaking your dog and letting them go sniff around and stuff if you want to, but don't feel like you need to do that every two minutes, right? Most of us, we just do not set the standard high enough for our dog. We absolutely baby them. Um, and they never get outta kindergarten. And then we get frustrated in the, the moments that are important to us because our dog can't or won't do the thing we want them to do. But it's like we never ask them to do anything challenging ever any other time.

Your dog is capable of more than you think, and it probably would benefit them in more ways than you realize. If you help them to a slightly higher standard, right? And then rewarded after. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I like feeding time at that time. Uh, um, I don't really walk my dogs right now to be honest. I mean, we live on 10 acres. My dogs hardly ever see a leash. Um, so they kind of run around and do whatever they want as long as they listen to me. And they do. But if you do, do walks with your dog, like, especially if you're a city person and um, you don't have like a fenced in yard or something like that and you're walking your dog a lot like meal time right after a walk, that's, that's, I kind of like that that setup, uh, where it's like we go out 'cause it's very natural for a dog too.

It's like we go out, we migrate together and then it's mealtime, right? Which is kind of like how a dog might do that in the wild. I don't know. <laugh>, that's my corny thinking anyway, but, um, nothing wrong with a little free time, right? As long as your dog earned it, deserves it, they listen to you. Uh, that's totally fine. But you know the question like, do we have to always walk in a heel? It's like, well, no, you know, there's no law, but why wouldn't you want to? Right? And inevitably like the answer always is like, because we feel bad for some reason.

It's like we're doing something bad to the dog <laugh> by asking them to heal, right? And all you're really doing when you say heal, is you're saying, just walk with me. Just walk with me and don't be on your phone all the time, right?

So it's not, you're not doing anything bad to your dog by saying, Hey, let's go spend some time together. Let's be a unit. Let's walk together instead of like, you're on your own walk and I'm just back here. Especially if you're getting yanked around like a ragdoll. But that is the most important thing to us, really, is that your dog isn't dragging you down the street. I think that's the number one most important thing. And when I say dog shouldn't be dragging you down the street, they shouldn't be pulling you. You should be able to walk, relax.

17:00 — A walk should remain relaxed for the handler, without the dog pulling down the…

If you can't walk, relax, then that's no good in my opinion. And I don't just mean when there's nobody around, right? When you go out and take your dog out at 11 o'clock at night, I mean, if you walk by dogs, you walk by people, there's cars or whatever it may be.

We don't wanna see your dog pulling you, dragging you down the road, yanking on your shoulder, wrapping you up, lunging, trying to get away from something. We don't wanna see that. So if there is any of that, then walk in a hill. Love the show. Well, I have great news. We are offering an inexpensive subscription to our new premium content. This is content that isn't available to the general public. We make it just for our subscribers. We're gonna cover a variety of new topics in these episodes and I think it's gonna be a ton of fun.

So you can jump right down into the show notes to get that website address and then skip over there and sign up for this premium content. Just wanted to take a second to let you guys know about that. Thank you so much for your support. And now on with the show, walk in a Heel and you can absolutely go after those things individually as well. Like, if you're not in a heel and you're, you just wanna let your dog be casual and walk, you know, kind of out ahead of you a little bit and sniffing around like, okay, but then when they do see a dog and they pull you, are you gonna correct them for that?

Because you should.

You should. You know. And if your dog is afraid of traffic and they see a car and they try to run, what are you gonna do to teach them? They don't need to run away, right? Because you have to do something to teach them that, otherwise they're just gonna keep trying to run away, right? So if you're walking in a heel, these are things you don't need to think about, right? So long as you're holding your dog accountable for it, which is something we'll talk about real quick too. Um, there needs to be some accountability.

Like there does need to be for everything, right? Or your dog just won't do it. Um, unless it feels like doing it. And it's the most important thing in the moment. Meaning there's no distractions, right? So dogs are great at things when there's no distraction, there needs to be accountability for heel, just like there does everything else.

And that can be as simple as just learning how to use your leash and giving your dog a leash pop if they pull on the leash. Easy peasy, right? But it is an art, it is a skillset. You do have to learn how to do that. Um, and most people don't do it quite right. They more pull on the dog rather than snap the leash. So it's a very snappy motion. Watch some videos, learn how to do a good leash pop. Watch some of our videos, um, where we do a lot of leash work in our videos.

Um, and you can use the e-collar, right? And you can teach your dog how to respond to the e-collar for a heel. Uh, we often will correct dogs for breaking heel with our e-collar. If dogs are here for three weeks or more, they're going to be very fluent at learning to respond to eco pressure. Meaning we turn on motivating stem and it brings a dog right back to our leg. Just like a remote control, um, if they get outta position, right? So I say that 'cause Joyce always compares it to a remote control car. Um, and it's a good comparison because people get very hung up on using their leash.

Um, and we want them to get really comfortable using the remote <laugh>. But even if your dog isn't eco trained, again, and I say this all the time, put a prong collar on your dog. Learn how to use it because it's all leash handling. The collar doesn't do the work for you guys. I know the collar look scary. Collar's not doing anything.

21:00 — Leash work and properly introduced e-collar responses can correct breaks in heel.

The collar does very little. It just sits there. It's all how you use it. It's all what you do with your leash. You gotta learn how to give a leash pop. Um, so if your dog walks past you and starts to tighten that leash up, starts to pull you or starts to lunge at someone, like you need to know how to pop your leash, say no, and then follow that. No with a leash pop, right? So you can enforce. So you have to know what your boundaries are and what your rules are and what sorts of things you should be expecting.

And this might depend a little bit on who your dog is, right? If you have a really nervous dog, teaching them not to crane their head around and look behind them is huge, huge. Now, if you have a pretty confident dog who just turns his head once because he just heard a noise back there and he turned and looked and then looked back, maybe it doesn't matter, right? But generally speaking, these are the types of things that we enforce. It's like don't worry about crane in your head around and checking everything out and worrying about who's over there or what that smell is on the ground, right?

It's all about exhale and just focus on walking with me.

And whether you're doing that with an eco or you're doing that with a leash and prong, you have to know what your rules are, what your boundaries are, and you have to enforce them. These are two of the most important things I'll mention on the episode. You have to enforce them A, meaningfully and B consistently. Okay? Now what does meaningfully mean? It means if you're not being meaningful enough with your feedback, with your corrections that you're using to enforce a ruler boundary. If you're not being meaningful enough, you'll need to be consistent forever because your dog's never gonna stop doing it.

So if your dog keeps making the same mistake over and over and over and over and over again, you're probably not delivering a correction that's meaningful. Or your timing might be off too, right? So normally we say no at the moment the infraction occurs and then we follow up after that.

No, with a leash pop or e-collar correction. Now, once your dog knows heel, you can just leash pop the moment they do it. You probably don't even have to worry about saying no, they're gonna know what it's for. But in the beginning, it's not, not a bad idea to market with a noob before you correct them. And so if your timing is off, that could be an issue too. But 99% of the time people are just not correcting their dog meaningfully enough. And so they end up nag, nag, nag, nag, nack. And that's not a fun walk either.

24:00 — If the dog needs thousands of leash pops, the training timing or correction is…

It's like, okay, great, my dog's walking next to me, but I have to pop the leash 5,000 times. And we only did one lap around the block. <laugh>, the walk shouldn't look like that. After you tell your dog two or three times, really they should start to get it.

Um, and the walk should be pretty easy. It should just be an occasional reminder, right? And for some dogs that's gonna look different than others. Like some dogs are very sensitive and other dogs aren't. You might have to be very firm, right? So your dog decides that that's not up to you. But you have to enforce your rules and boundaries and you have to enforce them meaningfully and you have to enforce them consistently, right? And then create that contrast with your dog by occasionally saying break even if it might be normally a time when you wouldn't break them in the beginning.

We kind of switch back and forth a lot between heel and break to really instill that contrast. Like right now we're healing and I want you next to my left leg. I don't want you sniffing, I don't want you cranking your head around.

I don't want you getting out of position when I stop. I want you to put your butt on the ground. If I start walking again, you're supposed to come with me. And then break where it's okay, go be free, sniff around, do your dog stuff, and then back to heel again, right? And so we'll kind of go back and forth and back and forth and we're not walking in a break. Most of the time if I say break, we're just kind of standing still letting the dog sniff around. Maybe they potty, maybe they check some stuff out and then it's back into heel.

But unless I explicitly say break, I mean the dogs here, they learn that they're really always in heel when they're on a leash. And I'm fine with that because that just creates the safest, calmest, most engaged dog you could possibly ask for. Where they know, they're like when, hey, when my owner puts me on a four, five foot leash, six foot leash, whatever, it's the standard leash. I know that like it's my job to be calm and stay next to them and just see what we're doing, right? And to me, that's wonderful. And they're like, that's the best relationship.

Like obviously if you put your dog on a short leash, like you're doing something together, you're going somewhere, your dog is not free. <laugh>, they're on a leash, right? And there's a reason they're on a leash. Um, as opposed to the dogs where you put 'em on a leash and it's almost like they don't even notice, right? They're just off doing their own thing. They're pulling you, they're wrapping you up, they're frantically sniffing around, they're anxious, they're pacing, um, they're staring at things. Maybe they're even barking at things. It's like, no, you're on a leash now we're doing a thing together.

Hang out with me, be calm, be collected, and be ready <laugh>.

And I like that. I like to pattern that with the dogs. And that just happens naturally because we're always doing stuff together when we're on a leash. And we always have the same rules when we're on a leash. So it becomes very easy and natural for them because they know exactly what to expect, right? And then if I take that leash off or if I drop it and I say break and I invite them to go, then they're free. They can go do whatever they want. They can go sniff around, they can go run around, they can go check out the trees, right?

If your dog's trained to be off leash, obviously don't let them off leash if they're not reliable <laugh>. But you know, as far as sniffing goes, it's like, yeah, I guess I can see if, you know your dog has no fenced in yard and you don't really bring him anywhere, you just have your walks like, and he never gets to sniff around.

It's like, okay, let your dog sniff around some. Like that's fine. 'cause normally I consider that like an off leash activity. Like you can sniff later or you can sniff when I take the leash off. But like when we're walking, I don't feel like you need to sniff, right? And it's not the end of the world if your dog doesn't get to either. But I mean, I can see if you want your dog to have some sniff time, uh, fine, right? But I consider that usually to be more of an off leash activity. It's not when we're, I've got you on a leash and we're walking together, like we don't need to do it then, right?

It's like, oh, I want my kid to have Instagram time so he can just do it on our walk. It's like, oh, <laugh> do it some other time. It's not that important. Um, yeah, just my opinion. But I, you know, like I said, I can see if you have no yard and there is no other time and you wanna work some of that in, you know, fine. But I think it depends again on your dog. Like you just wanna remember, if you have a dog that has serious behavioral issues, um, you know, obviously aggression, but you know, even reactivity or nervousness, severe anxiety, like any of these things, it's probably more beneficial for them not to do that right now.

It's probably more beneficial for them and for your relationship with the dog as a whole for you to rehearse that walk as being a time where they're fully engaged with you and where they have really clear boundaries, like a really clear path to walk. It makes everything easier for them, makes everything more clear, more predictable. They know what to expect. Um, they know what's expected of them. Uh, and it does a lot for your relationship to just make you relevant and like you're just part of their world. You're the center of their world, right? Instead of just being in the background all the time.

It's really, really great for your relationship. Um, and that's one of the reasons I really love heal. And we always walk dogs in a heel here. Uh, and again, I'll just reiterate if some people don't want to, I do think that that's okay. It's not my preference, but I think as long as your dog isn't exhibiting any serious behavioral issues and you are happy, that's the most important thing. But don't let your dog drag you down the street. <laugh>. Hey guys, thanks for joining us today. I really hope you enjoyed the show. If there's a specific topic you'd like to hear discussed, you can send that to me directly via email or fan mail.

Just jump down into the show notes. That information will be there for you. I really look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for supporting the show and I look forward to next time.