# Pixel heeling at 5 months



## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

Miss Pixel in class tonight. Not bad for a 5 month old puppy!


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## Ollie"s Mom (May 23, 2014)

Oh miss Pixel you clever girl you. Well done for a little baby.


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## Ditto's Mom (Apr 29, 2007)

Good job little girl!


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## MiasMomma (Jun 14, 2015)

krandall said:


> Miss Pixel in class tonight. Not bad for a 5 month old puppy!


Pretty dang fantastic, Pixel girlie!
What treat/lure are you using Karen?


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## Sheri (Oct 11, 2008)

How fun was that! Nice demonstration of how to do it, Karen and Pixel!


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

MiasMomma said:


> Pretty dang fantastic, Pixel girlie!
> What treat/lure are you using Karen?


I lure only to correct position, not for heeling. That's a really important distinction. If you get in a habit of luring for the dog to follow you, you've got nothing once you don't have food in your hand. Instead, you'll see that (with a dog this new to formal heeling) I stop every few steps and reward her for coming with me. Then my hand comes back up.

I happened to be using chicken here, but I rotate between LOTS of different training treats. There's no secret to any particular type. Use whatever your dog likes!


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## Heather's (Jun 18, 2012)

What a smart little Pixel!


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## 31818 (Oct 29, 2014)

Very instructive. Good job to both of yous. Gracias for sharing.

besos, Ricky Ricardo


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## whimsy (Apr 3, 2010)

I loved watching that! She is smart as a whip...so cute! ( Does your back hurt after that?? Mine is sore just from watching you lol)


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## sandypaws (Aug 8, 2012)

Good job girls. So much fun watching you both work. I will agree that it does look back breaking though, Karen.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

whimsy said:


> I loved watching that! She is smart as a whip...so cute! ( Does your back hurt after that?? Mine is sore just from watching you lol)


Oh, it's MUCH better now, Evelyn! In the beginning, I was doing chin heeling with her... which means you need to be totally bent over with a puppy this size with your left hand against your leg as a place for the puppy to rest her chin. Your hand has to be at the puppy's chin height, so it's not bad with large breed puppies, but toys?!?! It produces beautiful heeling, but it's a KILLER!!! 

So as soon as she had a pretty good idea of "where's heel" I started to modify it to only rewarding or correcting her position a needed.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

Ricky Ricardo said:


> Very instructive. Good job to both of yous. Gracias for sharing.
> 
> besos, Ricky Ricardo


Another interesting thing about the lesson, though you can't see it in the video is something we've talked about in the past... Heads-up heeling, whether you "have" to do it, and what the value is in competition.

(for those of you who didn't follow that discussion between Ricky and me, you do NOT want your dog walking casually in a "heads-up heeling" position, because it is a real strain for the dog to maintain that for long periods of time. The longest a dog would EVER need to do it in the ring is about 90 seconds... usually less)

In any case, for this class, (and we did the same exercise for Kodi's Utility class that we did for Pixel's "baby" Novice class) our instructor had us all line up our crates and chairs along the side of the ring and set the ring gate up so that there was JUST room to navigate between the people's legs and the gating to get into the ring. Then, as each dog was heeling (we each had several turns) we started providing increasing levels of distraction. For the first round, we sat in our chairs and talked and laughed. For the next round, we stood up against the ring gating, still talking and laughing. For the third round, we sat, sticking our feet very close to the ring gating and absolutely silent, scowling at the dog and handler. (often, silence at a trial is more "freaky" for dogs than steady background noise)

Now, almost all the people in these classes have been training with Esther for quite a while, so there was very little surprise that really none of the dogs in our Utility class had any problem with the distractions. What was more interesting to me is that in the "baby" class, (Pixel is the youngest, and the oldest is a two year old show dog who is transitioning to obedience)

EVERY one of the babies did great with the distractions AS LONG AS, they were in a heads-up position, paying close attention to their owner. You can see this with Pixel too. The times that she starts to wander away from me are times when she loses her focus and her head comes down. That's when something else catches her attention. In her case, of course, I didn't take her TOO close to the ring gate "distraction crew" and they kept their distractions mild, because she IS a baby. The idea is to build confidence around distractions, not terrorize the baby.  Each handler had to decide for themselves how close they could get to the distractions without "losing" their dog's good heeling. I suspect that is a large part of why I was leaning over so much. (at least I HOPE I don't usually heel like that! ) I was very intent on re-capturing Pixel's attention in a challenging exercise.

So, long story short, if you have good heads-up heeling with attention, your dog is focused on YOU, and honestly doesn't even SEE the distraction of the crowd!


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## 31818 (Oct 29, 2014)

Karen, see PM


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

Ricky Ricardo said:


> Karen, see PM


I don't see one from you since June... Did you send it? I'm leaving for a trial in the AM, and don't know if I'll have e-mail access until sometime Sat. If you don't hear back, I'm not ignoring you!


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## Dee Dee (Jul 24, 2015)

Wow that is great what a good puppy! You guys are a great team. Pixel is going to do great things.


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## Karen Collins (Mar 21, 2013)

Good job! Karen....and Pixel! :whoo:


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## Lisa T. (Feb 5, 2015)

Pixel did a great job! I love watching your videos. Thank you for sharing.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

Lisa T. said:


> Pixel did a great job! I love watching your videos. Thank you for sharing.


Thanks! That was a couple of months ago, and she's actually come a long way since then!!! She's really fun to work with.


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## Lisa T. (Feb 5, 2015)

How was it with Pixel when you first started training? Rudy has such a short attention span. Even trying too teach him to sit and stay, he will sit then slide to a laying down position.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

Lisa T. said:


> How was it with Pixel when you first started training? Rudy has such a short attention span. Even trying too teach him to sit and stay, he will sit then slide to a laying down position.


Well, stay is the LAST thing you teach a puppy. Start with just position changes. You can always build duration later. Puppy training sessions should be VERY short. Count out 10 cookies and do 10 reps of whatever you're working on. That's PLENTY for one session in the beginning. Just do 10 cookie "sets" several times a day, and they learn quickly!

The best way to teach duration and waiting is using "Doggy Zen". I'm pretty sure there is a Kikopup video on doggy zen, but if you can't find hers, there are LOTS of other videos to show you how it's done.


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## Lisa T. (Feb 5, 2015)

Do you remember how you taught the sit command. Rudy starts to sit then goes to a laying down position very quickly. I don't want to give the treat when he's laying down.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

Lisa T. said:


> Do you remember how you taught the sit command. Rudy starts to sit then goes to a laying down position very quickly. I don't want to give the treat when he's laying down.


Well, the way I taught Pixel to sit is probably different than most pet people use. It's MUCH more time consuming to do it the way I did it, but really important for a competition dog,because you really need them to do a "tuck sit" or they drop out of heel position when they go from walking to sitting at heel position.

Most pet people teach the sit by luring up and back with the cookie just above the puppy's nose, as they reach up, they scoot their front feet back, and sort of collapse onto their butt behind.

To get a tuck sit, you need to lure the dog FORWARD with the cookie, getting them to really reach high with their nose, but NOT so high that they take their front feet off the ground. It's a really fine balance between the two.

In either case, a clicker is really helpful to let the puppy know EXACTLY when they are in the position that is going to earn them the cookie.

I strongly suggest that you take a puppy K class where a knowledgeable instructor can help you with these beginning cues if you aren't experienced with training them yourself. It won't take you long to get the hang of it, but it's SO much easier than trying to learn (or teach) this over the internet.


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