# Backwards heeling?



## Chicagocanine (Aug 7, 2008)

Can someone tell me what the Schutzhund exercise is called where the dog switches sides and heels facing behind the handler? Also where can I find a description of this exercise?


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## shilorio (Mar 21, 2010)

that is very interesting.. i would like to know to  ill try and find someting


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## BlackPuppy (Mar 29, 2007)

French Ring Sport

"*Defense of Handler:* handler, dog and decoy approach each other and have a short conversation, then continue walking. the decoy turns around and comes up behind the handler, and as soon as the decoy "attacks" (obvious "hit" on handler) the handler, the dog bites the decoy. After the dog is told to out, he guards the decoy until recalled. the dog must stay with the handler until the attack, most dogs are taught to heel facing backwards for this exercise"
French Ring Sport - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's one video:




 
Or another. I love how the dog is so waggy in this one.


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## Chris Wild (Dec 14, 2001)

This isn't a SchH exercise, its a Ringsport exercise. There's no backwards heeling in SchH.


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## Chicagocanine (Aug 7, 2008)

Chris Wild said:


> This isn't a SchH exercise, its a Ringsport exercise. There's no backwards heeling in SchH.


Oh ok thanks! That explains why I wasn't able to find it on Schutzhund sites.


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## Aamer Sachedina (Jun 30, 2010)

Don't know whether it is my impression or not but I have seen the backwards heeling more in Belgian Ring than French Ring videos Although I was always under the impression that backwards heeling was the preferred way of doing it so that the dog can always see the decoy.


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## Fast (Oct 13, 2004)

It's in both French and Belgian ring.


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## TheJakel (May 2, 2013)

Are there any how to's on this ?


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## Tim Connell (Nov 19, 2010)

Many people train this first with obedience, with no decoy, just as a conventional heel. Some people train it from the get-go as strictly a bitework exercise. Preference of the handler/decoy taking into consideration the handler and dog's ability and training style.


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## TheJakel (May 2, 2013)

I was mainly thinking of doing first with out the bitework since it doesn't translate to IPO. I just wanted to be able to do it as an additional obedience exercise.


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## Merciel (Apr 25, 2013)

TheJakel said:


> I just wanted to be able to do it as an additional obedience exercise.


In that case I'd just teach it with a hand target to get your dog in the correct position/orientation (like for a left flip finish, except that you'd stop halfway through with the dog facing away) and then clicker shape to add more steps (duration/distance), with maybe a little light luring or hand targeting to induce the behavior initially. Given that the dog's head remains by your hip, it should be easy to lure.

The biggest point of confusion would probably be convincing a dog with a long reinforcement history for "regular" heeling that you actually want him to be -- and stay -- oriented in the "wrong" position, so I'd probably spend a lot of time reinforcing the basic position before adding movement to the exercise.


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## TheJakel (May 2, 2013)

Would there be an alternate command? We're still working on the traditional heel, would training this add to the confusion of regular heeling or make the reverse a little easier?


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## Merciel (Apr 25, 2013)

I would do it with an alternate command. In general I don't use commands for heeling (when I want Pongu to heel backwards at my left side in the "correct" orientation, I just move in the direction I want to go and he comes with me), but here the dog is actually facing in the opposite direction and that is not the same thing as normal Heeling, so in that instance I would think a separate command would be useful.

I might give it a shot this weekend after Pongu's last Rally trial of the year, actually. If my guess is right, it shouldn't take more than a day or two to get a beginner version going inside. Then I'll be able to make a video (or, in the alternative, know if my advice is dead wrong and this approach doesn't work).


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## Merciel (Apr 25, 2013)

Merciel said:


> I might give it a shot this weekend after Pongu's last Rally trial of the year, actually. If my guess is right, it shouldn't take more than a day or two to get a beginner version going inside.


lol I lied, I started doing it about an hour ago. No patience, me.

Anyway, it took three five-minute sessions and we've got the dopey beginner version. It is SUPER rough because (a) I'm asking Pongu to do it on the right side to avoid spillover into any of his "normal" Heeling behaviors, and we barely do any right-side work so that's screwing with his muscle memory a little; and (b) he keeps wanting to look up into my face instead of focusing on a decoy, because obviously I do no decoy work with nuttypants dog. All we ever train is standard attention Heeling. As a result he keeps scooting his butt downward into a Sit because it appears to be very awkward for him to maintain eye contact while facing away from me and moving backwards.

So it looks real dumb and choppy, and we only have three or four steps of movement, but the basic contours are there. I'll try to make a video illustrating what I did later this evening, since I don't know that I'm going to take it much farther than this. Not much reason to spend a lot of time polishing a behavior that we don't need for anything.


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## mycobraracr (Dec 4, 2011)

Tim Connell said:


> Many people train this first with obedience, with no decoy, just as a conventional heel. Some people train it from the get-go as strictly a bitework exercise. Preference of the handler/decoy taking into consideration the handler and dog's ability and training style.


 
I trained with a PPD trainer who trained it only with a decoy (if it's the same heeling backwards idea). The dogs taught already new the basic heel position so it was really simple. Handler and dog heeling away with decoy behind, handler tells dog to watch decoy, decoy fires dog up then back to passive, handler kept walking with slight pops on the collar. Every dog I saw done this way had it down very quickly. 

Recently we started teaching the back transport in SDA by instead of the decoy turning around(back to dog) the decoy just starts walking backwards. Dog/handler heeling facing decoy. Once dog learns distance, just like in a B&H the decoy can dance with the dog.


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## TheJakel (May 2, 2013)

Thanks for Both!,

Merciel
I'm def interested in seeing any video you have. Whatcing you learn will also helpe me learn as well.
Cobra 
Thanks for that input as wel. I'd imagine having the decoy back there helps keep the dog standing and attention to the rear.

We have rough basic heel, His head is just starting to pull and stay up and I can do do turns as well. I did get him to walk backwards with out me today at first un intentionally, just a few steps to, to get back into a sit before he could get his tug. I'll try the heel after I watch Merciel's video


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## hunterisgreat (Jan 30, 2011)

Mine will do it in a "transport" command bc of how I teach it in IPO. Just in IPO the decoy is never behind you


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## Merciel (Apr 25, 2013)

So a couple of prefatory notes here:

(1) We're doing this as a pure trick/obedience exercise. I'm sure you could train it successfully as a decoy guarding exercise too (and I'd like to thank myco and hunter for their alternative explanations and approaches, because it's always useful to think about other ways of doing things), but we don't have that foundation and my poor scaredybutt mutt would just run under the dining room table and bark his fool head off in terror at the sight of a decoy anyhow, so welp.

(2) I made these clips after seriously < 15 minutes of working on this stuff, so these are VERY rough draft versions. These are very much "training stage" clips. And, as I said in my previous post, I'm deliberately putting Pongu on the "wrong" side because we have another competition tomorrow and I want to minimize any potential confusion in his "actual" heeling, so that's throwing him a little too.

(3) HOWEVER Pongu does have a lot of prior practice doing backwards movement exercises, and if your dog does not have a lot of prior practice doing backwards movement then it will probably take more than 15 minutes to get to this point. I'm not working a totally green dog here, which has its pros and cons (like, oh, that head wiggle...).

Step 1: getting dog into reverse-facing heel position.





 
I'm using a platform because that makes it easier for my dog to understand that we're working positions. Depending on your exact goals and your dog's prior foundations, you may find it helpful or not helpful to use a platform. I don't think you _need_ it, in any case, it just happened to be useful for us here.

The goal of this stage is just to get Pongu into some approximation of the correct start position via hand target (and platform). You'll notice that Pongu keeps moving backwards to make eye contact (because, again, his prior training has always rewarded eye contact) and so I exaggerate my hand position a little to pull him farther down the platform, and am also feeding him farther away from my hip.

Step 2: adding movement





 
Pongu's butt is wobbling all over the place here because he really is just not used to going backwards in this position at _all_. ahee.

I'm holding my hand/arm out to act as a guide rail. Without it, Pongu kept moving to a point where he could maintain eye contact (you can sort of see this at 0:03 to 0:06 when I'm resetting the exercise -- that's roughly the position he would default to without the hand/arm guide rail, because there he can look into my face).

But actually he figured out pretty quickly that he was supposed to keep his shoulder aligned to my hip and he does a reasonably good job of it in that clip, particularly considering how different this is from all the other heeling exercises we ever did and how little practice he has at this point.

I think if I were training a contact Heel where Pongu's shoulder was actually pressed against my leg, I'd get way less wobbling. But I don't want to do that because I think it might damage some of the other stuff we actually get scored for points on, so for purposes of this demo I'll accept the wiggly side-to-side wobble walk.

Anyway, those are my starter clips, hopefully there's something marginally useful in that. Let me know if you have questions or if anything is unclear.


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## TheJakel (May 2, 2013)

Nope thats pretty clear and very usefull. 

Good call on the Transport Hunter, maybe on a slow weekend I can get a helper to stand behind me


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