This course will be the first of the three part heelwork series! Vol 1. focuses on stationary exercises and prerequiste skills. What is the first exercise that comes to your mind when you think about competing in obedience? Let me guess – heelwork? On the other hand, it is also the exercise that most of teams stuggle with and have a hard time breaking it down into teachable units.
If you are just starting, this course will be perfect for you. You will learn foundations for heelwork that will score the maximum number of points. How to teach a dog the correct head position? What should the perfect pivot look like? How to teach it all with errorless progression? You will get the answers in this course!
The course will also benefit teams who already take part in the competition, but would like to improve their results. It doesn’t matter if – your dog sits crookedly, pivtos with his butt on the ground or drops his head every 5 seconds – together we will go through this process and build a perfect routine.
Close your eyes and imagine the perfect heelwork you would like to achieve. Can you see it? Good, we will build solid fundaments to achieve this picture within six weeks! There is one condition – you must sign up for this course with me
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Course Testimonials
This has been an absolutely amazing course! My only regreat is lack of time (from my side) to do my homework. Catja has done an amazing job to give feedback. There have been so many small things to work on for getting a solid foundation for heelwork to heaven ❤️
I am a huge fan and I love the posibility to get feedback all the time on my training and be a “nerd” on the small things that helps me to make a perfect setup.
Catja has an eye for things that others miss. I love her approach to training and the way she set up every session to be “ready for succes”.
l’m ready for vol.2 🤗
Birthe Eriksen
Dahl
August 10, 2024
Lessons:
Week
1
23 Nov 2024
Welcome!
Read this before proceeding to the first lesson! Welcome, students! …
What does it look like?
Where do we start when we want to perfect our heelwork? We start with defining what we want it to…
The “boring” stuff
So.. about the rules. For those of you, that are not looking to compete, this lesson is likely not to…
Split, break, split, break…
It’s time to look at, how we can bring this lovely exercise into small bite-sized bits and pieces, to make…
Catch it, grab it, toss to mouth
So now, we are ready to start some actual training Todays lesson is going to be mostly videos I…
Homework week 1
You have made it through week one (hopefully). I hope that the idea of doing a lot of foundation work…
Week
2
23 Nov 2024
Welcome to week 2
Since you only had your homework assignment yesterday, I will give you an extra day to practice. This…
Prerequisite skills: backing and side movement
Let’s start with backing This behavior can be very challenging for some dogs, for various reasons. Especially if…
More backing and side movement
Backing Lets do a bit more of backing and sidewards movement, as promised yesterday. I did a new session…
Head position and focal point
We have already been covering the head position, so today I would like you to write me a comment or…
Pivots
Pivots, pivots, pivots… Today it’s time to start building the skills for turning. That means it’s time to look at…
Homework week 2
You have reached the end of week 2. I hope you are still hanging in there, and if you are –…
Week
3
23 Nov 2024
More pivots
Welcome to week 3! Today we will be looking a bit more at pivots. This step, is only something we…
Pivot a little more..
Done with pivots? Yes, I know you already were, but then I changed my mind and added another pivot lesson…
Back up.. more!
YAY – backing! So, at this point I can imagine that you are all fairly fed up with backing, targets…
Position! Precision or “close enough”..
STOP!! Well, not you, hopefully. I would prefer if you keep reading on. In many programs, including my…
Homework week 3
We are halfway though – I can not believe how times fly! I am having a lot of…
Week
4
23 Nov 2024
Welcome to week 4
Week 4 Once again, I am surprised by the speed that the weeks go by with. This week we will…
Following backwards
It’s time for us to start moving. So far we’ve been doing some backing and the back-and-forth exercise, but apart…
Set it up
Today we will work on setting the session right from start. We’ve already covered some parts of the set-up, when…
In the last lesson, we were working on having focus and heel position, and now it’s time to look at…
Homework week 4
This week have been about following us, focusing on us and having a good start position. So I would love…
Week
5
23 Nov 2024
Welcome to week 5
Week 5! I hope you’re still with me, and enjoying yourself. It’s no secret that I am enjoying to do this…
Trot along..
It´s time to look at the pace. As I have already mentioned, I am a big fan of looking at…
Fading prompts
Prompts! So far, we’ve been using an amount of prompts that unusual for me. I have however, found them to be…
Cues
Get a c(l)ue? usually I am not a big fan of working with cues, before my behavior is perfect. that…
(Extra) Prep for vol 2. Turns and start
Oh well…. So, I did these videos and realized that I have far too many things for you to work on,…
Homework week 5
It’s homework time! Although I am aware that you have probably posted this weeks subject under the lessons, I would…
Week
6
23 Nov 2024
Prerequisite skills – hands and paws
I hope you have tried the exercises from yesterdays lesson. Either still without you dog to practice your skills, or…
Welcome to week 6
I can not believe that we are already close to the end. This week, we wont have a lot of…
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting! We all know the feeling. We have found the perfect time for a session and the perfect location.
Gather it all…
We are almost at the end now – I can’t believe that this course has passed so fast, and when…
What´s on your mind?
The title says it all As we are getting very close to the end of this course, I wanted to…
Final Thoughts: Celebrating Achievements and Continuing the Journey
Farewell and Keep Moving Forward! Mega Cheers and…
Free Lesson
Getting into position
In the last lesson, we were working on having focus and heel position, and now it’s time to look at the actual coming into heel position.
In reality, we need the dog to be able to go into position from all angles.
It is very likely that when we start the exercise, the dogs will be walking with us up to the starting point, and therefore the heel position will be from walking next to us.
But in case we’re not walking in a straight line of the dog is not walking next to us, we want to make sure that the dog is able to still get into the correct heel position, so that we don’t lose any of our points before we even start the exercise.
Or at the very least, we want to have practiced that, so that we get as few surprises as possible, when we take this out.
so since we have just reinforced being in his position so many times, it’s about time that we also start reinforcing the actual getting into position.
I would start this off with some type of help from a platform or similar. in the below video I’m using a regular platform and feeding him to my front, so that it’s easier for him to just repeat the behavior and get into a position next to me. Platforms are great for this, just remember to not stick to the platform for too long, except for the very quickly become the cue for going into position, and then the dog is not really able to do it when the platform is not there. this is the type of help where you need to be really mindful, of how much you use it.
The next video, you’ve already seen in another lesson.
But it makes sense to show it after the platform video, as this is also an approach you can take.
Here I start by checking that my dog can actually pivot into position, and then remove the help of the target. Once I have checked that, I started clicking for the sit position next to me, and then gradually feed him in front of me, until he is able to go into heel position from my front, which is what I ultimately need.
Working on heel position, while removing the help of the tool.
This last video shows how it looks when you remove the targets. He is not as precise here, as I am going for today, but this video shows it better than any of the new videos.
Here, you get to see that we can´t always get perfection from the start, and that it’s for me, about capturing the behavior and then gradually shaping it to the form that I would like it to be.
Coming into heel position, without any visual target
So, I look forward to seeing your videos, of your dogs going into the starting position
