I think that poor Ella and I are suffering from a bit of heel work boredom. I've noticed Ella losing attention and drifting off a bit and I think it's because, well, it's boring. We're not entering any trials for a while (we need to learn some new stuff for the next level) and I refuse to enter anything unless I'm sure she's happy and enjoying herself. Does anyone have any ideas of games or training tricks to increase the fun in heel work?
I think it's like anything - to get a good performance, you have to have a high value motivator and reduce a high rate of reinforcement slowly. Well, that's what I've always found. For Charlie, it's a ball or a ball tug toy. So I can get amazing heel work from him by rewarding with a run around ball. Obviously off lead but I can also get it on a slip lead or fob (because I can deliver the ball reward fast enough). I struggle to get great on lead heel work on a street etc because he knows that his high value reinforcers don't appear there. But I get a reasonable version of what he can do.
Keep your heel patterns really short when practising. Never let it get to the boredom stage. Practise and heavily reward just coming to heel (at home, on walks) and then immediately release (I do this a lot, just stationary, without even taking any steps). Massively, massively increase your own enthusiasm - act like it's the funnest fun anyone could ever have on earth. I play a game where I make Obi wait, then I walk off, then I cue him to heel. Reward. Then I make him wait and I move off into another orientation a few steps away, then I cue him to heel. Reward. Make it fast, be really into it yourself, put a lot of anticipation into your voice and body language. I do this a lot in the lounge room and out at the local oval where we practise outdoors.
I appreciate this is a problem for a trial by the way - since I only care about performance for gundog work, and that's an environment packed with Charlie's high value reinforcers, it doesn't matter to me.
This is what I did last summer, working on a straight sit at heel, and then calling to heel from a distance. It became the most fun game in the world.
