Delta is now 13 weeks old. Currently we are working on heal off lead with the clicker. She is doing really well. I am getting her to heel as I walk REALLY slow. This will help for later on when we go squirrel hunting and are stalking. Sometimes while hunting we will need to back up (walk backwards). I would want her to simply take a few steps backward with me, instead of spinning around and reestablishing the heel. I have started getting her to heel up against the fence, thinking that it will keep her by my side when I start walking backwards. But I really have no idea. Any suggestions?
Does she have a hand target? It would be pretty easy to extend that to walking backwards by your side. Or use a target stick, which might be easier. Or, if she knows how to re-align herself at heel, then just take a tiny step backwards, use your "heel" cue again, and she should shuffle backwards. At 13 weeks, though, you may have not had enough time to get the accuracy on her heel position, so she knows that your cue means to get herself into that precise position.
I found the difficulty with this was my dog didn't have any 'rear end awareness' - he would step back with his front paws, but getting him to move his back paws (in a straight line) was tricky and I got a mess when I just tried to get him to 'back up' all in one. If you want to do it properly, so the dog walks backwards straight with their head held up, there is a good exercise in Kay Lawrence's 'learning games'. I started doing this when my dog was on rest (for something to do). I trained him to stand still on a bread board, then just encouraged him to step forwards for a treat, then he naturally stepped back onto the board for his next C&T, I then moved to clicking his rear legs moving. I stopped after just two steps, I got bored with it, and now he'll do those two little steps backwards all the time! I really should finish it off! I think someone suggested to me that I should have had the bread board on his rear feet, I think that would have been better but I have seen dogs take sort of 'high steps' backing up, which has been rewarded as they exaggerate the steps to feel the board behind them, which I don't like very much. This was the start of my efforts - we got a fair bit further than this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/123706979@N04/15323697934/ If you just lure the dog backwards, with a treat etc. it looks very messy and wonky - there are loads of videos on the internet of this being done quite badly, I think (this is one where I think the Kikopup video is quite poor, unfortunately).
LOL, you could take a segment out of that video and make a new thread called, Charlie's Morning Kiss for All of YOU. Thank you Charlie. The board idea looks great. IN Rally we taught it with a piece of food lure held under the chin and down by the chest. The dog stepped back to get it. We built in delay to get more steps back and moved the hand to over the head, hand held with palm down and horizontal. Then faded the food piece. To get straight lines we practiced along a wall. It wasn't messy. This worked great for the parts where we were heeling backwards but next we had to stand in front of the dog and verbal or hand signal a back. Just about everyone said BEEP, BEEP, BEEP for backwards and for some reasons we are allowed to say it three times. So all we did was say the Beeps while doing the above. We went on and needed hand signals for directed work from a distance as well. If anybody else needed a hand signal from a distance I'm curious what it is. We all chose our own.
Up against the wall. Delta will no option but to scurry backwards. The wall is also a great way to teach the correct heel sitting position. None of this off to the side stuff.
Lots of great info. Unfortunately, looks like I am going to have to put this one on the back burner for awhile. Delta seems to be hitting a little independent stage and I've got more pressing issues to address right now. But I will definitely keep these things in mind once I get everything else in order.
