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Instead of drilling heeling as formal heeling, I would incorporate a lot of play and games with the heeling. I always tell people you want to be so cool to your dog, they will choose working with you than looking at what is the distraction. When they do pay attention to you, reward that...you want the dog to think they get a bigger payoff by looking at you than the stuff on the floor or the dog in their peripheral vision. When I taught the guys heeling...I kept heeling patterns very short, very dynamic, and very fun. I make a big deal out of heeling with attention with them and make it feel like they cured cancer with their heeling. LOL I always stopped working while they wanted to do more. My philosophy is to build the love for the work first and then polish with the precision. Does that make sense??
I like to think of this stuff like if I were a teacher. We've always had those teachers in high school or college who were as dry as dust....blah, blah, blah...reading from the text book is their lecture...asking the back row of the class to pay attention. You couldn't wait to get out of there if you showed up at all. Then we had the teachers who were so cool and fun....interactive with their lectures and examples of what they were teaching you. We all loved them and worked hard and studied hard for their tests...we were present for their class. We never missed the classes of the cool, hip and fun teachers. Training dogs is very much like this...what sort of teacher are you??
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