[NAGDU] [nagdu] guiding in a heel

[Danielle Sykora]

Hi everyone,

I've noticed that even when I have my dog walk in a heel position, he
still tries to perform some guiding tasks. It wasn't until about a
week ago when I started actively working on heeling in more
distracting real life situations that I realized he was actually
trying to help, not just resisting loose leash walking. For example,
if I walk close to the left of a sidewalk, he will use his head to
push me to the right so that we will both fit, instead of just walking
in the grass (and he has no issues with walking in grass). If I am
using sighted guide and the person leads us into an area that is too
narrow to walk through side by side, Thai will hesitate to walk
through as if he were showing me a narrow space and then push me to
the side to make sure I don't walk into whatever is on the left.
I would expect most heeling dogs to simply move behind me so that they
wouldn't walk into the obstacle. Also, if we are on a sidewalk that
curves to one side, I would typically not realize this right away so I
would end up finding grass instead of sidewalk in front of me, and
then use my cane to trail the edge of the grass around the curve until
I get to straight sidewalk again. When I do this, Thai lightly pulls
to the left when he sees the sidewalk beginning to curve to the left.
He thinks I'm going to  walk into the grass or maybe trip over the
edge of the pavement which isn't exactly level with the soil next to
it. This is completely different from leash-guiding, where he will
perform every guiding task the same way he would in harness.

These behaviors don't necessarily bother me too much because he's
usually right and he walks nicely on a loose leash as long as I'm not
doing anything ridiculous, but I was curious to know if anyone else
has had a dog that tries to guide in a heel? Or is my dog unique and
showing me what the trainers really meant when they said he was
switched from the non-guiding service dog program because he kept
trying to guide people?

Danielle and Thai