[NAGDU] [nagdu] guiding in a heel

[Tami Jarvis]

Danielle,

My dogs would also rather make themselves useful than passively heel. It 
ends up working out better that way, so I go with it. Even my husband's 
pet dog will do basic obstacle clearance when I'm walking her. Some of 
that she picked up from Mitzi, and I also taught her a bit. It's just 
easier that way. I've found there are very few times I need a truly 
passive heel from my guide dog, and both will grudgingly agree to it 
then, so long as nothing comes up to require their intervention. I 
haven't taught Loki formal leash guiding yet, since I want him to do 
loose leash in his flat collar. He's pretty good unless he's all charged 
up, and even then he doesn't try to drag me. I want to have him more 
solid on *not* pulling in his flat collar before I decide whether to 
teach him to put tension on the leash on command. Even so, he can give 
directional cues without putting tension on the leash so long as I'm 
paying attention.

Loki's good at off leash heeling around the yard, but outside of 
obedience sessions, a true heel isn't that useful when I could take 
advantage of the helpful obstacle clearance. Once I realized that with 
Mitzi, I stopped sweating it. Now that she's retired because of some 
arthritis in her back, I'm trying to convince her to not guide or pull 
and finding it difficult. She assures me it's unnatural and just plain 
wrong. /lol/

Tami

On 04/18/2016 07:40 AM, Danielle Sykora via NAGDU wrote:
> 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
>
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