How to Teach a Dog to Heel

Easy Steps

Walks with your dog can start to feel like a challenge if your four-legged friend is basically dragging you around. That’s why it’s important to know how to teach a dog to heel ASAP.

Heeling is a term that describes your dog walking along side of you, rather than in front or behind you.

Thankfully, the training process is quite simple, and you’ll be adding an important trick to your dog’s arsenal that is bound to make your walks a whole lot more enjoyable.

Why Teaching Your Dog to Heel Is Important

If you don’t have a particularly willful dog on your hands, you may wonder if teaching your dog to heel is worth the effort. But even if your dog isn’t pulling you during walks, practicing this useful trick can actually have powerful psychological benefits.

For instance, even if walking by your side at your pace doesn’t present a physical challenge for your pup, it does require a ton of mental determination to remain focused on you throughout the walk.

This kind of mental stimulation actually relaxes your dog’s brain and keeps them in a state of “work.”

This is also an extremely useful way to grow your natural bond and connection with your dog.

Here’s What You Need to Get You Started

Before you begin, you should grab some small training treats and have them on hand.

We love Zuke’s Mini Naturals as a training treat. They’re healthy and small in size, so you can give them to your dog over and over again as you work on this new skill.

If you’re clicker training, this is also a great time to use a clicker to reinforce the behavior you want.

Be sure to pick a place that’s familiar and free of distractions as you’re starting out. You can progressively add distractions and change up the settings as you get further into the training.

How to Teach Your Dog to Heel: A Step-by-Step Guide

When you’re ready, here are the steps to follow to teach your dog how to heel at your side.

As with any other training, practice patience and refrain from using any negative reinforcement or punishment when your dog fails to follow directions.

Just go back a step or two and start again, while encouraging and rewarding the behavior you want your dog to display.

1. Have your treats (and clicker, if you’re using one) ready and start indoors in a familiar setting with plenty of space for walking around, such as a hallway.
2. Point to the side that you want your dog to approach. Traditionally, the heel side is to your left, but you may choose whichever side feels appropriate.
3. When your dog approaches, use your clicker and/or verbal encouragement such as, “yes” or “good job.” Immediately give them a treat.
4. Be sure to offer your treat with the hand closest to your dog to avoid the temptation to cross over in front of you to get it.
5. Repeat this process (steps 1–3) a few times, each time calling your dog over and pointing to your side. Then reward the behavior.
6. Now, stop calling or pointing to your side and let your dog make their way to your side by choice. From there, mark the behavior and offer a treat as a reward. If this doesn’t happen, go back to steps 1–3, and try again later.
7. Start taking steps forward and reward your dog when it keeps up pace with you. If, at any point, your dog starts to get ahead of you, ask them to focus back on you and try again.
8. Soon enough, you’ll need to speed up the pace at which you walk and even start adding tests such as zigzagging around to challenge them.
9. When your dog seems comfortable with the trick, it’s time to take the trick outside and start adding some distractions. After all, the real test of a successful “heel” is whether your dog is able to do it with the full distractions that come along with a daily walk.
10. Start phasing out the treats as a main stimulus for heeling and simultaneously increase other forms of encouragement to keep your dog motivated.
11. You can do this by offering a treat every other step at first, then increasing it to every 5 steps and so on. Do this until you only have to offer the food every once in a while.

Additional Tips

Here are a few things to remember as you’re learning how to teach a dog to heel:

• Your dog shouldn’t be expected or asked to heel the entire time they are on a walk once you’ve mastered the trick, but you should continue to practice and reinforce it often to keep your dog happy and relaxed.
• If your dog attempts to get to the treats in your hand, you can try holding them up to your chest while walking.
• It’s up to you, the owner, to choose when it’s time to heel and when your dog has the freedom to walk and sniff as it chooses.
• It’s important to remain the pack leader at all times during the walk. Even when your dog is not heeling, it should never be allowed to pull you on leash.

Final Thoughts on How to Teach a Dog to Heel

We hope these tips help explain how to teach a dog to heel. As you practice this important and advanced trick, remember to stay patient and offer your dog plenty of positive reinforcement.

If you veer off track, just take your dog back a few steps and repeat the process again. Soon, you and your furry friend will be enjoying your walks together, while increasing your dog’s mental stamina and wellbeing.

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