Heeling is my favorite obedience exercise and I think my dogs would agree. Heeling is the only obedience exercise that my dogs and I do together - and Pembrokes love doing things in unison. In all other obedience exercises, my dog does all the work and I stand still. While heeling, a dog and handler must work as a team, anticipate each other's movements and virtually "dance" with each other. When done well, a heeling exercise is not only a beautiful thing to watch but also in which to participate.

Many years ago, I taught my first Corgi to heel by jerking on her collar whenever she got out of position. I'd jerk just hard enough to get her back into general heel position and then I'd praise her. I fear that many people still train this way, not realizing how counterproductive it can be. Not only does one end up with a dog that heels without attention or animation, but also a dog trained that way rarely heels accurately. I believe that one can possibly train a dog to pass a heeling exercise more quickly using the jerk and pop methods, but if you'd like to do better than just pass the exercise, try this method. Not only will attention-based heeling training improve your dog's heeling dramatically, it will also improve the dog's attention for every other obedience exercise. In this article I will attempt to describe how I start a dog heeling. My methods are constantly under revision, but the basic steps have remained essentially unchanged when training my past few Pembrokes.