Pawprint Academy: Your Blueprint to Raising Better Dogs
Aug 24, 2026 · 34 min · 10 segments
In this episode, its our first ‘out and about’ mobile recording, so bear with us on the sound quality! We did our best! Advanced heel work is not about creating a dog that spends its entire life…
On this episode, we're going to talk about advanced heel work, right? And how it's not about forcing your dog to just stare at you and walk like a kind of prance, like that competition dog that you've seen YouTube what we do want to do is is we want to start developing this like higher level of communication engagement and positional awareness and that is what will help your dog to stay connected to you even when the environment becomes difficult
yeah
So first off, and we're going to cruise through this because it's really not a difficult concept.
It's just we're going to break down the kind of the steps of what we want to do.
So first off, heel is a position in relation to you, right? Focus is the mindset, the mindset that we want from the dog.
So focus.
A dog can technically be beside you without actually being engaged with you, right? They kind of are like walking along.
They're watching you, so they kind of like they don't get out of position.
But this is more of a loose leash walk than really the more precise version of a heel.
Right.
Which is what most pet dog owners are kind of used to.
Correct.
Exactly.
And usually when we teach healing for pet dogs, that's usually what we go for is I want the dog from withers to tail and on my left side on my pant seam.
Right.
I want it to line up.
But that gives the dog, depending on the size of the dog, a little bit of wiggle room to be a little forward, a little back.
Most pet dog owners really don't care about that, and it's pretty transparent to them.
But when we get into more advanced work now...
Just walking next to me isn't quite good enough.
And so we really want to focus in on the focus part of how engaged is the dog to you.
And can you hold the dog's engagement?
Yeah.
I watched a video earlier, side note, of a dog that was so focused on its owner.
They were walking through HomeGoods and she stopped by a dog statue and it took a solid three minutes for the dog to like look away from her and be like, oh, what is that? Where did that thing come from?
On this episode, we're going to talk about advanced heel work, right? And how it's not about forcing your dog to just stare at you and walk like a kind of prance, like that competition dog that you've seen YouTube what we do want to do is is we want to start developing this like higher level of communication engagement and positional awareness and that is what will help your dog to stay connected to you even when the environment becomes difficult
yeah
So first off, and we're going to cruise through this because it's really not a difficult concept.
It's just we're going to break down the kind of the steps of what we want to do.
So first off, heel is a position in relation to you, right? Focus is the mindset, the mindset that we want from the dog.
So focus.
A dog can technically be beside you without actually being engaged with you, right? They kind of are like walking along.
They're watching you, so they kind of like they don't get out of position.
But this is more of a loose leash walk than really the more precise version of a heel.
Right.
Which is what most pet dog owners are kind of used to.
Correct.
Exactly.
And usually when we teach healing for pet dogs, that's usually what we go for is I want the dog from withers to tail and on my left side on my pant seam.
Right.
I want it to line up.
But that gives the dog, depending on the size of the dog, a little bit of wiggle room to be a little forward, a little back.
Most pet dog owners really don't care about that, and it's pretty transparent to them.
But when we get into more advanced work now...
Just walking next to me isn't quite good enough.
And so we really want to focus in on the focus part of how engaged is the dog to you.
And can you hold the dog's engagement?
Yeah.
I watched a video earlier, side note, of a dog that was so focused on its owner.
They were walking through HomeGoods and she stopped by a dog statue and it took a solid three minutes for the dog to like look away from her and be like, oh, what is that? Where did that thing come from?
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
