Walking On The Leash

Earlier this week I was walking my bitch along a quiet road near my house. She was walking to heel off the leash. Although I usually have a leash with me in case I need it I hardly ever actually use it.

We passed someone coming the opposite way with a young border collie on a leash. Judging by the size of it, my guess is that it was probably somewhere between about 6 - 8 months old.

It was heaving into its collar the whole time. But not just a steady pull - it was constantly leaping forward again and again and again, so it in fact ended up with its front feet clear of the ground a lot of the time.

Its owner just smiled sheepishly at me as we passed, my bitch quietly ambling along beside my left knee whilst his dervish did its best to rip his arm out of its socket.

I always have to bite my tongue in situations like that. I'm dying to say "For goodness sake man, what on earth do you think you're doing? Why do you put up with that behaviour?"

But of course it's absolutely none of my business, so I just walk on by exchanging a polite "Hello".

If someone stops me and asks for advice I'm happy to give it, but I wouldn't just barge in uninvited.

It's completely beyond me why anyone would tolerate letting their dog walk that way. It's so totally and utterly unnecessary. It's uncomfortable and frustrating for the dog, and can be exhausting or even painful for the owner. I would find walking a dog like that a chore rather than the pleasurable experience I think it ought to be.

There are lots of ways you can address a problem like that. It's a subject I go into in great detail in my book "Dog Training Blueprint To Success"

The gist of it is that you need to have good timing. You need to engineer it so that you get the dog walking beside your leg instead of pulling ahead of you, even if you can only make it do so for one second before it surges forward again.

And immediately it's in the correct position you need to do two things -

#1 immediately let the leash fall slack so there's no pressure on its neck, and

#2 give it lots of praise in a warm loving tone of voice

Immediately it surges forward your voice changes to a gruff disapproving tone and you berate it while trying to engineer its correct positioning again.

Immediately it's back in the right position your voice instantly changes to a loving tone again and you let the leash fall slack.

How do you engineer its positioning?

There are plenty of different ways, but the easiest are to use a combination of a quick 'tug and release' on the leash and a change of direction on your part.

If the dog's walking on your left and begins to move forward, turn into it in a sharp 90 degree turn. If you jab your knee into its shoulder it'll pretty soon get the message. (Of course it depends on how tall you are and how big your dog is as to whether or not you can do the knee-in-shoulder routine.)

If the dog's surged ahead and you suddenly turn through 180 degrees and walk back the other way it's going to get a mighty hard yank on the neck. If it races past you and you do the same again it's going to get another mighty hard yank on the neck.

If you keep doing that it should soon start surging ahead with slightly less enthusiasm. Hopefully it'll come past you slowly enough for you to turn 90 degrees into it and force it to turn with you in the perfect 'heel' position by your leg. As you make that perfect turn your tone of voice instantly changes to the warm loving praising one.

As you come out of the turn and walk straight ahead what happens? If the dog stays in position you need to keep up the praise. If it surges ahead you immediately go into gruff telling-off mode whilst at the same time engineering the correct position once more.

You *must* have perfect timing. At the *exact* moment the dog's walking correctly the leash must fall slack and your voice has to change to one of warm loving praise.

At the *exact* moment the dog moves out of the correct position your voice must change to one of gruff displeasure and you have to engineer the correct position again. Tug and release on the leash, and/or change the direction in which you're walking.

And as with all training matters, you need to be consistent about it. Don't put in all this good work one day then the next let it just yank your arm off as before without doing anything to correct it.

Go down that road and you'll have a permanent battle on your hands as the dog will never know if it's coming or going.

I should add that the techniques I've described only really work with a fixed leash, not with an extending one.

If you've read this newsletter any length of time you probably know by now I have no time for those extending leashes. To my mind they're a dead giveaway for someone who can't control their dog very well.

My take on it is that the dog's either on the leash or it's not. If it *is* on the leash I want it walking calmly right beside me. If I'm happy for it to be 20 feet in front of me then I want it off the leash. I do *not* want it still on the leash while it's wandering around within a 20-30 foot radius of me.

The one exception to what I've just said would be if you live in an area where you are forbidden to let the dog run loose. I realise there are some parts of the world with such draconian anti-dog laws that an extending leash might be the only chance your dog has of actually having a sort of half-hearted 'run'.

But unless you live in a place like that I urge you to ditch that extending leash. You'll have absolutely no need for one if you'll just teach the dog to walk quietly by your side and to come when it's called.

This is a very brief overview, and there are a number of things that might complicate matters. You might have a dog that tends to lag behind instead of pull ahead. Or you might have one that tries to veer off to the side rather than to the front.

And your treatment of the dog should be dependent on its personality. If it has one of those big bold outgoing personalities you are going to have to handle the situation differently from someone whose dog has a shy, easily upset sort of personality.

I cover all of this stuff in my book - it's much too detailed a subject to be able to explain fully here, but hopefully that's given you a few suggestions you can use if your dog is of the 'rip your arm out of the socket' mentality.

Recommended reading "Dog Training Blueprint To Success".

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