Let’s Let Loose—Loose Leash Walking Tutorial Part 1

Walking your dog loose leash may seem like a dream that will never happen, but no matter how old or young a dog is, it can. What’s more, is it’s easy to do without causing pain, fear or intimidating the dog.

All you need is the right equipment and some patience.

First, prepare your equipment:

For consistency sake, use a 4ft or 6ft leash. Using a retractible leash is going to make this process unnecessarily difficult for you, and can be confusing to your dog if the length of the leash is different every time. I personally love using a european leash, that way it is clipped around your waist and both of your hands are free to work with treats. It is also more comfortable to stop while you are walking, all that pressure is distributed around your hips instead of on your wrist.

I recommend walking your dog on a harness. Whether it’s a front clip no-pulling harness or a back clip harness, they are the best way to walk your dog without causing them injury.

If your dog is a flight risk, rather than walking them on a martingale collar, I recommend a Webmaster Harness from Ruffwear. They are a bit more expensive but absolutely worth every penny and the dog cannot back out of them due to the straps around the belly.

I do not recommend the use of a flat collar or martingale collar as the long term use of these can cause trachea damage even in the mildest pullers. Even if your dog does not pull all the time, those times where there is something exciting…SQUIRREL… can cause some damage as well.

I do not condone the use of aversive collars. Click here to learn more about aversive collars.

Second, prepare yourself:

The first thing you have to remember is that this isn’t going to happen in one 30 minute session the first day, or the first week. Even if your dog begins to understand what you want (unless they are puppies, or are an adult that pulled for many years) we still have to make it a habit. It took me more than one day to learn my ABC’s so expect your dog to have to practice this with you until she gets good at it.

Resist the urge to pull on, tug, “pop”, or “snap” the leash. Doing this is counter productive, because we want her to learn to regulate herself. Add these small corrections and she will begin to tune you out in favor of something more fun…OTHER DOG…than you.

Something to consider: Dog’s have a problem with understanding object connectivity. This means that even though your dog knows she’s on a leash and knows you’re holding it, she does not understand the rules for walking on it. How many times have you come up to a street lamp or sign where you went on one side and she went on the other? She’s not trying to spite you or be difficult, she just does not understand what being connected to you by a leash means. So we will teach her.

Celebrate small progress:

The method that we are going to use is going to make it very clear to the dog that pulling gets them nowhere. The first week you are going to be stopping…a lot…most likely every 2 minutes or so. If you are consistent and patient, it will all pay off. You probably won’t get very far, distance wise, in the first week, but that is ok. When you feel frustrated or impatient, repeat the mantra “Good habits that are created are just as hard to break as bad habits.”

With Zoe, the first two weeks we were stopping every 4 minutes or so. Slowly but surely, the time between stops lessened to every 10 minutes. By the end of the month, we got to the point were I had to stop once or twice at the beginning of the walk (I call this the “do rules still apply test”) and we were walking loose leash for the rest of the way.

So how do we accomplish this? Continue to Part 2 of Let’s Let Loose—Loose Leash Walking Tutorial

#walk #training #tutorial