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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
If you Loose Leash trained your dog - tell me about it.
For those of you who've had willful dogs. Please tell me your encouraging story about loose leash training. Our dog is a little over a year. We've had her since she was 4 months old and admittedly really flaked on the leash training. We live a block away from a very active dog park so we got spoiled taking her there every day.
When out walking she gets very distracted and likes to walk ahead and pull on her leash. Basically all the typical antics.
A couple weeks ago I decided that we needed to conquer the leash issue since I'd like to be able to walk her once it's nice out this spring. I've resigned that we are going to spend some time every day working on it. Mostly we've just ended up walking back in forth in either the alley or out in front of our house.
As far as a method, I've been walking back and forth, changing directions and rewarding her with treats for walking next to me and not pulling. If she pulls, I turn the other way and lure her with a treat to follow me. Maybe it's me but this is so far the most difficult training I've done with her. We took her through obedience classes and she picked up her other commands really fast, along with her other "Manners" training we've done (No jumping up, mouthing etc). We continue daily sessions on these as well.
I'm lucky if I can work 10 minutes with her before we both get annoyed. She is a sniffer..so the ground is even more exciting than any treat I can offer her. I'm starting to think the only way to get her attention is to lure her with a dead bird in my hand.
If you've been there..please tell me that this is going to click eventually, or what worked for you. Thanks!
Re: If you Loose Leash trained your dog - tell me about it.
We did training similar to what you described. It does get better, but we still have a little bit of pulling on every walk it seems. The other tip we listen to was vary your walks as much as possible so the dog doesn't know where to go next. If you are going to park you can practice the zig zag walk at the park too, so you can have even more directions to walk in and you can go for a longer time in 1 direction.
For me the hardest thing to balance is correcting the pulling and accomplishing the bowl movement which is why we are outside walking in the 1st place (we live in condo and don't have a yard). After he is done his business, the walk is pretty much pull free. We give lots of 'good boys' if he makes eye contact with us and he has also picked up checking in, where he just noses our leg while walking like saying 'I'm still here"
For me, loose-leash walking is an on-going training process. Both of my dogs are wonderful at it, but it took a long time to get them there, and it's a constant work in progress. I agree that it can be one of the toughest things to teach, but I think the rewards are just huge. I love walking my dogs now that they are solid on loose-leash walking.
What it came down to for me was teaching my dogs that pulling gets them nowhere, but if they walk nicely, they are rewarded (with food, sniff time, potty time, etc.). Some techniques that I used and found helpful were changing direction (doing a 180 if the dog starts to pull and walking the other direction until the dog is in the correct spot next to me) or just stopping and not walking again until the leash was slack and the dog was looking at me (not distracted or looking elsewhere). I also rewarded constantly when the dog was in the correct spot, which meant holding treats in that hand and bending down (I have small dogs) so I could reward at precisely the right time/spot.
I also found it helpful to teach a solid "leave it" and "look/watch me" so if the dog gets distracted, I can get his attention back. Finally, I taught my dogs a "release" command that I give to allow them to go sniff/potty/greet another dog. Unless they are released, they are not to leave my side. It helped with consistency and so they know what is expected of them. GL!
Loose leash is on-going and as others pointed out, its usually more than one thing going on.
First we worked on "watch me" and "leave it" while at home. Then we moved onto the walk. We use an Easy Walk harness which helps with control. In my opinion the treats (and verbal praise) are not necessary as they tend to get my dog more excited which causes more pulling. This is my dog though something else my work for you.
For us, I start walking before she pulls at all I say "Easy" and keep walking. The second she pulls the leash tight, I stop dead, turn and start walking. She has to catch up to me. Then I usually stop, make her sit and start walking again. Honestly there were days we didn't leave the driveway and she was worn out.
You cannot let her pulls at all or she won't connect what you want. There will be a point when she'll realize that to keep walking she must keep the leash loose.
My Lily is squirrel/cat/lizard etc. reactive so I have to spot them first and give her a "leave it" and/or "watch me." For Lily, one day she just got it and the pulling viturally stopped. I also take her into parking lots (after hours dr office etc.) and just walk in all kinds of directions, left, right, turn around etc. She HAS to pay attention to me or she'll get left behind me.
It is an on-going process, but I think as long as you are consistent in your reaction and don't pull back and say "no" etc. your dog will get it. As far as I can tell, pulling back on the leash or just saying no means nothing to my dog. (Not implying you were doing that btw.)