Don't Let The Dog Pull You.
That's it.
That's the hardest part of the whole thing. Well, that and having some
patience if your dog has been pulling for a long time. So there are six
words that adequately explain how to teach this behavior from start to
finish. If you only move when the dog is not pulling, and you don't let
the dog pull you, within a few weeks the dog will stop pulling on the
lead. However, there are a lot of details and tips that can make things
go a bit more quickly and positively, and a lot of circumstances that
can make training more difficult. I'll try to touch on some of these.
I'm going to
assume a difficult situation some might face. Let's create a fictional
coonhound named Jeb. Jeb is a 6 year old coonhound that lives in a
second floor walk-up apartment with his Master. He has no yard, so he
must be walked every day to use the bathroom and get some exercise. Jeb
is a big, strong coonhound who weighs almost as much as his Master, a
young woman. Jeb and his Master go for a walk twice a day at the same
times; once in the morning and once in the evening. Jeb, like all
coonhounds, can tell time and he anticipates his walks every day. When
Master reaches for the leash, Jeb goes crazy with joy! He will barely
hold still long enough to get hooked up, and the moment the door opens
Jeb bolts out...dragging Master behind him. She barely has time to lock
the door and now Jeb is dragging her down the stairs and out to the
sidewalk. Master wanted to walk east, toward the new produce stand, but
Jeb decided to turn west and Master didn't feel like fighting so they
went west. Jeb walks along happily, stopping where he wants and doing
as he pleases. A squirrel! Jeb chases the squirrel, reaches the end of
his lead, and hears a yelp! Master is holding her shoulder and glaring
at Jeb. Jeb wonders why Master is there. A block later, Jeb sees
another dog that challenges him! Jeb loses his mind! He's howling and
barking and frothing and he can't even think! All Master can do is hold
on tight and try to drag Jeb away. Master is embarrassed. She takes Jeb
home.
Okay, I'll use this scenario above to illustrate the
problems and solutions involved. This is a pretty extreme case, but
it's also probably pretty common. I wrote a lot of this from personal
experience. Bobdog was about like this. First,
I want to talk about using the leash. Dogs
and people both like to experiment and learn on their own but both need
the same direction; they need someone who can teach them when they are
right and when they are wrong. This is an important concept in learning
to use a leash as a communication tool. If you use a clicker to train
your coonhound (you should) then this will be easy to understand. It is
fairly easy to condition a dog to understand that a loose leash =
good/IGetTreats/MasterLikesMe and that a tight leash =
bad/ICantGetToWhatIWant/ICantGoWhereIWant/ICantDragMasterAnywhere/SadCoonhound
:( You do this in a way similar to charging a clicker. But where
a clicker only says 'Yes!', a leash can say 'Yes!' or 'No!'. A loose
leash gets praise and rewards and a tight leash is met with complete
and total resistance to whatever the dog is after and apathy towards
the dog. Don't ever get mad or excited in a negative way. Trainers are
always telling people to be happy and upbeat when rewarding your
dog...and this is true, it is a very valuable trick...but the reverse
works, too: if you get upset and agitated over something wrong that the
dog did...say, yanking you to the ground....then the dog might place a
lot of importance on some part of that behavior and develop a serious
problem where none would normally exist. Think back to when you were
young and learning something new and you made a mistake and were
corrected harshly...it doesn't improve your enthusiasm for learning
more. Hounds are the same.
The first
thing Master needs to do is teach Jeb that the leash contains
information that goes two ways. This is going to be hard because the
only point during a walk that Jeb isn't pulling with all his might is
when he's waiting for the door to open. Perfect. Don't. Open. The.
Door. Master has a 6 foot leash and Jeb is wearing a Martingale collar
so he can't slip out and get away. That isn't a problem right now as we
aren't going to open the door. Jeb has set times of the day when he
goes out, morning and night. Master plans to start her training session
a couple hours after Jeb's morning walk...let's surprise him! At the
given time, Master gets her clicker and treat bag and the leash and
shows it to Jeb. He acts surprised, but he's been doing this for 6
years and he's a professional. "Harness me up, Ma, I'll pull you
wherever I wanna go!" Master stands about 6 feet from the door and puts
the leash on Jeb. Jeb runs to the door and pulls on the leash a little,
enough to make it tight. Master just holds the leash enough so that Jeb
can barely reach the door. She doesn't jerk it or anything, just hold
it tight and waits. Master waits for one of two things to happen: Jeb
backs up and the leash slackens slightly, or Jeb looks back at Master.
Either behavior earns a click, immediate complete slack on the leash,
and a treat, in that order. Do this 10 - 20 times, depending on your
dog's enthusiasm for it, then quit for at least a couple hours.
Jeb is
confused. Once every couple of hours Master plays some bizzare game
where she puts the leash on poor Jeb and feeds him treats when he looks
at her. He doesn't understand, but hey, treats. After Jeb learns that
paying attention to Master gets him more than trying to charge out the
door, he starts paying attention to Master. Master taught Jeb to sit
when he was a puppy, and as a result Jeb has been a Jedi Master of
Sitting for years. He starts offering a sit and Master, being a wise
and observant teacher, rewards this behavior. Soon Jeb has learned to
sit in front of Master with his leash on. However, if Master even
touches the door, Jeb breaks his sit and goes berserk again. Master
slowly desensitizes Jeb by clicking and treating him for sitting as she
progressively moves towards the door, touches the handle, turns the
handle, and opens the door slightly. When Jeb fails and breaks his sit,
Master picks up the leash and walks him back and places him in a sit
again. In a short time, Jeb has learned that the only way the door will
remain open is if he remains sitting. The moment Jeb's butt begins to
rise in the air, the door begins to swing shut and this is easy for Jeb
to understand. Especially since Jeb hasn't peed since training started
6 days ago...lol...
Finally, Jeb can run and
be free!! Jeb has learned to sit nicely with his collar and leash on
while Master prepares for the walk and opens the door. Jeb trembles
with delight as he intently watches Master picks up the leash. All of
his attention is fixed on her. Now, Jeb! Go! And Jeb bolts out the
door. Hey, it's still a walk, right? Master doesn't allow Jeb to have
enough rope to hurt himself, but when Jeb reaches the end of the leash
and it becomes tight, he cannot go even one inch further. Master stops
him and she waits again for either slack in the leash, or Jeb to look
back at her, or both.
Most of the time, a
dog can't both pull on the leash AND look back at you unless you are
already moving, and in case I haven't made it really clear: NEVER EVER
EVER GO IN THE DIRECTION YOUR DOG IS PULLING WHEN THE LEASH IS TIGHT.
You can go in that direction, but only when the leash is not tight.
Another way to look at it is...if the leash is tight, you should only
be moving if you are dragging your dog. You should avoid dragging your
dog. So most of the time, if the leash is tight, you aren't moving your
feet.
Jeb likes treats. He's learned that looking at
Master earns him treats. He's also learning something else: pulling
doesn't get him anywhere now. When Jeb gets to the end of his leash and
starts pulling, Master doesn't move. When Jeb turns his head to look
back, Master clicks. Jeb now has to walk back 6 feet to get his treat.
Once Jeb has eaten his treat, Master can take a step in the direction
Master wants to go. Jeb bolts to the end of his leash, anticipating the
direction Master is going to go. When the leash gets tight, that is
becoming a signal to look back at Master. Since training started, every
time the leash gets tight a look back at Master loosens it and earns a
treat. By now Jeb is starting to clue in to this information. Now
Master is clicking Jeb while he's returning rather than turning his
head and looking. Pretty soon Master can take a step without Jeb
rushing to the end of the leash! His charges seem less powerful now and
he seems to be anticipating the whole routine. He's looking back now
before he even gets to the end of the leash. Soon Master can take a few
steps in the direction Master wants to go while Jeb watches.
The rules never change. Tight
leash is bad, slack leash is good. Nothing good can happen...from the
DOG'S point of view...if the leash is tight. Good things can happen if
the leash is loose, though, and 'good things' doesn't always mean
'food'. Initially, food or a toy is the easiest reward to use, but in
the long run there is a better way to train your dog and keep him in
tune. It requires that you understand what your dog wants and the
appropriate ways for your dog to earn what he wants. Car rides and dog
parks are good examples. Once you get your dog to the point
above...where you can take a step or two and the dog won't try to bolt
to the end of the leash...you can take advantage of something the dog
naturally likes to speed up the learning process. Car rides and dog
parks hold extremely high value for some dogs...greater value than any
hot dog you might have in your pocket. If your dog is one of those, you
can use that passion to great effect in training loose leash walking.
I'll use the car ride as an example.
So far we've
worked on teaching the dog the mechanics of walking on a loose leash.
Now the dog is starting to understand that there is as much value in a
loose leash at there used to be in a tight leash; and that there is
less value in a tight leash than there used to be. Now we'll use
something of great value to teach the dog how to apply these things
he's learned. Right now all he knows is that you'll give him treats if
the leash is loose and nothing happens if the leash is tight. This is
the equivalent of charging the clicker in clicker training...it's the
very first step. The dog doesn't know why.
So this will help teach him. Assuming the dog both knows what a car
ride is and likes them a lot, lets go for a car ride. Assuming the dog
knows what is happening, he will be excited and try to pull...don't let
him. When he comes back to you to get his treat, try to make a little
forward progress. The dog should catch on fairly quickly that he makes
more progress towards the car when he's watching you and not pulling
than when he pulls.
This is a good point to introduce
the idea of penalty yards and leash pressure. Once the dog understands
what is going on...that if he's calm and doesn't pull, he'll get closer
to the car...he'll try all sorts of things to cheat or hurry you or
just plain pulling. You and the dog will start to get sensitive to
leash tension or pressure...this is how you know you are both learning
the difference between good and bad. Instead of pulling as hard as he
can...since he's learn that earns him nothing...he may try pulling half
as hard. Don't tolerate that. Let's say you are practicing walking to
the car and the dog is excited but he knows you'll stop dead if he
pulls too hard. He's going to test how hard that is. It is up to you to
decide what to tolerate. When they push too far, you not only stop, you
take a few steps backwards, away from that precious car and the ride
they want. The first time I did this with Woody, he freaked out! He was
really mad and completely understood...he'd worked hard to earn every
step towards the car and when I just casually erased some of his
progress for testing me, he understood that there could be negative
consequences to his behavior. That is penalty yards. In conjunction
with something extremely valuable it can be powerful. So you kids
behave or we aren't going to Disneyland this year.
The dog park
works the same way. There are times...especially in the
beginning...where you won't make it to the car or the dog park gate
or...the front door...or wherever. It is pretty important to do this
training a lot in mock circumstances and not just try to do it every
time you need to get the dog in the car. This doesn't take long to
teach IF you commit some time (20 minutes twice a day or more) to it
and just be patient. I trained Woody in about 3 weeks when he was 8-9
months old. With the car or the dog park (or any other high value
thing) you can quickly stop using food and the clicker...the end reward
is in sight and the dog understands what it will get. The dog will then
just be battling his own excitement and trying to stay calm.