Leash manners continue to be the most challenging thing for dog owners to teach. Why? It seems so simple, right? Your dog walks at your side. How hard can that be?
The answer is “very”. Next time you go outside, humor me and try something. Close your eyes. What all can you hear? Traffic, kids running up the street, birds flying South, the wind blowing leaves past. What can you smell? The neighbor’s cooking, the exhaust of that guy’s car, fresh asphalt, wet leaves, a rotting pumpkin.
Great. So we agree that the outside has a lot of stuff happening, right?
Now let’s take that to the next step. Imagine that you can hear and smell all of that, but add in the bugs in the grass, the traces of whatever walked through your yard last night, the sound of trees creaking quietly, the smell of a discarded piece of candy slowly disintegrating in the gutter… Everything you smell and hear, your dog smells and hears far, far more.
So what do we do about it?
We teach leash manners fully and completely, before we go outside and try it in the distractions. It sounds counter-intuitive, but I never start teaching leash manners outdoors, and never with a leash.
“That’s stupid, it’s called leash-“
Yes, I know, hear me out. Leashes don’t teach anything. No training tool will do your work for you. It’s on you to teach your dog HOW to walk at your side, HOW to ignore distractions, HOW to manage their walking speed to match you. Without those skills, you just have a dog hauling you along on a string.
Before you even set foot outside to try leash walking, you need the following skills set in stone:
- Heel. Your dog must be able to walk at your side, not racing ahead or lagging behind, but walking with you.
- Wait. Your dog has to know when to go, and also when to stop.
- Leave it and Focus. You need a way to tell your dog that they cannot have or engage with the things around them, they must be focused on you.
On top of all that, you need to have great communication. Your reward mark (“good boy, Scruffy!”) and your correction mark (“uh-uh”, “nope”, “nein”) have to be well-understood and mean something. If your marks don’t mean anything to your dog, you’re just talking to air.
When I have all that down, I’m ready to start teaching how to do these things on a leash… INSIDE. I teach leash pressure, the concept that if the dog puts pressure on the leash, they cannot keep walking. I am withholding the thing they want (to go forward) until they walk properly. I teach them how to circle back to me and return to a heel, and to wait for my cue to continue walking. I move all this to outside in a secure, controlled area where I can work both on- and off-leash. Once that’s all solid and ready to rock, it’s time to move to the driveway, then to the curb, then to the end of the block… Small steps.
The last key is maintenance. You as the owner have to be consistent. If you allow some pulling, you normalize pulling. When pulling becomes the norm again, your tools stop working and your taught skills mean nothing, and I as your trainer have to re-teach all of these skills again, often with an escalated correction to establish that pulling really, actually, truly isn’t okay this time. Why? Because your dog has at least twice been taught that pulling is okay, and now I have to further deter a behavior that’s self-rewarding (“I pull, I get to go where I want and my owner can’t stop me!”) and therefore self-sustaining.
The easiest way to tell if your dog is properly and truly leash-trained is to ask yourself “do I need this leash?” In a secured area, walk with your dog, leaving the leash hanging over one finger. If your dog can take that leash away from you by pulling it off your finger, you two have more work to do.
Whoever said it first said it best: “the leash should be a safety belt, not a steering wheel”. Keep yourself and your pup safe, and practice those leash manners regularly to keep them in tip-top shape!