Need Advice To Get My Girl To Walk On Leash

[joanne76]

Your advice would be greatly apperciated. Lola is my 18 month old black lab. She has regular obediance training but nothing too serious, Its more just for fun. When she is on lead by herself she is usually pretty good and she listens most of the time to my corrections. I have another dog and I cant walk both together so I go on 2 walks, if by chance my hubby is home early we walk together with both dogs. Lola is a nightmare pulling me to get to Zack, If she walks up front with Zack she then tries to pull to get to smells before he does or she tries pulling to get back to me.

We've tried walking Zack in front and keeping Lola at heal but she is still pulling and making herself pant very heavily. This didnt work at all. My hubby took zack one way and i went the other way with Lola to calm her down.

She behaves the same at training if we walk around the block with our training freinds. she completely doesnt listen to me at all.

I thought I could try to tackle the problem by walking along side zack, as soon as lola pulls i will turn her around and walk the other way until she calms down and then go back and rejoin zack who has stopped and keep doing this until she calms down. I have no other clue on how to stop this behaviour.

I would love your advice because i want Lola and i to enjoy our walks together.

thanks

Jo

[Erny]

Is the "regular obedience training" you have, with a dog school or other trainer? IMO a good trainer would be able to assist you greatly and fairly quickly with your difficulties.

[Reddii]

Hi Joanne,

I'm pretty sure others will have something to say and as Erny said a professional trainer is always the best way to go with a problem you can't sort. That said, I have similar issues with my 2 BC's who are currently sorting through their hierachy issues and constantly try to one up each other on our walks.

I'm using two techniques to combat this and it is slowly working. Basically I'm treating it exactly the same as I do with one dog - pull on the lead and you either get to stop and sit or you get to turn around and go back the other way - very boring because you've already been there. Walk where you should be walking and you get a treat, trick is you both have to be there to get the treat.

Not sure what the pros have to say on this one, but it's working for us.

Cheers

Tony R

[joanne76]

Thanks Tony and Erny,

Our obedience class is with a behaviourist (sp) she can be difficult to get hold of so i thought i would ask you guys.

I will start tonight with the stop/sit go back the other way. I suppose the main thing is to be consistant and i also dont always take treats on a walk so i will go back to that too.

thanks again guys.jo