Walking More Then One Dog?

[rastus_froggy]

Once my dogs found the posiion they liked best I made them stick to it, they chose where they walk but I am happy with their choice as the male is next to me and the femaleis on his other side which means he cant pee on every tree we walk by. The smaller of my three dogs walks on my right, that way she doesnt get trodden on by the big boofers.

Practice and be consistant with having them where you want them, not wandering around in front of you or constantly pulling to be in front of the others.

[corvus]

Voice control REALLY helps. Our two can be walked together by one person, but not easily. My older dog, Penny, is 12. I never bothered about where she was walking as I never had to walk her with other dogs until a few years ago. My mother and I both tried to convince her to pick a side and walk there, but she just never really got into the habit and would get all stubborn and stand rooted to the spot if you try to guide her to somewhere she doesn't want to go.

Enter the puppy. He's nearly 6 months old, now. My partner and I walk the dogs together, so it's been good for training the pup. In the end we gave up on short leashes because he was constantly hitting the end before anyone had time to tell him to stop. So we have done the vast majority of our leash training on a 5m long line and concentrated on classical conditioning and voice control. When I say "this side" he moves towards me when passing an object so the leash doesn't get tangled. When I say "hold up" he slows or stops, depending on what he's doing and how much leash he has. I'm now teaching him that "hang about" means come in and walk close to my left side. I'm using treats to reinforce that one, but the others were just persistant classical conditioning. He is pretty good, and on the occassions I have had to walk both at once, we have achieved it without me getting cross, which doesn't take much if dogs are all over the shop getting tangled. The trickiest bit is that Penny dawdles and sometimes wants to walk at the pace of death and sniff every single blade of grass while the pup wants to run, naturally. That's another place where the long line is useful. Penny can walk behind and Kivi can range ahead up to 5m. It's actually easier to manage than it sounds, as long as the pup is paying attention to my constant verbal directions. I walk around the block constantly saying "hold up", "this side", "hold up", "wait", "come on", "this side", and I'm saying "good boy" every time he does the right thing. It takes a bit of time, but I have to say that classical conditioning is totally underrated. All you have to do is say the same thing and have the same stimulus after every time. So teaching him "hold up" just meant saying it just before he hit the end of the leash and then patiently waiting for the slack on the leash again, then saying "okay" or "good boy" and moving again. I'm hoping it will translate to off leash work as well. I will tentatively say "hold up" is something he is thinking about less and less and just doing, so I think we will get there. I use "good boy" every time he gets a treat, so he has come to view that as a reward itself. So if I say "hold up" and he slows before the leash goes tight because he knows he's about to hit the end, I can say good boy and we never stop, which is great as far as he's concerned. So I guess it becomes a bit of a combined classical and operant conditioning approach.

Anyway, I really think teaching verbal directions is quite easy and extremely useful, and I think it would help you out. We haven't used leash corrections at all with the puppy, and he does pretty well. And knowing "hold up" means he can adjust to any length of leash without too much trouble. Recently we went back to the tiny one for an unexpected walk and it took him about 5 minutes to adjust from a 5m leash to a 1m leash. My mother taught one of her dogs to walk on the left and the other on the right. She just did it with persistance. She kept guiding them with the leash to their spots. Now they won't walk unless they can walk in their spots. Unfortunately, the same approach did not work on Penny.

[astonnolan]

Theres some great advice here, i'll take some on board. I have 2 5 month old Boxers that do the same thing. Thanks