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Letting Your Dog Wander While Walking


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This quote comes from the Chronic Puller! Help! thread.

Once we are walkign consistently nicely on the harness, I am going to start switching reliance to the flat collar, slowly but surely so he doesn't really notice.

At first, pick times where he is not distracted and has nothing to pull towards. Short bursts, reinforce the good stuff. Build it up. Be absolutely consistent, never let pulling achieve anything for him, even in the harness. If he can pull a little bit and get a sniff at something, he'll keep doing it. If you identify that he wants to go over to something, let him - so long as it's on a loose leash.

How do you let your dog sniff things while keeping him on a loose leash?

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How do you let your dog sniff things while keeping him on a loose leash?

Easily - Daisy just puts her head to the ground and scents whilst walking next to me/slightly in front of me. I usually walk her on a 6ft leather leash, as long as the leash has no tension in it I consider it LLW.

I don't let my dogs stop to scent things, though.

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We do the same as Aidan describes, & in my case my girl is allowed to wander within the confines of the leash & sniff what she likes but not pull on it. If she feels tension on the leash, I expect her to relax it so the leash is loose again.

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Same as Staranais. Our dogs have a "hold up" cue to remind them if they get caught up in something and start to pull. I think in future I'm just going to teach them that the tension on the leash is the "hold up" cue and forgo the verbalising.

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My dogs take tension on the leash as a cue to stop and wait. It's not something I made a concentrated effort to train, it sort of just happened, yay for half assed training :)

Yeah, my girl is mostly pretty good at keeping the leash loose by herself, but she occasionally needs a reminder. If she starts to pull for more than a second or so I normally call her back & make her walk by my side in a sloppy heel for a while.

Only non-pulling dogs get to wander & sniff things. Cos, you know, I'm a big meany. :o

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My dogs take tension on the leash as a cue to stop and wait. It's not something I made a concentrated effort to train, it sort of just happened, yay for half assed training :)

Yeah, my girl is mostly pretty good at keeping the leash loose by herself, but she occasionally needs a reminder. If she starts to pull for more than a second or so I normally call her back & make her walk by my side in a sloppy heel for a while.

Only non-pulling dogs get to wander & sniff things. Cos, you know, I'm a big meany. :o

In that case I am a big meanie too :cheer:

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My dogs take tension on the leash as a cue to stop and wait. It's not something I made a concentrated effort to train, it sort of just happened, yay for half assed training :D

Yeah, my girl is mostly pretty good at keeping the leash loose by herself, but she occasionally needs a reminder. If she starts to pull for more than a second or so I normally call her back & make her walk by my side in a sloppy heel for a while.

Only non-pulling dogs get to wander & sniff things. Cos, you know, I'm a big meany. :)

I generally walk the dogs on the weekend and my wife walks the 3 dogs together during the week, too early in the morning for me ;) so she has 2 GSD's and a Golden Retriever walking out in front. Our older GSD will always pull to the end of the leash after a week of out front walks although drops back with a light leash pop, but keeps doing it. After about 5 times of running out to the end of the leash this day, I stopped, he stopped out front and looked at me and gave him a formal "heearr" command and he circled behind me and sat in position ready for a formal heel. Off we went in a formal heel for about 20 paces and he was perfect there after. Thing is, if we do a formal heel out of the driveway on to the footpath, he's perfect for the duration of the walk. If we don't heel, once we hit the footpath.........he shoots straight to the end of the leash???. If I walk him for a couple of days, we don't need to start with a formal heel and he stays on a loose leash. This is a trained dog who works in reliable obedience off leash, he's quite a reasonable dog.

It appears that he gets used to walking out front with the other dogs over a week with my wife and needs that little re-shaping exercise to trim him up again with me :eek:

Edited by K9Nev
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