Loose Leash Walking

If your dog is forging ahead, pulling on the leash, the walk is neither healthy for the dog nor relaxing for you. It's also a sign that you and your dog are not paying attention to each other -- it takes two to pull.

Pulling is very rewarding to a dog. The action of pulling doesn't feel so bad at the time and it gets them where they need to go. Any behavior as rewarding as pulling on the leash takes a lot of commitment to fix.

Make this promise to yourself now: I WILL NEVER LET MY DOG GO FORWARD IF IT IS PULLING.

Think of it this way. Let's say you are a gambling addict, that you like to go out and gamble until you run out of money. As intervention, your family prevents you from gambling. You watch them carefully and about once a week, they aren't paying attention and you slip out for an evening of gambling and you win big. Are you still a gambling addict? Yes. Are you ever going to stop at this rate? No. In fact, I'd say your desire to gamble is probably stronger!

So...you have this canine gambling addict in your care, who wants to go forward and sometimes it works to pull, so he might as well try it all the time. What to do? Follow the Training and Management tips below.

Note: If you have more than one dog, practice the following training techniques separately and use management techniques when they are together.

Training for Loose Leash Walking

Reward him for eye contact. Learn how to use the clicker (see our clicker handout). Practice walking on leash in the house, where your dog probably doesn't pull. Each time he looks at you, click and give him a treat. Whenever you go on a walk, do the same. This helps bring your dog's focus back to you. Besides, it's hard to face you if he's 6 feet ahead of you!
Reward him for being in the Sweet Spot. Click and treat whenever he is in the area near your left leg (It doesn't have to be the left, but that's the traditional side. Just pick one and stick with it.) Soon he will begin to think that it is a very good thing to be near you, on your left side.
Thigh slap. The instant that your dog gets to the end of the leash, slap your thigh and turn around. The point is not to jerk your dog around or punish him for being ahead. It is to make him pay attention to you and give him an opportunity to be in the Sweet Spot.
Work on your relationship. Pulling on the leash can be a sign that your relationship with your dog could use a little tweaking. Do you demand that he pay attention to you without you paying attention to him? One way to improve your relationship is to consistently ask your dog to Say Please to get what he wants. (see our handout on the Say Please Protocol.) On a walk, for example, you can ask him to sit and look at you before he is allowed to take a long time sniffing something.
Set your dog up for success. For all of the above techniques, work in situations where your dog will be successful. If you take him out to train and he is just a basket-case, pulling every which way, he is not going to learn, and you will just become frustrated. Back up a step or two -- work at home, inside, with only a few distractions. Then work in the yard. Next, work in front of the house. Make your training walks longer and longer. Avoid distractions that your dog is not ready for: if you can make it to the park, but not through it, for example, bring along one of the management tools below for the currently-impossible stage of walking nicely through the park.

Management for Loose Leash Walking (or "When you aren't in the mood to train.")

Most of us are not always eager for a chance to practice loose leash walking with our dogs. Sometimes, you just want to get down the street. But you can't let him pull, right? You promised. Here are a few management tools that you can use for the times when you just can't practice on a flat collar. None of these will teach your dog to walk nicely on a regular collar. They are management devices. That said, if you work on eye contact and rewarding the dog for being in the Sweet Spot, you will see improvements, even on a flat collar.

Head Halters. Head halters work on the principal that a dog will follow the direction of its head. Benefits: usually works like power steering on a dog, large or small. Drawbacks: you have to desensitize the dog to the head halter. They flop around like fish if you don't get them used to it slowly. Recommended Brands: I like the Gentle Leader, but there are other good brands.
Body Harnesses. These can be great. Your dog can still drag you down the street on a regular harness if it is attached to the top loop (on the dog's back). But if you hook it on the front, with the harness fairly tight, you get a similar effect to the head halters. Be careful when you are picking out a "no-pull" harness. Try to figure out why the dog wouldn't pull. If it's because it hurts to pull, you might want to keep looking. Benefits: The dog turns around to face you when it tries to pull. The SENSE-ation harness is especially made for hooking up in the front and does a great job of redirecting the dog. It is my favorite management option, because dogs take little or no time to get used to it and it works very well. Drawbacks: Body harnesses offer less control than the head halters. The SENSE-ation harness is only available from SofTouch Concepts, so you have to order it from them, for now. But it's worth it. (Note: I have no affiliation with any manufacturer or retailer of dog products).
Build-it-yourself harness. This is an emergency method. Let's say you are on a normal stroll, you thought you'd be in a training mood but suddenly Fido is just too irritating to deal with. To make matters worse, you left the Gentle Leader at home. Take your leash and loop the handle end under the dog's midriff. Now you have two places to grab the leash -- one on either side of the dog. Gather both of them up in one hand and you'll have more control than you had before.
Options I generally don't recommend. I do not recommend the use of slip chains (a.k.a. choke chains), prong collars, basically any collar that works because of the pain or irritation the dog will experience. It may work, your dog may walk nicely on that collar and may transition okay to a flat collar, but at what cost? Why do this to your 'best friend' when their are more humane alternatives? If you have used these, you are not a bad person. You probably just didn't know there were so many other options. Throw away the correction collar and don't look back!

No guarantee is stated or implied in this article and if you follow any of the advice in it, you do so at your own risk. If you ever feel that you, your dog, or others are at risk because of your dog, please seek the services of a professional dog trainer.