I naively thought that I'd be walking Xena (11 weeks) the short 300 metres to the school gate almost immediately. Ha. Ha. I became very quickly aware that this wasn't the case, so I've been practising loose lead walking in the garden and on the footpath in front of the house. When can I realistically expect to be able to walk the dog to school without rocking the "reeling in a marlin" look?
Under no circumstances let them pull you around. It might make your trip to school fifteen minutes longer. As soon as they start pulling, you become as if planted in the ground. It'll take time. Arnie is six months old now and still tries to pull sometimes, either when he needs to toilet, or he sees a dog or person he wants to get to
Oh yes, I'm doing the "make like a tree" method. I stand around...a lot. She'll stay at home in the crate with her kong until she's got some nice leash manners. It was such a disappointment to realise that all those dogs I see walking nicely on leads weren't born that way! And everything is a distraction - Grass! Leaves! Birds! Airplane! Dandelion! Give me strength, I'm sure she'd find a distraction if we were training in a bare room.
Lol, yeah it's just how they are at that stage. I'll link you to a video of an American trainer who's methods I like. It's got a decent step by step for leash manners. It's a long ongoing process tho.
He makes it look so easy! I'm afraid of screwing it up, especially since I've been doing the "tree" method We don't start obedience classes until the beginning of August, it seems so far away.
I have used both methods when Arnie was little and he walks pretty good. It does take a while. You'll have to do the stonnie method over a few sessions and then when you're out and he pulls just tree it. That worked for us.
Yeah, at the start it's almost machine gun treats. Use his food allowance. It'll prevent him eating too much. Watch his other videos. I really like his approach
Jessie is coming up for 8 months and it is getting better, but still lunges at people and other dogs, and she is much stronger now, so harder to get under control! I've just ordered a halti to try and help with this. She was doing well until 6 months when Puberty kicked I and we left her with my mother in law to go on holiday, so we've taken a few backward steps! Loads of treats is the way forward, we treat less, but do still treat. I still also stop dead when the lead goes tight and this reminds her what she is supposed to be doing. We also started off with a clicker, which was great. Once you've loaded the clicker (ie she knows she gets a treat on the click) you can mark the position you want her in with a click and a treat. I still think we are a way off walking to school tho! I think she would go crazy at the gates for other dogs! I'm hoping to work on her "stay" over the summer so I can get her to sit nicely outside the school whilst I drop off!
@Somatic I had good fun trying Stonnie's method this afternoon. I'm so slow doling out the treats compared to him, but it was fun luring Xena alongside me
Matilda was walking great on a lead at 10 weeks but I think ive been fairly lucky as she took to it straight away! just keep trying
Charlie walked perfectly on his lead until he was a teenager, then it got a bit challenging. Betsy is better on her lead at 11 weeks than Charlie is at 3.5 years! See if that lasts.... I honestly think it depends on how hard you work at it, and how much experience you have in training. If you put in the hard work with a really young puppy, I'd say it doesn't take longer than a week to train. It's much, much hard once it has gone wrong to get back on track and some people just never manage it and resort to haltis etc. If you start off with an 11 week old puppy, train well, you'll have her walking 300m in no time. If you are not consistent, don't train, you'll have a dog that pulls in no time too. Best of luck with it.
I'm very much in the 'start as you mean to go on' camp. If you never let them pull, even once, then it becomes habit not to pull. Sounds easy, but it's not ~ you have to be utterly determined and ready to not get anywhere on walks - just to walk to train lead walking.
@Somatic thank you for posting those videos! I had never come across stonie but have now subscribed to his YouTube channel and will be watching each lesson starting at the day 1. Love the way he is with the dogs and also communicates with the viewer good too. Great stuff
