Eric (and me) love our off lead walks. His recall is coming on, certainly not fantastic and I'm on constant guard to second guess him, but we are getting there. However, on lead walks are a different matter. If we walk anywhere on lead, on grass, he goes mad! desperately pulling to get away and be free If we walk the streets his nose is constantly down, near the edge, sniffing so loud it sounds like thunder! we can't get anywhere! This is what I'm doing: Out of house, Eric pulls, I stand still, he has learnt that means 'come back to me' and does it BUT as soon we set off he does it all again. I'm persevering but just want to check if there is anything else I could be doing?
You could more actively train him to stay at your side. So train the heel position while you are stood still. And get that really, really strong. So when he is off lead, you can stand still and say 'heel' and he'll come and sit on your left hand side. Then take ONE step and encourage him with you. Then two....three, four....once you can do fifty, add a lead. Ok, so you still have to get from A to B on a lead - you could try a harness for that.
Thanks Julie, Will do that. We use a perfect fit harness, I couldn't walk him at all without it! He's flipping strong
I let my dog sniff on walks, but, having said that, we have to walk on lead a lot (because of dog laws) and so if I didn't let him sniff walks would be too regimented. Basically, we just stopped if he pulled. Every time. Then moved again the instant he voluntarily loosened the lead. Just takes perseverance....and your timing needs to be fairly good too. You have to stop the instant pulling happens and go the instant pulling stops. Don't pull on the lead yourself as this is confusing (unless you have to get your dog out of danger of course...). You can use treats to reward walking without pulling, but that can have the end result of your dog staring at you the whole time wanting a treat....The reward of being able to continue walking is enough in theory. So I'd just keep doing what you are doing... But, as Julie says, on top of 'loose lead walking' it is definitely useful to have a proper heel, where the dog is by your left leg - and we have taught this as well, using a marker and treats. When Eric is sniffing really loudly he is probably drawing air over his vomeronasal organ, which is a super smelling organ above the roof of the mouth with openings into the front of the mouth (just behind the top front teeth). It's especially useful for smelling pheromones, apparently. Eric is probably of the age where he is becoming interested in what other dogs' scents have to say about them.
My dogs walk to heel until I say 'go sniff', they know the difference, not sure how I taught that! Sniffing is very tiring for a dog, so is a good thing to teach. Mine also only cock their legs when I tell them, though of course if they are off the lead they can pee wherever they like
You could try keep changing direction, I have done this quite a bit and gets Dexter to remember to keep with me. We are still a work in progress with the sniffing, which is worse in certain areas, I use 'head up' as my cue to remind him and click and treat this. I also do click and treat for walking nicely close to me and lengthen the distance, keeping him going by saying 'good boy' when his head is up facing forward and the lead loose. It's working well for us. I stop as soon as he pulls, get him to sit (which he now does automatically) then once he looks at me for direction start walking again, either forward or back the way we came.
