Hi all, So i got my little man Arnie, 13 weeks old and doing great. We have worked a lot on loose leash stuff, and he gets that relatively well (except when another dog approaches from the front. Then it's lunge time. But it's early days yet). So walking in a straight line isn't too hard when his attention is facing the front. What he's started doing is wanting to angle off to the side and sniff stuff and it seems like I am constantly either dragging him back to my side, or dragging him forward when he finds something in the straight line to sniff. Should I use the same method of stopping, waiting for him to come back to my side and then moving off? Or is there a different way to fix this?
Hi there In terms of him dashing off to the side, the trick is not to walk close enough to interesting stuff so he can get there and be rewarded for a yank to the side. If your dog is always rewarded by yanking to the side, it's the same as him yanking forward (if he gets to walk forward when he pulls, that's why we stop). So try to walk far enough away from things - walls, grass, trees etc. so if he pulls to the side he doesn't get to where he wants to go. If he does pull, just stop, same as if he pulls forwards. It's a bit tricky, and I made a few mistakes, but got there in the end. If you want your dog to be able to stop and sniff stuff (I do, it's his walk to enjoy, and he likes to sniff stuff), that's fine, but your dog needs to walk on when you say. My cue is "let's go" or "this way" (if he is trying to sniff stuff in a different direction from the one I want to go in). I trained this, I trained "let's go" to mean "now walk with me quickly". The other thing I have is an "attention getting noise". Mine is a click-click sound made with my tongue. This means "pay attention, super treat coming your way". If my dog is deep in a sniff, and I want to walk on, I use my attention getting noise. If you don't want your dog to sniff at all then you have to really work at a cue that is "head up, no sniffing now". This is my "close" cue (a heel cue), but I don't use that all the time because I think it's tiring for my dog, and boring. I use it when I want to walk past rubbish or horrid stuff I don't want him to sniff.
Yeah fair enough. I've gotten a pretty decent heel into him and when he pulls off to the side I just drag him back with the leash. But I don't want to drag him all the time. This morning I wanted to walk quickly to a spot where he can go off leash so we can do recall work. It took forever to get there because he kept sniffing everything - leaves, bark, the road, his own feet, a speck of bird poop. It was challenging. But when we got to the off leash place he was fine. Recall worked well. Every time he pulls forward or to the side I stop and "reset" with a heel and then we go off again. I don't treat reward for the heel, because I figure the walking and forward movement is the reinforcement marker. Am I right in doing this, or should I treat?
I would try to avoid dragging a puppy back by his lead - that's not really going to teach him anything, apart from the lead isn't a great place to be, really. It's much better to just stop, and wait (that's why it's important to walk far enough away from the interesting things at your side) - puppy gets to go nowhere (to the side) and will eventually return back to walking with you. It terms of giving your puppy treats, everyone has different methods. If I'm training a dog to walk at my side, yes, I'll give treats for that. I'll also use a marker to tell the dog exactly what he was doing (walking at my pace, head up, looking forwards) when he earned a treat. If I'm training just loose lead, as in the only criteria is no pulling, I don't tend to give treats, because the environment is the reward - but on a loose leash my dog is sniffing and is accessing the environment. Does that make sense? Heel (walk by my side) I give treats; loose lead (do what you want but don't pull) I don't give treats because the reward is more sniffing etc.
