Hi my names Mel I have a 12 week old lab named Max. He's settling in at home really well and has learnt some basic commands look, sit, drop and stay. He has been toilet trained and is getting better control over his play biting. The part we are having difficulty with is walking him, we live in a newly developed residential area so there is a lot of construction in our local surrounds, Max cannot walk outside without attempting to eat every single stone he can find on the road or footpath, on an average 30 min walk around our block he would pick up a minimum of 100 stones, its very frustrating. I am trying to use distraction (toys and food) and commands 'look' and 'sit' to gain his attention, but when we are outside the house he completely ignores me, I have to stop walking and physically remove the mass of stones from his mouth. Wondering if anyone has any suggestions about how to transition out training from indoors to outdoors? or any suggestions on how to distract him/ train him not to pick up rocks. Thanks
Hi Mel and welcome to you and Max! I think others with fresher puppy experience than myself will have some good advice on the rock thing. He sounds like a little Hoover, that's for sure. 30 minutes of concentration is asking a lot for a small puppy in a highly stimulating environment. Might it be possible to try to get him 5 minutes rock free, then carry him somehow so that he gets exposure to the environment and socialisation without asking him to walk and ignore the rocks? Or to drive him to an area where it is clear from rocks and quieter? Something to keep in mind, however, with any age dog is that what they learn in one environment (i.e. your house) does not translate immediately to another environment, especially if that other environment holds more distractions (i.e. outside on a walk). I could teach my dog something in my living room and have him look at me in complete bafflement if I tried to give him the precise same command in the back garden. So my strategy was to teach first exposure to any new behaviour in the place with the least distractions (living room) and then progress to areas with greater distractions. With each move, just assume that the dog has never learned that behaviour before and you're starting from scratch. My 'learning circuit' was: living room, kitchen, back garden, front garden, residential street, park, store, city street. With that in mind, maybe set up a rock training game for him first inside your house or own garden to teach him to ignore the rocks before also throwing the other challenges of the outside environment. I've never had a dog obsessed with rocks, but did have one who loved to chase balls, so we did all sorts of goofy proofing inside the house with him on a downstay and me basically chucking tennis balls at him that he then had to completely ignore. Not that I'm suggesting you chuck rocks at your pup. But you could set up a little rock obstacle course for him and then click/treat with high value goodies when he ignores the rocks. At the beginning that may mean clicking even for him simply looking away from the rocks and towards you. If he is really obsessed, it may be baby steps just to get his focus away, but then once he gets it, it will go faster. Good luck and post some puppy pictures here if you can!
This is very, very normal - every blown leaf is a distraction at first. The more you take them out the more ordinary it becomes to them. I find with a new young pup that walking takes a lot of concentration - for me and the pup - so I make our first walks out nice and short (5 or 10 minutes). Get really, really tasty treats just for training, this will help a lot.
As others have said everything is a distraction . With my clients we will begin training in one position in a room, then move, then move to another room, then to another room, then to one part of the garden, then another area of garden then outside the house, then down the road, then the local park etc etc. Puppies and dogs learn 'in context' and is a real part of the reason owners find their pup is top of the class at puppy training but doesn't respond the same anywhere else - they haven't yet learned the response in the new area . At 12 weeks old a puppy doesn't need 'formal' walks and the time should be more about socialisation and habituation with a little practice on lead walking - literally one or two minutes at a time, let your puppy get used to the distractions in your immediate area as it will help when you venture to new areas, sights and sounds.
You might try a "Gentle Leader”(https://www.petsafe.net/gentleleader2) harness. We used everything on our 95 lb labrador. No other harness worked. You do have to train him to use it with lots of treats. Google training with the Gentle Leader. You have to be gentle with it since pulling hard on it could injure your dog, but not as much as one the old fashioned choke collars we all used to use. My old dog actually injured himself by pulling me forward even though it was choking him. My 9 week old is too distractible, and besides that, Its winter here in Maine, and there is really no place to walk, its too cold, and there is too much poisonous salt on the roads. But by the time spring comes we will start him on the Gentle Leader training.
@zarathu Why would you recommend the use of a head halter on a very young puppy who is distracted by his environment? A head halter, which many dogs find aversive, is a last resort training tool for strong pullers where there is a risk to the human on the other end of the lead. and should only be used under professional guidance for a short period of time. In my professional opinion they can never be an appropriate tool to use with a young puppy who is just learning to walk nicely on lead and ignore his surroundings. If it is so dangerous in use that you have to add a cautionary note, why use it on your dog? You should not be pulling on the lead at any time whether it is clipped to a collar, harness or head halter. I've trained numerous dogs over the years and have never resorted to using a choke collar - they have never been necessary to train a pup to walk nicely on lead.
I’M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO ARGUE WITH YOUR PROFESSIONAL OPINION, as a professional dog trainer, Jojo83. I only suggested it as a possibility, and asked the person to look it up. I assume that people won’t act on a couple of words here but will look it up as I suggested. Again, I suggest the best book I ever saw TRAINING THE BEST DOG EVER: A 5 Week Program Using the Power of Positive Reinforcement. Dawn talks about leash training with puppies as young as 8 weeks in the book.
Dawn spends 3 pages explaining how to use a "Gentle Leader" with all dogs, puppies and adults. I would assume that no one is going to rush out and do something like a collar like this without checking it out. By the way, Jojo83, I respect your opinion, but until you produce a credential of some kind, your comment that you have trained many dogs over the years, is just a comment by another person, rather than a professional opinion. And if you have done it over the years, then you will remember back in the 70’s and 80’s that we did in fact use punishment techniques, and choke collars, because that was what the training was supposed to be.
That's a huge assumption and if you looked around at the huge number of people after a quick fix without putting the work in themselves(not just in dog training, in all aspects of life), you'd know that it's a reach too far I have never used a Gentle Leader or even held one in my hands. Growing up, our family dog wore a Halti, which is effectively the same thing. My parents continued to use it with every dog they rescued afterwards, until the latest, who they got via me, is an amputee and I forbade them from using it with her. I will concede that it's effective (far more so than the choke chain they tried on that first dog for a while - this was when I was a child and a long time before my first steps into dog training myself), but not only were all these dogs miserable whilst wearing the blasted thing, it was also undeniably at least uncomfortable and most likely even painful when they pulled, just because pulling not only turns the dog's head, but also tightens the device around the snout. In fact, in those days, this is how the Halti was "sold" to us - it hurt to pull, so the dog stopped doing it. He learnt quickly that pulling hurt, so in order to avoid pain, he just didn't pull. That was considered acceptable in most circles back then. Hell, it's still considered acceptable in many circles still today! Many people who consider themselves wholly R+ recommend them. Many people I admire recommend them. Luckily, I can admire someone and still disagree with parts of what they do or say. I would only recommend a head collar in an exceptional circumstance, which is, if you have no alternative but to walk your dog on lead and you run the risk of your dog injuring you through pulling. So that would be people with physical limitations, injuries etc and people with very big, strong dogs who have to be walked in areas where there is no off-lead opportunity. Other than that, I'd recommend actual training rather than relying on tools to get the result you want. I think it's very unfair to imply that someone needs to have been training dogs for thirty or forty years to have any credibility. Some of the top trainers around today were mere children then! Just because you've been doing something for a long time, it doesn't mean you've been doing it well and, conversely, just because you've been doing something only for a short time doesn't mean you don't know what you're talking about. A trainer doesn't have to be a cross-over trainer in order to know that positive reinforcement is the right way to go, or that positive punishment is bad. There is enough evidence out there demonstrating this that we don't have to try choking our dogs ourselves to know. Just like I don't need to invade Poland to find out that that doesn't end well. History is brilliant.
In the last year I have recommended the use of head collar (a gentle leader ) on one occasion, for an owner who tipped the scales at 7.5 stone and had a 42kg (and still growing) American Akita who also had become reactive to other dogs and people on walks He is now back to walking just on a harness after training for his reactivity and loose lead walking. I meet very few dogs and owners where pulling isn't an issue but it is rare that the circumstances warrant a head collar.
I never said I was training in the 70s and 80s but it's been known since the 1930s that punishment was not necessary to train a dog, with the evolution of operant conditioning by BF Skinner- and no, I don't remember the 30s . Come to that we knew of conditioned responses for training long before that with Pavlov's dogs. I remember the arrival of Karen Pryor and clicker training - my mentor was among the first to bring that training to the UK and promote the benefits in training. I have spent much of my life with and around dogs, none of whom have worn choke chains, why would I want to cause pain and discomfort to my dog instead of taking time, and yes, some effort, to train a nice walk on lead. I'm happy to share my knowledge and experience with members of the forum, it is entirely up to the individual what they take away from it whether as an individual or a professional
I got given a halti for my assistance dog and he hates it, each time I put it on him he is rubbing it and trying to get it off his nose. I totally agree with what you have said in you quote as that’s basically what I said to who gave me the halti, but I have tried to walk him without it and he pulls too much resulting in injury for me as I have vascular EDS (Ehlers Danlos Syndrome) meaning I dislocate very easily. I am interested in trying to use the gentle leader, but with a dog that doesn’t like the halti on his snout do you think he wouldn’t like that on his chest?
The Gentle Leader we're talking about is a headcollar very similar to the Halti. It doesn't go around the chest. PetSafe do also make a harness called the EasyWalk. If you desensitise this well from the start, you may find that your dog accepts it; I think (just considering them from the position of the dog wearing them, not talking about their mechanical corrective capabilities) harnesses are generally less aversive than head collars, but some dogs do still just hate them. My dogs all hate harnesses despite very careful introductions to them. However, once they're on, they don't constantly try to remove them like dogs often do with head collars. I use the Perfect Fit harnesses, which are far bulkier than things like the EasyWalk. This means that any pulling will be less uncomfortable for the dog (and I don't want to cause my dogs discomfort; I use the harness to prevent damage to their necks before I am confident with their LLW) but it also means it's more "present" on their bodies. I've never tried one of the strappy harnesses, and it's possible that they might accept it more readily than the PF because it's less bulky, I can't say. In any event, you want to associate it with great things and introduce it slowly to have as good a chance as possible of him accepting it.
@EDSandBaloo a link to a video on YouTube has just popped up on my FB to acclimatise a dog to a head halter. I haven't watched the video but it comes recommended by a trainer that I respect and whose advice is usually excellent. The video also has a downloadable training plan. Hope that it helps you. Edited to include link
