Hi all, I have a question about walking on the lead / leash. I've read all of the articles and watched all of the videos and Ziggy is now at puppy classes so I have their input too. Everything I've read says that you MUST NOT let your puppy pull you as he will be self rewarding and will learn that by pulling he can get where he wants to get quicker. I understand the theory of treating, or clicking and treating each time he has done a few nice steps and stopping, or even turning in the other direction when he starts to pull. I really do get this and can see how it's meant to work. My question is this. Despite the fact that Ziggy will often walk nicely without pulling and will return close to my side when I ask him to, there are occasions when he pulls like a steam train. When he gets like this, no amount of stopping, reversing and treating good behaviour will stop him from pulling. I'll stop, call him to my side and after a few good steps I'll treat him. Then, a few seconds later, he's pulling again. I know that I should keep stopping and waiting for good behaviour but the good behaviour never arrives! In the end he sits down and whines and whines because he's not getting where he wants. In the end, he pulls all the way home because I simply don't have a spare couple of hours to walk the usual two minutes down our street from the park with him. I really can't see any way around this. Does anyone have any advice? I'm concerned that when he's fully grown he'll be able to pull me over and will run off into a road or something. I love our walks and usually they're really good fun. I don't want it to turn into a battle each time we go out. Does anyone have any similar experience and how did you cope?
This is really difficult and I feel for you. Can you define a trigger that's causing him to pull? Does it always happen in the same place(s)? If it does, then I would go to that place in order to specifically train, without needing to get anywhere. I have decided I really don't like the stop-start method; certainly not for my puppy. She would get hugely frustrated and wouldn't make the connection between her action (pulling) and the consequence (stopping). The thing I found best was to do a lot of work on making walking at heel fun fun fun, both on and off lead, so that when I have to use it to get somewhere, it has positive associations. So, loads (and I mean loads) of games where she was positioned at heel. I struggle now to get her to leave my side most of the time, she's got such a strong history of reinforcement there. If we're out and she does start to pull towards something, then I physically back up and work on focus for a couple of minutes, so maybe a bit of Middle, magic hand stuff, hand targeting, anything she finds fun and gets her back engaged with me. Magic hand and hand targeting are good on the move, too, so gives her something to focus on apart from pulling. I think the stop-start and about-turn approach can become a battle of wills and is intensely frustrating for both ends of the lead. Focus games are infinitely more fun - and productive!
