Dog Lead Training

Dog Lead Training

For a dog to live a happy stable life, he or she needs the right balance of exercise, discipline and affection. If any one of these is way off kilter, behaviour problems are sure to follow. It is believed that for a dog to happy and well adjusted, our relationship with our dogs needs to consist of as much as 50% exercise. That’s quite a lot.

For most dogs, the mere mention of the W word results in endless leaping and bounding until they’re well on the way up the road dragging the hapless owner behind. This is generally followed, by wanting to go again within 2 minutes of being back inside the front door.

Exercise for dogs is beneficial in so many ways. Of course, the most obvious one is that of the moving of the legs and the making of the heart and other body organs work hard enough to keep them all moving and healthy, but it’s the brain department where the biggest differences can be seen once the exercise amount in a dogs daily routine begins to slide.

So that our dogs can get the exercise that they need and that we, as owners are able to provide it for them, it’s vital that our dogs are able to behave appropriately on the lead. In an ideal world of course, we would all have access to endless rolling acres where the dogs could frolic all day long. However, in the real world, most of the dog walking will need to be done on the end of a lead.

Unfortunately, there are some dogs who just cannot handle being on or anywhere near a lead. For some reason they demonstrate fearful, neurotic and submissive behaviour whenever the lead comes down off its hook. This may be due to unpleasant experiences in the past, where perhaps the dog has been tied up for unreasonably long periods of time, has maybe got nastily tangled up in a lead, or perhaps has even been beaten with the one thing that is supposed make him jump for joy.

Some dogs are so highly strung that they just develop various phobias for no apparent sense or reason.

Whilst there’s no denying that having a fear of the lead can have a very debilitating effect on the dog-owner-walking situation, the good news is that it is relatively easy to sort out. Having said that, it will take some time, a lot of patience, but the results will surely be worth the effort.

Dog Lead Training

You will need a lead of about 5ft or 125cms in length. You don’t want to risk your dog getting tangled up once you’ve made good progress and are out walking, yet this length will allow good control when necessary.

Make sure this lead is made from leather or webbing. A chain lead is no good. Not only is it hard on the hands, but you could, inadvertently flick your dog in the face with it, which will do nothing to convince him that walking on the lead is a good thing!

You also want to use a good collar, again, something made from leather or a padded webbing. A choke-chain collar is not suitable; these are training aids, and shouldn’t be left on any dog unattended.

The aim of the game is to accustom your dog to the lead a little bit at a time, whilst allowing him to stay within his comfort zone every step of the way. Due to your dog already having a fear of the lead, expect your dog to show some discomfort, but you need to keep a keen eye for signs of extreme fear such as submissive urination, drooling, hyperventilating and rolling his eyes, often showing the whites.

It really is important to take tiny steps, and accustom your dog to the lead very slowly. You could try leaving the lead just lying around in full view, then try leaving it somewhere where he will definitely come across it, perhaps in places that he associates with pleasant things, his food bowl for example. Be mindful of the reaction. You don’t want him to be prevented from going near his food bowl if he is too adverse to being near the lead. This reaction simply means you need to go back a step and take smaller steps towards this target.

Eventually he will stop reacting to the sight of the lead. When you get to this point, now is the time to introduce the lead to him in a more active manner. This can be done easily by such actions as having it wrapped round your hand when you stroke him, or brush him, or when you put his food bowl down with his dinner in it. This needs to be done until your dog is completely at ease with this and pays no attention to it. There is no point rushing these steps; the intention is to make these actions as normal a part of everyday life as breathing and eating is.

When he is no longer showing any signs of discomfort with this level of closeness of the lead, you can attach it to the collar. Take a firm but gentle approach and put him in a sit-stay and clip on the lead. There’s no need to make a big song and dance over it, dogs are very perceptive and he will feed from your emotions. Just quietly get on with it.

Give him a little time to get used to the feeling of it hanging from his neck. If he does get a bit panicky and tries to rid himself of it, do your very best to distract him with something he usually loves, so try to have his favourite toy or treat ready to hand just in case.

If the lead is such that he would be able to run without him getting tangled in it, play a short game, tug of war, or fetch. He will hopefully be distracted by the activity of the game and will forget about the movement of the lead at his neck.

If he does accept the clipping on of the lead, without panic, and it’s possible, without much palaver, go for a short walk; round the garden is fine. After just a few minutes, take the lead off and load on the praise for him being so good.

As with previous steps, this will need repeating until he accepts it as perfectly normal and gives it not a second’s thought. This needs to be firmly in his mind as normal and no big deal, in fact it needs to be no deal at all. These steps need to be complete before you try to control his walking on the lead.

The more often you can incorporate positive things into the time your dog spends on the lead the better.

The next steps include very short training sessions on the lead. Five minutes is plenty of time to start to develop a pattern, but avoid overwhelming your dog. The Sit-stay command and the recall command-‘Come’, is a good idea to get firmly in place. This reminds him that he is still expected to follow your instructions, irrelevant of whether he’s wearing a lead or not. When he is readily willing and able to follow your instructions on the lead, the former ‘trauma’ of his lead association should be all but a distant memory. You can now try taking him for a short walk.

The thing with longstanding behaviour patterns is that even though they may have been addressed, and the animal or person for that matter, may have made huge progress and there is no evidence of that pattern still being part of their toolkit of reactions, in times of stress, upset and trauma, those old habits may rear their heads again.

If there is evidence of jumpiness for example, he will, due to his uncertain frame of mind, probably look to you for a clue as to how you should both be reacting. You’re both in the same pack remember! Simply ignore the unwanted behaviour and carry on, keep calm, and wait for the moment to pass, like to haven’t noticed it.

If the moment doesn’t pass, and he’s still the same, or getting worse several minutes later, the chances are that things may have progressed too quickly for him. You will need to go back to the level at which he was 100% happy with what you were doing. If you have to go back to the beginning, that’s fine too. Make sure you wait a few days before going on to the next stage.

Patience is the most important thing here. You are trying to put in place behaviour patterns that will improve your dog’s and your own life for many years, if it takes a few more weeks, it’s no big deal. Using force will just help to build the whole situation into a bigger ordeal, and the intention of the exercise is to make the walking on the lead into no deal atall, it’s just something you do without thinking.

Make sure that you give him no encouragement to be nervous or agitated. By patting or comforting him when he’s trembling or running in circles round your feet, you’re telling him it’s ok to do that. Distraction tactics often work wonders in these situations.

So, patience is the key. Do not correct or punish incorrect behaviour, just make a mental note of when it happens and go back a stage. If you need more information of a whole range of lead related behaviour problems, you might want to have a look at Secrets To Dog Training. It’s an A-Z manual of all kinds of dog behaviour issues and how to deal with them. You can get a free report about some of the current myths about dog training from here. There is also a 6 day mini course on dog training which you can get delivered straight to your inbox from here.