Lesson four is walk on a loose leash. All that most dog owners need from their dog is for them to walk on a leash and not pull. This is surprisingly easy to teach. Here is what you do. Start with your dog on a leash in collar. I prefer a longer six ft leash and start walking with your dog. As soon as the slack leaves the leash, turn it to walk in the other direction.
Again, as soon as the slack leaves the leash, turn to walk in the other direction. This will force your dog to pay attention to where you are going. That you have a particularly excitable dog or a boisterous dog. The correction that they are going to get by running to the end of the leash as you are turning is going to be equal to the force that they have.
Generally, after five or ten minutes of doing this technique, your dog readily pays attention to which way you are walking and it can be great fun to try to trick your dog and to pulling on his leash. Once your dog understands the concept of not pulling on the leash, you can add a word or sound. I will say something like no pulls or make a sound, this lets the dog know that I will be changing direction if the pulling does not stop. It's a joy to walk a dog who isn't puling on a leash and rather looking to you, watching where you want to go instead of blazing his or her own trail.
Remember, you are the leader in this relationship and this reinforces that to your dog. Once you start training for a loose leash walking. It's important that you require your dog to do this each time he or she is on a leash. If this is for some reason not possible, go ahead and take your dog by his or her collar and lead them where you want them to go. heeling is a great addition to any dog's training and it can be easily achieved, now that you have mastered loose leash walking. All that you need to do is to start out with your dog walking on a loose leash and slowly over several sessions, shorten the length of the leash.
Your dog has already learned that their needs to be slack in the leash at all time and again you can have great fun with your dog trying to get him to pull on the leash. If your dog is particularly boisterous and having a hard time focusing, you may want to relook at lesson one, the look command.
So with the loose leash walking, you are going to want to start with your dog on a leash in collar and you can start by requesting the dog to look at you or to come to you, just to get your dog's attention. But what you are going to want to do is just move around with your dog on the leash, let him get distracted. Okay, and you will have the leash in your hand, you can have it in your left hand like this, so your dog can be encouraged to be on your left side and just start walking around. Okay.
And basically what I am requiring is that my dog be on a loose leash. As you can see, there is slack in the leash at all time and he knows that because he has done this lesson many time. Okay. So when you want to go to the actual heel position, all you need to do is shorten up your leash. So say, you are walking your dog on a six ft leash like this and he has already learned how to always keep a little bit of slack in the leash no matter where you are.
When you want to go into the heel position -- Shug okay, all you do is choke up on your leash a little bit until the dog in the heel position and continue walking and since your dog already knows how to stay in that position, he automatically keeps the loose leash in the heel position and you can also integrate to sit, which you have already learned, good boy, that's a good boy, that's a good boy, good boy. Good boy. Shug, heel. Good boy, sit, that is a good, good boy. Good boy and that's basically it. So when working on loose leash walking with a larger dog, you are going to want to again start with your dog on a leash in collar and just start walking around like so. Now, he has already kind of got the concept, come on. Kind of staying fairly closer by.
