Blog: Walking The Dawg (On a Loose Leash in 21 Days)

It's Fall! My favorite time of the year! The smells, the colors, the low light, and more places to take my dogs. 

Yes, now that the high temperatures of summer are almost gone, our dogs can come along with us more often. We can go for longer walks in the middle of the day because it’s not so hot, and we can enjoy an outdoor cup of coffee or a meal with our dogs by our side at one of the many dog-friendly restaurants downtown.

As wonderful as it is to include our dogs on these outings, it will be much more pleasant if your dog can walk nicely on a leash.  

Sure, you say: If I have a head harness, chest harness or correction collar, then they’ll walk nicely.  

But what about actually teaching your dog to walk and stay close with minimal pulling, on a normal collar. You don’t want to keep your dog on one of those training collars forever.  

Can it be done? Of course it can, and I challenge you to try for the next 21 days. Teach your dog not to pull without wearing a training collar.

They say it takes 21 days to break a habit, so try this and see if you can teach your dog to walk on a flat collar.

How to Teach This

Start by thinking about your daily walk habit with your dog and how you contribute to his pulling. Do you grab their leash, hook them up, open the front door and fly out for your walk, dog all excited, you just hanging on?  

Here's what you need to do. 

Get their leash, go to the door, and have them sit while you hook the leash to their collar. (The training collar is in your pocket.) While holding the leash, keep the dog in a sit position, and open the door.  

If the dog gets up, close the door and put the dog back in his/her sit position. The goal is to have the door open with your dog sitting, relaxed, and with no pressure on the leash.

Silently count to 10, step outside the door with the dog still sitting, and then call them out the door. Have them sit again while you close your door.  Again, do a silent count to 10 and then a release to start walking. 

Start your walk with your dog close to you.  Do not give your dog the entire length of the leash. If your dog starts to pull, stop and ask for a sit. Do not move forward with a pulling dog.

You want the dog to sit and “watch,” so that the attention is back on you. Once there is slack on the leash, start to move forward again.  If the pulling becomes too great and you are too frustrated (which may be the case, especially at first), calmly pull out your training collar and put it on your dog.

Finish your walk as usual, but on your way home, when your dog is tired and more cooperative, remove the training collar and return to the flat collar.  

The idea here is you want to train at the beginning of the walk and at the end of the walk with a good loose leash and a flat collar.  

If we can master the beginning and the end, the middle will follow. Teaching loose-leash walking takes time and you have to set goals for how far you will get each on the loose leash and flat collar. Say to yourself, today we walk nicely to the end of our block, by next week we will walk two blocks without a training collar and no pulling. 

Be patient. This is difficult behavior to teach. Remember that the most important tool in teaching dogs is patience and praise. Oh, and a well-timed treat every now and then.

Give these suggestion 21 days and let me know how it goes. Feel free to ask any questions below. 

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Dolores Blake is the owner of The Cultured Canine.