Tips on loose leash walking (video)

Loose leash walking in the animal shelter 

This gorgeous doggo named Pluto proved to be a great student for loose leash walking exercise! Does that mean that it’s all done once and for all? Absolutely not!

Loose leash walking has a lot of complexity to it! In reality, there are many behaviours that need to be taught but even more importantly every change in the environment can affect it! It’s one thing to learn this behaviour in the home environment, in the hall during a dog training class, in the field with no one around or in the dog park. It will be different in the known environment and different in the unknown one. The new scents affect it big time and just the fact that another dog left his scent just a minute ago can seemingly throw off all the progress.

Working with the shelter dog, there are more things to consider. Currently because of COVID volunteers are not allowed to take the dogs out for the walks. It means many dogs lack vital mental and physical stimulation. Dogs live there in a highly stressful environment to which they (to some extent) got used to but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect them!

Pluto and I were able to develop nice loose leash walking skills. We started with him following me, then he learned to line up next to me nicely, then started to build more steps, change direction and speed. It was done in an environment that he knows well. When taken outside we needed to start the process all over but we were able to build a few steps too. 

There are a couple of triggers that increase his excitement:

1. Attaching a leash to Pluto’s collar [I would much prefer using a harness but he refused to wear one]

2. Coming close to the gate of his run

In both of them, Pluto seems to be “losing interest” in the exercise, he started pulling towards the gate and/or stayed facing toward it without looking at me for a prolonged period of time. How do I interpret it? He hasn’t yet learned what I would like him to do while we come towards the gate on the leash. 

Often I heard people coming up with interpretations like the dog is “distracted” “uncooperative” “unmotivated” “losing interest in training”. All of those are just concepts we come up with that don’t offer any solutions. For me, it’s not about naming what I see but rather start to look for even the smallest changes that I can work with. 

The sight of a leash served Pluto as a cue that we are coming out of his run. His learned behaviour was to pull towards the gate and outside of it. The first thing I tried was to do the loose leash walking exercise without attaching the leash at all in the same environment. We build more fluency to the behaviour before attaching the leash. I highly recommend this step to many owners! First of all, it helps us learn how to deliver treats as it is easier to do without the necessity of holding the leash (important skill acquisition for us, humans!) and second of all it helps the dog learn what we want him to do without forcing him to anything. It’s you who has to be fast and generous with your reinforcement if you want to keep him by your side. 

The second solution involved training more around the gate. It started from coming closer to the gate but not too close so he still stays engaged in training. Eventually, we were able to build up the behaviour without any moments of disengagement. Even if he would disengage, I wouldn’t see it as being uncooperative, to me that would be information that I moved too fast and he wasn’t ready for it yet. 

There is more work to be done to get this behaviour to fluency but I'm celebrating all the progress we are already making! Loose leash walking is a complex behaviour to teach and it’s through taking full responsibility for teaching all the skills that we empower our learner and start to see beautiful progress. 

If you would like to learn even more tips about loose leash walking and taking those skills to the next level with your dog - sign up for the Let’s go course on Tromplo. Shelly Wood and I will help you achieve the relaxed walks you always wanted!

Be a Superhero for your dog, he will love you for it!