Techniques to try when over threshold on the lead

[Kay]

OH has quit his job and is finally moving down to be with us full time and I’m hoping to get a few weeks of him being around before he starts another job.

So I want to plan an intense training month with Boomer to try and undo the damage from the last few months and get us started back on track.

Behaviour in the house and off-lead is still lovely (most of the time!) But our loose lead walking is horrendous; just utterly utterly horrible.

This is where we are currently:
- lead walking in a very very known environment / e.g on the way home from an off-lead walk is pretty ok. Loose lead most of the time. Plenty of treats for being in position. If he pulls -me standing still will 9/10 bring him back to position.
- In a very very very known environment - Off lead heel (when he’s had a bit of a run) is good and on-lead heel - in the ‘off-lead’ environment is good. (He's brilliant at this in the garden / around the house)

But anything other than that turns him into a doo-lally whirlpool on speed. He’s fine when not walking - e.g. will happily sit in the pub / sit while I chat to people with no fuss.

Sometimes he’s able to engage and take treats and then the stop or turn around and go the other way works ok. I can work with this and kind-of-know what to do.

But more often than not he is beside himself with excitement (I think) and the stop / walk backwards just seems to wind him up even more. E.g:

- he lunges to the end of the lead / I stop
- he charges back / whirls around me
- comes to position - rarely stops (doesn’t want the treat) and then lunges to the end of the lead again.
- or if he does stop - then when we set off again - he just lunges to the end of the lead again.

And when he’s like this - the treats just aren’t cutting it. Roast chicken, fish, roast beef. His fav tug toy, hand touch, middle - nothing. I try scatter on the floor as I’ve heard that’s meant to be quite good at calming - but nope he just looks at it and dances around. I've also tried the 'go sniff' - i.e he pulls to a sniff / so I turn around or stop and he only gets to the sniff if he walks on a loose lead. But then when he gets to that sniff - oh no, he doesn't want that any more - he lunges to the one just at the end of the lead.

I’m guessing I really need to work on bringing that excitement level down first rather than actual ‘loose lead’ walking.

So my only thought is to just stand still and not engage with him at all until he’s stopped whirling around and lunging to the end of the lead. Then perhaps try and stream a few treats into him and do something to get focus on me. And only then take a step forward. And if he lunges again - just stop and do it all again.

But I really am clutching at straws here. It would be great to hear any better ideas!!

 

[Charlie]

Hi Kay, you could try @snowbunny Fiona's technique as linked below, it might help! x

Figure of Eight

 

[Kay]

Oh this looks perfect - thanks for linking. Will give it a thorough read tonight and start the planning!

 

[Charlie]

Good luck! x

 

[Boogie]

Yes - and tethering the lead to yourself by tucking your hand in your jeans or belt really works. The less we try to ‘steer’ the dog the better. We often do it without even thinking.

 

[snowbunny]

Ooooh, this is a topic that is close to my heart and I'm actually putting together some stuff about it at the moment. I have oodles of advice, but definitely try the figure of eight to start with. Do it at the beginning of every walk until you have calm focus; don't move on until you have that. If you then walk ten paces and he's starting to become over-excited again, back to figure of eight. It really doesn't matter if you don't go anywhere, he's not getting a chance to practice being in that state of arousal - the more he practices this, the more it will happen, so that's your focus. Stop way before he gets to the point where he won't eat and keep on working on that calm focus. There are a million other different little games you can add in to help with the focus, but figure of eights are really a brilliant place to start. Go slowly. Slower than you think. It will make him engage his brain and it's really tiring for them!

I have moved away from the stop/start technique for heel walking and/or stopping and waiting for the dog to have an epiphany in any context. It's frustrating and lacks clarity - dogs thrive on clear signals and I think it's our duty to teach them what we do want. Just standing around waiting for them to spontaneously offer something when there are a million conflicting environmental cues just isn't fair. Shaping is a great tool, but a proper shaping session is set up in a way that doesn't involve sitting and waiting for more than a second or two and leaves the dog very few options but to make the correct choice.

And another epiphany I have had with my latest pup is that the rate of reinforcement most of us work with is pitiful. Double it. Then double it again. You want to be clicking and treating three times in every ten second period - at least - in the acquisition stages of a behaviour. If your dog isn't making enough good choices for you to do that, then you need to set up your environment so they can. Remember, the greater the reinforcement history (the number of times they have been rewarded for making the correct decisions), the stronger that behaviour will be. So ensure you're rewarding decisions the dog is making, rather than just streaming (which is effectively luring) but do it quickly, and a LOT. If your dog isn't making those good decisions, that's your job as his trainer - to make sure the environment is such that he can.

 

[Kay]

Thanks so much for all this info. I’m just pulling together a little plan to get us started as I can crack on with 1 and 2 straight away.

1. Learning / practising figure of 8 in the garden.
2. Gradually work the figure of 8 towards the front gate (where the fizz begins)
3. Get the figure of 8 working outside the gate before we start walking down the road
4. Then when he seems calm…step out of the figure of 8 and try a few steps down the road. Click treat heavily when he’s in position.
5. If he’s getting too excited jump back into fig of 8

Does this sound ok so far?!

But then….what should I do when that first lunge / pull happens but he’s not particularly over-excited - he's just pulling?

I know ideally he’ll be focused on me and making the right decisions. But what do you do when he doesn’t make the right decision and is now at the end of the lead in front of me?

This is where typically I’d be stopping or I’d turn and go the other way. I get what you are saying about the lack of clarity and getting them frustrated as quite often now Boomer will start whining if I do this. But I can’t really picture what else to do in this scenario.

Thanks!

 

[snowbunny]

I was just laying in bed thinking about this and considering that what we’re dealing with can be separated into two different things. Because the dog is on the lead, we tend to bundle it all together as “leash manners” or “loose leash walking”, but that’s not the whole story.
When our dog is calm, we can focus on LLW, sure. That is behaviour we can train. When they get over-excited, frustrated, fearful, or whatever else causes the lunging, they are no longer in a place emotionally to be capable of learning. So, when the lunging begins, we need to go into management mode to deal with the emotions. Give them the space from the trigger if there is one, or lower the arousal another way until they are back in the headspace where they can be trained once again.

So, first things first, I would take a breath and try to adjust how I feel about what my dog is doing. Let the behaviour simply be information. It’s him telling you that you’ve asked too much, gone on too long, or maybe that trigger is too close. Go into management mode: this is not the time to train.
Get him the thing he needs to lower the arousal and put all thoughts of training out of your head. But then, dissect it. Ask yourself “why?”. Did you ask him to walk nicely for longer than he could manage? Did a trigger appear? Or what? Then, come up with a plan. That might be “I am going to practice my A-to-B so that it’s fluent enough to use in a real life scenario” (A to B - managing lunging/barking triggers in everyday walks)
Or it might be, “Next time, I’m only going to ask for thirty seconds and then I will break it up with a game of tug”, or, “I’ll drive him to the park where we can practice rather than expecting him to walk the whole way”, or whatever makes sense in your scenario.
The point is, when your dog is reacting, it is not a training opportunity. It is a time to manage him and that’s all. Your job is to work out how to take that information and use it to come up with a training plan to prevent it happening again.

Make sense?

 

[Kay]

Ok - then yes, I think this is very much two different things to deal with then:

1. Over-excitement about the environment.
2. And LLW behaviour to train once he’s in the right head space.

But now thinking about from your reply - perhaps he's never really in the right head space when he’s on the lead apart from the times when we’re walking back from the park and he’s had his run so is tired and excitement levels are down. And he walks nicely anyway with just the occasional pull.

So yes, it’s all about the emotion then - just different levels of over-arousal but he’s still always in an aroused place where he can’t learn. Hmmmmmmm ok.

In that case it’s all about tools to lower that arousal.

And of course managing that in every day life where he still needs his off-lead walks…but every walk I’ve found so far has a lead element from car to off-lead area.

If he’s utterly bonkers once we get out of the car. Do you think it’s best to just get stuck into the fig of 8 (once we’ve really got that in our heads) and just carry on doing it if he’s trying to dart around? Or is there any benefit in just sitting and letting him for a bit and let him gradually chill. Although I guess getting up will trigger the Tiggers again whereas if I’m already walking with the fig of 8 then it’s less of a change to then gradually start drifting into the walk. Sorry - just rambling…and thinking it out as I type! I guess I won’t know until I try!!

But thanks - I think the change of mind-set will help here. It’s not loose-lead walking behaviour yet. It’s reducing arousal first so the world isn’t such a madly mind-blowing place!

 

[Boogie]

Yes - try it and adjust if you need to.

Two keys from what @snowbunny said - “It really doesn’t matter if you don’t go anywhere.” This is crucial because once you have a destination the training tends to come second. And feed lots at first, a stream of food (I use a portion of their meals) so that, in their heads, this is the best place and way to walk. Once that is truly in their heads it stays there, whatever is going on

I would also suggest going to different places every day so that, when he’s in the car, he doesn’t know if it’s just a lead walk or a free run he’s going to - that way the anticipation won’t build before he even gets there - which will help with calmness.

 

[snowbunny]

You need to remember also to practice these things in really easy places. Practice the figure-8 when he's in the garden, or outside your front door. Because you both need to learn the mechanics of that, too, and you can't do that when he's bouncing around already. If it's a familiar pattern, though, he'll recognise it and fall into it a lot more quickly. Just keep on walking, slowly, keeping the lead short. You don't want to be dragging him, but keeping the lead short restricts his options as far as bouncing around is concerned.

Or is there any benefit in just sitting and letting him for a bit and let him gradually chill.

That works well (guess what I'm going to say) as long as you've practiced it in a normal environment first. Get a bit of vet bed and sit on it with him on lead. Let him sniff, pet him if he interacts with you (or whatever calm things he enjoys) but let him look around and assess the environment too. Don't encourage him into you - let him make that choice, whether it's after one minute or ten.
If you take him straight to the funfair and do this, he's going to go out of his mind. But if you practice it in the garden, then in a boring car park etc, and do it enough times that you see he understands "When you sit on the mat, we're going to chill out a while", then he will get a picture which can be transferred to more and more exciting environments.

 

[Kay]

@ Boogie - Yep, this is exactly the problem.

This is crucial because once you have a destination the training tends to come second.

Before we moved and I could take him out on my own we did training walks and it was great. But the last few months -I've not been able to get out on my own without the kids so lead walks have become just a need to get to the off-lead destination as I really really struggle walking the two little kids and him on a lead together and it all just escalates into a huge chaotic mess.! So thank goodness this will soon end

But I totally get his point-of-view. Lead =we're going somewhere and something really really exciting is going to happen so why wouldn't you go bonkers.

@ Snowbunny I like the idea on the vet bed / mat - 'sit on mat = chill'. That's a good one to work on and I can do that with the others with me as well ( I think!)

Thanks all - I can't wait to get started. Only another week to go and in the meantime we'll master figure of 8's and mat chilling in the garden

 

[Kay]

Well... figure of 8 in the garden. WOW!!

I’ve not felt that relaxed for years! Heart rate dropped, felt a huge sense of calmness... Booms was excellent too

I bet half of the problem here is me always having a rush around head on.

I can see this is going to be as beneficial to me as it is to him!

 

[snowbunny]

Great! I think that's a big part of the picture - it's soothing to us as well as the dog. It's predictable and we both know our "job". It gives us some breathing space to come up with a plan if we need it, too. It's a great little technique

 

[UncleBob]

Yes - and tethering the lead to yourself by tucking your hand in your jeans or belt really works. The less we try to ‘steer’ the dog the better. We often do it without even thinking.

You do need to take a little care with this approach - in his younger days Harv gifted to me two torn pockets when I used this approach! (more fool me for trying it a second time! )

 

[Shamas mom]

How about tethering to a leather belt, and still holding the lead lightly in case you need to offer directions? That worked for me with Shamas, as he'd pull too hard for a hands-in-pocket approach....would have hurt my wrists. I wear the belt at my hips, so he can't pull on my lower back.

Another thing that I've found helped(Shamas gets too excited for treats to be noticed) is giving him a job. I use treats on my way out, but on the way home I give him a bag of treats to carry. The smell of his reward is directly under his nose, and he knows that he's got to get it home to eat it. He will carry his prize the whole way home, and even other dogs can't get him off of focus, as long as they're not close enough to take it. We discovered this tactic quite by accident one day while going for our standard walk for coffee. My son gave Shamas a coffee tray. I put his Timbit in the tray, but his "job" was more important than the timbit. He stopped all arousal-based behavior and walked straight home to take it under the table. We manage the pulling behavior, but he's not bonkers. Shamas' carry-home treats are always treats that he does not get given at home- Timbits, cookies, Butcher-fresh bones, etc. Something that I bring out of the place that we went to.

 

[Kay]

Belated thanks @UncleBob and @Shamas mom for the tethering thoughts.

Have to admit - a little apprehensive about this approach as his sudden lunges to sniffs are arms out of sockets strength- so pretty confident this will end with me on my nose or ar*e!

But hey - I’ll give it a whirl and report back - hopefully not from A&E

 

[Shamas mom]

Yes, Shamas pulled my shoulder out once going after a cat. That landed him on Halti for a month whilst I healed. What about a Bungee lead, to take some of the brunt of the yank? Most jogging leads that I look at on Amazon have bungee sections, so the dog doesn't automatically pull over their running partners-instead, the elastic takes the yank, and brings them back in

 

[Boogie]

Zaba is a terrible puller. His Mum got him a front fastening harness when he was a pup and she’s just let him pull ever since He’s very strong. But today I used a flat collar, plenty of treats and my puppy training technique with him, Tatze was with us too.

He was really good - no pulling at all even when we got near the park. I’ve tried to show his Mum, who is my best friend, the method - nope. Humans are much much harder to train than dogs!

.

 

[Shamas mom]

Yes, its easy to get lazy when you have tools (no criticism intended, I also use a front clip harness)

I'm still working on flat collar training, and have employed some help on the matter. I think we also want a wider collar too, as I only bought this one to hold tags.