Leash Manners – How to Teach Loose Leash Walking?

Walking a dog isn’t as simple as putting a collar on a dog and attaching a leash to it. Yet this is how most people do it. Good leash manners actually require quite a few skills from a dog that needs to be trained first before we step outside into the world of distractions, this is particularly important with young puppies. And following through on those good leash manners on a daily basis is the consistency that is crucial for this type of training, otherwise, the training will forever be confusing for the dog and go back and forth because of it.

So let’s look at the skills required for nice loose leash walking. These are the 4 foundational skills a dog needs for loose leash walking:

1. Being comfortable wearing a collar/harness and a leash: This first thing is something most people completely miss to even think about yet I am often called to clients when the situation has got so bad that the dog is now showing aggression to avoid their daily walking gear. We should always remember that this type of equipment we need for safety is unnatural to our dogs and they can have negative feelings towards them which can also affect their walking manners.
2. The technical skill of walking on a leash following you, not the leash: I always say that if a dog can not walk nicely on a leash at home with no distractions around it is most definitely not going to happen outside either. So walking on a leash is something we need to start practising at home first.
3. Ignoring distractions: This is where it can get very difficult and most people have issues with walking due to the distractions out and about. However, many people also accidentally reinforce the wrong things such as pulling and lunging by allowing the dog to interact with the distractions in this way such as when meeting another dog.
4. Leaving things: Good leash manners require impulse control and the ability to leave things such as food, other dogs, people, moving objects, traffic etc.

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