Hi

I am after a solution to prevent or stop our dog pulling on his lead when we go for walks. Also from crossing over from side to side when not in an 'at ease' phase of the walk (meaning when we are walking but he is not allowed to sniff, I am still working on the recall so sometimes letting him run free is not an option but to roam on the lead is ok as I have control).

He is not so hard to handle for myself, except he does occasionally yank me around.

Its my wife I am more concerned about, she is totally unable to walk him as he is too powerful. It is upsetting her that we got a dog so she could take it for walks to get fit yet this has not been able to happen.

We have been told that our dog will eventually settle himself down as he grows older and wiser (he is 1year and 5 moinths now and a Lurcher cross Collie) we have been told to expect him to grow out of this eratic behaviour by the time he reaches aprox 2 1/2 - 3 years old. However the wife cant wait that long!! We are trying to train him and certainly do stick with the training and we have even used different leangth leads and switching leads so he recognises when he is 'at ease' or not. We have tried a stop pull and a halti muzzle lead, but none of these work. We have also tried the stop / go method of stopping when the dog pulls and waiting until the lead is relaxed then carrying on but this gets us knowwhere and our short walk can take hours!

Has anyone been in this situation before?

At present he has an ordinary collar (not a greyhound collar) and a long training lead. My wife suggested buying him a harnes rather than a collar as we dont particularly like yanking his neck (we wouldnt use a 'check chain'), but the lady in the pet shop said a harness would make the pulling worse as the dogs power comes from his shoulders. I can undrstand the meaning of this but I have recently seen a Halti version of a harness which allows the handler to control thepower of the dog or am I imagining it?

Help I want a happy dog snd wife!

Thanks

Duke

:)

Hi there

I am surprised that the Halti didnt work as headcollars are very good at stopping or certainly reducing the pull from a dog.  I have two BCs and use Gentle Leaders on them which enables me to walk them both together.  On normal collars they are a nightmare together yet on their own being walked will walk perfectly.   Did you introduce it as a good thing i.e. slowly? 

Unfortunately I have no experience of the halti harness and am sure someone maybe able to help.  I understand you need to use it with a double ended training lead as one fastens across the back and one at the front of the chest.  It is produced by the companyofanimals so you could check out their website for more information.

Claire

http://www.learningaboutdogs.com/acatalog/Specialised_Clicker_Training.html

This book may help you.

All the gadgets in the world will not train a dog not to pull although they can mitigate their power.

Generally dogs do not "grow out" of pulling, the more time they have to practise it the stronger they get!  They pull because it works, they get to where they are going quicker.  If you stopped and/or changed direction EVERY SINGLE TIME your dog pulled, it would soon stop.

It is time consuming but then so is ALL dog training, the time you invest now will reap rewards for years to come.

The halti harnesses are good and effective for some dogs but I would still recommend that you invest in training and then your dog will be a joy to take out rather than a pleasure.

HTH

Duke,

I had a 9mth old St Bernard taking me for a walk aat one stage! and trust me it wasnt good fun!
I took her to puppy training classes and the lady gave me lots of tips. My dog does walk by my side now and a gentle word 'heel' and tap of the lead gets her to slow down.
She told me my dog wasnt wearing her collar correctly, too loose? u shud only be able to fit two fingers in the collar and you will find you get better control/response out of your dog, i certainly did. Not too tight tho, as you can choke the dog if he does decide to pull?
When he pulls you need to check the lead and tell him heel. firmly, if he doesnt respond you will have to stop everytime he pulls, it took me half an hour to walk down an alleyway and yes my neighbours must have thought we were mad, but after about a month or so, i was able to walk my dog with ease? :)
And he will learn that he is not to pull or else he wont go anywhere!
the longer you leave it the worse it will be to get him out of his habits.
Keep going with the training.

For the determined puller, haltis, gentle leaders etc only have a reducing effect, they do not, imo, cure the problem completely.
The advice given by others - stopping and turning every time the dog pulls - probably has the best effect, longterm.  But you do need a lot of perseverance and patience to do this.  If your walks are time-limited it's more difficult to sustain the training.
I have a dog that's probably a quarter the size of yours and, after 3 years, he still can't really walk properly on a lead -  as well as pulling he's also a darter and a lunger.  I won't say I've given up on him but I've now accepted his limitations.  In lots of other ways he's a brilliant little dog  :)

Good luck - I hope you find the magic key !

We have a very large lab x breed puppy - he weighs five and a half stone so if he pulls it is an effort to control him -  we have, through very slow and tortuous method trained him out of pulling (nearly) (i.e walk down the road and stop every time he pulls - it takes forever but they do get it in the end). However, his puppy exuberance means that he does still lunge towards other dogs (in a totally non-aggressive way). We did use a halti on him which didn't stop him lunging - now we have bought a Dogmatic which is simiilar to a halti but is leather and fits much better round the dog's head. It has made a tremendous difference and now we can stop him lunging and he can say hello to other dogs "nicely". I read about the Dogmatic on this site so I don't suppose that there is any problem with me putting the website address on here  www.dogmatic.org.uk.

You will find it's best to allot time for training and time for when you need to get from A to B.

I used a stop pull harness for when i really hd to get somewhere, and didn't suggest to the dog to not pull because I wasn't able to train her then, but when she wore a collar (normal broad collar) we trained and gave lots of rewards etc for not pulling.

Many peeps make common mistakes - they pull back and say Heel but that doesn't help the dog understand where it's meant to be.

The best success I had with my dog was to use letting her off as a reward for not pulling...it worked very well. I basically insisted on a step of loose lead, saying "loose lead, good girl" and then "good!" and immediate release to play (no sitting first etc as that takes away the reward).

I was then able to gradually ask for 2 steps,then 3, 4 and so on. I still used the harness for times when it wasn't possible to train, but now she will walk on a loose lead when asked as a result of the method I described :)

Lindsay
X

my dog trainer says that dogs should be trained to walk to heel without the lead that the lead eventually shouldnt be required.... obviously used for safety precautions for roads etc..
we are taught to do heelwork and eventually loose it or tie it loosely around thier neck so that they dont hear the clip being released as most dogs when the lead comes off they run off to play...
We train to heel with treats preferably sausages with my girls and use heel as the command holding the treat  in my hand with my hand on my hip.
You may need to start with the basics holding the treat under his nose so that you get his attention stand straight and have him look up at you using the command preferable to you eg: heel or close practise in the garden walking up and down doing left and right turns with lead or without up to you
I use a training lead when I'm out but dont have a problem with pulling......tell a lie they pull from the car into the training class as they love it so much!!!!