I wonder if anyone could offer advice with walking my 7 month old gsd cross when I have the children with me. When I take her for her morning walk when the kids are at school she is basically an angle, if she does occasionally get excited as we near the park then i only have to stand still until she stops a few times and she gets the message. When she has her early evening walk however its usually a different story. Some evenings she is very good but more than likely she pulls.

I have a halti harness that Ive used for about 2-3 months as before this she would constantly pull. My fault as I didnt realise that by allowing her to pull 'sometimes' she thought she would try it on all the time. Anyway this helped an awful lot. Now she is 4 1/2 stone and if she decides to pull it can be quite hard to stand still until she comes back to me. Its definatly linked to when the children are with me, if they are with me at the weekend when she is off lead she seems more confident and doesnt stay as close as when its only me and her. If they are with me on the evening walk she seems kind of more skitty. On the rare occasion i have walked her by myself in the evening she has been fine as long as nothing scares her.

I bought a gentle leader yesturday after much thought, i had always been against them but since reading up and finding out that it can infact sometimes calm dogs i thought i would give it a try. I put it on her yesturday twice in the house for a very short period of time and gave her titbits of chicken. the first time i put it on and took it off after about 30 secs. The second time it was on for about a minute but she decided to try and remove it with her paws. I felt so sorry for her, I know its going to take her a while to get used to it but its made me feel like I have let her down by not training her properly from day one and now i have to make her go through this. I will try for a few more days but after yesturday its kind of put me off of them again.

I suppose what I am asking is whether I should use the gently leader or carry on as I am with the halti harness. She is constantly trained when she wears the harness, if she pulls to sniff i tell her to leave it and pull her towards me and when she loosens the lead i give her a treat and praise her, if she pulls ahead of me then i stand still and reward when she comes back to me. Sorry its so long winded but its turning evening walks into a bit of a mare and i dont want to upset her by using the gentle leader. 

I really should not be on here, answering posts, when I have the house to get straight for buyers tomorrow - but I thought I would come in now.

You are worried about "upsetting" your dog.   What about you?   Aren't you upset when she pulls?  I know I am when any of my lot decide that they are going to pull like trains.   And then you don't feel that you can walk them as far - because you are gettiong exhausted with all the pulling, a walk is supposed to be fun - and its not.

Keep on with the Gentle Leader - it feels different to her, and as long as you have fitted it properly it really will not hurt her.   What will hurt her at first is the fact that she isn't in control - that you are - and she's now used to that!   Just persevere - she will get used to it - she will enjoy being told "good girl", and will learn that the "good girl" and treats come with walking by your side instead of half a mile away !

You are doing great - but don't let her take control - you have the control.

Regards

Margot

 

Thanks Margot, I needed that, you are right. She is at an age now where we have become so close and i would say 90% of the time she does what i ask of her. I suppose i felt like i had let her down with the walking and because of that i now had to put her through the stress of getting used to the gentle leader. But in saying that she got used to the halti harness very quickly when she realised it meant going out! Its great having this forum where people give advice, my friends who have dogs do not seem to understand at all about training and use chain collars and/or drag the poor thing around when it pulls. They all think im slightly mad but i dont care, they cant think i am that mad when they all say how well behaved she is and some of them have even asked for my advice when they have owned dogs all their lives. This is our first dog! But you are right, I am the one in control. Good luck with your house.

Hi I have an 18 month old cairn who used to pull terrible, so bad that I dreaded taking him for a walk it became a real chore instead of being fun. I have tried different collars to correct it and have found the gentle leader works best. It took a while to get used to but now going out for a walk is fun. He will still try it on sometimes and he still pulls without the gentle leader but he is much much better
Hope all goes well Good Luck
Jane

Hi,

As long as it fits her face shape and is fitted correctly you have nothing to worry about - and of course she will paw at it and think it strange to start with, it's a completely new feeling for her - most dogs react this way when they first have them on.  Just take it really slowly, pop it on her give a treat and take it straight off again do this several times a day for a couple of days, aswell as putting it on giving her a big fuss then taking it straight off again.  If she likes her food, put it on for her to eat her dinner in and take it off as soon as she's finished.  When she's ok with this take her out in the garden and entertain her playing silly games while she has it on.  Try and get her to associate it with as many good things as possible.  It's alot kinder for her to get used to a headcollar which she will do, and have a nice enjoyable walk for you and her than for it to end up being a stressful frenzied walk.

Persevere she will get used to it, and keep up the good training and in no time at all you probably won't need it at all, but in the meantime it is a great training aid.

Good luck,

Karen

my parents have got a cross breed who wears a gentle leader hes 12 years old now and still sometimes trys to get it off and he has been using his since he was 6 month old my bm had one for about a year and learnt not to pull at all so we dont use it any more for her

By walking her on a gentle leader at times when the excitement gets too much for your pup and you are probably too busy (with kids in tow) to be her normal mum you will stop bad habits from forming and you will all be able to enjoy your walk. If you can continue to walk her on her collar successfully when on your own then there is a good chance that as she matures less things will get her too excited. One thing you might like to do is to cover the nose band part of the gentle leader with velvet, you can get velvet strips (I don't know how else to describe it) from material (haberdashery?) shops. I am no seemstress but it really is very easy and it stops the strap marking their face.

I walk three Aussies together, the older two are walked on a gentle leader type collar the youngest, the biggest, strongest of the three is a large 19 month Aussie boy. He was walked on a gentle leader from a tiny puppy until nearly a year old and he never really learnt to pull in a collar. I then through circumstance (he cut himself) had to walk him for a while on a collar. At first it was a night mare but nothing like as bad as I expected and he learnt relatively quickly to walk with the others, actually very slightly in front of them. He rarely and only temporarily pulls and even then it is nothing like as strong as I know he could. I now only use the gentle leader when I know that circumstances are going to be too-o-o exciting because I'd really rather not have to keep nagging at him.

Just been to pets at home and bought a halti for my yorkie, he may be small but when he pulls it hurts my arm and it must hurt his neck. I feel for you guys with 4 stone plus dogs must be hell.  My bigger dog doesnt pull thank goodness.

Is Halti just another name for the gentle leader or are they different?

Different.

karen,
your advice really helped for my staff, it even seems to be helping break the habit. it has taken her about two weeks to be totally happy . it now means i can walk my 3 dogs  without the misery. 2 years ago my wippets made a sudden lunge and dislocated two of my fingers, since then the staff has done this twice, thankfully i am now healing. thank you

Oh, that made me smile, it's nice to know when your advice helps - thanks for letting me know.

Karen

Thank you everyone for putting my mind at rest, when we went on the evening walk last night it didnt go too well lol. Ive decided that even though it doesnt look great on her that it will be beneficial, its hard to control her now if she pulls and its going to be even harder when she is fully grown so i would rather deal with it sooner. I still feel a pang of guilt though when getting her used to it :rolleyes: especially when she noticed it in my hand today and ran behind the table. What made it worse was when i walked in without the gentle leader: i was just holding some treats to start training with her ball and i think she has associated nice food with gentle leader going on, so as soon as she smelt the treats she ran away from me and i had to entice her back with a game of tug. Because of that I have only put it on her once today. I will carrying on tomorrow, and thanks for the tips on getting her used to it, very helpfull. Thanks again.

Just a thought but are you taking it too fast? Ideally it takes a few days at least to get a dog used to having one on. I think they are like glasses - some peeps find them so irritating even though they may be used to them, and sigh with relief when they can take them off or use contact lenses! :P

Also it's possible for some dogs to learn to pull into a headcollar, eventually. I don't know if this is the case with all headcollars or just some makes.
Do you walk more slowly with the children? Only if this is the case, it's possible she is finding it difficult to actually keep the balance when walking this way. I had never thought of or realised this, until a friend who is a TTouch practitioner pointed it out and showed how dogs, after doing certain exercises for balance and awareness, improved :)

Another idea is the other harness, the Walkezee, which is meant to be very good.

Lindsay
x

hi lindsay, i did think i was maybe taking it too fast. one of the times i put it on her she didnt seem bothered when she was eating scrambled egg so when she had finished i ran outside to play footy with her but she followed me and with every step she took she swiped at her face, i took it off straight away. i did it again this morning and she ran when she saw it but didnt seem bothered when it was on eating her pork and pastrami, i took it off as soon as she had finished (about 30 secs). I think ill carry on like this for a few days but i am determined to carry on.

I dont think i walk more slowely with the kids, infact its probably more quickly, i keep training her to heel and when i have her focused on me i tend to charge ahead to get more ground covered lol. Problem with that is she soon realises if the kids are not right behind us (they always seem to walk more slowely when she is doing well!) so then it becomes a game of waiting for the kids, mind you she is very good and just stands there waiting where as before she would try and drag me over to the kids.

Which one is the walkezee? We use the halti harness at the moment, previously i used one that had like cord running under her legs and up to the collar until puppy trainer pointed out that it could hurt her so we bought the halti.

new owner-

One of mine absolutely hates any kind of headcollar.  This is despite the fact that she was accustomed to one from being a young pup.  When it's time for the headcollar to go on, I just get very no-nonsense.  Yes, she does run and hide behind the table and put her tail down and her ears back, but I just ignore this behaviour and catch her and put it on.  By the time we get outside and are walking, she is usually ok with it.  If I stop walking and stand still, she realises she's wearing it again and paws it to get it off.  But if I keep moving, she's fine.  I did try, with a clicker, to desensitise her to it - clicking her for sniffing it, clicking her for letting me approach her with it and so on - but I think desensitisation can only work if there is nothing intrinsically aversive about the stimulus.  By that I mean - you can't desensitise a dog to an ecollar's shock, for eg, because in itself, that is aversive.  Some dogs find the headcollar itself intrinsically aversive, and it's not really possible to desensitise these dogs in the same way.

hi onetwothree, this is something i was concerned about that she would never get accustomed to it. I have only put it on her once today and it seemed to go well this time, she barely noticed, although still ran away when she saw it coming and smelt nice food. Its nice to know that other peoples dogs do not like it but i suppose i am being premature in deciding if she hates it or not. I understand what you mean about the headcollar being seen as aversive by some dogs, i do still have a feeling though that she will never be entirely happy wearing it. But like another poster pointed out i can just use it in certain circumstances where i know the walk could turn out to be stressful for all involved! I have to be realistic and remember she will get bigger, if im having trouble now then its going to get harder.

Absolutely - at the end of the day - mine hates it and she gets no choice - it goes on if I know that I will be walking with her for some time on the lead and will get stressed and angry.  She is still young (15 mnths) and we are still working on the training for loose lead walking at other times.  But when I need to get somewhere or if it's an "exercise walk" and not a "training walk", I don't want to be stressed and angry with her and so it's actually better for us both, and for our relationship, if she has the headcollar on - even though she appears to hate it when I put it on.