Hi! My 6 month old puppy (collie) when walking on a lead along beside the busy roads, is always rearing up at all the cars that come past. He is quite uncontrollable & doesn't settle until he is in the park out of the way of all traffic! What can I do? Our daily walks are becoming a nightmare because of this ! Lizzie.

Hi your dog should always be on the left hand side, i dont know in which direction you are going, but keep him on your left, do you do any obedience classes these would be best as your trainer could actually see what your dog is doing and get you in control of him it sounds  very dangerous for your dog to be doing this as he could get injured or cause an accident.  Also try diverting his attention by doing command work like sit and drop while you are walking the park,    hope this helps frank

What Frank says is right, its a general obedience problem, he's doing ok with his obedience until he finds something which distracts him, heightening his obedience level always works, you just tell him leave when he starts so working on that will get you there.

As Frank says, by doing sits etc in the park will heighten his obedience and then just extend the same exercises to the road.

Keep yourself between the dog and the traffic.

If he is a collie the traffic triggers his herding instinct.

I'm not sure that it's necessary to keep a dog on the left - that probably goes back to military training and also competition obedience, but it's not necessary for a pet dog to be walked on the left.

It's best to teach a dog to walk relaxed on either side IMHO.

Even if you want to teach for proper obedience, you can still train a dog to walk on both sides, as roadwork should not be a velcro style heel, more a loose lead walk. I agree with keeping collie the other side to the traffic and yourself in between...a good book which discusses this and other problems in detail is "Understanding the Border Collie" by Carol Price.

Lindsay
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