# Still no luck



## mom2Zoe (Jun 17, 2014)

I posted earlier that I was going to work on Zoe's leash manners. It has been a week and it is not going to well.

What i have done so far is when she pulls ahead of me to either stop or go off in the other direction. I have been rewarding her with treats, but she does not seem to be getting the hang of it. She still pulls every few steps. I have given up our long walks and turned them into short training walks. It has been so cold so I am not minding one bit.

Can you please offer more suggestions?


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## mom2Zoe (Jun 17, 2014)

Still need more suggestions, funny enough today's walk was a drastic improvement.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Stick with what you are doing. It will work but can be slow to click. My first few months of walks with my two often didn't go much further than a house or two down the block because I did so much stopping/starting and turning around. I am sure my neighbors thought I was nuts. I spent lots of time in the street with one or the other of my pups and barely went anywhere. Now I can take the two of them and go for as long and far as we all have energy for. I am glad you saw improvement this morning, just remember it can be a two steps forward, one step back kind of process.


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## Poodlerunner (Jul 4, 2014)

mom2Zoe said:


> I posted earlier that I was going to work on Zoe's leash manners. It has been a week and it is not going to well.
> 
> What i have done so far is when she pulls ahead of me to either stop or go off in the other direction. I have been rewarding her with treats, but she does not seem to be getting the hang of it. She still pulls every few steps. I have given up our long walks and turned them into short training walks. It has been so cold so I am not minding one bit.
> 
> Can you please offer more suggestions?


I am working on the same and it can be exhausting. If I have her on a martingale, we don't get very far on our walks because Piper is an exuberant puppy and forgets often. I have both a head harness and I just bought a gentle leader chest harness. I think she prefers the chest harness. She cannot pull on it so at least she is not getting into the bad habit of dragging me. I do take her on long walks so for me it is necessary because we would never get anywhere otherwise.


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## twyla (Apr 28, 2010)

I agree with Catherine, It has taken awhile with Beatrice and there are says she walks like a champ and then no some much I just keep plugging along it has helped that I given up that leash training will happen quickly. Beatrice is my second puppy, I had gotten my other dogs as adults. My first puppy Baby was a champ on the leash from the first day I got her so I was spoiled and she even helped me leash break Flower and Cappi.


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## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

I think we expect a lot of pups - getting just a few seconds of loose leash walking is a matter for celebration while they are still learning! I would up the rate of reward, and treat walking on leash as a training game, rather than an attempt to get from A to B - a harness might be a good idea if you do have to walk any distance in a hurry. I found games of follow the leader off leash at home helped a lot - we still play it, with me changing pace, switching direction, doubling back, and the dogs rewarded for managing to stay close to me. Once "With me!" came to mean "Get ready for fun stuff!" rather than "Prepare to be bored!" it became much easier for them, and it is much easier to be more exciting than the environment at home than it is out and about.


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## ericwd9 (Jun 13, 2014)

If all else is failing you, Use a harness with the leash attached to the front under the neck on the chest. Every time the dog pulls ahead it is forced to turn in toward you.
Eric


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## twyla (Apr 28, 2010)

Whoops I forgot to mention that Beatrice has been wearing the easy walk harness, that alone made a huge difference


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Now that I am looking back over these posts and thinking about the suggestions of harnesses I would suggest that if you expect to fade the need for the harness you should put it on Zoe every time you take her out for 10-14 days without hooking her leash to it. She will come to think it is no big deal. On the day you hook up the harness also put on a new collar that you have scented with mink oil or fish oil. Hook up harness and callar. Zoe will think that collar has magical powers to control her. You will then let the smell of the collar fade and gradually take away the harness. Put it on without hooking it up, then skipping it all together. Unless a dog has anatomical issues that make putting any pressure on their throats a health hazard I think walking on a collar it greatly preferable to a harness or a head collar. Those tools sometimes will make people think there is a temperament problem with the dog when there isn't.


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## mom2Zoe (Jun 17, 2014)

She outgrew her harness and I use a martingale/buckle collar. 
I prefer to stick with that since she is used to it and the harness would just be a temporary fix.
I will go and invest in one if all else fails.
I should have started out with proper leash walking from the beginning. However, being a novice at owning a dog and housebreaking being the most important criteria, proper leash walking wasn't at the top of my list. So now it might be confusing for her that this is what I expect out of the blue. I will just have to be patient.
It is just frustrating that for a week we haven't really been walking. I have been giving her exercise playing fetch in the back yard instead.

At our last potty break it was windy and she kept running ahead . I usually hang for a 5-10 min walk or so, but cut it short after a quick pee. The wind could have been bothering her and I did not want to risk this mornings progress.


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## mom2Zoe (Jun 17, 2014)

Thanks for all the suggestions:top:


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Investment in one extra collar if you go the harness route won't be a bank breaker and will pay out for Zoe in the end. I would make the extra also a martingale. You can wash out the scent when you are done with the harness and save it as a spare for when the current one gets too worn for your taste.


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## patk (Jun 13, 2013)

so have you tried, at least at home, the peanut butter on the end of a long spoon routine, just to get her used to the idea that leash time is when she should be at your side?


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## mom2Zoe (Jun 17, 2014)

patk said:


> so have you tried, at least at home, the peanut butter on the end of a long spoon routine, just to get her used to the idea that leash time is when she should be at your side?


Yes. The wooden spoon peanut butter suggestion was the best !!!!!

Another good short successful walk this morning. Had that spoon right at my side.:adore:


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## Indiana (Sep 11, 2011)

mom2Zoe said:


> Yes. The wooden spoon peanut butter suggestion was the best !!!!!
> 
> Another good short successful walk this morning. Had that spoon right at my side.:adore:


I think you're on the right track mom2Zoe; if you use easy walk harnesses or haltis, your dog will need those tools to walk properly (unless of course you wean off like Lily suggested). My dogs are huge and strong; they are large for females at 24" and 26" tall at the shoulder and over 100 lbs combined in pulling power! But I had excellent success with what you're doing, bringing along a treat and rewarding loose leash walking. I expect our dogs to walk at heel and they do; I gradually used fewer and fewer treats until all I needed was a couple of kibble in my pocket, maybe not even giving them to the dogs until we got home, but they still walk really well in the heel position. We take them running on trails off-leash and they get TONS of exercise, so when they are on leash, I expect them to behave. It boils down to a safety issue, really. You may have read of my training challenges with Maddy, so she is not an easy dog! But if she learned to walk really well on leash, Zoe can too


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## mom2Zoe (Jun 17, 2014)

The snow we had today threw all my hard work down the toilet. LOL
I let her play first in the backyard so she would walk nicely, no such luck.
She kept trying to take off like a crazy nut job.


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## patk (Jun 13, 2013)

do you do any exercises with her on leash in the house? i'm pretty sure that my dog never got leash work right because of me. when we took basic obedience, i spent more time and effort on recalls than anything else. then once formal training stopped, i stopped really working with my dog, too. he was small and not overly energetic, so it was easy to just go with the flow. and we did fine overall. but i could have done better by him on the leash work by working with him in more than one situation to "proof" him on leash commands. maybe creating at least two commands for the dog while on leash? "heel" meaning stay at my side and "go sniff" meaning okay, go ahead and check out the pee-mails if you insist. "go play" would be for off leash nuttiness... just thinking about how i might do it today...


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

Be careful not to hold the wooden spoon down where she can lick it as you're walking. Only put it down for a lick or two and then back up, out of her sight. In other words, you don't want that to become part of the cue by luring her with it. Reward two or three steps where she's keeping the leash slack, then pick up the treat. Luring, bribing is what happens when people say, "my dog won't do this or that without a treat." As soon as she starts getting onto walking nicely, start putting it on a variable schedule...ie: every 3rd step, every 2nd, every 6th, every 4th....try to figure out an average number of nice steps or a duration (however you want to look at it) were you can reward her and just keep stretching it out a little bit, putting a little more pressure on her. Then toss in another lick so she stays motivated.

How frequently are you reinforcing? At first, you need to pretty much dispense the reward rapid fire...VERY frequently. The more feed back she gets as she's doing it right, the quicker she'll get onto it. Make sure it's consistent. Sometimes it's easy to forget to pay attention. I know. I sort of space out sometimes and miss an opportunity to reinforce. Consistency is super important. She'll get onto it pretty soon if you keep plugging away. Not one step forward if she creates tension in the leash. EVAR. lol.:act-up:


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