You ever get the feeling that your dogs are taking you for a walk? This morning my dogs grabbed their leashes and took me for a nice walk around the block. We had to stop and sniff all the trees (saying hi to the dog down the street). Walking two of my three dogs is truly and exercise in patience. Freyja is an energetic 10 months old, she loves to check out everything with her nose and mouth. Then all she wants to do is play running, jumping and trying to entice me into a rousing game of leash tug-o-war. If she can’t get us into the tug game she like to pull on Annabelle’s leash try to get her to play. Freyja running around is like holding on to a 40 pound yo-yo with a mind of its own. She has, on several occasions, hit the end of the leash hard enough I though she would dislocate my hand, wrist, or should, maybe all three.
Freyja has been placed on a very strict leash training program. To get her to behave better on leash we are teaching her to walk with us and not walk us. You now are asking yourself how do I do that? Here’s the program.
- Take Freyja out front of the house with mild to no distractions.
- Walking backwards with Freyja following me, I treat her often.
- Once she is walking with me I turn so that I am walking in the same direction as she is, still high rate of reward.
- Any time that she wanders off (she is a border collie and has a short attention span, think of a five-year old kid) I stop and start over with the backward walking in the other direction.
This is just the start of the training that Freyja and I are working on. Stay tuned for more tips as we work through this.
