Walking nicely on the lead is something we all love to have.
Ambling through the highways and byways, our dog trotting happily beside us, the lead dangling …
But for some of us that’s a pipe-dream!
We see others who, without any apparent effort, have dogs who mosey along beside them, never pulling. And we wonder why - with all the work we put into teaching loose lead walking at home - we are still being hauled along by a frantic dog who seems to have an urgent train to catch.
But it may not in any way be your fault.
It may be all to do with what’s going on in your dog’s head.
It’s not that he doesn’t know how to walk on a lead.
It’s that he can’t do it right here, right now - he’s overwhelmed!
Dog anxiety
Many of you, I know, have dogs who have been labelled reactive. That is to say, they travel the world reacting to things all the time.
Maybe another dog (horrors!), or somebody dropped something (eek!), a car door slammed (oof!), a flag fluttered in the breeze (yikes!), something moved at the end of the road (oh noooo!) … they can react to anything at all.
And mainly it’s to do with a change in their environment, or SEC as we dog-nerds call it - Sudden Environmental Change.
“There wasn’t a dog there last time we walked this way - what’s it doing there??” huffs and puffs your worrit dog. So he has to repeatedly check ahead, behind, above, either side …
And our job is to navigate the walk, managing all these alarums and excursions, without our poor frazzled dog having a meltdown.
But my dog loves walks!
But my dog sees walks as the high point of his day, you say. He gets so excited when he sees me get the lead.
That’s as may be.
But it doesn’t mean he’s not super-anxious about the whole venture. If you were stuck inside four walls all day, you’d be excited at the prospect of new scenery!
So why is it that when we get out of the front door, he goes into carthorse mode, and starts pulling as fast as he can?
Let’s look at it from his point of view, and see how we would be in a similar situation. If you were walking along dark alleys in a strange city at night, wouldn’t you be walking fast?
It’s because of anxiety.
The world is full of sights and sounds - most of which we weedy humans miss, our senses being so much poorer than the dog’s.
But your dog hears and sees them all!
The whisper of someone walking in the next road; the slight movement in the grass up ahead; and, of course, the scents which are filling his nostrils, of what’s recently passed this way - and might still be there … waiting to pounce!
Mental assault course for dogs
For the anxious, shy, nervous, type of dog, this walk is an assault on his senses - from every side.
Yes, he was excited to get out in the world.
But once he’s there, his only way to cope is to surge forwards, and get through this fast.
“What can I do to help my dog?”
So, what can you do to help? After all, you’d like your dog to enjoy his walks as well as your shoulders to stop aching!
You do need to teach Loose Lead Walking (we have a terrific, simple, system in the Brilliant Family Dog Academy so that your dog knows what you’d like him to do.)
And at home, indoors - where he’s not frightened of anything - you can get this going really well. Graduate slowly to doing a few steps in the garden. You may have to ‘go back to the drawing board’ as you re-teach in this new place. It may be your safe garden, but it’s outdoors, and there are all those sounds (that you probably can’t hear, or simply ignore) to disrupt the game.
Once you have a semblance of Loose Lead Walking indoors, you can start working outdoors, and then on a walk.
But you’re not going to expect him to walk nicely beside you.
“No? What am I to do?”
What you’re going to work on is connection.
Connecting with your dog!
You want to establish a connection with your dog when he’s out.
Hitherto he has been too stressed to notice you. I could walk my anxious young collie for a good ten minutes before he’d turn and say, “Oh, are you here too?”
So what I suggest you do is spend some time before you set off on your walk, just feeding treats for any glance he gives you.
You can stand outside your front door, wander in circles on your drive, step through your gate and amble up and down twenty yards or so, and all you’re doing is chatting encouragingly to your dog, and feeding him a treat every time he makes eye contact with you - even fleeting eye contact.
To begin with you may do well to get him looking at you just the once!
But repeat this, boringly, every time you leave the house, and gradually he’ll find himself able to cope with this small familiar bit of the outside world, and give you more and more eye contact.
You may graduate to adding in some of his favourite tricks (a SIT is a trick to him), even incorporating a little of your nice lead-walking from inside the house. Maybe he’s a tactile dog and would like to feel your hand on his shoulder, or he can offer you some nose-touches to your hand.
Building this connection is the most supportive thing you can do.
It will allow him to connect with you when something worrying appears.
It will allow him to come out of a state of paralysed fear - or even a shrieking meltdown - much faster.
If he starts ramping up his anxiety during the walk, pause and repeat your circles and wanderings from the start of your walk, until the area you’re in has lost its terror for him and he’s able to relate to you once more.
Over time, you’ll be able to avoid the meltdown altogether, using some of the techniques we teach you in From Growly Dog to Confident Dog
Get started with your dog right now!
.. and let me know how it goes.
Keep in mind that this will take as long as it takes, but like all worthwhile things, you’ll be glad you stuck with it when you look back in a year or so, at how nightmarish your walks used to be!
RESOURCES:
The Brilliant Family Dog Academy
From Growly Dog to Confident Dog
