When you got your dog, I bet you imagined taking them for a relaxing, peaceful walks through your neighborhood. But when you got them home, you quickly realized they were less of a Walker and more of a puller in this video instructor. Rob is going to give you five tips to stop your dog from pulling on leash so that you can take your aspiring sled dog out of that lead position and get them into more of a heel position.
I'm Ken Steepe and welcome back to McCann Dogs. One question we get asked very often here at McCann's is how do I get my dog to stop pulling on their leash? When we're out for a walk, it can get extremely frustrating almost to the point.
You're so stressed that you don't even feel like taking your dog for a walk anymore. We're going to give you the tools to help make that walking experience so much better. So your dog won't pull on their leash and you're going to want to take them for a walk or take them wherever you want to go.
If your dog's choking on his collar, you're doing it wrong. The last thing we want is your dog. Don't be pulling on their lease and also choking themselves.
So that's usually because the collar is poorly fitted, but we can easily fix that. Usually the collar is too loose, but here's how we're going to address that. You can see here on ketchup, this collar is on them.
It's sitting there way too low, over top of his shoulders almost. So when he leans into his leash, he can really pull because it's sitting nice and low on his shoulders. So he actually has more power.
One thing people often do though, is they switched to a harness thinking that that's going to stop the dog from choking on their car. But the biggest problem with that is it doesn't address the issue that your dog's pulling. In fact, it actually enhances the issue for the dog to pole.
Now there's a lot of different collars out there. So it's really important to choose the right one for the right training method. And we're going to show you which one's best to get started with.
[Inaudible]. You can see there's a lot of different collars, and they're all designed with a specific purpose in mind, even harnesses as well. But what we like to start is with a flat metal buckle collar and make sure you stay away from the plastic ones.
The plastic ones can break at the clips sometimes, and your dog can be off before you know it. So we're going to get our flat buckle collar. And what we have, what we're looking for in the fitting is to make sure there's a good boy catchy pad.
It fits up high on the neck, And it's not going to slide down. Like I mentioned before, we want it to fit up nice and high, and you can only really fit two fingers underneath the dog's collar. It's still nice and loose.
So it's not choking your dog at all. But the one thing that you have to remember, you got those growing puppies. I want to be doing that two finger check every single day, having a well-fitted collar will give you more control and also provide your dog with better timing of information.
The next thing I want to talk about is tension in the leash. And what we're looking for is a nice Slack leash clip pointing towards the ground. It's really important because if your dog is always under tension and you're holding the leash tight, that goes right down to their collar and they can feel that and they get used to it.
And what they ended up doing is pulling all the time because that's all they ever know. So we want to get the leash nice and loose as we're training. So they don't continue to pull.
Now that tension can work in a good way because it'll cue the dog to move towards us. Once they feel that tension and to see if you can see how catch it moves around with me, and he feels a little bit of tension, he starts to move and he'll move to my side. That's a good boy.
Yes. Good boy. Catch up.
And that forever. He feels that tension. He quickly moves closer to me.
And even to the point where we can take that leash off, there's a good boy. Stay nice and close. Hey, there's a good boy.
Yes. Ketchy, come on there. Good boy.
Yes. Give him a touch. Good boy.
And he learns to move with me no matter what. So the important thing is when you have that leash nice and loose, it's almost the same as not having Alicia on at all. But if you have that tension in the leash all the time, your dog knows there's no freedom for them, and they're not really making a choice to hang out with you.
So this is my other dog scout, and she's got a metal flat buckle collar on too. But sometimes you can get a really strong dog and you need something to provide them with a little bit more direction that will help affect change in your dog. So our next go to thing on that is the general leader.
And the reason we like the generally just so much is it works on head control versus anything else. It controls the movement of the head a little bit better than the flat buckle collar. And it works on a pressure system versus a pain system, like some other collars.
And the great thing about this is it's easy to wean off of. So if Scout's walking and she's doing a really good job, not pulling, I can slide that nose loop off. There we go.
Scout. Good girl. And what I do is I can just take that clip.
And there's a double D-ring underneath the bottom there and I'll take that clip in. And then now it's acting like it's a flat buckle collar and then Hey scout. Yes.
And if we need to, what we can do is unclip it from that double dereg underneath slip that collar back through, and then over top of her nose. It's okay. It's okay.
There we go. And then we can go back to the general leader if needed. So the general leaders, a good level up option if you needed, if you feel your dog's too powerful with the flat buckle collar, but just remember, you still have to have good timing and provide good information to your dog or changing any of the pieces equipment.
Won't be helpful. So one thing that's really important to stop your dog from pulling is to not let them pull the things that they want to get to and how we're going to do that is by turning them away from those things. If he was so distracted, I would slide my hand down leash, turn him, and then put that Slack back in the leash like we talked about before.
And that's so important because if your dog is constantly on this tight leash, we talked about, they're just going to learn to continue to pull. So let's remember, we're not going to allow our dogs to pull the things that they want to get to. And we turn them away from the distraction in the opposite direction.
You want to work around distractions, but nothing this close, you want to build up to it. When catchy was a young puppy, I wouldn't have any of these things out, but as he grew more confident and he'd hang out with me more and he'd be less distracted, then I would challenge him with a toy in front of them. And then we'd work through it.
Let's talk about a key takeaway for teaching your dog to walk on a loose leash, your number one thing, make sure you're consistent. If you're not consistent with your dog, if you're letting them pull some of the time and other times they're addressing it, you're really not being clear. And that's not fair to the dog.
Now your next step is to start applying these tips in your training, but it's also important that you understand the mistakes to avoid click that card right there for the biggest mistake that people make when it comes to leash walking training. If you're interested in training with us, make sure you check out the link in the description below to our life skills program, where we can work on that loose leash, walking with you. And on that note, I'm Ken I'm Rob.
Happy training.
