Since she's still a puppy and not fully trained, I have to keep her on leash during walks because I don't trust her yet to walk off leash. Ultimate plan is to have our walks without the leash and her being fully aware of where she can and cannot go with full gas. Thnx for your advice
Leash walking problems with 8 month old girl
Hi, we have a 8 month old girl Csilla and are having problems with walking on leash.
She is pulling a lot, it's not like she is pulling in 100 directions all at the same time (her behaviour isn't hectic).
But pressure on lead is constant. I've read pretty much all posts here for this problem. I've tried using "let's go/good girl" command so she looks at me every time I say it during the walk (then I give her the treat), because I want her to focus on me. I've also been doing changing directions technique, so that she knows that she needs to follow me if she wants to go somewhere.
We've been dealing with this for few months now. Some days are better some are worse, I guess that's normal for teenage phase.
But she is so interested in everything, her mind is in thousand places all at same time when she's out, and her nose is working overtime.
I've used all kinds of treats, but she seems like she cannot help herself when there are new smells/dogs/things (hard for her to focus).
She didn't have her first heat, also wanted to mention.
Maybe I'm not doing it with enough consistency and should develop strict schedule for every day. To focus more on let's say technique/quality of walking instead of walking for the sake of it.
it. Perhaps play fetch so she is more tired before our walks in order to focus more (she is of leash for 1-1.5h a day).
It's funny because inside the house, she never ever destroyed anything, amazing in terms of walking, recall, focus. So she apparently knows it all, but once outside everything else is more important.
Thank you for all the answers in advance!
Matko A first time V owner
She is pulling a lot, it's not like she is pulling in 100 directions all at the same time (her behaviour isn't hectic).
But pressure on lead is constant. I've read pretty much all posts here for this problem. I've tried using "let's go/good girl" command so she looks at me every time I say it during the walk (then I give her the treat), because I want her to focus on me. I've also been doing changing directions technique, so that she knows that she needs to follow me if she wants to go somewhere.
We've been dealing with this for few months now. Some days are better some are worse, I guess that's normal for teenage phase.
But she is so interested in everything, her mind is in thousand places all at same time when she's out, and her nose is working overtime.
I've used all kinds of treats, but she seems like she cannot help herself when there are new smells/dogs/things (hard for her to focus).
She didn't have her first heat, also wanted to mention.
Maybe I'm not doing it with enough consistency and should develop strict schedule for every day. To focus more on let's say technique/quality of walking instead of walking for the sake of it.
it. Perhaps play fetch so she is more tired before our walks in order to focus more (she is of leash for 1-1.5h a day).
It's funny because inside the house, she never ever destroyed anything, amazing in terms of walking, recall, focus. So she apparently knows it all, but once outside everything else is more important.
Thank you for all the answers in advance!
Matko A first time V owner
1 - 3 of 8 Posts
Hi Matko,
Kinda crazy but I feel you're basically describing our dog. She's about 15 months old now and starting to get the walking on a leash thing. She has never destroyed any furniture in the house besides some blankets we allow her to have. We spayed her at the 12 month mark. She's always been a super puller on the leash, always wanting to get to places and getting sometimes too excited for any type of encounter with another dog, person, etc. Because of that we reduced walking her on a leash everyday from the time she was 10 months until maybe 2-3 weeks.
This is what has been working for us so far: First we let her go to the dog park and run around for about 45min, after that when she's more tired we would put a Halti Headcollar on her and start walking very short sessions with her and lots of treats, about 5-10min for a couple of weeks. I feel that the head collar slowly reset her way of walking on a leash. Now, instead of the Halti, we get her on a 6ft leash iso she has some more wiggle room and start walking with her in different directions and praising her when she's not pulling. It's been about a week now of this routine and I can say her pulling has diminished to a 10-15% of the time so we are really happy as it has only been a couple of weeks with the new routine. Still lots to work on but it's super encouraging when the pup starts realizing how to behave in the world.
Keep at it
Thnx for sharing
. That's exactly what I've started doing few days ago. 30-40 minutes of constant fetch, and then 10-20 minutes sessions of walking exercises. Changing directons, bumping into her (that is especially effective because she's looking at me "what the **** are you doing" ) and lot's of treats and praise. It's a lot of work, I've been planning of getting Vizsla or GSP for 2 years. But you cannot be fully prepared just with reading and videos 1 - 3 of 8 Posts
