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Old 03-20-2003, 08:59 PM
Wrath Wrath is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2003
It can be a lengthy process to train your dog to walk nicely on a loose leash, probably the most important thing you can do is not encourage pulling by allowing them to drag you along. By doing that, you're training your dog to mush. Instead, when they start to pull, make like a tree and don't budge. When it finally starts clicking in their head that pulling on the leash=stop they won't be so apt to pull you along to get where they want to be faster.

It also helps to be able to get your dog's attention, start in your living room or somewhere where there's little distractions. Have the dog on leash and walk them around, when they start to get distracted, call their name, snap your fingers, slap your thigh, click your tongue, etc etc and make a quick 180 and head the other direction. The goal is to train your dog to look at you and see which whay you're going. Once they've mastered the living room, move to the hall, kitchen, back yard, the local pet store, the park, keep moving up to more distracing locales. If they start pulling, then take a step back and work them in the living room again.

There are numerous training aids that can assist in training a dog not to pull: chain collars, prong collars, sporns, head halters, etc. Each has it's own merits, too in depth for me to go into quickly but they can all have the potential to be damaging if used improperly so make sure you can find someone to teach you their proper use.

If she's not lunging ahead, then I'd reccomend a HalT or other type of head halter. The basic premise is the dog will go where it's looking, and when it starts to get ahead of you, the halter pulls their head back around and they end up looking at you.
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