lead walking

[Char22thom]

We have a 4yr old working cocker spaniel bitch who has amazing recall and well trained in lots of areas, but hopeless on the lead or walking to heel. Would really like to tackle this as planning a uk holiday next year where she will need to be on lead (around seaside towns etc) for periods of time. Is it too late to train her? Can anyone offer any tips/advice? X

Apparently spaniels are notorious for pulling on leads (I have one). At our training we are encouraged to keep correcting him using a slip lead because using haltis and harnesses just encourages them to pull more and with more force. Also keep changing direction so they don’t assume they know where you are going whilst you train them.

I have been really putting this into practice for the past couple of weeks by taking him out everyday for a 20 min walk with the view that it is purely for lead training (my cocker is almost 1 year old and is a puller) and it has made quite a big difference in that if there are no other distractions he will walk with a loose lead for about 80% of the time now. I am still working on the pulling when there are distractions

I googled Victoria thingie's (can't remember her name) advice on stopping dogs pulling on lead when I got my Staffie Cross earlier this year. I think the advice of hers that I followed was just stopping when the dog started to pull and then only resuming the walk when she'd relaxed and let the lead go slacker - every time. She learned very fast but, occasionally, will lunge after a squirrel unexpectedly. she is on a longish extendable lead. Whenever she does that (it is very painful on the elbow ligaments!), I stop and get her to come back to me again and sit and calm down before we continue; I do think it is happening less often now.

I should also mention that spaniels naturally track side to side to hunt so walking in a straight line is not natural to them so it will take a lot of effort to train unlike some breeds.

Have a look at Kikopup's videos on YouTube, she's got some excellent ones on loose leash walking.

You definitely don't want to be attaching the lead to the collar of a dog who is consistently pulling and avoid anything that tightens either round the neck or body. A well fitting harness is much better and safer. Something like the Perfect Fit harness is good as it has a ring at the front so you can use a double ended lead with one end attached in the normal position and one attached at the front. This will give you more control in situations where you need to get her from A to B on lead.

We are working on this with our collie cross atm. What works best for us is when he pulls ahead saying 'uh-oh!' in a high pitched, positive voice to get his attention, then turning around, walking back on ourselves in a circle telling him 'heel' before carrying on. It can take a while to get anywhere but it's starting to pay off slowly. Now when he hears 'uh-oh' he checks himself and comes straight back. By the end of a walk he is now usually walking next to us on a loose lead. Because we sometimes use an extending lead we tell him 'off you go' to make the distinction of when he's allowed to go off ahead and investigate the bushes etc.
Keeping everything upbeat and positive and using treats as incentives has worked much better than physically pulling him back, halti collars etc. HTH!