Holidays

[GhostCastle]

Our dog is usually very well behaved, but when he is in a new environment he pulls like a train on a lead. He doesn’t pull on street walks around our local area. The holiday has been stressful at times because he is desperate to get ahead of us. Obviously it must be exciting with all the new smells. I feel jealous watching owners with their chilled pooches. If he’s not trying to pull us, he is whining for us to keep moving. We went to a dog friendly museum, and it was stressful. He just wanted to keep speed walking around. I love watching him run around on the beach, but it has made me feel sad that we can’t just take our time to look around when he is on lead. It’s probably too late to correct his behaviour. We don’t travel that often, so he is used to his routine at home. Will it get better with age? He is 3. I think this will be the last time we take him away during the summer hols.🙁

He's only three so it's absolutely not too late, but it's just something you need to work on via training - there's no magic solution unfortunately.

I would look at "capturing the calm" - basically, if you see your dog behaving calmly with no prompt from you, reward them, either with a treat (nothing exciting, just place it near them) or with calm, gentle praise. The idea is that they then do more of that behaviour as they learn it brings good things, but they learn to do it naturally rather than by force or pressure from you.

Adding onto that, you want to teach a "settle" command. Start at home and encourage your dog to settle on a bed or blanket. Once they do so on command, you can move the command to more distracting environments - the garden, the park etc.

Then, ideally, when you go away, your dog will want to behave calmly because they know it's what you want from them, iyswim.

However, saying all that, my dog would be bored stiff just wandering around a museum - I mean, practically speaking, what's in it for the dog? So beforehand, I'd be making sure he was tired, fed, toileted and well-exercised so he wasn't "needing" anything :)

Really good advice, thanks. I will work on teaching him to settle. I brought his dog bed into a pub when he started getting restless the other day. It helped him to chill to a certain extent. I still felt very tense eating my dinner. Makes sense to work on that. I feel very anxious about his whining annoying other people. I’m sure he must pick up on that.

They definitely pick up on our anxieties too which is a really difficult thing to solve!

I suppose it's partly "fake it until you make it" - try not to let yourself get tense as if travels down the lead to your dog and they will react accordingly - easier said than done I know 🙈

If he whines and barks you could also work on teaching a quiet command. It sounds weird but the best way to do it is to teach them to bark on command - once they've learnt that (it shouldn't take long!) you teach "quiet" and reward that. Eventually you'll be able to stop the barking just by using the quiet command 😊

For lead walking, he probably needs more practice in unfamiliar settings before going on holiday. If he only ever walks in the same streets at home, a brand new environment might be really overwhelming for him. Can you take him to some nearby but unfamiliar places once or twice a week? The more he has the opportunity to experience new places, the less likely he will be to react by pulling on the lead the next time you're on holiday. Loose lead walking is a skill like any other, it requires repetition and reinforcement. But it's worth it. And your dog is definitely not too old to learn!

I second making sure he’s had a good walk or a runaround first.

when we used to take our dog to the pub we would take treats or buy a bag of crisps and sit them on the table edge. She would watch them for us (as long as she got a reward every so often).

iI was also advised to use that squeeze toothpaste cheese for heel training. You squeeze and let them lick straight from the tube. Perhaps on something like the museum tour that would be a help.

Training dogs is mostly bribery until you get the behaviour you want.

Thank you for more great advice. I will have a think about where we can take him that’s different back home. Somewhere he needs to be on lead for at least part of the time. I don’t think it helps that we take him to places where he can be off lead. I love to watch him running around, and he has great recall. I will do some work with him because it’s not relaxing having him straining to get everywhere at top speed!
I need to get my anxiety under control. I get so uptight when he slightly misbehaves. He obviously isn’t that bad because a lady said how well behaved he was at the pub. I just felt on edge the whole time like when my kids were young.

I think you can feel very judged as a dog owner!

We are on holiday and our cocker has entered peak excitement and is pulling absolutely everywhere. I also took him to the beach yesterday and forgot his ball and he shot off like a bullet and ran really far into the sea chasing a sea gull (he had never seen one before). I was mortified as his recall is usually excellent but he couldn't hear me over the noise of the sea. He came back and I immediately put him back on lead! Went back to the beach with the ball today and he was much better and we watched a lady arrive with her 2 springers and they did exactly what he did yesterday! I helped her catch one of them!

So don't feel alone. I think some dogs just get super excited on holiday - like toddlers! Ours has never been trainable with food - he just doesn't care. He also walks beautifully at home (some of the time!).

Your post made me smile @OReillyTheOneEyedTelescope.Thanks for sharing. You have made me feel so much better. Strangely enough our dog went charging off into the sea the other day. Nothing there for him to chase. It was as if he had lost his fluffy mind. Really weird. He couldn’t hear us over the sound of the sea. Thankfully the sea is shallow for a long way out, and my teen DS caught up and told him to go back. I really don’t know what he was doing! He is definitely like a hyper toddler. He’s so chilled back home.

I definitely worry about being judged. I felt like that a lot when my kids were young, especially in an environment where they were the only young kids around. Hoping they didn’t misbehave and draw attention to us.

My old dog hated National Trust properties for some reason. Just seeing the sign put him in a bad mood. He’d pull on the lead, bark and whine - things he usually never did. I guess some places are just not to a dog’s liking!

Maybe think about your whole day plans a little more and try and identify what gets your dog tired, settled or the adrenaline up.
mid you think haring around a beach gets the adrenaline up, it might be very difficult for them to then settle. Whereas a new environment with lots of sniffs might be a bit calmer and mentally tiring. Think of what you want to do later in the day and plan accordingly.
activities like licking and chewing are relaxing and release stress.
So for instance if you plan on going to a pub for lunch, I would maybe go to a garden beforehand where they can have a walk, lots of sniffs- but other dogs will be on the lead so there isn’t a chance for adrenaline boosting play. I’d then go to the pub give a treat like a pizzle whilst we had drinks and then aim for a bit of a snooze whilst we ate.
On lead places things like National trust gardens are good for this