Loose lead tips

[Butterfrog]

Anyone who has mastered loose lead training with a bouncy and over friendly young dog, what are your top tips?

A good trainer - where are you based?

Ours is much older and reactive but we now have done loose lead walking, which is much better than it was.

A serious amount of training and patience needed. For our DDog we also had to build up trust so she knew that she could rely on us not to put her in harms way.

It starts at home the week you bring them home.
Start with teaching them where heel is off a lead. Start with a few seconds and gradually build up to 2 minutes.
Once they undretajd where heel is in the garden you then introduce the lead and repeat the process.
Once they can do 2 mins on lead you then progress to walking to eg garden gate and back repeatedly.
Once they can do this you move to walking outside the house eg 10 metres up the road and back.

The whole idea is that they never learn where the end of the lead is or how to pull in the first place.
A dog that has already found the end of the lead will take longer but I would still use the process above. It is force free and positive rather than negative through the use of gadgets.

It is hard work and takes a lot of concentration for a young dog to walk to heel so set them up to win by bot asking them to maintain it for long. That might mean driving to off lead walks whilst you practice the heel walking at home.

If you don't feel confident then go and get 1-2-1 lessons from a gundog trainer.