When did you let yours off the lead?

[stripesorspots]

We have a 4 month old Cavapoo and she's been a dream so far. She's been pretty easy to train - she's house trained and can do basic commands, and it's generally 50/50 as to whether she comes if you call her name. However, I can't ever imagine letting her off the lead when out in the park etc. I'm intrigued to know when you first felt confident enough to let yours off the lead? I'm not even considering it for a long time, but as a first time dog owner, I'd like to know how you know when it's time.....!!?? In the meantime, we have a large garden, so she gets plenty of free running around play time.

From around 12 weeks.

My dog was also very trainable and we played with games and treats to work on recall and getting him to run from my dd to me and vice versa. I think the sooner the better.

I haven’t let my last two puppies off the lead at all except when it’s very quiet and I am basically alone. Which has worked out well as I get up at 4AM every day so first walk is usually before most people are awake.

There are way too many out of control and, quite frankly, dangerous dogs for me to risk a young puppy/adolescent off the lead in a busy public area and later in the day. At least when a puppy is on the lead other people are more likely to keep their dog away and you can choose when to do introductions.

When they’re adults, they’re off all the time. But puppies are mentally and physically to vulnerable for me to take the risk.

first walk as she wanted to be next to me, so much so that she jumped into my arms when she saw a big scarey dog!

From day 1, as pp's have said, they don't wander more than 2 metres at that age. It was also during this time that I heavily used treatment based rewards for recall when I / he spotted another human/animal. He's 3 now and has 100% recall (so far),he even spots animals/humans before me as he automatically comes back to heal when he sees one. It makes walking a dog and absolute pleasure around where I live.

From day one as he was glued to my leg then. Now nearly 3 and recall is pretty good. Takes his time if there is something good to sniff. Other dog was 100% from four months.

When we got our dog I read the happy puppy book and she says to let your puppy off the lead from day dot, when they really little they stay close by to you anyway. Then you can start working on recall. The worst mistake you can make is keeping them on the lead.

Anyway it worked for us, my Labrador has very good recall with minimal effort

Practice recall religioly! Calling dog from the garden/:otherroom / or whatever? Good doggy & treat.

First and subsequent walk, no lead at all. (Unless required to protect wildlife or on roads/ pavements that are busy. I have a very quiet neighbourhood and have taken my pup out without a lead. Just a few meters up and down the road to show doggy where we live. )

Teach your dog to stay with you by giving regular treats.

If they stray to far ahead/ behind, call them and treat.

Also time your recall, if they are intensively sniffing or following a scents they might not hear you. In that case change direction. This will teach them to always have an eye/ ear on you!

Big dogs (with a very few exceptions) usually ignore or give puppies some grace. Up till first season or puberty (whatever it is with male dogs).

Oh dear. I waited til he was 10 months and used a longline before that. He's my first dog.
He's not 100% even with very high value rewards but he doesn't run off as such although I had a moment just this weekend where he strayed into a small parking area. He just wouldn't listen although he could hear me fine. Little shit.
So he went back on the lead.

He's 11 months now btw

Ours was from straight after his jabs, over time he needed a long line as he got more adventurous. Now his recall is great unless he sees other dogs fairly close, so I'm always scanning and grab it. Now devoid of his bollocks he's seemingly much better so we are using the long line less and less. Even if he's on the line I'll do 10+ recalls every walk, it's drumming it into him. I write this mainly to say it's not a straight line and his behaviour changes with his development.

We took on a rescue at around 5/6 months old and kept him on a long line for the first couple of weeks and played recall games every day until we were certain he’d got it! We were both nervous as hell the first day we let him off even though we knew he’d come back, and it worked a treat.

We ‘lost’ him a couple of times when he was about 2, when he shot off exploring the woods but just stayed calmly where we were and he came back grinning and desperate for a drink!

He’s 5 now and has an on-lead poo/wee walk first thing in the morning, then an off-lead evening walk where he can zoom about as much as he likes, but we still do recall exercises every day just to remind him that he needs to listen!

After reading this thread I took my 4 month old out and let him off lead - so far all our walks have been on a long line because I was worried he’d disappear into the ether. He didn’t, he had a bit of a run, checking where I was and came back and forth.

I slipped a lead on when we came across another dog because his recall isn’t there yet and he’s very bouncy with other dogs, but he was off lead for about 70% of the walk. I wouldn’t have even tried until his recall was bombproof without reading the advice here. He loved being able to run and sniff and it made for a nicer walk for us both.

I’m so envious of you all with dogs with bombproof recall! How do you get your off lead dogs to ignore other dogs and not run up to greet them?

I think we were lucky. My dogs a collie and he just doesn't want to play with other dogs. He just doesn't have any interest in them. They can come over to us for a sniff but he just doesn't engage with them. He puts me off having another dog, purely because I don't think I'd ever get one as good as him again

Around here it's fine for offlead dogs to greet and play with other offlead dogs, providing your dog will walk on with you when you're ready / the other dog is not interested.

It's not ok for your offlead dog to approach onlead dogs, so that takes some training along with being alert to recall and put lead on if necessary if your dog is not able to walk past ignoring the dog on the lead.

I’ll put mine back on lead if an on lead dog is approaching and if the dog is further away when he’s off lead then he’ll ignore them.

What I’ve discovered is that not every off lead dog and their owner is fine with another off lead dog approaching theirs - and I’ve seen that repeated on threads on here too. It’s a minefield.

Yes, get a longline. Go somewhere quiet and practice recall. When you are confident of recall when there are other dogs/people go for it.

Long line here for three years! Have done all the practising in different locations with different distractions but I still can’t trust him 100%. He’s perfect if there are no distractions close by but I haven’t yet managed the close distractions.

Within first couple of walks. On a beach where it was small but she couldn't get off the beach. She stuck to us like glue for most of the time.

Now she's off the lead most walks apart from when it's not appropriate like near a road or cattle.

Doing an activity like agility has helped

Our problem is ours is lovely off the lead, stays with us, checks in, avoids other dogs or polite sniff (unless it's an Alsatian when she barks like an idiot). But we never nailed down lead walking as were concentrating on recall and off lead....

She's a bugger on the lead.

Treats probably.

I'd put mine on a lead coming up to another dog if it was going to run up and play. Ours doesn't like other playful dogs but will ignore them happily so I'm loath to put her on a lead everytime we meet one. But if it looks like a 'oh ignore him he's just friendly' dog, I'll put her on the lead.

We use 'this way' to redirect if our 18 month old decides to bound after another dog.

It's also a really good back up command if he is temporarily deaf to his recall command.

Works really well too if I spy a muntjac or other distractions.

He's an HPR breed so doesn't take much for him to be distracted.

Our trainer also advised us to recall him and put him on the lead at several unexpected points of his off lead walks and that's really helped

We do treats, on/off long line and this way at random times too. Also have trained him to my whistle (100% if no doggy distractions, less so if there are) or will run the opposite way from him shouting his name is a ‘woohoo!!’ way and everything else mentioned on here but I still can’t be 100% sure of his recall.