When you got your dog, I bet you
imagined taking them for a relaxing, peaceful walks through your
neighborhood. But when you got them home, you quickly realized they were less of
a Walker and more of a puller in this video instructor. Rob is going to give you five tips to
stop your dog from pulling on leash so that you can take your aspiring sled dog
out of that lead position and get them into more of a heel position. I'm Ken
Steepe and welcome back to McCann Dogs. One question we get asked very often here
at McCann's is how do I get my dog to stop pulling on their leash?
When we're out for a walk, it can get extremely
frustrating almost to the point. You're so stressed that you don't even
feel like taking your dog for a walk anymore. We're going to give you the tools to
help make that walking experience so much better. So your dog won't pull on their leash
and you're going to want to take them for a walk or take them
wherever you want to go. If your dog's choking on his
collar, you're doing it wrong. The last thing we want is your dog. Don't be pulling on their lease
and also choking themselves. So that's usually because
the collar is poorly fitted, but we can easily fix that.
Usually the collar is too loose, but here's how we're going to address
that. You can see here on ketchup, this collar is on them. It's
sitting there way too low, over top of his shoulders almost.
So when he leans into his leash, he can really pull because it's
sitting nice and low on his shoulders. So he actually has more power.
One thing people often do though, is they switched to a harness thinking
that that's going to stop the dog from choking on their car. But the biggest problem with that is
it doesn't address the issue that your dog's pulling. In fact, it actually
enhances the issue for the dog to pole. Now there's a lot of
different collars out there. So it's really important to choose the
right one for the right training method. And we're going to show you which
one's best to get started with. [Inaudible]. You can see there's a
lot of different collars, and they're all designed with
a specific purpose in mind, even harnesses as well. But what we like to start is with a flat
metal buckle collar and make sure you stay away from the plastic ones. The plastic ones can break
at the clips sometimes, and your dog can be
off before you know it. So we're going to get our flat
buckle collar. And what we have, what we're looking for in the fitting is
to make sure there's a good boy catchy pad. It fits up high on the neck, And it's not going to slide
down. Like I mentioned before, we want it to fit up nice and high, and you can only really fit two
fingers underneath the dog's collar. It's still nice and loose. So
it's not choking your dog at all. But the one thing that you have to
remember, you got those growing puppies. I want to be doing that two
finger check every single day, having a well-fitted collar will give you
more control and also provide your dog with better timing of information. The next thing I want to talk
about is tension in the leash. And what we're looking for is a nice
Slack leash clip pointing towards the ground. It's really important because if your
dog is always under tension and you're holding the leash tight, that goes right down to their collar and
they can feel that and they get used to it. And what they ended up
doing is pulling all the
time because that's all they ever know. So we want to get the leash
nice and loose as we're training. So they don't continue to pull. Now that tension can work in a good
way because it'll cue the dog to move towards us. Once they feel that tension and to see
if you can see how catch it moves around with me, and he feels a
little bit of tension, he starts to move and he'll move
to my side. That's a good boy. Yes. Good boy. Catch up. And that
forever. He feels that tension. He quickly moves closer to me. And even to the point where we can take
that leash off, there's a good boy. Stay nice and close. Hey, there's a
good boy. Yes. Ketchy, come on there. Good boy. Yes. Give him a touch. Good boy. And he learns to move
with me no matter what. So the important thing is when you
have that leash nice and loose, it's almost the same as not
having Alicia on at all. But if you have that tension
in the leash all the time, your dog knows there's
no freedom for them, and they're not really making
a choice to hang out with you. So this is my other dog scout, and she's
got a metal flat buckle collar on too. But sometimes you can get a really strong
dog and you need something to provide them with a little bit more direction
that will help affect change in your dog. So our next go to thing on
that is the general leader. And the reason we like the generally
just so much is it works on head control versus anything else. It controls the movement of the head a
little bit better than the flat buckle collar. And it works on a pressure
system versus a pain system, like some other collars. And the great thing about this
is it's easy to wean off of. So if Scout's walking and she's
doing a really good job, not pulling, I can slide that nose loop off.
There we go. Scout. Good girl. And what I do is I can
just take that clip. And there's a double D-ring underneath
the bottom there and I'll take that clip in. And then now it's acting like it's a flat
buckle collar and then Hey scout. Yes. And if we need to, what we
can do is unclip it from
that double dereg underneath slip that collar back through,
and then over top of her nose. It's okay. It's okay. There we go. And then we can go back to the general
leader if needed. So the general leaders, a good level up option if you needed, if you feel your dog's too powerful
with the flat buckle collar, but just remember, you still have to have good timing and
provide good information to your dog or changing any of the pieces
equipment. Won't be helpful. So one thing that's really important to
stop your dog from pulling is to not let them pull the things that they want to
get to and how we're going to do that is by turning them away from those
things. If he was so distracted, I would slide my hand
down leash, turn him, and then put that Slack back in the
leash like we talked about before. And that's so important because if your
dog is constantly on this tight leash, we talked about, they're just
going to learn to continue to pull. So let's remember, we're not going to allow our dogs to
pull the things that they want to get to. And we turn them away from the
distraction in the opposite direction. You want to work around
distractions, but nothing this close, you want to build up to it.
When catchy was a young puppy, I wouldn't have any of these things out, but as he grew more confident and he'd
hang out with me more and he'd be less distracted, then I would challenge
him with a toy in front of them. And then we'd work through it. Let's talk about a key
takeaway for teaching your
dog to walk on a loose leash, your number one thing, make
sure you're consistent. If you're not consistent with your dog, if you're letting them pull some of the
time and other times they're addressing it, you're really not being clear.
And that's not fair to the dog. Now your next step is to start
applying these tips in your training, but it's also important
that you understand the
mistakes to avoid click that card right there for the biggest mistake
that people make when it comes to leash walking training. If you're
interested in training with us, make sure you check out the link in the
description below to our life skills program, where we can work on that
loose leash, walking with you. And on that note, I'm Ken
I'm Rob. Happy training.
