You get ready to open the door. You take a deep breath, wrap the lead tightly round your hand and gird your loins, ready for that first, unpleasant jerk. You open the door…and you’re off, your dog bounding forward with you trailing haplessly, and rather painfully, behind.
Does this sound familiar?
Between half and over 80% of all dogs pull on lead. Some dogs pull continually, “Come ON, let’s go,” others pull intermittently “I need to sniff HERE.”
Pulling is not good for your dog or for you. I wrote last week about a recent study that showed that even the lightest pressure on your dog’s neck from pulling is enough to risk damage to the vital structures there. (Check out my blog here if you want to read more.) The study recommended you use a harness to walk your dog to prevent this potential problem.
You risk damage too – strain on your arm, shoulder and back from the physical effort and action of resisting your dog’s pulling, torn muscles or tendons from sudden jerks on the lead, wrist and hand damage from the pressure of a lead wrapped tightly round, or even being pulled over or into the road with potentially life changing consequences.
Practice produces progress. If pulling is what your dog is practising they will get good at it. Really good at it. And you will develop mitigating habits, such as wrapping the lead tightly round your hand, or walking your dog on a really short lead, or yanking your dog back every few paces to try and keep them by your side.
Yet it is so simple to train your dog to walk nicely on lead. Simple, though not necessarily easy. Like anything worthwhile in this world it takes practice – lots of practice. And if your dog has developed a strong pulling habit, in both senses of the term, it will take time – changing a habit takes lots of patience and practice.
Practice produces progress. If NOT pulling is what your dog practises, then that too becomes a habit. Simples.
Join us at one of the clinics and make unpleasant, damaging walks a thing of the past.
Keep training and keep safe,
Carol