Day Seven -- Let's Go

Some dogs hate to go out in the rain, even to go to the bathroom. It can be quite a challenge when you live in Oregon. Ubu, however, is not one of those dogs. It makes life so much easier when he will readily go out in the rain.

It means we can still get all our training done even when the weather is bad. Maybe our pictures aren't the best but we do what we can. When we're working on "Let's Go," which is the command to have him walk nicely beside you, we always want to make sure we have a nice, loose leash. If it's a tight leash, he won't learn how to walk properly on the leash. Besides, we want to put the responsibility of walking nicely beside you on him. If we have a tight leash, all that responsibility is on us.

Before we start out and whenever we stop, I want him to come to a sit beside me. This keeps him in a controlled position and it let's him know he's still on task. Leash work should be practiced on both sides so you can easily transition him to walking on either side of you.

While he's walking, I'm going to talk to him, pat my leg, and reward him periodically to keep him in position. If I see a distraction ahead, I will reward more frequently to keep his attention on me. If he gets ahead of me, I will either stop moving forward or I will turn the opposite direction. Continuing to move forward when a dog is pulling on leash is a sure fire way to teach a dog to pull on leash.

It's great if your dog checks in with you while you are walking. You want him to look to you for direction. He still needs to be able to scan his environment and see what's going on around him but you do want him to stay connected to you too. So paying attention to him, smiling and praising him when he checks in with you is really important. And, of course, in the beginning, short training sessions are important. Too long of sessions will likely result in a puppy with poor leash skills. Their poor little brains can handle too much learning all at once and it's a lot of work to learn how to walk nicely on leash. It's a lot of work but all the hard work you put in now will pay off big in the long run!