Offleash behaviour to Leash training

[silverfz]

Funny how things change anyway gigi is 4 yrs and she is excellent offleash.

I will say "stay" and take the thrash to the front of the house [live on a busy street] or if someone with dog is walking in front of the house and she will hold till i release. Even if go into the garage and come back 10 minutes she will hold the stay.
She is really good at stay , stop , down and heal with hand signals. She will walk with me off leash close.

now put a leash on her and things get a bit off. I had back surgery and still have a limp. so our daily walks she is dragging me a bit as i am slow, she in ahead running point , when people walk by i get her and she makes sure is in gaurd mode with me. When other dogs go by forget it. she looses it and want to bark and play. she seems obsessed with other dogs.

I want to train her again . i want her behave better on leash. We walk a few miles everyday . once she walks a mile she is so much better on leash and gets nice.

i thought by 4 she will be a bit more calmer. We camp alot and hike and she is really good and loves to travel with us. She is excellent travelling too. so its just leash re-activeness.

I all appreciate any info on what training i should look for. Her leave it is excellent too. i can have her drop cookes, roadkill or even deer legs she got hold off.

PS : when she was 8 month someone reached behind me to touch her during a walk after walking by us to pet her without me know. She grabbed her hand . i posted that 3 yrs ago. she is not that dog but it is always in the back of my mind.

[barry581]

Brooks walks better off leash than on, he won't pull but he will go right to the end of the leash so it's tight. I do a variety of things, such as stopping, changing directions, verbal corrections etc, etc. We don't do a lot of on leash walking, so it's not a really big concern, but I still have an expectation and enforce decent leash manners. I think it really boils down to consistency, hold them to the standard you want.

[kimbersmom]

Kimber was similarly better off-leash than on. I finally knuckled down when she was about 2.5 because I was sick of being dragged around. Like Barry said, consistent training is key. I'd break your challenges into two: 1) impulse control when walking on leash, and 2) actual walking.

1) Kimber was well behaved when she saw others while on leash because from the time she was 6 months old, I started training her. I used to take Kimber to Starbucks and parks with a decent amount of foot traffic, sit on a bench with her on leash next to me, and treat her extensively when people pet her and she didn't jump on them, and when she kept calm when New! Best! Friend! (aka, any strange dog) walked by. Even when she became dog reactive later in life, she never bothered or reacted to another dog while she was on leash with me. (Unless they got right in her face and tried to sniff her, but that's a different challenge.) So I would suggest impulse control training on leash can help. Stormy is a bit bonkers and has really benefitted from Susan Garett's impulse control training (google youtube).

2) If she calms down after a mile, it could be she has a lot of pent up energy at the start. Can you play a quick, rigorous game of fetch so she can get the ants out of her pants before you start walking? For the pulling, I'd probably look into a prong collar. I tried every "be a tree" "switch direction" strategy out there, both by myself and with a trainer. We finally decided that Kimber's prey drive/independent streak was just going to require a correction. As scary as the prong collar looked, Kimber loved it because she knew it meant we were going on an adventure.

[Snowshoe]

The book, "Control Unleashed" by Leslie McDevitt helped us a lot. Got us past the big, black dog who always charged his fence at us and in and out of some tight spaces. Literally tight, dogs close together. Don't take the title literally though, we used it mostly on leash.

Leslie McDevitt: Control Unleashed®