Loyal to leather If it’s possible to be in love with a dog leash, than this would be nothing short of true love… For years and years, I’ve been loyal to the leather leash. Afterall, a nicely worn leather leash is about as comfortable as in your hand as big fuzzy slippers on your feet. I’m also a big fan of using a waist leash to walk your dog, specifically if you are teaching loose leash walking skills. I’ve relied primarily on the leather Convertible Service Dog Leash offered by J&J Supplies as my go-to waist belt for training and running… until now. A new generation of leashes In my constant and relentless quest for tools to make managing unruly dogs easier, I found the exquisitely feature-heavy Ruffwear Front Range Harness, which was named as one of the best no-pull harnesses by The Whole Dog Journal this year. But, even more exciting than that, I … Read More
Multi-Part Series: Loose Leash Walking – Part 2
Welcome back to the multi-part series on training your dog to walk on a loose leash. As mentioned in Part 1, it’s important for you to decide what your training goals are before you start training. In many situations, owners are content to put their dog on special equipment, like a no-pull harness or a head collar to minimize pulling. Some owners would like to be able to walk their dog eventually on a regular collar, without any special equipment. If you fall into the latter category, then read on! Terminology Before training begins, it’s important to review some training terminology. Positive training techniques often rely on the use of a behavior marker. A marker – usually in the form of a sound – identifies for the dog the exact moment that they did something correct, and signifies that some form of reinforcement or reward is forthcoming very soon. This … Read More
Multi-Part Series: Loose Leash Walking – Part 1
In my professional dog training opinion, loose leash walking with your dog is one of the most difficult things you might ever have to teach your dog. If there was one key to training a dog well, it’s consistency, of course. Therefore, if you live with any other people in your home (like most of us do!) and those people aren’t 100% on board with your training, this might be a challenge. Sometimes the even bigger challenge is maintaining consistency with ourselves. Remembering to do the exact same thing over and over and over again can become boring, so we humans like to mix it up sometimes. This may or may not be a good learning technique for certain dogs. Also, as we begin to see success with our dogs, we tend to become more lax in our training criteria and the learning curve in our dogs can begin to … Read More
Why You Should Invest the Extra 20 Bucks: Collars and Harnesses
Halters and collars and gentle leaders, oh my! There are so many positive training equipment options out there right now, it can make your head spin, and the selection grows each and every day. The enhanced selection that you can now find in big box pet stores and online stores alike is a very positive thing… and a positive step in the right direction towards exposing dog owners to less aversive equipment options, and thus less aversive training methods. But I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but we’re sort of in a recession. (Okay, not technically, but we all feel like we’re broke… so there.) And some of the recommended items of dog training and management equipment, like Freedom harnesses and Sense-ation harnesses, can sometimes be expensive, not to mention the amount of money that could be spent on training treats can rack up at an accelerated rate. … Read More
The Ultimate Jedi Mind Trick for Your Dog
What’s the most fun, versatile and quickest thing to teach your dog? It’s nose targeting, of course! Nose targeting means that the dog will touch his nose to your hand – or the tip of a target stick – to earn a reward, and it is one of the most basic building blocks of clicker training. Once your dog is trained to target and will follow your hand for extended periods of time, the sky’s the limit on the number of things your dog can learn. I love to tell my clients that targeting is like playing Jedi mind tricks on your dog. “You will come to me… Your nose will touch my hand… You WILL spin in a circle.…” All important and practical things for the Rebel alliance, yes? For me, the most fun thing about targeting is communicating with your dog without physical prompting or manipulation. How incredibly … Read More