I'm having trouble with my dog Samba who pulls on the lead while we are out walking. She takes me for a walk, rather than the other way around. Its not the relaxing experience I want it to be.
My dog did the same until I learnt about random walking. Basically it involves walking in random directions keeping you dog on a short lead. As they don't know where they are going they will stay by your side.
That's a good idea. My dog is very strong and stubborn, and in order to get her to stop pulling me all over the place I would stop and turn in the opposite direction, everytime she pulled on the leash. I would walk back about 10 feet, then turn around and make her sit and wait. After she was calm, I would quietly tell her to "come" and we would start walking again. Fortunately she is quite intelligent so she figured out what I wanted from her pretty quickly. Now she is great to walk. Unfortunately this method has not worked with my other dog (he is not quite so smart ) so I am going to start using a halti on him. Wish me luck!
A halti is basically a head collar for a dog, similar to that which a horse would wear. It slips over their muzzles and does up behind their heads. You clip your dog's leash onto a ring that hangs under their chins. When they pull on the leash the straps around their muzzle tightens. I use a Halti's on my dogs and I have found that I have much better control over them. They found the halter odd to wear initially, and both tried to get it off, but once we were out walking, they quickly learned to trot along nicely beside me without yanking me all over the place. I personally think they are great!
Hi I am new to this site and am just reading some of the posts - I am trying to retrain a 6 year old westie who has been neutered - he let me put on the halti head collar twice now he will not come near it! - He is very aggressive and I am trying to go back to basics - he lets me go through doors first and sits etc but he will not listen to me when he is barking and gets very aggressive - I thought the halti would be good but I am not having much luck - can any one suggest anything please
Try a Lupi. They're made by the same company as Gentle Leaders (similar to Halti's), but there's a loop that goes over your dogs head, then the front legs each go through another loop. The middle bit where it all comes together sits around the breastbone. You then attach the leash to the bit on the top and your dog DOESN'T PULL . Sounds complicated, but it actually isn't, it's just difficult to explain. The first time I tried it with mine - a fox terrier and a rhodesian ridgeback who were unmanageable - it took me well over half an hour to walk 1.25 miles (it used to take 17 minutes!). I was a bit exasperated because they weren't walking fast enough, but the pulling has stopped and walking them now a pleasure.
