Walking my dog on the lead

Jeaniebean

Maybe agility or flyball would wear him out a bit!!!

Raggs_2

My boy is probably much larger than your springer (getting on for 40kg now I would guess), and strong for his size (I've worked with 50kg+ dogs that can't pull like he can).

Jerking the lead can work well, but depending on the dog (and whatever is causing the excitement at the time) it's not an always successful technique. For me it works well when the dogs mind is just wandering a little bit, a small jerk just reminds him whats going on (more than anything it's the sound of the chain going through).

What I do if that's not successful is stop walking, bring him (pull him) back to my side, very short lead (though no tension, it's short so if he starts to wander I can react quicker), and wait for a few seconds. Then "heel" start walking, and he tends to get the idea nicely from this. You can look like a bit of numpty stop starting on the street a few times, but ah well.

Since we got our boy at around 7/8 months we'd missed the golden age for training, and he had received absolutely non previously (no sit, no stay etc etc). He now knows the absolute basics,sit, stay, taught him down this month (2.5 years old), leave, and fantastically useful "gently" (for taking food from the hand, very good when 2 year olds want to give him a piece of cucumber, but don't open their hand fully to do so). All of these things are done with a great deal of thought on his part (he's half maremma, read up on them on the UK site, very very true). His heelwork is still not perfect, and is still improving.

Something I think helps is we allow him to investigate things on the walk, but by permission. Basically whilst walking to heel I see a lamppost, bush etc and I know the dog wants to investigate, I give him a command ("go on then" basically do what you want) and he can investigate, once he's done, I call him to heel. If I don't give the command, he's not allowed to investigate. Most the time we let him investigate 90% of what's interesting, because we're out walking him (no point in walking him if he's not allowed to investigate and go to the loo), but occasionally deliberately go past sites of interest just to confirm that it's by permission.