Teaching your dog new tricks
Where do you even start with teaching a dog not to pull? I used to be the person being pulled down the street by a dog and didn’t think there was any other option. But when we brought home Cassius Thunderpaws, a nine-pound half-Great Pyrenees puppy who’d grow up to be 10 times that size, I knew I needed to learn how to handle him, stat. We enlisted the help of Louisville dog trainer Tyler Ohlmann, who blew our minds with teachings like: the leash should be loose when you walk.
Ohlmann (who has three dogs at home in the 130-150+ pound range) shared his best advice for anyone struggling with a dog who pulls. For starters, he said, recognize that the pup is probably just doing what they’ve been taught.
It takes two to pull
“Most people walk a dog wrong,” Ohlmann said. “People think you need to hold the dog in place [so they] pull on the leash to hold the dog. That triggers opposition reflex, and the dog pushes forward. … [and] they walk. As long as the dog is pushing they get to do stuff, they get to explore, and dogs do what works … so [pulling] becomes the price they pay to go somewhere. You’re literally teaching a dog to pull, which is probably a number one reason a dog is walking poorly to begin with.”
Making matters worse, Ohlmann said, are retractable leashes. From a training standpoint the flexi leads are “awful because they teach a dog to pull,” he said, since as the dog pulls, they’re rewarded with more leash. Injuries (to person and dog) occur when the dog runs to the end and breaks the flywheel in the handle — most people are using a lead not appropriate for their dogs’ size, he said — or pulls the lead out of the person’s hand and then runs away. Even bystanders can be hurt if they get between a person and their lunging dog thirty feet of line away.
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Source Credit: NBCNews.com
