Treats are the key to teaching your dog how to walk to heel!

COLUMN: Pawsability by Anna Patfield

Thinking about what to write about this month, I googled “dog news”. And what pops up? Dogs and lambs, well, and Crufts.

With lambing on the go just now, if you’re walking your dog in the countryside, it’s really safest to keep them on lead and figure out some other way of providing exercise. But it’s just so stressful walking a dog on lead because they continually pull. It’s not a pleasant walk – for either dog or person.

Teaching heel in the traditional way can be exasperating too. Walk, wait for the lead to tighten, stop, turn the opposite direction or, wait for it to slacken and move on. Repeat. Is it really fair to hope that the dog will figure it out?

Much more effective, is to help our dogs to just love walking beside our legs; helping them to learn that good things happen when they are just right there. So how is this done?

Well, start off in a quiet, distraction-free location. Encourage them to be at your leg, facing the right way – either guide them into position or move yourself beside them. Reward them right there. Pop a wee treat in your hand; put your hand just at their nose; take one step and reward them as they walk forward keeping their head at your leg. Repeat. Take another step or two. Gradually build up the number of steps. Repeat. Practice in a different place, but go back to the first step.

Practice in different locations and with different distractions. Repeat this several times a day for a minute or so. There are a couple of other solutions which are a bit more fun – have a look on PawsAbility.co.uk for top tips.

Of course, the earlier training starts, the better. Teaching puppies when they are only eight weeks old is far easier than having to unlearn bad habits.

And how do we keep up exercise levels if we need to keep our dogs on lead for a bit? "Fetch” is a great way to focus the direction of running, building on recall training, bonding, having fun, avoiding distractions and teaching patience and self control.

True, some dogs seem to not like this game. They don’t seem to “get” that when we throw something away, they are meant to bring it back! Doh! But they can be taught to love the game. The solution? Start with ball on rope tug and throw start out by throwing only short distances.

As always, there can be many other difficulties with this, so do have a look at the free training notes onwww.pawsability.co.uk or email anna@pawsability.co.uk for help.

Anna Patfield, Ardgay, is a dog trainer and behaviourist.

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