Re: Lead Walking and New Dog

[Anonymous]

Hi,

The dogs distract each other – I had this sillyness when we had Mist last summer.  My 2 dogs who both walk well together under cue suddenly turned into monsters and I had Mist tugging like a huskie dog AND a toddler who needed his hand holding !!!

It is definately patience and practice.

I would tackle this by using Fly’s time to tackle the ‘distractions’ – make sure her C5 heelwork is of a fair level without distractions and then try adding them and keeping her focus.  Would she lose focus if you walked somewhere new to her or with lots of people around ?  How about when someone walks another dog down the opposite side of the street ? what about one walking the same way infront of her ? 

How about getting ollie’s mum to walk by / infront / behind you and see if her attention keeps focus, then get ollies mum to take Ollie and keep her focus, then work up to trying Meg and then Ollie and Meg (ollie’s mum dont worry if they not perfect or they bark – the point isnt for you to be perfect here its for Fly to learn she cant just break cue when she fancies) then try wally (with ollies mum handling him) as he reacts like a bit of a nutter he’ll be a good test !

You need to do something similar with Wally but sloooooower there will be a way you can get his attention back you just need to slow down and back up with the pup 🙂

Once Wally is to the point where you can atleast distract him and walk on then you could try walking him out with someone else doing Fly to test how she copes with him firing off once you have her not firing and him ‘distractable’ then try them back together again but stick to the cues and “ahah”‘s and dont let them repeatedly break. 

If you need to walk them at the same time then you need someone else but ollie’s mum is right – they absolutely must know what they are doing too as it wont speed things up it’ll just slow them down 😉

Try and remember each time that you put them in a situation and allow them to bark at other dogs it strengthens this response that you dont want them doing – you need to manage this heavily until you get her cue better or you are just working against yourself.

Claire x