Hi it's Beth from Battersea today I'm going to show you how to teach your dog to walk nicely on a lead
Loosely walking is important for lots of reasons, obviously it helps you to have a calm and pleasant walk with your dog but it also encourages your dog to focus on you
To start take your lead in your left hand and your treats in your right and I will guide the dog to my right-hand side and let him smell the food
Give him the instruction of your choice, in this example I'm going to use the instruction “with me” “with me”
At this point take one step forward and reward your dog when he comes with you on a loose-lead
After you've done this we're going to move on to taking two steps before you reward the dog
If your dog pulls or strays away from you just guide him back to your starting position and reset
After this we're going to gradually increase the number of steps that we can take with our dog before we reward them
I'm going to repeat what I've done before but just adding an extra step
“with me”
Consistency is key in loose lead walking so if your dog pulls or strays away from you remember to reset them to the starting position and drop back to the number of paces you know your dog can comfortably walk on a loose lead
Now we're going to increase our distractions and difficulty by changing direction and also adding instructions to our training environment
“with me”
So as you can see I've added some change in direction
Now this is more difficult for my dog so I'm going to increase my rate of reward to reflect this
Please bear in mind that you will need to practice your loose lead walking in areas with different levels of distraction if your dog is struggling and is pulling in an area then move back to an area where you know he is comfortable before you move on again
At home you can increase the distraction by moving from the living room into the garden
You may need to increase your rate of reward as you move into a more distracting area
So now your dog should be comfortable with loose lead walking
If you would like more help and advice on how to train your dog to Battersea Way then visit our website and follow our channels
