Giving in to leash pressure is a loose leash walking foundation skill that will cue Chai to reorient when reaching the end of her leash and keep her from pulling sideways once we are working on collar mode.1
June 1, 2023 (day 56) – Chai’s first two leash pressure sessions on a collar!
I haven’t put a collar on Chai before her first session today – she doesn’t even have a collar of her own yet, so the one you’ll see in this video is a bit big. It’s one of Game’s collars that I rarely use. I’ve only walked Chai on a harness so far. Note: it is MUCH easier to teach leash skills to a dog who doesn’t have a history of pulling yet. If your dog does, it is completely normal for them to take longer than Chai. It is easiest to teach leash walking to a puppy.
Collar leash pressure session 1:
Session 2:
In her second collar leash pressure session, Chai gives in every time before I bring out the treat – that’s our cue to take things into a new environment in the next session after!
June 2, 2023 (day 57) – leash pressure in a new environment
We repeated the leash pressure behavior up on our roof – a low-distraction outdoors environment (no video). Chai did just as well as she had done inside. Leash pressure on a collar: check! We’ll be moving on to the next foundation behavior for our invisible line LLW behavior: the hand touch!
(1) In this post, I am specifically referring to the invisible line approach to loose leash walking. If you’ve taken the class Out and About I used to teach at FDSA, you’ll know what I’m talking about in terms of the “invisible line.” If you’ve taken Out and About but not worked on leash walking, you can look up the broader context of this approach in the leash walking lectures in your FDSA library!
If you have NOT taken Out and About and want to know what the heck I am talking about, you can get a micro e-book on my loose leash walking approaches here. It comes with all the training steps, larger concepts that are not a part of this blog post (WHY do we need these baseline behaviors in the first place and WTF is an invisible line?), more unlisted example videos and other fun training materials.