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Loose Lead Workshop - 3 July 2022
This workshop is to teach the most challenging skill for the dog. Walking alongside their owner takes a huge amount of impulse control.
Dates:
Sunday 3rd July
Times:
9.30am - 11.30am
Location:
West End, nr Woking, Surrey
Our Loose Lead Workshop is to teach the most challenging skill for the dog. Walking alongside their owner takes a huge amount of impulse control.
Dogs have to resist sniffing amazing smells, the strong desire to scent-mark, rushing off to see the other dogs and wanting to go at their naturally fast pace to get to the off-lead area as quickly as possible.
This workshop will teach you the basic heel position using targeting and then it will be developed very gradually to increase the difficulty level to suit your dog’s individual level.
Dogs learn at different rates and are better at some things more than others; therefore, exercises will be adapted to suit each dog’s individual ability.
Lead and Listen only use science-based positive training methods to reinforce the behaviours that are desirable from our dogs. Positive reinforcement training is force-free, fun and very effective.
Teaching our dog to walk with us is more about engagement than a skill.
We need to know how to keep them with us without using the lead to retrain them. Our voices, our body movement and of course rewards all help to keep them with us.
Positioning at our side is the aim and then we have to add distance and distraction to this behaviour. This is often where the problem occurs.
They will walk nicely when they have nothing more interesting around them or if they know that there is no chance of going off lead, but on the way to the off-lead area or past heavy distractions can be way too difficult for them.
During the workshop we will cover:
- Identifying what your dog really loves. This will then be used to reward the loose lead and also be used to distract your dog when proofing the behaviour.
- Understanding arousal levels and body language so we can identify when they are no longer able to respond to the usual cue.
- Learning new ways to lower arousal levels which will improve your dog’s ability to respond to cues.
- Teaching the hand and object target for positioning at heel.
- Teaching impulse control while on a lead.
- Teaching the cue ‘this way’ and ‘look at that’ to manage them better on the lead.
- Walking towards distractions on a loose lead. Starting with low-level distractions and building up the difficulty level.
- Learning how to identify when your dog is engaged and connected with you.
- Understanding best times to train to ensure success and introducing management tools when training is not possible.
- Games to play to improve engagement and to vary the rewards we offer them.