Easy Walk Update and Polite Greetings question
I posted a week or so ago asking about what sort of expectations people have for a loose leash walk with a puppy. Corrie is 4 months old and I was finding myself frustrated a lot with him pulling on the leash everywhere we went. There were two things I took from that conversation that are working out really well for me.
1) Lots of people suggested that at 4 months it's more important for a puppy to be experiencing the world than for him to be paying attention to my every move. That makes a lot of sense to me. That's a huge part of the reason we go on walks is to experience new surroundings. If that wasn't important I could just wear him out by throwing the ball in the backyard every day. So I've relaxed on my expectations a little bit. I still want him to walk without pulling on the leash, but I've backed way off on trying to teach "stay with me" (like a very loose heel). I still praise him when he does it voluntarily, but I'm not pushing that.
2) The Easy Walk Harness. Seriously. This thing is amazing. I was pretty skeptical about it. I am not an early adopter of new technologies. I figured that if plain old collars have been working for a thousand years (give or take) then why bother with some new fad? But I was wrong. I got the harness last Wednesday and I didn't even realize how much I had come to dislike our walks with all the pulling until the first walk with the harness. It was fun! Corrie played in the snow as if he was having fun too! And the whole time he was doing it without pulling! Amazing. I didn't notice that he really even tested it, just immediately changed his behavior when I switched to the harness. I was expecting that he would try pulling on it for a while until he figured out that it worked differently. Instead, it didn't seem to trigger whatever made him want to pull in the first place. So we can mosey along through the neighborhood and he can check stuff out here and there, and he rarely pulls on the leash. Very nice.
The only time that he still pulls significantly is when he wants to say hello to another human or dog. I'm not sure how to deal with this. He doesn't lunge hard enough to get turned around by the harness. He just pulls against it just enough that his front feet are almost off the ground, but not so much that it throws him off balance. I'm teaching him at home that the only way to get attention is to sit calmly. But I can't force people walking down the sidewalk to stand still until he sits, so I can't really enforce that behavior out in the real world. It also feels weird to just haul him along after me, ignoring the other person/dog, and allowing Corrie to continue barking and lunging until we're past them. While I can see that he's wagging his tail and genuinely wants to lick their faces (and that's what he does if we stop to say hello), his hackles are also up and he's lunging and barking in a way that's likely to make people think he's aggressive. Right now people aren't concerned because he still looks like a cute puppy, but when he's an adult if he has the same behavior he's going to scare people.
How do you deal with teaching your puppy polite greeting manners with people in the real world? I've thought about a big button on top of his head that says "Please don't pet me unless I'm sitting down!" :)
Thanks!
DeAnna
1) Lots of people suggested that at 4 months it's more important for a puppy to be experiencing the world than for him to be paying attention to my every move. That makes a lot of sense to me. That's a huge part of the reason we go on walks is to experience new surroundings. If that wasn't important I could just wear him out by throwing the ball in the backyard every day. So I've relaxed on my expectations a little bit. I still want him to walk without pulling on the leash, but I've backed way off on trying to teach "stay with me" (like a very loose heel). I still praise him when he does it voluntarily, but I'm not pushing that.
2) The Easy Walk Harness. Seriously. This thing is amazing. I was pretty skeptical about it. I am not an early adopter of new technologies. I figured that if plain old collars have been working for a thousand years (give or take) then why bother with some new fad? But I was wrong. I got the harness last Wednesday and I didn't even realize how much I had come to dislike our walks with all the pulling until the first walk with the harness. It was fun! Corrie played in the snow as if he was having fun too! And the whole time he was doing it without pulling! Amazing. I didn't notice that he really even tested it, just immediately changed his behavior when I switched to the harness. I was expecting that he would try pulling on it for a while until he figured out that it worked differently. Instead, it didn't seem to trigger whatever made him want to pull in the first place. So we can mosey along through the neighborhood and he can check stuff out here and there, and he rarely pulls on the leash. Very nice.
The only time that he still pulls significantly is when he wants to say hello to another human or dog. I'm not sure how to deal with this. He doesn't lunge hard enough to get turned around by the harness. He just pulls against it just enough that his front feet are almost off the ground, but not so much that it throws him off balance. I'm teaching him at home that the only way to get attention is to sit calmly. But I can't force people walking down the sidewalk to stand still until he sits, so I can't really enforce that behavior out in the real world. It also feels weird to just haul him along after me, ignoring the other person/dog, and allowing Corrie to continue barking and lunging until we're past them. While I can see that he's wagging his tail and genuinely wants to lick their faces (and that's what he does if we stop to say hello), his hackles are also up and he's lunging and barking in a way that's likely to make people think he's aggressive. Right now people aren't concerned because he still looks like a cute puppy, but when he's an adult if he has the same behavior he's going to scare people.
How do you deal with teaching your puppy polite greeting manners with people in the real world? I've thought about a big button on top of his head that says "Please don't pet me unless I'm sitting down!" :)
Thanks!
DeAnna