Tips for stress free walkies

Penname

My dog is badly behaved on walks. There are two issues:

1) He pulls on the lead.
To remedy this, I bought a Halti head collar and a harness that trains him to walk without pulling but neither worked. He ends up getting stressed and starts this anxious bark (extremely high pitched). I have also tried the stop/start technique whenever he pulls but this isn't working either. I have, at this stage, abandoned the head collar and harness as he just wasn't enjoying his walks.

2) He barks at other dogs that pass by.
To remedy this, I distracted him with a treat every time I saw a dog coming to keep his focus on me. This works sometimes but not all the time (there are times where a dog will come out of nowhere or times where I forget to bring treats)

I must note that he is a rescue dog so this is not something we could have nipped in the bud when he was a pup, which would have been preferable. Also, with the other dogs, he is not aggressive - he's actually very submissive when another dog shows interest. He is just curious and wants to play with them. We have doggy 'playdates' and also bring him to the Marley park dog park so we are trying to socialise him.

Has anyone any advice on the two issues? Any tips would be gratefully accepted.

LucyBliss

Ah, the high pitched anxious bark. How well I know that and how many tears I have shed and cried 'where did I go wrong?!" into the wind as my Jack let rip with barks that would have rivalled a opera singer who could shatter glass with one note. To combat this, I've had to initiate a routine whereby he absolutely has to leave the house quiet(er) and calm(ish), just so that we're starting the walk in a somewhat relaxed fashion.

Like your dog, OP, the stop and start just doesn't work. Jack is a busy dog, he wants to keep moving, making him stop does nothing but frustrate him and start him on the lower octaves of the bark. He doesn't pull as much as he did - what we did at the start was power walk him until he had lost that extra energy to pull, or run with him for a bit so that he'd be in a better headspace to listen to our lead training.
Now, I am not a natural runner, I prefer walking so sometimes I say to him "do you appreciate the sacrifice I am making here?! Do you??!!" and he will reply by sniffing a tree. I think that means he understands...

Jack also barks at other dogs or as is more often the case, will bark at the first dog he meets and then ignore any others. When he does, treats are of no use to him, he doesn't care, though he'd happily eat them at home or in the garden or in the car. So when I'm walking him, I keep giving him direction like "this way!" "Good boy!" "heel!" "With me!" "Come along!" That kind of thing. And when we meet a dog, I increase our pace and keep giving him commands to walk with me. Or if he starts to get bouncy on the lead and won't stay to heel, I change direction swiftly and often to get him back focused on me and where we're going.
It's a job and a half sometimes but the other day we met a neighbour with her dog. I stopped to say hello to her and Jack began to whinge. When I told him very sharply to stop it, he did. I was extremely surprised it worked on
the first go to be honest. It wouldn't have a few months ago.

I'm not trying to knock his personality traits out of him but I do want him to be in a place where when I saw knock it off, he'll step back and realise that he doesn't need to react because I'll take care of it. So we're doing a lot of the Nothing In Life Is Free training and getting him to just calm down in his reactions. At this point, there are more dog treats in the house than there are human treats!

Lpfsox

my dog is also a rescue dog and was a terrible puller on the lead when I got him first too. I tried a gentle leader (similar to a halti) which he hated so much that he used to find it and chew it until he eventually destroyed it altogether. The stop start thing didn't work with him either, nor did turning and walking back the way we'd just come as he was so happy and excited to be going for a walk that it just didn't matter to him.

What did work for us was a non-pull body harness in conjunction with some off-lead training to teach the dog what "stay close" (ie walk beside me and match my step) means. It's not 100% foolproof but between the training and the harness I don't have the pulling problem with him any more. Interestingly he only ever really pulled on the lead - off lead (in the park or on the beach) he would tend to mark me more closely anyway.

LucyBliss

Lpfsox, what kind of harness are you using? I've been looking at the front closing ones online, can't find them in any shop in the area - the other ones we used back when he was younger and there were of no use to us - but they're dear enough to order and I can't afford one right now. September is a damned expensive month this year!

Squaredude

My GSD was always pulling on the lead,he managed to snap two collars doing it.I bought a gentle leader(which he eventually destroyed) which did nothing only frustrate him.Decided to get him an easy walk harness and it works brilliantly.it gives you a lot more control over your dog.

http://www.premier.com/View.aspx?page=dogs/products/collars/easywalk/description

Penname

Squaredude, thanks - that training harness looks different to mine... must check it out.

Lucy bliss/LPFsox, thanks for the replies. I brought him for runs last night and early this morning, (something I have NEVER done before - with or without dog!) and the poor dog didn't even have time to look at another dog, never mind bark. He was exhausted last night!

Having said that, running is all well and good but at some stage we'll be walking so I'll need to find some way of reeling him in (lead wise and barking wise).

Lpfsox

LucyBliss wrote: »

Lpfsox, what kind of harness are you using? I've been looking at the front closing ones online, can't find them in any shop in the area - the other ones we used back when he was younger and there were of no use to us - but they're dear enough to order and I can't afford one right now. September is a damned expensive month this year!

Hi Lucy

I got him one of these: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Non-Pull-Dog-Harness-Pulling/dp/B000OIRLO6/ref=pd_sim_petsupplies1 - going now for a super-cheap price on amazon. I got mine in the pet shop on the long mile road who fitted it for me to make sure the size was ok (I use the medium sized one on my collie - he's generally in the "large" size for most things but the large harness was too big for him). It's not a front closing one - more of a sort of vest thing - but it does work really well and like I say between that and the training he's a pleasure to walk now.

Taltos

We use the Sensation Soft Touch harness - and get them from Dog Training Ireland.
http://www.dogtrainingireland.ie/shop/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=438

Have to admit it still takes patience, would recommend you ask the folk there to help you size it correctly otherwise it will just slide around. Using this we still do use the stop-start, get some crying but the dog knows what we are looking for so in our case once we outwait the little cry we are immediately rewarded with our mite coming back to her proper place so we can continue.

Hope you find a solution that works for you.