Ensuring Your Dog Walks Beside You
When consulting with clients, a common concern most complain about is a pulling dog; from dragging their relative down to the ground, or the dog extremely distracted by something resulting in a tug of war trying to keep the dog under control.
As a pack animal, there is a ranking system; lead males are Alphas and lead females are Betas. When packs travel together the Alpha and Beta lead the pack, as they determine the directions the pack goes. Thus, whenever you’re walking your dog and your dog is walking ahead of you the dog is in an alpha walk, leading its pack as to where it should go.
It’s important to ensure that dogs don’t initiate and or anticipate behavior within the relationship. As pack animals their instincts will eventually mature into expecting to lead their own pack, whether as Alpha or Beta. Thus, if they’re leading its owner in the direction it wants to use the bathroom, they’ll be allowing a false reality. Failure to address such behavior will eventually spill over in other areas that may become more annoying resulting in potentially relinquishing ownership.
Whenever walking your dog, you should have your dog walk in a heeling position (directly by your side) until you determine where the dog should take its bathroom break. Once said location is determined, you should stop, allowing a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree boundary, preventing the dog from moving your feet once at your desired area. Once the dog has exhausted the area of your choosing, then you should initiate where you want to walk next, repositioning the dog back into a heeling position, as you walk to your next break area.
Keep in mind that the little things we take for granted, such as a simple walk can eventually cause additional issues by handler errors, we may be naïve to.
Circulation drills is the key to encouraging your dog to remain by your side. Whether you’re walking into the dog and or away from the dog, try to obtain a structural object, like the island in the kitchen, the car in the garage, or the sofa in the living room. All of the aforementioned scenarios work exceptionally well, considering minimal space is sufficient contingent you can circle the structure without obstruction.
As you and the dog become more proficient with each other, you should increase the challenge by either widening the circles till you’re keeping the consistency of the dog besides you as the circle become more straight then circular.
As the dog forges, which means the dogs starting to lead you, you can either circle into the dog or walk back away from the dog, which would be determined at the moment; depending on what deems appropriate at the time.
