Training a Famous Brentwood Dog to Stop Pulling on the Leash

By: David Codr

Published Date: December 16, 2022

stop pulling on the leash

For this Brentwood dog training session we worked with 3 year-old Pit mix Eleven (Our cover boy!); sharing tips to stop pulling on the leash.

Eleven has a special place in our hearts. His guardians are awesome, he is a great dog and we use his puppy photo on the cover of our Omaha puppy class broschure. It was fun to get a pic of him all growns up, posing with the brochure!

We did a couple of sessions with Eleven where we went over the Relaxation Protocol as well as some loose leash walking tips. Normally we teach loose leash walking in 4 separate sessions, but since we will be traveling for the holidays, we crammed them all together in 2 sessions.

How to train a dog to stop pulling on the leash

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Stopping dogs from pulling on the leash is one of the oldest dog training requests out there. Dogs pull on the leash for many reasons; it works (they usually get to what they are pulling towards), we walk super slow compared to dogs and the leash stops that, so they pull.

The number one reason dogs dont walk with a loose leash? People try to teach a dog to not pull on the leash on an actual walk. But we dont learn to drive on the 405. Surgeons dont figure out how to do surgery by slicing people open and seeing how it goes.

Sadly, not teaching a dog to do something – then putting them into an advanced situation and trying to teach them in the moment is all too common for dog guardians. Instead, we teach dogs to not pull on the leash inside in short practice sessions when they arent distracted. This way they can learn what we want first. The work up to more challenging situations later. This is the best way to stop a dog from pulling on the leash.

One of the exercises we use to train dogs to stop pulling on the leash is the walk back game. This game teaches the dog to follow allong with us as we walk instead of racing ahead. If you have a dog who pulls on the leash, check out the free positive dog training video below on loose leash walking.

This is an easy way to train dogs to stop pulling on the leash. Since the dog is looking for the next treat and we are practicing inside without distractions, we can set them up for success. Once the dog is walking with a loose leash easily towards us to get the treat, the guardians can add in the pivot so you are both walking in the same direction.

It was great to see how quickly Eleven caught on. This exercise can be a little awkward at first, but with some practice, most dogs learn to follow us along with a loose leash.

Now there are 7 other loose leash walking exercises we went over, and unfortunately we cant share them all here. But we wanted to make it easy for Eleven’s amazing guardians to put them all together. So we recorded a summary video at the end of this in home Brentwood dog training session with his guardian’s marching orders.

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This post was written by: David Codr