Easy Leash Training Tips to Help a Rescue Dog

For this West LA in-home dog training session we worked with newly adopted Taiyo, sharing some positive leash training tips.

Taiyo or Tai was recently adopted by a friend of mine who has never had a dog before, so I was very happy to do this session.

We started off with a number of dog training fundamentals. We introduced a marker word, used hand targeting to work on our timing. I went over the proper way to introduce a new command cue, dog consent and cut off signals, exlained how celebrating desired behaviors is an easy way to teach dog manners and some creative exercise tips.

We ran through all of those exercise fairly quickly, so I wanted to make sure that I included links on this page so that Tai‘s guardian can go back and practice them all individually.

I recommended he practice in short one to two minute practice sessions three times a day; morning, midday and again in the afternoon/early evening. A dog training secret that many people are unaware of is that it is much more powerful and effective to practice in short more frequent practice sessions than one long one or skipping days in between.

Leash Training Tips

Now we were ready to go over one of the main behavior issues they needed help with, how to teach Tai to stop leash pulling.

One of the most common mistakes people make when they want to stop dogs from pulling on the leash is to practice on an actual walk or outside. This creates a lot of motivation for the dog to pull on the leash which works against you.

Instead, I like to share tips to stop leash pulling inside the dog’s home. Since most dogs have already sniffed everything in the house, they don’t have much motivation to pull away from you and there are fewer distractions so they can listen and learn faster.

There are a number of exercises to teach dogs to walk with a loose leash. I run through a few of those in the positive leash training video below.

Tai did great on these exercise to stop a dog from pulling on the leash. After we shot the video, I coached his guardian through the same techniques until he was getting the same results.

I would like to see him practice these loose leash walking tips in short, 2-5 minute practice sessions. Practicing more frequently in shorter sessions will allow the dog to learn faster and produce quicker results.

Stopping a dog from pulling on the leash is all about conditioning them to walk with you. This happens best through frequent, short successful practice sessions. Fortunately for Tai, his guardian is persistent. Nothing in the world takes the place of persistence, so I’m anticipating some pretty quick and dramatic results.

I covered a number of other dog training tips in this in-home West LA Dogs training session. To make it easy for Tai’s Guardian to remember them all, I recorded a roadmap to success summary video that you can check out below.