Training a Puppy to Go for a Loose Leash Walk

In this Omaha puppy training session we worked with Rosie, a one-year-old Miniature Australian Shepherd who needed help to stop pulling on the leash and go for a loose leash walk.

When I chatted with Rosie’s guardians about their main puppy behavior concerns I learned that Rosie pulls on the leash a lot and they wanted to help training her to loose leash walk. I taught them a few tricks: one using the reverse sit where they take a couple of steps backwards and ask her to sit in the house. Then slowly progress to moving faster around the house to teach her that following you is fun! The other puppy training tip that I gave them is to use a martingale collar with our structured walk exercise, which you can see below.

As you can see in the video above Rosie caught on quickly! I want to remind the guardians that when they make a leash correction that they want to make that quickly- you don’t want to have tension on the leash very often. When you pull the leash up you should release just as quickly. Also, remember that these are gentle corrections.

By the end of the session Rosie was relaxing from her walk. She was learning to look to her guardians for leadership and direction. To keep up with this good behavior remember to be consistent with your training and keep the rules and structure in place that we discussed during the session. We wrapped up this puppy behavior session with Rosie’ Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.