Tips on How to Walk Dogs – Walking a Dog Off Leash!
So your dog used to going for walks and being off the lead. Do you get scared of the prospect of letting your dog off the lead and scared that he or she might run away and never come back. Today I’m actually going to share some tips with you to make you a little bit more relaxed at letting your dog off the lead. It’s important to understand that all of these concerns are normal because it is a new dog or it might even be an older dog that you have adopted or taken on and it’s a normal worry to have because you do not want your dog to go missing.
Within our personal experience my dog has always been quite good and quite trained when it comes to coming off the lead. The number one tip is to actually start early, with my dog we started straight away when we had him as a puppy. We used to go for a lot of walks with him and train him to stay close when off the lead. We would use methods such as sit if there was a car coming past and we wanted him to stay close “Milo sit, good boy” or we’d use ‘heel which he knows more now.
If we shout heel he will come straight to us and just stay by our side to let them know that this is the sort behaviour they should be portraying. The next tip is to make sure that you know your dog 100%, and make sure you’re 100% confident before doing it. By doing this I mean making sure your dog knows its name so if you ever need to shout it it will come straight back “Milo, come here, come on, good boy”. As well as he is able to obey simple instructions such as sit, paw, lie down. That sort of thing and especially come here or heel “sit, good boy”.
However, a fun fact is that some dogs are actually easier to train, grey hounds and whippets are actually a lot harder to train because they are bred to chase animals, so if these sort of dogs get distracted it may be a little bit harder to train them to come back. Now, another good tip is to start in a secluded area whether that is a big space or like a field, make sure it has fences or hedges that the dog can’t get through, because then you have a little bit more confidence in yourself that the dog isn’t going to run away.
I know when we were training Milo we actually had a rather large garden, so we used to train him in there as well as taking him on walks along a road like a single track road that was quite good because there’s nowhere for him to run. Another good tip, is to actually take some treats with you because then you can use them sort of like a bribe to shout your dog back. I know this is quite a popular method when it comes to training your dog. Now Milo knows to come straight back but still we will still treat him with a couple of treats the last tip is if you still are a little bit uneasy about the thought of letting your dog off the leash straightaway you can actually get a training leash or a long leash which I know that we used for Milo, and all you do is you let the leash on the longest setting and then drag the leash on the floor so it makes the dog feel like he’s a little bit more free.
You still have the control over where the dog goes, and if the dog does start to run away, you have always got that control to stop him straightaway, so those are just a few of our special tips that we use when we were training Milo to stay close when off the lead. If you guys have any tips on how you trained your dog on how to stay close when off the lead, do leave them down in the comments below I will definitely be checking them out.
