HUGE Breakthrough with Charlie

congratulations on your new "trick" with Charlie. I've read the leash yank or snap theory before. I hope it continues to work for you and Charlie. With my girls, they usually aren't prey or lungers on walks... although Roo does a good sled dog when she's scared.

Woo Hoo! I see some calming clicking in Sydney's future. Congrats on your breakthrough with Charlie. You guys have made so much progress in such a little amount of time! The mother of Chandler who works at DG Connection is Christina Curtis. Her dog, Captain Jack, has a profile on here, and is a former National Disc Dog champion. She is the wonderful person who saw Sydney on Petfinder and told me I better check it out because there was a "dog who looked just like Maddie" up for adoption. She is like Sydney's guardian angel.

Even better and more neck-friendly for Charlie is no purposeful yank on the leash. In otherwords, leash is static. As soon as Charlie take tension off the leash and looks your way - heavy reinforcment. Or if this is not working, progress to lighter and lighter leash signals. Also a soft collar is good. Sounds like you're doing a great job!

BTW. Chandler and his mother are disc dog champions and great trainers.

Thanks for the encouragement - I need it! My SO thinks this is all really silly. I'm being really careful with all of this, and should have defined the word yank. It basically constitutes enough pressure to indicate a direction change during a normal walk for us. I do not do a full mimic of Charlie's behavior when excited or stressed. Charlie normally wears an easy walk harness when we go out because of his propensity to run after prey and his dog anxiety. I'm not certain I can totally control my reaction, so am training him to repond in a positive way to my stress. I'm working on this with both his collar and his harness. We were already working loose leash walking pretty heavily before I read this particular book. One of my biggest issues in the beginning stages of this training, is that he wouldn't keep the leash taut to even start! That he volunteered the behavior on our first walk after 8 only minutes of training is what I found SO exciting.

We had Chris in one of our classes (I'm really bad at last names and can never remember them), and LOVED her. We keep running into them at dog events (with Sheila - not Charlie, yet), and always say hi. Its often hard as they're usually doing demonstrations! LOL

Congratulations!! I may try that with my wild monster, Minnie. We need to practice loose-leash walking because she constantly pulls on the leash. Bev does too, but not quite as bad. I think Minnie and I are going to go out and work on the barking thing today. I'm going to try the same thing you did with Charlie and sit in the car at the park. If she doesn't bark, she gets treats. If she does, I'll ignore her. I need to scrounge up a pair of ear-plugs!!

Hmmm, wonder if this will work for me? I'm a fantastic puller.