❌ Myth: Harnesses encourage dogs to pull
Our family dog Tully ❤️
So much love for him, he's really an awesome dog and it's an absolute pleasure to walk him.
We walked calmly past the sheep and did some lovely recall training in the fields.
When you don't have a snuffle mat you improvise 😁 snuffle toy box
What an incredible transformation !
Tully is a Spanish Mastin cross adopted from Spain by Lindsey Ann Edwards
He's always been very independent and going out for walks with him meant that he only ever cared about sniffing , humans basically didn't exist in this context. He didn't even look at us let alone engage when his nose was in action...
Recently I've been doing some regular training walks around the village focusing on reinforcing any attempt of engagement and it's had a snowball effect which translated to him being the most engaged ever while walking around the field today .
The field - as a big open space has always been triggering with attempts at animal chasing but also reacting to other dogs.
Not only we had a fantastic training session in this environment but also he ignored off leash dogs and a big group of dogs walked by a dog walker.
On the way back he just kept checking in with me the whole way - also something that has never happened before as his attention would always be very brief .
Here's the proof that
1) reward based training WORKS
2) consistent training sessions help build the engagement outside of the usual environment
3) avoiding triggers /using distance helps to decrease stress response in the long run (we've always tried to avoid coming too close to other dogs)
4) stress to triggers decrease when a dog builds a strong positive relationship with the handler
4) powerful dogs can be walked with just a harness
Two ways to reduce pulling without corrections /punishment
#dogtrainingtips #dogtrainer #dogtraining #mastin #positivereinforcement #clickertraining #rewardbasedtraining
Training the "back up" cue with Tully so that I can pass through doorways that he likes to block with him being actively engaged as opposed to giving me a side eye 😃
We have two cues for this behaviour , the voice cue "back" and taking a step towards him - the step cue actually evolved from pairing the word cue with my step towards him .
Of course all trained with the application of Positive Reinforcement:)
Dog to cat reactivity is a common problem when a household is shared by these species , it doesn't have to be that way though.
Here I'm working on both of the animals being happy in each other's presence. The fact that my cat is eating is a statement to how relaxed she now feels around my mum in law's dog.
Tully also shows much more engagement and choosing to do stuff with the human rather than fixating on the cat (which used to be his default response especially when the cat was moving).
For this type of work I always recommend some sort of barrier - just for safety reasons to keep both animals desperate during the training (in my instance the floor produces a natural barrier as Tully really dislikes the wooden floor 🙈).
