Day Fourteen -- Before You Break

It's so much easier catching a dog before they have fully committed to breaking a stay or acting on a distraction or being naughty. If I can watch Thunder's body language enough, I can see when she's thinking about doing something I'd prefer she didn't. That's the time to interrupt the behavior and redirect her. If I were to wait until she stood all the way up, she's already up and moving away and it would be much harder to get her back into a down. But if I catch her when her elbows have just barely left the ground...

I can get her to slide back down into position. At that point, I'm going to praise her quite a bit because she made a choice to do what I asked instead of zipping off in the other direction.

The same concept can be applied to distractions. If I can catch her before she has fully committed to investigating the distraction...

I'm much more likely to get her attention back on me. Note that we are working on a flat collar. I like to use the flat collar when I am doing training sessions so they are really learning what I am teaching on not relying on training equipment. We still do short practice walks with the Gentle Leader but we do short walks on the flat collar too.

For loose leash walking, I want her to periodically check in with me while we are walking. She doesn't have to look at me the whole time but I do want her to acknowledge that I exist and be prepared for whatever I ask of her next.

She still gets periodic food rewards for walking nicely next to me but now I give them to her sporadically to keep her guessing.

On occasion, she'll just plant it. If I were to pull on her leash, her response would be to pull in the opposite direction. It's called an opposition reflex. It's the same reason why pushing on your dog's rear to get them to sit doesn't tend to work well. Their natural response is to push in the opposite direction in conflict with you. So, I continue to encourage her, pat my leg, etc. but I also do a light tug and release, tug and release on the leash. She starts walking with me again after I do that a couple of times. Such a good girl...