My Dog Lacey

This dog. This wonderful, incredible 20-pound bundle of pure puppy energy. Curious, naive, jumping, running, escaping, freedom-loving, always wanting to please and love.

So open-hearted, so consistent in who she is. I love this dog.

Anyway. I wanted to take her to the park and let her run around, free of the leash and a slow human (me). But I can’t let her off-leash with that much freedom because she runs away and it’s really hard to catch her because she’s quick, she’s fast, and she doesn’t want to be caught.

Here’s what I did: I bought a 6-foot, skinny nylon lead for about $6. It comes with the loop at the end to put your hand through. So I cut out the loop (which made the leash longer by 6″ or so.

We went to the park with a tennis ball and a cool new Kong ball a little smaller than a tennis ball. (Because if I go to the pet store for a $6 leash, I spend at least $30 on stuff she simply cannot live without). I cut the loop and off we went to the park.

It worked great. She could chase the ball, run as fast as her long, lanky legs would carry her, get the ball, bring it half way back to me and drop it, get distracted and move on to the next thing. If the next thing happened to be running away from me, I’d try to get her attention.

But I never used a command I couldn’t enforce in the moment. I just wanted her to pay attention to me. When she was trotting away and not giving me the time of day, I ran behind her and stepped on the leash. It worked great. I got her attention and she was much more attentive when I let her run again.

This is a great technique for teaching a dog to be off-lead. We could also work on “over here” “cm on” (a variation of “come” but not it — I haven’t taught it because I don’t want to water it down), and “let’s go” without me holding the lead.

And by the time we left, her tongue was hanging all the way out the side of her mouth. She got home, got a drink, lay on the marble and slept for a while. Now, of course, she’s chasing her squishy, fuzzy, squeeky soccer ball around the house. Where does she get that energy?!

Anna

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 30th, 2006 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Dog Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This dog. This wonderful, incredible 20-pound bundle of pure puppy energy. Curious, naive, jumping, running, escaping, freedom-loving, always wanting to please and love.

So open-hearted, so consistent in who she is. I love this dog.

Anyway. I wanted to take her to the park and let her run around, free of the leash and a slow human (me). But I can’t let her off-leash with that much freedom because she runs away and it’s really hard to catch her because she’s quick, she’s fast, and she doesn’t want to be caught.

Here’s what I did: I bought a 6-foot, skinny nylon lead for about $6. It comes with the loop at the end to put your hand through. So I cut out the loop (which made the leash longer by 6″ or so.

We went to the park with a tennis ball and a cool new Kong ball a little smaller than a tennis ball. (Because if I go to the pet store for a $6 leash, I spend at least $30 on stuff she simply cannot live without). I cut the loop and off we went to the park.

It worked great. She could chase the ball, run as fast as her long, lanky legs would carry her, get the ball, bring it half way back to me and drop it, get distracted and move on to the next thing. If the next thing happened to be running away from me, I’d try to get her attention.

But I never used a command I couldn’t enforce in the moment. I just wanted her to pay attention to me. When she was trotting away and not giving me the time of day, I ran behind her and stepped on the leash. It worked great. I got her attention and she was much more attentive when I let her run again.

This is a great technique for teaching a dog to be off-lead. We could also work on “over here” “cm on” (a variation of “come” but not it — I haven’t taught it because I don’t want to water it down), and “let’s go” without me holding the lead.

And by the time we left, her tongue was hanging all the way out the side of her mouth. She got home, got a drink, lay on the marble and slept for a while. Now, of course, she’s chasing her squishy, fuzzy, squeeky soccer ball around the house. Where does she get that energy?!

Anna

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 30th, 2006 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Dog Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.