There’s little more frustrating than a dog who won’t stop pulling on the lead. It is unpleasant for both you and your pup, can cause lasting injuries, and can turn a simple walk into a complete nightmare. This is why teaching a puppy to walk on a lead is important.
Teaching your dog to walk on a loose lead isn’t difficult – especially if you start when your dog is a puppy – and with a bit of work and a lot of consistency, you can both look forward to a lifetime of fun, enjoyable, stress free walks together.
Keep reading to find out how to lead train a puppy and why you should do it.
Why Do Dogs Pull on the Lead?
In their excitement to get places, their joy of being in the great outdoors, and the thrill of having another adventure, many dogs pull on the lead. While every dog can get excited at times, if your dog refuses to walk without constantly pulling, it means that instead of you being able to walk with them happily staying beside you on a loose lead, you are controlling them with nothing more than physical restraint.
The lead should be there for safety, and it is your training and practise that should keep your dog walking close to you – not be something you have to hang on to with all your strength!
If you are relying on the lead, the physical effort involved in controlling your dog could be overwhelming – and even get dangerous for you both, especially if your canine friend is one of the larger, stronger breeds.
Why lead training puppies is important
Exercise
Being able to walk your puppy on a lead provides an opportunity to exercise your dog and keep them fit and healthy while they grow and mature, and throughout your life together. Many behaviour problems can be solved or reduced by making sure your dog gets enough appropriate exercise.
Mental stimulation
Lead training puppies allows them to observe new and interesting things about the world around them. Exposing your puppy to new sights, sounds, smells and environments is essential to their socialisation, growth and development, and so walking on a lead is essential to exploring all these new places together.
Most dogs spend long periods of time in the home – and that can get boring! Walks are the perfect time to experience new sights, sounds, scents and environments. They break up the day in an exciting way – and one where they get to spend quality time with you too. Puppies need all kinds of positive experiences to help them develop into well-balanced dogs who are happy with all the things they will encounter in their day-to-day life.
Exposing your puppy to new environments is important to their growth and development, and as they need to be safe and under control at all times, walking on a lead is essential for this.
Safety
There are many places you will want to go with your dog where having them on a lead will mean you can keep them safe – and other places where it will be important, and sometimes even the law, to keep people, other dogs, and livestock safe from your dog.
Further puppy training
All the exercises you will train your dog to do – sit, down, wait, come etc – will all need to be taught outside in the real world as well as at home or in the garden. Having a dog who will walk calmly on the lead gives you the opportunity to do this as part of your ongoing training.
A dog who has been trained to walk on a lead properly will, as part of that training, check in with you frequently and so will listen to you far more than if they spent all their time straining on the lead and largely ignoring you.
Social responsibility
When you are out and about with your dog, you owe it to others to be in control and not have an unruly dog (however friendly or cute) charging up to other dogs or people. This means that there are going to be times, even in safe open spaces, when your dog has to be on the lead.
Livestock
Any time you are in the countryside, you need to have close control of your dog – especially around sheep – and that means on a lead.
What you’ll need before you start puppy lead training
A Harness
It used to be that a puppy would be taught to walk on a collar but now we know that a harness is the best way to make this a positive experience for your dog, prevent injury, and still give you all the control you need.
Every puppy can get bouncy at times and learning not to pull and to walk nicely is an ongoing process and so mistakes will be made. You don’t want those mistakes where, in their excitement and inexperience, your puppy can’t help but bound off and pull, to have all the force of the lead focused sharply around such a sensitive and delicate area as their throat.
A harness doesn’t make loose lead training any easier or any harder – it just means that the chances of hurting or injuring your puppy while they are learning are less.
A collar
You will still probably want a collar on your puppy however to attach their ID tag to (which they must by law wear in a public place). This should be soft, and comfortable with an easy (and quiet) fastening clip or buckle. When fastened you should be able to get two fingers between the collar and your puppy’s neck.
Treats
As with all your training, you will be using high-quality treats to help your puppy understand what you want, and to reward them when they get it right. Walking on a lead, especially at human speed, is a totally unnatural thing for a dog to do, so you need to be generous with the praise and the rewards.
A lead
Find a 2m (6ft) training lead that has a clip at both ends and is not too heavy for your pup or uncomfortable for you to hold. A lead of this length will mean you can keep your puppy safe and close to you but still give them a bit of flexibility – as the objective is that they walk on a loose lead, not that they are glued to your leg in some kind of old-fashioned military exercise!
Walking close beside us for any length of time (as you see in obedience competitions) takes a high degree of training, and also, if you are to avoid putting strain on joints and bones, a high level of fitness and balance. Dogs naturally move at a very different speed from us and to slow down to our speed takes serious concentration and physical development.
Make sure that the lead can be attached securely to your puppy’s harness.
Remember: the object of puppy lead training is that your dog will walk on a loose lead. Forget about obedience style ‘heel work’ for now as this is an advanced exercise, and you would be just setting you and your puppy up to fail, and to endless frustration.
Five Steps to teach a puppy to walk on a lead
To train your puppy to successfully walk on the lead, follow these steps:
Your puppy can’t pull if there is nothing to pull against, and you are both learning from the very start how to work together.
- Start early when you are in the house and long before you put a harness or a lead on. You are going to be teaching your puppy that walking beside you is a good thing.
- When you are doing some training with your puppy, hold a treat close to the end of their nose so they can smell it, and walk a couple of steps forward encouraging them to come with you. After two or three steps, stop, tell them how good they are, and give them the treat.
- Make it into a game - be enthusiastic and have fun with this. If they get ahead of you or wander off, stop, use the treat to lure them back to you and carry on walking (and remind yourself to be more enthusiastic and get better (smellier!) treats!).
- Practise this several times a day in different rooms and at different times – so your puppy learns that walking with you is rewarding. Once your puppy can do this in the house, move into your puppy-proofed garden (ie your garden is fully fenced and enclosed).
- You can begin to build up the distance you can walk - and reduce the amount of time you need to lure with the treat. The aim is that you show your puppy you have a treat – and then just walk a few paces without them needing to follow the treat - but of course still getting rewarded at the end.
- Spend time finding a soft harness that your puppy is going to be very comfortable in. This shouldn’t rub anywhere and shouldn’t come across the front of the shoulder as that can restrict the puppy’s movement.
- Introduce it to your puppy just by sitting on the floor and letting them sniff it. This can be paired with treats and praise to build up positive associations. Don’t let them bite or chew it though.
- When your puppy is happy with what the harness looks and smells like, you can put it on, give them a treat and/or play a game – and then take it back off again. Practise this several times a day (long before your puppy is allowed to go outside) so that they are totally used to the harness.
- Now and then, lightly pull on the harness so they get used to that feeling too – always pairing that with praise and treats. Most puppies have worn a puppy collar while still with their breeder, but you can get them used to the collar exactly the same way.
- Don’t forget that puppies grow fast so check the fit and the sizing of both the harness and the collar every day.
- Before walking your puppy, the first step is to repeat the ‘walking beside you without a lead’ training you did in step 1 but with the harness on.
- That seems like a small thing but for a puppy, moving with a harness will feel very different. This will need great treats and plenty of them to distract your puppy from the new sensations and make sure they are still having fun.
- Once they can do this happily, it’s time to add the lead. Start with a very lightweight lead – maybe even a houseline – that your puppy will hardly even realise is there.
- Attach the lead to the harness – but don’t pick it up yet.
- Go right back to practising your ‘walking beside you without a lead’ with the lead either trailing or else held very loosely in your hand (you might have to do this if the lead looks like something exciting to play with!).
- Then pick up the lead but follow your puppy wherever they want to go. This is about getting used to the feeling of being attached to you. Keep giving frequent rewards and praise so that your puppy learns that being on the lead is a great thing!
It’s important to make the lead seem fun and rewarding so your puppy looks forward to you putting it on. Once the lead is on, you can use treats or toys to entertain your puppy. By association, your puppy should anticipate fun once you put on the lead.
- Once your puppy is happy moving around the house and the garden with the harness and lead on – with you following them – practise the Watch Me exercise every few minutes.
Just stop, say your puppy’s name, and when they look at you, give them a treat and then let them continue exploring/walking.
Being able to get your puppy to look at you when you say their name is going to be invaluable when you get out into the great outdoors with all the distractions they are going to encounter. This will mean the difference between working together and your puppy ignoring you and focusing solely on all the exciting things that are going on around them.
- As always, reward successes!
- The secret to good loose lead walking is not to rush all these steps. This preparation means the difference between a puppy who thinks leads are for pulling on and one who has learned to keep it loose. Practice some gentle tugging.
- Once your puppy is happy walking with their harness and lead on – with you following behind – you can start to get them used to the sensation that sometimes you will need to have pressure on the harness from the lead (for safety, steering and for those inevitable times when your puppy gets so excited or engrossed in something that they pull on the lead).
So, while you are following your puppy, stop, turn round and call your puppy to you. If they come, fabulous. If they don't, add a little bit of pressure – without jerking or pulling. As soon as they follow, relax the lead totally and reward them when they come to you.
Keep practising this – and all the other steps up to this point – until your puppy is fully vaccinated and allowed to go out.
FAQs
What do I do if my puppy keeps pulling on the lead?
Go back a few steps and work on teaching your puppy to walk beside you without the lead. Reward frequently when they are in the right place. Once you put the lead on, stop every time the lead gets tight and wait for them to check in with you. When they do, use a treat to lure them back and then keep walking. The secret is to be consistent in this. Never resort to aversive equipment or jerking back on the lead. This can cause injury – and your puppy should walk beside you because they want to – not because they are too scared of what you will do if they don’t.
Can I teach my dog heelwork?
Yes of course, you can – once they have mastered loose lead walking and are fit enough and well developed enough to be able to hold this unnatural position for any length of time. Find a class that uses reward-based methods and teaches obedience.
How long does it take to teach my puppy to walk on a loose lead?
You can teach the principles of loose lead walking to your puppy in a couple of weeks – but the world is an exciting place, puppies do not have any self-control, and there are lots of distractions. This means that you will be working on and off on loose lead walking until your after your dog’s adolescence (when things get even more distracting!). This is a marathon and not a sprint! The good news is that with some early training – and consistency on your part – within a few short months, your puppy will be happy to walk on a loose lead – most of the time!
Purina Editorial Team
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