Loose leash walking with reactivity?

[1ht1da]

Hello! Using a throwaway because I'm quite embarrassed and frustrated with my dog (F, 5 y/o, GSD/Lab mix). Besides her chronic fearful reactivity, we struggle a lot with loose leash walking because she pulls like a truck and loves to rush to the end of the leash to choke herself (she wears a harness with the leash attached to the front clip and a martingale with a safety clip attached to the leash).

Every training advice re: loose leash walking I've seen involves some form of extended time outside, e.g. U-turning and stopping in place until she gives into leash pressure. When she's always .5 seconds away from having a meltdown, I'd like to at least give her a somewhat fulfilling walk without choking and waiting for triggers to come to us.

It's hard to hold out for her to willingly offer engagement when I'm also looking for any approaching triggers (human + dogs). Like if I'm standing still and waiting for her to come back and a dog's coming up behind us, I have no choice but to keep it moving and giving in to her pulling. Same goes with U-turning, because the amount of times I've turned directions just to see a dog behind us is way too high.

So what can I do? What worked for you? She's an angel indoors and in our backyard with her gear attached, heeling perfectly and keeping eye contact. But all of that goes to crap when we're outside.

TIA for any and all advice! My arm and I are kind of at our wit's end here.

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@1ht1da I just walked with treats in my hand and would pop one in his mouth randomly or anytime he looked back at me. He learned fast that my side was more rewarding than pulling

 

[excitedsnake]

@1ht1da If you worry that your dog will get fat because of this outside training, you can feed all daily portion of his/her food only outside. And about pulling, nothing of the mentioned methods worked for me either (different story for heel-work), so what I do when a dog pulls: I start walking at a slower and slower pace, but don’t stop. And I try to be very stable, so that a dog can’t change my pace and move me. I’m like slowly walking pole that they are tied to. So dogs want to go faster, but get to walk even slower, meaning the behavior is discouraged. Also, then they start to concentrate on me, shake the stress off and so on. This does not work 100% for me, but it’s like a prevention of a problem getting worse.

 

[coltproulx]

@1ht1da You have to practice and proof loose leash walking in low distraction areas. If you have access to a car, I recommend industrial/office parks or other large parking lots during off-hours. Banks and Chikfila are good on weekends, too.

If you don’t have access to a car, your walk schedule should be the opposite of your neighborhood’s traffic schedule. For us that’s a long walk at 4 or 5 in the morning and a quick potty break in the alley between 1 and 3. I also would do loose leash drills up and down the alley until we graduated back to afternoon neighborhood walks. Drilling up and down your hallway at home is helpful, too.

 

[1ht1da]

@coltproulx I live in a dense neighbourhood so there aren't very many off-peak times, especially after the pandemic started and everyone got dogs.

Office and large car parks is a good idea, though! Thanks very much, we'll try going from training at home to the car parks, then out and about.

 

[phroggie]

@coltproulx It looks as though you may have spelled "Chick-fil-A" incorrectly. No worries, it happens to the best of us!

 

[themanwhosinned]

@1ht1da The stopping and u-turn practice never helped me much. What helped my dog with loose leash walking was training heel (have her walk next to you with treats in her face). I made it really rewarding to be next to me when I used the heel command, and it carried over into her walking next to me most of the time because she's hoping for a treat.

I also taught a "look at me" command to get her attention back if she starts to pull or get too far away.