[Grasharm]

Okay the subject line is exaggerated for affect. It's not that bad. It's just when I walk my sister's dog (about 3 times every two days). Whenever I get ahead of her and she needs to come back up she comes to the opposite side of the hand holding the leash. I'm ambidextrous so I don't mind which hand I walk her with and I have tried both hands to no avail. She always chooses the side that tangles her leash against the backs of my legs. Can someone tell me why this is and how I can stop it from happening. I'm just waiting to be tripped up one of these days.

Also relevant to this issue is copious sniffing. She will stop and sniff a spot for a good long while. This results in me pacing ahead a little instead of her staying near my side and thus the tangling. I have not timed the amount of time but it's enough for me to go from, "Wow something must be really interesting there," to "Nothings is that interesting," to "Okay we need to get going," this accompanied by a few light tugs just to let her know I wanna go, to "Okay I'm not going to be out here all day," acompinied by dragging her away with the leash and harness and ually a light sense of guilt for doing so. Oh and the breed is a pug if that matters.

[lange]

Hi. Are you using a retractable leash? Those are no good for teaching leash walking.
Use a real leash without too much extra length at first so that it's easier to work with her. Then pick a side & be consistent with the one you pick. As she's walking back to you you can simply guide her back with the leash to the correct side. You could also treat on that side only. If you hold something especially smelly in ur hand she'll likely gravitate that way.

As for smelling..are you kidding? It REALLY is super interesting smelling!! Their nose is their information superhighway. It really depends on you how you want to handle that. For me, I like to pick the spot I let my dogs take breaks at & sniff around. Otherwise I like to keep a more structured walk as opposed to leisure most of the time but I'm also still leash training 1 of my dogs right now so structure is preferred to me because of that. It's all in preference. Neither right or wrong.

Hopefully that helps some.

[Daisy]

Look for the EzyDog Cujo leash. I can't post a link yet since I do not have 50 posts under my belt.

I have trained all of my dogs to leash walk on these. The hound was a little more stubborn, so I ended up having to train her with that as well as a Sport Dog collar. Now, the Sport Dog has a shock function, but I never had to use that. Whenever Maggie began to pull away, I simply used the beep function and she came right back to my side and let the leash go slack. When she did, she got a treat and praise. On top of that, whenever she manages to stay by my side for a while, she got a treat and praise as well.

It's important that you set the boundaries. Like lange, I like to choose where my dogs stop to sniff. There are a few spots up and down the road with some prime tree and grass sniffing, which they all seem to love. I let them do their sniffing and business there, hold a treat out for them and start walking again. When they follow me...you guessed it! A treat!

If you try the treat method, make sure you either get very small treats or break up larger ones. It will make them think they're getting a lot, but they really aren't.