Our dog is obedient but when on a leash, she forgets you exist. Would Focused Heeling with Michael Ellis be something that would work for us?

Question

Cindy,

    I have a 4 year old female Brittany who was given to us when she was one and a half because she was afraid of the shotgun and wouldn't hunt. She is very obedient around the house and in our backyard but the second you put a leash on her and take her out she forgets you exist. She is too busy observing the birds and squirrels and she pays no attention to the person at the other end of her leash. I had a trainer come to my house and whenever he is around she walks nicely but as soon as my husband and I try she starts pulling again. I have tried every type of "no pull" collar/harness, the prong collar, stopping and not moving until the leash is loose, turning in a different direction, going back repeatedly to the front door and literally walking step by step, spraying water at her, loud verbal corrections, you name it I have tried it. She responds to each thing for a little while and then she just puts up with whatever form of correction is given to her. I have even taken her for a run riding my bike before we walk hoping to tire her out but she still pulls. My trainer is very frustrated as well as we have been working on this for two years. I walk her every day and faithfully practice anything my trainer has suggested. In the house she follows behind us, stays until we free her and obeys any command that we give her. In the neighborhood or the park it is a different story. Any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated. I have been seeing a lot about training puppies but not too much about older dogs. Do you think I would benefit from the focused heeling DVD or is it geared to younger dogs? I am not interested in competition heeling I just want to walk my dog without it being a struggle every step of the way. I am very frustrated and do not want to stop taking my dog on walks because she really benefits from the exercise.

    Thank you,
Debbie

Accepted Answer

There are a couple of ways to do this. It seems you’ve already tried the correction based way of training and it’s not working for her. From your description it seems you’ve desensitized her to a lot of different forms of correction.

The way I prefer (although it takes longer) is to teach the dog that there is something valuable in it for them if they pay attention to me. The foundation to this type of training is marker or clicker training. I would read our article on Training Dogs with Markers.

The focused heeling would be my choice because you can give the dog a very clear picture of what she needs to do to get her reward. Instead of corrections for being wrong (which she has learned to tune out) , she gets something high value (food or toy) for paying attention to you.

You will need to put a foundation of marker training in place before you can jump right into the focused heeling training. She needs to learn the whole system.

I’d recommend the following in this order:

The Power of Training Dogs with Markers
The Power of Training Dogs with Food
Focused Heeling with Michael Ellis

If she likes toys, you can use a tug or a ball or whatever in place of the food once the initial training is done.

You would benefit from our streaming video section. Check out the Michael Ellis series lectures.

I hope this helps.

Cindy