At the beginning of most session, Chico wants to play, his playing is still with his mouth, it pinches to sometimes I just almost let out a word. (You know I was an altar boy) (that grew up in the Army.) anyway, once I got the leash on there no problems, and that is most of the time.He also jumps and fling his paws to avoid the leash. what else can I do? leash correction, saying no, the stair down, grab at the scruff? now that Alpha rolls is out. we walk four miles, almost every day. and he is tired, or sand bagging. MY thought is more training and don't give up. he does not pull on walks, goes to place as order. what say you? Dan

Dan, Will he work for food or a favorite toy? If you put him on a sit, held the leash in one hand and a favorite treat or toy in the other (letting him see it but he has to earn it), attach the leash and then give him the reward - will that work? It sounds too simple... but if you practice when you aren't going anywhere, just putting the leash on, treating and taking it off, putting it on, treating, taking it off... What do you think?

Sorry Dan,
I've forgotten how old is the pup now?

With a young dog I probably would not do any sort of correction in this situation, it might confuse him. I would generally go with Barbra and teach a collar grab, teach putting collars off and on, and teach putting the leash off and on separately from anything else, marking the behavior I wanted and giving the negitive mark for what I dont want, name it something when you love it.

I find it easier to name the behavior with something like this (putting collar or leash on), most people probably don’t, but I would in this situation.

IMO he will eventually pick up on it (sometimes you just need A LOT of patience w\working strong willed puppies)

I also feel with certain dogs, giving a name to something as simple as this goes a long ways, some dogs just like the command, must make them feel important or in my case feel like she is REALLY pleasing me.

My other dog I do what everyone else does, put collar on put leash on and go do whatever with no issues, never has been. Puppy is a different story.

And, watch out about making a big deal of it, sometimes we let our emotions get involved BEFORE we go to do something, for example, my puppy sucks at learning a formal retrieve. I would into a training session thinking this is going to suck again. No progress was being made. I had to change my mind set. Now, we are progressing at a decent pace.

Of course, the goal is to get the dog wanting to come to you and wanting you to put the collar on, because what follows is such great fun. Totally agree that you have to treat "collar application" as a seperate behavior and train for it accordingly.

A year or two down the road, you will laugh at this post, Dan. Your dog will be bringing you his collar and DEMANDING that you put it on him and get rolling!

Or maybe he just needs a fancier collar and leash:

http://www.collarplanetonline.com/servlet/the-3027/Crystal-Colored-Jeweled-3/Detail

http://www.collarplanetonline.com/servlet/the-3083/Animal-Print-Jeweled-Pet/Detail

My pup has not been a pant/hand biter for some time now, since she figured out the toy was better.

But sometimes she gets into such a prey frenzy, she forgets my hand is there and just goes for the toy anyway. I just have patience, swear to myself under my breath for not being faster, make sure I am not bleeding too bad, and move on to working on targeting again.

For the leash thing, get your toy out first and build drive, then let him have the toy. Once he is bitten on the toy, then you can quickly snap the leash on and continue playing. I would do both the marker training to get him to know the leash going on means food and then just use the toy method when he is in a puppy frenzy.

At the beginning of each training session I ALWAYS tug with my puppy. It gets her focused, gets her into drive and takes some of the edge off her energy. I play for maybe 2-3 minutes, build drive, but quickly put the toy away before she can bite again. Then I move to marker training. Do that for another 5 minutes or so, then get the toy out and play again.

The other thing I have found that has helped is using her ball on a string for the marker training. So I play, food marker training, play, then use the toy for marker training. It mixes it up, keeps it fun, and satisfies her urge to bite!

I kind of went off on a tangent there, hopefully I was somewhere near answering your question...

There seems to be at least one wise guy in the crowd around here.....

 Quote: Linda West

There seems to be at least one wise guy in the crowd around here.....

Hey, I gave an answer before wise cracking!

 Quote: Scott Kapphahn

Or maybe he just needs a fancier collar and leash:

http://www.collarplanetonline.com/servlet/the-3027/Crystal-Colored-Jeweled-3/Detail

http://www.collarplanetonline.com/servlet/the-3083/Animal-Print-Jeweled-Pet/Detail

I am embarassed to say that when I clicked the link, my first thought was OOOH Nico would look pretty in that

I also had to practice leash and collar on and off when my dog was a pup. Otherwise It was like trying to wrestle a greased pig that was chewing on my arms every time I went to do it.

The prong collar was even worse, I always have trouble fastening those, much less when my dog is writhing around mouthing me.


I started just hooking the prong onto my pants and walking around with it jingling for a few days. It really helped cut down on the frantic behavior every time I touched it.