I need some advice with our 2 yr old male golden and walking. Kasey doesn't lung and drag when you walk him, he just likes to be out in front by about his body length (his tail is by my leg instead of his head!). I need him to walk beside me, loose leash, to get certified by Therapy Dogs Intl.

We have been using a prong collar for 'out of our neighbor' walks since he pulls a little bit more in higher distraction areas (he walks past other dogs w/o caring and doesn't jump on people or anything - just a constant tension and too far ahead). But the prong collar and correction method has not worked.

So a couple weeks ago I decided to try clicker training. He does pretty well now just around our block, but he tires of it fairly quickly and you start to loose him after about 15 minutes or so. My problem is that I can see that this is going to take a lot of practice before he is ready to go outside our neighborhood AND for very long periods. But he really needs his 40 minute exercise walks EVERY day! We live close to the beach, so we go there and to parks, etc. for exercise walks, so I can't figure out how to do those kinds of walks while I'm still trying to get him to learn not to pull and go out ahead with the clicker training!

Is he going to get confused if we do long walks for exercise w/o expecting him to stay right next to us and not pull at all? If I am saying 'let's walk' as the command with clicker training which means stay by my side w/o pulling, and I DON'T say that when we walk for exercise will that be understood by him, or just confuse him?

I hope I'm not sounding confusing to you guys! Thanks so much for any advice anyone has with this!

Are you doing plenty of releases during the walk?

Also, are you maintaining a really brisk pace with the loose-leash "let's walk" work? A really brisk pace interspersed with releases for sniffing, etc.?

And can you do some fetch first?

I didn't know I was suppose to do a bunch of releases!

I'm also not doing 'brisk' - I thought that would be too hard for him in the beginning! Oops!

And as far as fetch - that is my 'grrrr' issue! He LOVES fetch, but the only place we can do it is in grass, which of course, he's allergic to! So I have to decide if I want to make him itch a little more in order to wear him out!!! This dog makes nothing easy!

 Quote: lori hall

... I'm also not doing 'brisk' - I thought that would be too hard for him in the beginning! Oops! ...

For casual (but still "good" and loose leash) walking, I do.

He's an adult, right? Any hip problems? Heck, I march 'em right along until the next break/release.

 Quote: lori hall

I didn't know I was suppose to do a bunch of releases!

That's how I make the walk more fun for the dog -- on the handler's terms.

From a different thread:

 Quote: connie sutherland

.... pulling to sniff things off the route or path can be worked with quite nicely to cement additional obedience with a new kind of reward. "Heel" (whatever his casual heel is) can be stopped with "wait" or however you say stand still and attend to me, and then a release ("OK!") so that he has the length of the leash to sniff, pee, mark, etc. I stand still then so that there is no confusion about who's in front, who is leading -- it's the dog's free time. I do these fairly frequently. One thing is that "heel" is far more eager and "in the zone" when there are frequent little "OK" times, but even better, the "wait" can be very gradually built up and the "OK" becomes a new kind of reward.