Training Self Control

A while back I received an e-mail from a gentleman who was seeking advice on how to control his dog’s behaviour.

“He is 120 pounds… and the problem is that when we go for a walk and he sees another dog he pulls me across the road to get to the other dog. We have tried to control him with a choke chain, ordinary collar, making him sit and saying leave it, but nothing works. Do you have any suggestions?”

There is not a week that goes by that I do not receive an e-mail similar to this.
And my advice is always the same, instead of teaching a dog to leave-it, teach it some self-control.

The simplest way to deal with this problem would be to put a head halter on the dog and use the halter to control the dogs pulling action across the street. Unfortunately the dog is still not learning anything, other than it can’t pull its owners across the street as fast.
But we can teach the out of control dog that if it wants to meet the approaching dog, it must show some self-control.

This dog or any dog like this is not aggressive, they simply have a very high need to be social with members of their own kind. Chances are, when this dog was a puppy it spent the majority of its time playing with other dogs…and very little time engaging in play with people. So the dog thinks that other dogs are way more fun than people ever could be. One could use a choke collar and choke it out of the dog, but this will inevitably teach the dog that approaching dogs mean stress and discomfort…which might make the dog leash aggressive…not a good thing.

To teach a dog self control in this situation you need to separate the training into a few different stages.

The first stage would be to teach the dog to give unsolicited eye contact to the owner. I like to train this focus drill in such a way that it means ‘when I am standing still and quiet, look at me.’

With your dog on leash and in an outside area with minimal distractions, simply stop walking and place your dog in a sit (it is important not to ask your dog to sit, but gently place their butt on the ground). Now wait for your dog to look at you. Don’t call their name, whistle or make smoochie noises, just be quiet. Your dog may look at leaves rolling by or birds flying, but if you are patient he will eventually look at you. When he does CALMY say good boy/girl and give him a treat. Now move along and try it again. After just a few repetitions your dog will get the hang of it.

The next task is to bring this focus drill to your daily walks. While walking down the street, but without any other dogs around or with dogs at a safe distance, randomly practice the drill so the dog learns to focus when on a busy street.

The final task would be to practice with another dog that you know well. Start with the focus game. Once the dog looks at you point to the other dog, take a step towards it and say “Go play”. Then allow the dogs to meet.

The end result of putting all the tasks together will be a dog that sits patiently and looks to its owner until it hears a command to say hello to the other dog.