Oh man, today I got to walk my mom's dogs. I went over to eat dinner at her house and she has two dogs, an American Bulldog and a rat terrier, affectionately called by me as "Ratdog".
Anyway, somehow I got on the subject of their leash or crate or something and was totally like, "Hey, can I walk him?" (him being Ratdog, the rat terrier) and she was like, sure, so I walked him all around the neighborhood for a good half an hour or so.
I love walking dogs. Or more like just walking in general. I love it. Mentally, I find it hard to walk by myself. But if a dog's there, then hey, perfect reason to go walking all around! And I just feel so much confident with an animal by my side.
Ratdog is excellent excellent excellent to walk. He weighs about 18 pounds, or so I was told, and he is like -the- perfect size. Not so small like chihuahuas where they get under your feet, but not so big as to be able to pull me around.
Man, like, the main thing I like about dogs is being able to walk them around. Seriously, if I had a dog, the number one thing I would want is a dog that walks perfectly on a leash, heels right by my side, and isn't super dog or human reactive. Anything else, shoot, I couldn't care less.
Ratdog is wonderful. We didn't meet any strange people during the walk, since it's in the evening and most people were inside anyway, so I can't say much about how reactive to people he is. But to other dogs! He's no problem at all. There was a chained up chocolate lab in a yard that I didn't notice until I got close, but Ratdog didn't bark or growl or anything, just sort of stared. It was hard to redirect his attention to me though, but nothing too bad overall!
Anyway, I'm not making this post just for my entertainment, lol. I would like some help on how to teach him to walk perfectly! A lot of you have dogs and take them for walks and other exercise pretty regularly, if not every day, and most of you (sound like, at least) have dogs that are pretty well-behaved on walks. How can I get Ratdog to be like that?
Ratdog, like I said, is pretty good, but sometimes he tries running ahead of me, pulling on the end of the leash- he doesn't pull super hard, but it'd be nice if I could get him to stay by my side so I can keep the leash slack and calm. I'm not sure if I'm describing what I want well, so if you need more info, please ask.
I am using what seems to be a 4 or 6 foot leash, blue, the traditional nylon or whatever type of leash. On walks I switch directions very often, since I heard that helps keep their attention on you. If he pulls on one end of the leash, I turn around and walk in the other direction.
He is highlyhighly food motivated, so I'm thinking of getting some meat pieces to reward him when he's walking well. But um, how do I carry them with me? Since I don't really want to be holding meat in my hand for like the duration of the walk, lol. Victoria Stillwell seems to use a fannypack but I'm not sure where to buy those.
I'd like to not use the clicker, at least not at this point. In the future if this thing with me and him continues I'll likely use it to do trick training, but just for basic walking I'd like to teach him without it.
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