Drilling skills in training class is no fun for anyone — so to mix things up, I like to use games we all played as children but with an added component of training.
I’ve mentioned playing “Simon Says” before.
Today I want to talk about using another game: Musical Chairs.
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Late last year Denise Fenzi released her book, Beyond the Backyard: Train your dog to listen anytime, anywhere! and with it she released an instructors guide, for dog trainers who wanted to offer it as an advanced dog training class.
I’ve run through the program several times now with my own classes; I’ve found it to be an excellent program for teaching distraction proofing basics and helping to bridge the gap between rewarding all the time and weaning dogs off of cookies.
While working my way through the program, I’ve come up with a number of “games” that I use as bonus games…
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Loose leash walking is perhaps one of the most important “quality of life” skills a dog can learn, since a dog that walks nicely is much more likely to get taken along when their people head out and about in the world.
But there are almost as many different ways to teach loose leash walking as there are types of dogs.
This post is a round up of some of my favorite ways to begin to teach a dog loose leash walking.
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While there are a number of games that you can use to help teach a dog to walk nicely on leash, this one is intended to teach the owners.
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In the equestrian world, “Soft Hands” are what we call pulling on the reins in a soft manner—just enough to communicate to the horse. The same idea can be used to teach a dog to walk nicely on a loose leash.
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