Dog Hiking Foundations (Wk 4)
This is part 4 of a 6 part series on group hike prep for your pups! If you’re looking for part 2, click here, and for part 3, click here!
Despite the off-leash manner of our group hikes, it's still important for our pups to have good ON-leash manners as well! We've always preached how important it is to start our adventures off on a good foot (or paw!) By setting the tone from the very start of our pup's time with us. That includes the moment we step into their home for pick up, to the walk to the car, the drive, walk to the trailhead, and all the way back home again!
You can help your pup out with this by working on their leash skills and greeting manners at home since these are two areas we work on often with newer hiking dogs. These two exercises we'll share with you this week will help your pup learn some of those essential leash and greetings skills that we use every day for our own dogs!
There’s a simple little game you can play that will teach your dog what leash pressure means. Leash pressure can also be called leash tension. Whenever the leash gets tight, especially for dogs that are already well versed in pulling, it encourages even MORE pulling through what we call opposition reflex.
This is the same reflex you would feel if someone were to push against you as you stand- you counterbalance and push the opposite way, in towards them, so as to not fall over! For our dogs, when the leash is pulling back against their neck and chest, they lean forward into the pressure. Then you get that (not so) lovely freight train pulling behavior as a side effect!
Instead, wouldn’t we rather they FOLLOW the direction of the leash pressure/tension? This is a skill that usually needs to be TAUGHT so don’t underestimate how much your pup may benefit from this simple exercise!
*Practice this leash pressure game daily or each time you put a leash on your pup!*
Get your pup on their leash, have some treats at hand either in a bowl on your counter, in a treat pouch at your side, or a few closed up in a free hand. Depending on the amount of space you have to practice, you either need to hold the leash far up close to your dog if you’re in a smaller space like a room in a house, or just hold the end if you have a lot of room like outside at the park.
With your free hand, take and toss a treat just outside of the reach of your pup (definitely let them see and watch you throw it), anchor your feet down, and get ready for them to hit the end of their allotted leash space! When they do, and likely they will strain to reach their thrown treat, you will lean AWAY with your leash hand held firm, and slowly move back more and more so long as your dog is straining away from you in the opposite direction to try and get that treat.
Don’t say anything! More on that later. But keep taking your dog further and further from their prize UNTIL they turn to follow you. The moment they give up trying to get that treat and follow you instead, you should immediately stop pulling them away, praise, and either give them a new treat from your free hand OR run with them to go get their thrown treat!
What your pup will learn is that when the leash goes tight, they will get further from what they want UNLESS they follow where the leash is getting tight! Then they get all sorts of goodies and praise! We don’t speak much because we want the leash getting tight to be their cue to follow us, not our voice. That way, on the trail, when they feel the leash tightening because they’re starting to forge ahead of us, they will snap back towards us instead of pulling against it automatically.
Of course, it takes time to get that snappier response, so practice practice practice! We like to get a few tossed treats in before moving onto something different or continuing our walk. It also takes time for the dogs to generalize this skill, so have patience. Practicing in a variety of places, with a variety of different tossed “temptations” will help to speed the process along.
This video here demonstrates this concept with a tiny puppy! It’s never too early (or too late!) to start teaching our pups any skills.
*Practice enforcing polite manners for each new person your pup meets AND/OR when they’re excited to see family members coming home!*
Because we share the trails with a lot of other people and animals, it is courteous to keep our hiking groups under control and out of other’s business as much as possible. We don’t know if others are allergic, afraid, or have unfriendly or nervous pets. So it’s always good to assume others don’t want your dog to run up and jump on them! That doesn’t mean your pup still can’t have a good time and say hello to others! But doing it politely certainly helps make EVERYONE’S day a bit more enjoyable on the trails.
This little exercise is going to help your pup learn the valuable “four on the floor” skill. Again, have your dog on a leash and treats handy to begin, but this time look for a place to tie your dog to where you have room to back away from them even if they reach the end of their tether.
Start off by having your pup tied to their tether, and toss some of their treats to the ground between their paws. Back up and out of their space. Now the “game” begins. Your goal is to be able to go into your dog’s bubble, and pet, talk to and feed them without getting jumped on. THEIR goal is to keep their paws rooted on the ground no matter how exciting or hype you get towards them!
Approach your tethered pup once they’ve finished their treats at a level 1 difficulty, which to us looks like simply walking towards your dog, without making any noise or expressions. Boring old walking, yet still, dogs may struggle and try to jump up at you the closer you get to their bubble! If your pup “fails” the approach by their paws leaving the ground to jump up, you will simply back away and start over! No need to say “no,” since your pup will get the picture loud and clear after a few repetitions of losing access to the fun things they want when you get close!
When you can walk towards your dog and they remain still, the moment you get close enough to “touch” their personal space bubble, praise them and give them a treat between their paws. We always feed food to the ground when working on this game to encourage the dog to stay low and not jump UP at us.
After each repetition, you should up the level of difficulty just a tiny bit each time. This could look like walking FURTHER towards them, into their bubble. It could be walking faster, or slower. It could be starting to talk to them in a neutral tone, then excitable, etc. Then it could mean adding in some knee patting, high pitch voices, jumping jacks, whatever you can think of to distract your dog and test to see if they jump up! At first, do each little distraction by itself, then as your dog gets good at staying on the ground during it, start to layer them together, such as walk up, high pitch voice, AND kneel down all at once!
Anytime they fail (jump up) and you have to retreat instead of giving them their reward, make it slightly easier for them to win (by keeping all four paws on the floor until they get their reward) next time by making yourself just a bit less exciting on the next rep. We want them to be winning OFTEN! So go slow in increasing your difficulty levels, and don’t forget to praise them when they do a good job by giving that treat to the ground (or by petting them low on the chest or rubbing their belly- another reward they may like but still encourage them to remain calm and on the ground)!
Soon, all these distracting, tempting things we humans do to entice our dogs to jump up will start to become cues for our dogs to keep four on the floor instead. Keep these sessions short and sweet, but frequent for the best results!
Here’s a helpful video to follow along to to help you play this game at home!
