[Cara]

Saul:

This sounds familiar. From day one (i.e., 8 weeks), my pup would sit herself down when I started out on a short walk. It was cutely defiant but it quickly became an issue: a little bit of leash pressure – a puppy pop – would launch her at a run and she’d sink her teeth into my leg. No fun.

I cured this by using the walk to pay out her kibble. It was somewhere between a bribe and a game of “find,” with some coming right from my hand, but it got us over the hump and she started associating walking with something yummy. A few weeks in, some other issues developed that took a while to address and I phased the food out from the walks.

She’s a year old now. We’ve come a long way since then. Lots of things I’ve had to learn along then way. In my case, my dog’s habit of sitting when I was moving ended up foreshadowing a disconcerting indifference to leash pressure. A prong helped with that, and I have recently started over with some of Robert’s early leash pressure videos. Now that we’re over some odd humps, those lessons have proven meaningful and helpful.

Good luck.

Cara