Lead/Leash manners - Teaching a Prey Driven Dog to Recall. Video 7.

In this video I focus on the lead training for this lovely, lively prey driven dog.
Why?
Because lead training MUST be incorporated into recall training. It MUST come first.
Why?
Because a dog that won't listen to you at the end of a lead certainly won't listen to you when she's on the scent of another animal and chasing!

For this dog the lead or leash training was taught with a combination of negative and positive reinforcement.

What the heck does that mean?!

Essentially, having been taught beforehand that her own behaviour could remove the annoyance of the electronic collar, when she moved beyond my left leg, the 'immediate' tightness of the slip-lead (she came with that) was followed immediately by the appropriate level of stimulation on the electronic collar, at which point I had already turned and begun to walk in the opposite direction. Bothe the stimulation of the collar and the physical pressure of the slip lead were instantly removed when she turned.

**This part is VERY important to bare in mind when watching this video .. The dog came to me with a pre-existing problem behaviour - she would run away from the slip lead when she saw it, whether at the start or the end of the walk. This shouldn't make sense right? Why would a lead that comes before going for a walk be something to avoid? The first thought is that she found it unpleasant (aversive) - yet she would perfectly happily pull like a steam train when wearing the lead to the point of rasping and almost choking herself!
Whatever the reason for the bad association, you can still see shadows of it in points during this video. Further conditioning work will dramatically reduce this 'leash avoidance' behaviour.

So here we see a dog with zero lead skills, a dog that would automatically lunge and pull like crazy, progressing to multiple handlers, zero corrections, zero treats and zero commands - in under 2 weeks!

Then we have the final part of the video!! ... A COMPLETELY unique test of her understanding and handler confidence!! I have never seen this shown before!!

Video 8 will show it in full!!!

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Thanks all!

Jamie