Walking your dog can be relaxing, and the perfect way to start your morning off or mark the end of your work day. But it’s not always so calm – if your pup has ever decided to pull toward other people when they’re on their leash, you’ll be able to relate.
Not wanting your dog to approach people by pulling you over to them is completely understandable. For many of us, it’s not a behavior we want from our dogs. However, you can use positive reinforcement (with plenty of the best dog treats) to stop them, encouraging them to carry out a different behavior instead.
Fortunately, Juliana DeWillems, expert trainer and the founder of JW Dog Training & Behavior Consulting, is on hand to offer some advice about how to do just that in a recent Instagram post.
DeWillems begins by explaining that she marks and rewards her dog every time he looks at a person while they’re out on a walk.
“This cues the dog to look back at me for the promised treat,” she continues, “If the dog doesn’t look back at me after I mark, that is information that they could be over threshold and might need more distance or more support from me.”
Because she clicks and gives the dog a treat every time they look at the person, she is rewarding the behavior of looking but then sticking near her – something that’s incompatible with pulling away to something else.
She adds, “As the person gets further away and the training becomes easier I’ll wait to reward until the dog chooses to look back at me.”
Essentially, when your dog is doing something undesirable you’ll want to offer them a replacement behavior. In this instance, sticking close to you is a great replacement behavior when you want to stop a dog pulling on a leash because it keeps you both safe, comfortable, and happy.
As DeWillems puts it, “You can’t do a don’t! Make sure you are telling your dog what you DO want from them when you are training them.”
Dogs don’t know that they’re doing something they shouldn’t, or why they shouldn’t be doing it. We can’t reason with them like you might a human, so offering an alternative and giving them plenty of treats along the way is the best solution.
Read next: My dog’s leash pulling made walks miserable until I helped her reactivity, here’s how
