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Dog Off-leash Control

ABC Practical Guide to Dog Training
copyright . 2004 by Wiley Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved Howell Book House
Appelbaum, Steven.

Another challenge with young puppies involves obedience commands and raises a huge question regarding off-leash versus on-leash control. Basically it works like this.

Most people need and want their dog to respond to obedience commands when the dog is not wearing a leash. This is not to say that most owners want their dogs to walk down a busy street off leash. In fact, this can be dangerous no matter how well trained your dog is, and may also violate local leash laws. That being said, your dog doesn’t live on a leash and, as such, has to listen to some commands off the leash. Which commands? The recall (“come”) is critical, as is “stay,” “sit” and probably “down.” Off-leash control needs to be attained, at the very least, around the house, in the yard and possibly in the neighborhood. The big question is, when does obedience training start and how does an owner typically go about getting off-leash control of this type?

The real answer is, obedience training starts from the very second you, the owner, start giving your dog obedience commands. Most owners start giving their dog commands on the very first day.

When should formal training start? The answer varies, because generally your dog will need to have some inoculations before being admitted to a class with other dogs. Speak to your veterinarian about this, but please understand that diseases such as parvovirus and distemper are nothing to ignore. They can be nasty, fatal and can strike puppies who are not inoculated against them. Typically most classes won’t allow young puppies to be enrolled before 14 weeks of age. If you get your dog at 10 weeks of age, this means a month before you start any kind of formal training. It is during this month that most owners start to make mistakes that often make obedience training much more difficult to teach down the road.

Conventional training wisdom goes something like this: When you start formal training, you put the dog on a leash and some form of training collar. For many years the training collar most commonly used was a metal-link slip collar, usually called a choke chain. There are numerous choke chain variations. Some links are bigger, some smaller, some irregularly shaped, some are made of nylon, but all work on the Choke chains.

same noose-type principle. That is, when you pull one end of the collar, it tightens around the dog’s neck. When you release that end, the collar loosens again. Prong collars, sometimes called pinch collars, were once also routinely used. These devices work in a similar fashion to a choke chain, but the prongs pinch the dog’s neck when the collar tightens. It sounds worse than it is, but it is clearly not a device designed to be pleasurable for your dog.

Nowadays—and I think this is a huge improvement—head collars that fit over the dog’s head and muzzle are replacing choke chains as the collar of choice. It’s an improvement (for most dogs) because these collars enable handlers to more easily control the dog’s body with less force by controlling the dog’s head. This is very similar to the way some horses are trained. For a number of years, there was a huge debate in the training world (trainers love to debate) about whether head collars or choke chains worked better and whether choke chains were cruel or inhumane. I believed then, as I do now, that both collars are effective and, when used properly, neither is inhumane. Personally, I believe head harnesses are better in most, but not all, training situations. So, as I started to say, conventional training wisdom has you in class with your dog on a leash and some type of training collar. The objective is to train the dog to listen well enough on the leash that he can be consistently counted on to obey all commands regardless of distractions. When this occurs (and in the best case it can take four to six months), the hope is that you will be able to take the leash off and the dog will still obey you on the first command off leash, initially with no distractions and eventually with them. It makes sense—unless you’ve ever tried it. If you have, then you know what typically happens.

When you take the leash off, the dog is far less inclined to listen. In some instances, the dog doesn’t listen at all! I’ve seen dogs who were absolutely, perfectly obedient on leash completely “forget” their training when the leash came off. Entire training methods have been developed to overcome this problem. These include light lines, where a very light nylon cord or even monofilament is put on the dog’s collar, so that when the leash is taken off the handler can step on the monofilament or grab it (with gloves), thus preventing the dog from escaping and teaching him that you still have control.

Smaller leashes, or gradually cutting a six-foot leash to five feet, four feet, two feet, etc., have also been used. This is because we’ve all seen dogs who listen perfectly on a six-foot leash.

the six-foot leash and walk 10, 20 or 40 feet away and the dog would still listen. If a dog listens on a six-foot leash when you’re 40 feet away, is the leash really necessary? Many people would say no and remove the leash. The problem is, when you take the leash off, the dog often runs away. To overcome this, instead of taking the leash off you start to gradually cut it down. First five feet, then four, until finally the dog is left wearing the metal clip portion of the leash. Many dogs responded to this technique, although some started to run when the leash got shorter than one or two feet. Many trainers still find the challenge of getting dogs to listen off leash among the most difficult they have to deal with.

To be fair, this is less of a problem now than it was 30 years ago. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that most modern training methods are not based on teaching your dog to avoid leash corrections. When compulsion methods of this type were taught, the dog viewed the leash as the tool of correction. The problem was that once the tool was removed, the threat of correction and the ability to correct were also removed. Dogs are not stupid. If they’re trained to avoid punishment, and the instrument of punishment is gone, so is the dog— down the street, with his handler chasing 100 feet behind.

The other reason this is less of a problem today is that training usually starts at a younger age now than it did in decades past. When owners waited until their dogs were six to eight months old before they started formal training, they had been interacting with their pets for months before formal training took place. During this time, they were inadvertently teaching their dogs not to listen. To put it another way, if you only have a month to mess up your dog’s training, you will typically do less damage than if you have five months.

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