How To Have Off-Leash Control Of Your Dog

One of the goals I have with every dog that I train is to eventually have them responding to me off leash.  It’s important that our dogs can respond off leash under distraction so that they can still have the freedom and the ability to go run, play, and exercise that they deserve when they come into our household. If we’ve only trained them on leash they’re going to be frustrated because they cannot expend that energy that is bound up inside them.

They’re at little athletes that live with us and they need to exercise to be happy and healthy!  We begin our training with a long, light line on the animal.  Something like a quarter inch hollow braid polypropylene line. We don’t want to go any heavier than a quarter inch and we also want to make sure it’s hollow braid because when it gets wet from the dew in the grass that it will not absorb the water and become a heavy anchor to the dog.  We want the rope only to be there is a means of control not as a means of restraining the dog or making it difficult for them to move around.  If they’re feeling that there’s an anchor behind them they’re not going to act naturally when they’re out working with us.

The Procedure

We begin them with a long twelve foot line attached.   If you have an extremely fast dog that likes to bolt on you, you can go even longer than this -go even up to twenty five or thirty feet to begin with just to be safe- so that you can always get control of them if they run.

Start with a few commands like those we’ve already learned, in a close quarter situation where you can always again be in control of the line, then start to take the dog for walks allow them to roam twenty or thirty or forty feet from you. You will drop the line while they roam.  You want to do this in a non-distracted environment first and then move into situations where there are more distractions. If your dog is responding about ninety five percent of the time under the great distractions that you’ll encounter, then it’s time to move up to a shorter line.  Go to one that’s just long enough to hang out your hand, and is about the length of the dog and again we work in our situations under distractions.

If we find that the dog is responding to us again about ninety five to ninety nine percent of the time, then at that point then we know we’re confident to move to an even shorter line.  This line will be short enough not to drag on the ground when hanging from the collar.  This little line can hang on the dog for a few months if we want to just so that we’ve always got the ability to get control.  We always have the ability  to make a correction with our leash and our and our choke chain. There’s basically enough room for two hands so we can make our quick snap if we need to.

When we find that the dog again is responding very well under distractions with this short line on then we can try moving with no line at all. So at any point if you feel that you’re having a struggle if you’ve gone to a shorter line and the dog is beginning to have more confidence or get a little cocky and test you then go back to your longer line until again that you’re seeing that the dog is is humble to your control.

Move into the stages, weaning the dog off of the leash until you feel confident.  DON’T GET AHEAD OF YOUR OWN CONFIDENCE!  You want to be certain that when you eventually take this line off completely that your dog is going to respond under a dangerous distraction.

You don’t want them to get hurt; you don’t want them to see a cat across the road and go bolting because they feel free. One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they go from the long line to suddenly to have no line at all and they wonder why the dog won’t respond.  Then they spend an hour chasing the dog around the car or the bushes or the neighborhood because the dog knows when that line comes (off if it comes off too soon) that we don’t have the ability to get a hold of them and to reinforce what it is that we’ve asked them to do.   In most cases dogs want to do their own thing; they’d rather go chase the cat or or grab some smells in the air and take off chasing those things than to do what we want.

Be patient with what you’re doing and have some fun with it.  At the end of three to six weeks (depending on the dog) you will have confidence that under any situation you can have total control on your dog.

This will give them the freedom,  the enjoyment, and the happiness they want out of life. Everybody’s going to be a little bit happier in the end if we do things properly.

(Move this part UP)

As we start to go for walks that are leading towards off leash work with our dog, we would begin by having our dog on a long training line. As they start to move away from us they get ten or fifteen feet away a lot of people tend to panic the dog is further away from the maybe than they’ve been used to now what we want to watch for if we’ve done our other work with our down command we’re getting our responses and so forth that the dog is starting to have a regard for us there will be a natural distance that the dog will sort of stay around us sat in it’s generally around forty feet with the average dog so what we want to do is as we start to walk down the trail the dog is stopping to sniff something don’t be too quick to jump on the dog say Come on let’s go let’s go if we do what we’re going to find is that the dog is going to feel like we’re nagging at it it’s not getting the freedom that it wants the opportunity to smell the bush or whatever so carry on walking just go silently keep marching forward and you will see it about forty feet maybe you know give or take a little bit on that the dog will look up and if you keep moving the dog will automatically catch up to you and they may go ahead of you about the same distance and just again hold back just wait that extra little time before you say anything see what the dog’s response is going to be at this point and again we want to have laid the groundwork with some other commands so that we know by the time we get here the dog is going to be natural sticking around the less you say to them on these walks when the dog is bad. Going forth like this the more chance you’re going to have a response when you do speak if you’re constantly saying something to them it’s going to go in one ear and out the other because they’re going to say I was just about to come anyway sort of leave me alone give me some space on anything that we’re doing when it comes to off leash if the dog is not responding again just remember that we need to say our command one time give the dog two seconds to respond and then go in and make the correction so as you dog is falling behind you you’re walking if you get to that forty foot point you’ve given him his time is distance when you call and you clap your hands and you say let’s go do it while you’re continuing to move forward so that when the dog looks up he realizes that your motion is to move forward and he’ll fall that as opposed to stopping staring at him clapping and looking at I’m saying Come on let’s go and he’s looking at you and you look at him it becomes this standoff keep moving and then once you’ve taken a few more steps and you’ve given the dog a couple seconds to respond if he’s not responding then you can run back make your crack and you know talking along and drop a line then carry on moving so the next time you speak you’re going to see that the dogs are going to respond if it’s a down command off leash at a distance and things to get anywhere you’re not getting a response look at the patterns that you’re working with the methods are you sticking to the program or you reinforcing what you’re saying every time in other ways and are you disciplining firmly enough as the distractions increase when the dog begins to move away from you remember the dogs desire to attend to those distractions is going to increase so your corrections will also have to increase anywhere they’re being stubborn it’s not the dog doesn’t understand you as long as you’re speaking clearly and loudly enough it’s that they’re just simply saying I don’t want to so you make your corrections increase and your dog will start to respond and the idea again is to move beyond having to correct them increase firmly enough so that a few days or a few weeks down the road there’s no corrections needed your dog simply knows that when you speak you always mean business you’ve proven that every single time without a doubt and then it’s just simply a verbal communication with your dog and you have one that responds all the time in any situation.