How to Teach a Dog to Walk on a Lead

Teaching your dog to walk is very simple if you know how to do it. You've surely seen dozens of dogs on the street walking alongside their owners — plenty of them walk properly, and some others… walk very, very badly.

Walking a dog who doesn't know how to walk can be a real hassle; tugging, overtaking, tension on the lead, and endless problems that can turn a lovely walk into a whole ordeal. So let's explain how you should properly teach your dog to walk. Shall we start?

Advice Before Their Training

Whether your dog is an adult or a puppy, you need to teach them to walk beside you. Dogs don't know whether they're doing it right or wrong — they simply walk, and it's up to their owners to let them know whether they're doing it right or wrong, correcting or praising them. Most behavioural problems during walks with dogs stem from poor communication between owner and dog, not from a badly trained dog.

If your dog is a puppy, you need to vaccinate them before going out with them, and get them used to wearing their collar all day. Once they're a bit older and used to it, you'll be able to take it off at home or whenever you like… but while they're a puppy, it's advisable for them to always wear it, so they get used to it and don't see it as a problem around their neck.

Remember puppies grow quickly — check the collar is never too tight (you should be able to fit two fingers with no problem between the lead and the puppy's neck).

Let's learn how to teach our dog or puppy to walk beside us, with no tugging or scares. Going for a calm walk with your dog is genuinely simple, and only needs a bit of practice and patience. Forget any techniques you've learned so far, and put these into practice — you'll see how, within a short time, you'll get good results.

Burning Off Their Energy

When a puppy or adult dog goes outside, the first thing they want to do is run, play, urinate, greet other dogs… This is entirely normal, which is why, once out of the house, they're so energetic, full of life and eager to play.

The first thing we need to do before teaching our dog any task, such as walking, lying down, fetching objects and so on, is let them burn off steam. By eliminating their extra energy, we'll have a far more submissive dog, ready to learn, which is why the first thing we need to do is let them release energy.

It's advisable to take them to a dog park or somewhere they can run freely, play, sniff around… ultimately, somewhere they can burn off steam and get tired. There's no rush to tire them out — you don't need to throw a stick 200 times to exhaust them… let them do it naturally, so we need to allow between half an hour and an hour for them to enjoy exclusively.

Once the dog has relieved themselves, played, sniffed around and burned off steam… we can start teaching them.

Choosing a Suitable Spot for Training

To teach our dog to walk, we need to choose a calm spot, where they can't easily get distracted and won't receive too much stimulation (once they've learned the basics, we can practise in spots with more stimuli).

A good spot for walking could be a quiet park, a country path and so on… If our dog is learning somewhere they can see other dogs playing, children shouting, balls bouncing and so on… they won't learn anything, since they'll be paying more attention to those stimuli than to their owner.

Preparing the Dog… and the Owner

To start teaching our dog or puppy to walk, we need to be entirely relaxed. We humans indirectly pass on our problems to our dogs, so if an owner is tense or stressed, the dog will notice that tension and won't be calm. To teach our dog to walk, we need to be calm and in a good mood, with no rush and eager to teach.

Our dog or puppy should already be used to wearing a collar, so all that's left… is putting the lead on. It's very important to use a short lead to teach our dog to walk — retractable leads aren't suitable. A lead around a metre long is a good lead for teaching our puppy or adult dog to walk beside us.

Once our dog has tired themselves out and we've gone to a calm area to start the lesson, all we need to do is put on the lead and start the lesson.

Starting to Walk With Our Dog

Get your dog or puppy to sit, put their lead on, position yourself by their side and start walking. Do it at a medium pace, neither too slow nor too fast. It's very important the lead has no tension — it should hang loosely in the middle, so it conveys no tension at all, so it's not taut.

If your dog or puppy gets ahead, the moment you notice tension on the lead, stop dead. Once they turn around and come towards you (the lead stops being tense), start walking again. You need to repeat this every day, so it becomes ingrained in their head that when they tug, they don't move forward.

If they constantly get ahead and tug, instead of stopping dead and waiting for the lead to lose tension, you can turn 180º and walk in the opposite direction, repeating this same step as many times as needed until the dog pays attention to you and, when you turn, does so at the same time, alongside you.

Another option, if you find the above impossible because they tug with tremendous force and don't respond, is to hold a dog reward in your hand (a small kibble, a piece of sausage and so on), getting them to walk beside you. Once they do, reward them and place a new reward in your hand, then reward them again after two or three metres, keep walking without stopping, repeat the process, and reward them again after five or six metres. The trick lies in gradually extending the time before they get their reward, so they walk beside you (neither ahead nor jumping) and get their reward.

Walk straight and vary the pace — for a few minutes walk quickly (without letting them get ahead, stopping dead if this happens or the lead gets tense) and then switch to a slower pace, where they should also stay level with you, not get ahead.

If your dog or puppy falls behind, simply walk a bit more slowly and keep a small reward in your hand so they move up to your side. Once they're by your side, the lead should have no tension — remember the lead should have no tension as a general rule.

Teaching Your Dog or Puppy to Walk

Teaching our dog or puppy to walk properly isn't achieved in a day, a week, or even a month. We'll see steady progress, but we'll need patience and to repeat the steps set out daily for a fair amount of time.

Some dogs learn to walk properly within a month, and others take six months… what matters isn't the time, but enjoying it. Teaching our dog isn't about sacrificing our time, but about sharing it with them and investing in their future (and our own comfort in the future).

By repeating the steps set out in the previous section regularly, we'll gradually see great progress. Once our dog can walk more or less well, we can go for walks with friends who also have dogs, so our dog sees other dogs also walking alongside them and doesn't feel the need to start playing. Remember you need to burn off their steam before teaching them — it's an essential step.

Practical Tips

We all make mistakes while training our dogs — it's entirely normal. That's why we've put together this series of tips that will be highly useful for you.

• Carry out the steps just as we've described them — get your dog to burn off steam first, then start the lessons. Never start a lesson with a dog full of energy — it won't do any good.
• Avoid training under the sun's heat — make sure it's not too hot, or your dog will only want to find shade to shelter in.
• Forget about choke/punishment collars, anti-pull leads and so on… Every dog can learn with a normal collar and a medium-sized lead.
• Your mood matters a great deal — if you're not calm and in a positive frame of mind, don't hold the lesson.
• If your dog is too worked up, get them to sit, lie down and massage them. Get them to relax naturally, and then start the lesson.
• Never let a young child hold the lessons for you — only the owner or an experienced adult (trainer) can give the lessons.
• Keep a well of patience — some dogs take several months to learn to walk properly; it's all about practice and patience, there are no other tricks.
• If the situation is too much for you, if you don't have the time… see a professional, but always, always, you need to be present during the training.

As you can see, this is just common-sense advice, but sometimes we forget it because of being in a rush or getting distracted. So now you know — just have a bit of patience, and you'll see how, within a short time, you get your dog to walk properly beside you.