Teaching Chance to walk on-leash

Chance has pulled through from the parvovirus. She is back to her playful, submissive behaviour. She is still waiting to be adopted. Anyhow, I shall wait until after this upcoming long holidays for enquiries about her before putting her into an animal shelter. In the meantime, for the past three visits, I have been conditioning her to accept the leash and collar; and ultimately to obediently walk on-leash. This will give the potential adopter a head start in getting her to walk on-leash.

In my first post about Chance, I mentioned that she likes to go into submissive belly-up posture. Well, on the first training day, she did exactly that when I pulled her with the leash. So I deferred this step, and just let the leash twist around her body, with the intention of letting her feel the presence of it. Initially, she was eager to follow me, and didn't mind the leash being around her. 

 



After awhile, Chance began to roll over when I looked back at her. I ignored her and continued to walk. Being the kind who is sticky to me, she had no choice but to follow me. I worked on this first phase of the process for remaining of the walk for the day.

 

On our next meeting, I repeated the previous step for a while before proceeding to hold the leash. She again rolled over. I dropped the leash and walked on. She followed. I picked up the leash again. I repeated this step whenever she rolled over, until she was willing to walk while I held the leash.

It was natural for her now to call the shots. This time she stood her ground - sometimes she sat down - and resisted from moving. I pulled her, but realised it was not effective and correct to do so, so I dropped the leash and walked away. This time she did not follow me until I was quite far ahead. On ocassions when I see cars approaching, I have to squat down and call her over. I will again hold the leash and proceed to walk. She will again resist. This process repeated several times for the remaining of our walk.

On the third visit, she was more obliging to walk beside me, though occasionally - but not as frequent - she resisted from moving. I was confident she would fully cooperate in future. One of her favorite place - and mine - for us to relax is at a gazebo at a nearby park. This was the first place I brought her to while waiting for the vet to open. For ten minutes, she gets a to enjoy a belly rub.