You’ve mastered walking on a leash, Heel, and working through distractions at home, and your backyard, now it’s time to take those lessons and apply them to a real, neighborhood walk!
Before you continue with these tips, if you haven’t had the chance to review and practice walking on a leash with your puppy and heel training, now is the time! These tips are meant to advance your puppy’s training, and help you if your puppy already knows the foundation of leash walking, and had practice working with distractions.
Now, let’s get walking!
Tips for Walking Outside With Distractions
If you have been working with your puppy for a few weeks now at home or in your backyard getting the handle on walking nicely on a leash, the next big step is taking all of those skills and applying them to a walk outside in your neighborhood.
With these tips, you will work through normal daily challenges to help your puppy build focus and muscle memory through food work, leash pressure, and applying obedience commands with rewards!
Passing Another Dog on Your Walk
One of the most common daily encounters will be other dogs on walks. In these situations, as your puppy is still learning to maintain focus with distractions, you will use the “Bubble Out” technique. Essentially, as you approach the oncoming dog, you will draw your puppy away creating a large open space between your puppy and the other dog, or a bubble, as you pass them and continue on.
When you see another dog walking toward you, use a piece of your puppy’s food or a treat and bring it to their nose. The food in your hand will act as the lure to maintain your puppy’s focus, and applying leash pressure to continue moving forward is your tool to guide your puppy. Ask your puppy to “Heel” so they walk next to your side and start to create that bubble of space. Once you have passed the other dog, you can reward your puppy with the food or treat and say “good!” Going through this routine while other dogs are walking past will help your puppy create the muscle memory to stay close to you and follow your lead on the walk rather than go toward the new approaching dog!
Pro Tip: Start your bubble out and keeping your pup's focus before they even notice the other dog whenever possible!
In instances when you don’t have enough room to bubble out or have a puppy that is very easily distracted, you can add a “Sit” into the routine. With your food hand to your puppy’s nose, ask your puppy to “Heel”, as your walking toward the other dog. When the other dog is passing, ask your puppy to “Sit”, with the addition of placing yourself in front of your puppy to block their view of the passing dog. Doing this retains their attention on you so once the distraction has moved on, you can reward your puppy and continue on. Asking your puppy to remain still while another dog passes is much harder than using movement to navigate around the situation! So your puppy may only get a couple of seconds of “Sit” before you'll want to keep on moving!
Why do we do this? Creating that amount of space lets you remain in control of the situation and maintain more of your puppy’s focus on you. All you can control when out on a walk is your puppy’s reaction to things. Since you can’t know if the other dog will lunge, bark, or try to play with your puppy, remove that option by using the bubble out technique to create some distance.
Remember, puppies’ drives and attention levels are different. Try both variations to see what works best for your puppy!
Regaining Attention Using “Heel”
You’ve been working on bubbling out but your puppy is still losing focus and distractions are pulling their attention in every direction! Or you have a puppy that’s very social and all they want to do is greet every new dog they pass. What do you do?
Troubleshoot your puppy’s distracted behavior by using the “Heel” command and leash guidance to regain the focus on you. If your puppy is starting to pull toward the oncoming dog, apply light leash pressure stepping backward, and say “Heel”, and walk in the opposite direction. This change can help draw your puppy’s attention and once you have created enough distance from the other dog or whatever was distracting your puppy, incorporate some food work such as asking your puppy to “sit” to start working on maintaining their focus on you!
Quick reminder if you haven’t read our Introduction to Heel Training blog go ahead and jump over to work on those routines first!
Maintaining Focus Using “Let’s Go!”
In our Introduction to Walking on Leash blog we covered teaching your puppy the “Let’s Go!” command. The goal of “Let’s Go!” is to help motivate your puppy to follow through walking with you while distractions are present. “Let’s Go!” is fluid and should be used while you’re in motion. It emulates a real-life situation and utilizes leash guidance to get your puppy moving and following your lead.
When you’re out with your puppy practicing their outdoor walk, incorporate “Let’s Go” the next time you have an approaching distraction. Say the command “Let’s Go!” and continue moving in the opposite direction. The delivery of this command also plays a huge part in its effectiveness! Inject some energy and excitement when you say “Let’s Go!” to really recapture your puppy’s attention and get them motivated to move with you.
How did you walk outside go? Did you find these tips helpful? It will take some time for your puppy to conquer distractions but continue to work with your puppy through distractions, building up their focus and they will get there!
Join us next Wednesday for our Ask a Puppy Trainer live q&a! If you have questions on this topic, feel free to ask and we’ll help you!
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Puppyhood Made Easy for New Owners: How to Play with Your Puppy Pt. 1
