Thelma Leash Training
A lot of people ask me how I maintain control of eight dogs living under one roof. The answer is easy: I walk the poop out of them.
The most effective method of establishing leadership over a pack of dogs, as well as an only dog, is a thirty to forty-five minute, structured walk every morning. To Mason and I, walking our pack is as important as affection, mainly because the benefits are immediate and mutually beneficial.
One hour of activity in a park or on a sidewalk results in a whole range of benefits: it curbs energy levels, promotes pack bonding, increases confidence, and boosts socialization skills. Most importantly, if done properly, it’s an easy way for the pack leader (s) (Mace and me) to earn respect, which means the dogs listen to us and obey our house rules.
The problem with Thelma, the six-month-old lab-mastiff mutt that broke through our fence, is that she hates a leash. From the second we put one on her, she acts like she’s being tortured, yanking and pulling and finally just dropping her fifty-two pound mass on the ground and turning into an anchor that won’t budge.
Last week, when Donna, ICHBA’s founder, transported her to the Fix Foundation in Kentucky, we had to carry her out of my car, then lift her into a crate in Donna’s van. Donna is almost seventy and slim, and I weigh 125 pounds soaking wet, so it was quite a load, particularly because Thelma turned into deadweight. After that trip, I truly realized the severity of Thelma’s leash-phobia, which is a new problem for me. We’ve had foster dogs with fear-aggression, separation anxiety, zero housetraining skills, bad eating manners, and poor walking etiquette, but never one that cowered and stubbornly boycotted movement when attached to a leash, at least not one as big as Thelma.
In the meantime, I got an email from our friends, Nora and Jason Pidgeon, who had recently adopted a new pup, Dakota. They are having the same problem with Dakota as we are with Thelma. Dakota hates a leash and refuses to walk even when tempted with food.
In order to (hopefully) help my friends, as well as anybody encountering similar leash training challenges, I’ve decided to keep a log of Thelma’s progress. I’ll try to update it in three days increments, but if improvement takes longer, I may need to push that back to weekly. If it happens sooner, then right on, and believe me, you’ll know about it.
Our goal is to walk her, using proper leash etiquette, with the rest of the pack on the Springfield Greenway. When I refer to proper leash etiquette, I’m defining it as dogs that walk directly next to their human’s side, with very few pit stops, never pulling ahead or lagging too far, but prancing slightly behind, relinquishing center stage to the leader. In fact, if you log enough miles with your pack while consistently behaving as their leader, you should be able to encounter any stimuli, from other dogs and cats to squirrels, rabbits, and even deer, while holding your animal’s loose leash with your pinky. I’m nowhere near Cesar Millan’s level, but right now I can lead up to five dogs at a time on a five-mile walk. If any aggressive mutts are in the group, that narrows to three. Unfortunately, Thelma isn’t even close to being ready for some much-needed pack migration.
Slightly off the subject, but the first rule of leash training: throw out every retractable you own. On several trails on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, all dogs must be leashed but the leashes can’t be retractable or longer than six feet. In other words, keep your dogs on a short leash. Same rules apply at the Farnival.
Friday, April 18:
After consulting the Farnival’s most-trusted animal authority, Katherine Peacock, who swears by Cesar Millan’s philosophies, we decided to try fastening a leash to Thelma for a few days, let her get comfortable with it, and see how things progress. Hopefully, when she relaxes while wearing a leash, she’ll be easier to walk on one.
At six a.m. on Friday, we started our experiment. Mason put a harness on Thelma and attached a leash to it that she’ll wear constantly. We picked an old leash that could get chewed apart (rope will do) and chose a harness instead of a collar, so that Thelma can’t strangle herself if the rope gets snagged.
By late afternoon, we already saw a smidgeon of progress because she made one lap next to me around the basement before I fed her dinner. I tugged to get her started, but she walked a circumference of six feet without any resistance.
Saturday, April 19:
Yesterday, after we had attached the leash, Thelma spent a lot of time hunkered downstairs, like she had done something wrong, but this morning she’s completely comfortable wearing it. I even saw her wrestling with Meadow in the backyard. She still resists walking for more than a few feet, but I keep trying in small doses. The second she resists, I urge her a little farther and sometimes she’ll take another step or two. If she resists too forcefully I release her leash, walking away like nothing unusual happened. At all times, I’m mindfully calm and assertive.
Sunday, April 20:
Thelma has been wearing her leash for forty-eight hours now. Surprisingly, the leash is still in decent condition. Rosie, the baby of the pack, chews on the end at night, when she’s worn out from playing but too awake to fall asleep. Once in a while she thinks it’s fun to terrorize poor, huge Thelma by yanking on her leash, like its some kind of tug- of- war game. Overall, Rosie doesn’t understand Thelma’s reluctance to walk and if she’s around when we’re practicing, she’ll nip on Thelma’s thick, folded, drooling maw to urge her forward.
This morning I walked Thelma four laps around our deck. She dropped on the fifth try, but she did so good for the three minutes before she gave up that I gave her a carrot treat.