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Hi all:

Wondering if any of you have any thoughts on how much off-leash is too much. We bring our (almost 7 months) puppy there a few times a week so she can burn around with the other dogs and really stretch her legs. She loves exploring in the long grass, and as she is a hunting breed, we like to let her get used to working the grass in an environment where we can know that she will not get into any trouble. She has such a good time and as well as getting her exercise, it also tires her out enough that she (and we!) gets a nice sound sleep all night. We are having troubles with her on her leash though and I wonder if we are maybe bringing her to the off-leash park too much. While we all enjoy our time there and meeting up with the regulars we run into, we're thinking it might be hindering our leash training. She pulls and pulls and pulls so hard on her leash, and no matter how much umbilical, correction, etc that we do, she has not shown improvement. It's so frustrating and tiring to take her for leash walks. She's getting pretty strong too so even on umbilical she ends up pulling me around and I have chafing and bruises around my waist from all the yanking and lunging she does. I wonder if she's so used to ripping it up at the off-leash park that she just thinks she can do the same on her leash. She's a good dog but this is really the one big sore point we have with her right now. She's a pro at basic commands and has been getting much better at recalling as well, but leash walking is an absolute nightmare. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks folks!

As long as she responds to you off leash, I can't see a problem.
Yes leash work does need to be worked on but at least she is getting exercised without the frustration.
Lilo is strong and still has issues on leash, but being a high energy breed she needs exercising. Therefore we use leash time as training time and exercise her either by bike or off leash.
Leash work takes a long, long time to get right. I know myself how frustrating it can be! The last thing you want is to get annoyed at her and solve nothing
Try draining her energy at the off-leash park then spend solid time doing leash work. It will take time but i think as long as she is obedient off leash you should be more successful with the leash training sessions.
Thats what im doing at the minute with my nutter but im sure the others have other suggestions that may help

Prairiedoug you and I have the EXACT same issues but maybe it's because we have the same breed at around the same age.

I am becoming horrible with my leash consistency. I have just returned to work and am dealing with leaving her home for 7-8 hours so I have to take her off leash to burn a lot of energy in the morning so she isn't stressed out when I leave her. Then I feel guilty that she is cooped up at home and take her off leash when I get home (we live a block from the off leash park). I do umbilical with her at night but I've signed up for street safety and so this week I am stalling a bit with leash training until we start the class - I know it's bad.

I hope the class is going to help a lot because I spent a whole summer working with her leash training and it hasn't gotten any better so I'm obviously doing something wrong.

If you ever watch Dog Whisperer he always recommends the off leash as more of a reward or socializing time. So he says the dog gets walked, trained, etc. before going to the park which helps calm them and blow a bit of energy as well. No entering the park until they are being a follower. Maybe working in some leash walking on the way to the off leash would help if you are just going directly there now. That way you work both things in.

I've also seen some people walk their dogs on leash in the off leash until they have calmed down and are listening before letting them loose.

Yup a good brisk walk before the Doggy free for all! That way they have burnt off a bit energy before they play!

Do you have a martingale on her, if so is it adjusted properly? She should be correcting herself every time she pulls. Try changing directions as soon as she tries to go past you, also are you walking thru your dog, perhaps work more on that, hope that helps.

Andy, yup, I do have a martingale and it's adjusted properly...does not deter her from pulling whatsoever. In fact, she pulls harder as it tightens. Then she ends up choking herself and really doesn't seem to care. I do the quick direction changes, running around trees, jumping over stuff, etc. and it helps for about 10 seconds and then she goes right back to pulling. She just does not seem to get it. I'm not giving up, but I was just wondering if too much off-leash might be confusing her.

I can try doing a bit of walking on her leash before letting her go, but she gets so hyper when she sees other dogs (she's a total social butterfly!) that I'm not sure I'll be able to get her to focus on her leash at the off-leash park.

Tanilo, I remember you saying in a post that you are in Calgary. Whereabouts? I am in Calgary as well and we usually go to the Southland park so if you ever go there, maybe we can arrange a date/time for our two brats to meet eachother. Always love chatting with other GSP owners and there are a few that we have been running into there recently...no other puppies though, so it would be cool to meet you both! Are you a member of the Alberta GSP club? I think I remember our breeder saying they are in the NW somewhere. Wondering if it's worth joining or if it really centres a lot on showing, which I'm not interested in.

Sorry all, got a little off topic at the end there!

Prairiedoug, I feel your pain (and so do my hips). We went through the same thing, and trust me, it\'ll get worse before it gets better. Every time you let your dog off leash when it has been pulling like mad, she wins. Keep that in mind, you HAVE to be more stubborn than she is. When my dog was that age, he got excited over EVERYTHING. In his mind he was saying, Oh, grass, gotta sniff it, gotta chew it, piece of garbage, jump on it, don\'t let it get away in the wind, umm smells good, gotta get it, mini gravel (playground gravel)!!! whoo feels funny on my feet, I\'m sinking into it, feels cool, lots of smells in here boy....and it goes on. Me during this time? Whoa this dog is pulling me all over the place, why isn\'t he listening, what am I doing wrong!!!! I\'ve changed directions about a billion times, I\'ve made him sit, but he\'s got blinders on and isn\'t listening to a word I say or a thing I do. On a day where he would get particularly zoomy, I would tie the leash tighter around my waist to give him less length to pull from, and make the corrections more effective. So a few things that are contributing to your problems. One, you are not alpha yet in your dogs eyes. Two, she\'s still young, and with high energy dogs, that\'s just the way it is sometimes. Three, you\'re letting her get away with it IF you are letting her offleash after she\'s been pulling. And lastly, I KNOW you want to let her run free and have fun, and burn off the energy. But you are not going to solve her onleash issues this way, and you have to put in more on leash time. Do more umbilical on walks with the leash tied so that she has less length (this will help with the squeezing you to pieces part too), be more quick in your corrections, you have to switch directions before she\'s at the point where she\'s choking herself pulling. Anticipate her movements and change directions when you see it coming (I know, easier said than done, but you get better at it at time goes on). Or, you can just do an exercise in an open area where you\'re running back and forth, changing directions at different points, and you\'re just teaching her to follow you even if she isn\'t pulling at all. Honestly, I didn\'t feel like I was alpha over my dog until he was maybe a year old. Maybe not even then, cause I have a hard time picking a turning point. He\'s still not perfect, and neither am I, but it\'s a work in progress, and I am so proud of him right now for how well he\'s doing. But, as much as you don\'t want to hear it, your dog is only 7 months old, coming right into the terrible two\'s soon, and it\'s going to take some time. It\'s easy to combine training time with playing time, you just have to be patient, it WILL get better, as long as you\'re putting the time in for it. When we were doing Brad\'s classes a couple times a week, we were doing at least an hour and a half of street training exercises, with a tiny bit of offleash if they earned it. Keep in mind that the training exercises their brains too, and it\'s great for dogs like ours where their brains are working a mile a minute.

I would LOVE to get the puppies together. I have never been to southland dog park with her. We always take her to riverpark. It's nice because we can take her down to the river and try getting her in it - she's not super interested in the water. I have run into a few GSP's as well but all have been older and my dog doesn't seem to connect as well with them as she does with the german wire haired dogs we've seen.

If you're in town this long weekend and will be there let me know. I think since the weather is going to be bad we will probably stay in town and I wanted to take her up to Nose hill park this weekend as a change of setting while doing errands in the NW.

Hey again Tanilo:

Sorry...haven't been on here for several days. I have the inlaws in town this week, but I'd still like to try and set up a date sometime for our pups to meet. Hunting season starts really soon so we'll be taking her out starting mid-month, but I'm sure we can figure something out. We saw another GSP puppy when ours was still really young, but have only seen adults since. Seems to be quite a few of them around actually as we're meeting more and more owners at the park. As Storm is maturing, she's getting less interested in saying hi to every single person and dog she sees. Now she picks and chooses who to greet. There is a couple who have a pair of wirehairs at the Southland park quite regularly. Where is Riverpark? In the NW? Southland is in the SE right at the far east end of Southland. You can see it along Deerfoot if you're ever at the Deerfoot Meadows shopping area (where Ikea is). Anyways, let me know and we'll try to set something up. Later!