Leashes! They’re a must-have, although I assume you have one already. The leash is one of, if not the most common piece of training equipment in any dog owners’ household and used by professional trainers. A leash offers you control over your dog to aid you in training desired behaviors, preventing bad behaviors, and correcting mistakes.
So, is there a proper way to use a leash? YES!
There is a proper way to hold a leash and use it during your training sessions. Let’s talk about grip first.
Most leashes are designed with a loop on the handler’s end. This loop gives off the appearance that you should hook it around your wrist or just grasp the loop, however, there are a few issues with holding a leash this way.
The first is if you just grip the loop with your fingers, your dog (depending on its size) can easily pull that loop out of your grasp. Your fingers are NOT strong enough to defeat the strength of your dog. Then there’s the issue with providing haptic feedback to your pup. Even if you have a short 4ft leash, that’s too much slack to give a tug easily using just your arm You’ll either have to stop your motion or take a few steps to distance yourself from your dog.
Now let’s review the loop-around-wrist hold. Many owners do this because they fear their dog is going to pull the leash out of their hand. They end up looping it around their wrists to ensure it doesn’t go anywhere. There’s a huge safety problem with this hold. If your dog goes running towards anything, you are likely going with it. That might mean going towards danger together. Of conversely, if you end up in danger, you could pull your dog into it. Say you’re on a hike and you fall off a steep incline…now your dog is coming with you and each of you is dead weight to the other. Maybe you catch yourself mid-fall, but now your dog’s weight jerks you back to falling. Don’t get trapped in the leash. Don’t loop it around your arm and very essential hand.
Alright, so how do you hold a leash?
- You take the loop and slide it over your thumb. The rest of the leash should now be hanging down the center of your palm.
- Curl your fingers over the leash that’s hanging across your palm to secure your grip. If you ever need to release the leash, you simply open your hand and it will slide off your thumb easily. This hold gives you the most powerful grip your hand can achieve so your dog isn’t going to pull it off of your hand unless you want it to.
- You also can take up slack easily by looping more leash around your thumb so you always have the appropriate length to provide haptic feedback to your dog.
Now that you know how to properly hold a leash, let’s talk about what leashes you should be using. There are so many options to choose from in any pet store. They come in a variety of lengths, materials and offer unique features. So which do you choose?
Materials: Leashes come in leather, nylon, polypropylene rope…etc. Leather provides the best grip for you, while offering strength and durability. Leather is therefore commonly used by trainers as it suits their needs best. Nylon leashes are the most difficult to grip as the material is slick. polypropylene rope is curved making it fit your hand best and offers a good grip to the handler. All leashes can be chewed through so they won’y stand up to your dog’s teeth, but leather lasts the longest out of the three, the nylon and polypropylene rope being about the same.
Width: This is commonly overlooked or misunderstood by owners. The leash width should not be based on the dog’s size. It should be determined by the handler’s size. Your fingers should be able to wrap around the with of the leash comfortably. If your have small hands, but a thinner leash. The strength of the leash will stand up to large dogs regardless of width.
Length: For training close proximity behaviros like, sit, down, and heel, the ideal leash length is 4 ft. You don’t want your dog getting preoccupied with other things in the environment so limiting what they can reach is ideal. You also will be standing close to your dog so having a shorter line is best suited for close range haptic feedback.
For training distance behaviors like stay, place, down at a distance, sit at a distance, and recall, a long line or lead is preferred. Leads allow you to be farther away from your dog while still being able to limit their movement and provide haptic signals to them. As you progress through your distance training, you’ll be moving farther and farther away from your dog. You will either need to purchase longer leads as you progress or purchase a 50-100ft lead from the beginning and take up slack as needed.
Unique Features:
- Bungee Leashes – these owners purchase to limit their dog’s pulling. However, it has a converse effect. These are like athletic training equipment for dogs. They increase the dog’s pulling strength since they now have to pull against stronger resistance. If you want to your dog to pull harder, buy one of these.
- Retractable Leashes – These leashes were originally created to help train recall. When dog’s recall they often run back to the handler faster than the handler can take up the slack in the leash, so the retractable leash was made to solve that problem and keep the appropriate length of leash available to the trainer to provide haptic feedback to the dog. These leashes are dangerous to the dog and to others when used for walks. They often lead to owner complacency, where the owner doesn’t pay much attention to how far away their dog is and as a result, what it then has access too. If your dog is 10 ft away to your left in the grass, it also can become 10 ft away to your right in the street. Also if you’re walking and your dog is at a distance from you, you can’t simply take in the slack without your dog going along with it. Your dog has to come to you or you have to go to your dog to take in slack, which I often observe, doesn’t give the owner enough time to close the distance down before other people, cars or dogs approaching get in range of your dog. The final danger these pose is their poor durability. They’re made of plastic and that plastic will break if the link snaps too hard or too many times. All in all, do not use retractable leashes outside of recall training, if you must.
- Leash splitters – These allow the handler to hold one leash that attaches to two dogs. If you own dogs who are not reactive, walk calmly and don’t pull you, then by all means get one of these so you have a free hand! If your dog does any of those things I just listed, a splitter should not be something you own. You cannot provide individual feedback to one of your dogs on a splitter to assist them in walking appropriately. If both dog’s pull, now you have 2x the pulling power stacked up against your one arm. Bottom line, if you’re still in walking training or heel training, don’t use one. If both of your dogs have graduated, then reward your hard work with a splitter and free hand!
- Leash Clip – The clips on leashes also come in a variety of materials and types. Type does not truly matter so long as it’s durable. Durable metals like stainless steel or copper are the best to use, because they are the least likely to fail leaving you with a runaway pooch! Buy for durability and strength and ALWAYS CHECK THE CLASP before venturing out.
- Slip Leash – These are used to provide a variety of haptic feedback signals to a dog as the strength of the signal can be increased or decreased as needed. These prevent owners who use slip collars from having to buy two pieces of equippment, a slip collar and a leash since both are wrapped up into one product. If you intend to use a slip collar, you may just want to buy a slip leash with a stopper on the dog end to prevent your dog from backing out of the leash while achieving the same results as a slip collar and separate leash.
- Part or Full Chain Leash – these leashes are for dogs that like to chew their leash. Dogs don’t like the feel of metal on their teeth so leashes that are part or fully chain are designed to deter the dog from chewing on the leash. If you have a leash chewer this will prevent the behavior from repeating but is only a preventative. Often supplemental training to teach the dog to drop items from its mouth is needed to eliminate the behavior entirely.
One final but crucial tip!
Bring backup. Even if you check your equipment before you leave and everything is working properly, it can still fail while you’re out. Bring a backup leash with you or attach a short handle leash to your dog when you’re out so that in the event your leash breaks or leash clasp fails, your dog will still have a short length of leash attached to it for you to regain control of your dog.
