it's your labrador pulling on the lead all the time and you just have no idea what to do about it well don't worry we've got the video for you .
we've discussed on multiple occasions in these short webinars my theory on the use of physical correction that to justify the use of a physical correction or a corrective based tool it has to meet one of my three criteria is the dog causing harm to somebody else is the dog causing harm to itself or is the dog causing any serious property damage when it comes to pulling on a lead i think that it quite comfortably ticks the first two boxes in terms of it causing harm to other people large powerful breeds really significantly hurt their owners when they pull them and again i have a lot of cases where people have had serious injuries where they've been physically pulled off their feet people have hit their face on the floor people have been covering it covered in grazes and that's been the catalyst to finally do something about it and come to me that justifies my use of a physical correction i also think that the dog causes themselves significant harm especially if they're utilizing a flat collar even a harness they call themselves physical harm .
there's definitely a justification in terms of the emotional harm that is caused by a dog that pulls on a lead a dog pulling on a lead is making decisions for itself it's not looking up to you for guidance and direction a dog that doesn't have a good leader in its life whom it knows it can look up to for guidance and direction will be an anxious fearful dog an anxious fearful dog lives in a fight or flight response because it doesn't know what to do it's bouncing off the walls it's got no direction from an owner and it has that constant state of living and anxiety and fear and that causes significant emotional um not abuse but it causes emotional distress to the dog and i absolutely think that addressing heel walking is a huge proponent of having a dog not living that emotional distress to finally remove that baggage and just go ah finally yes i can look you can tell me what to do amazing that is again it's a wonderful thing to be able to hand over to an owner that's never had that with their dogs before and having a dog walking to heel achieves that so quickly and so fantastically which is why we put so much emphasis on it if you've watched our rescue diaries over on our main channel you'll see that i always get a dog tuned up walking to heel just because of the not even necessarily for the ability to have a dog walking tail but because it so quickly achieves my desired outcome of of leadership and relationship then the heel working is a bonus on top of those things so i will often utilize different tools depending on the size of the dog and the severity of the pulling we will use the minimum amount of physical correction required starting from a slip lead or a slip collar through choke chains up to prong collars prong collar heel walk training is something that i can usually address in utilized a prong collar when utilized the prong collar correctly safely and effectively by somebody with experience who knows how to implement a prong collar can take a dog with significant pulling behaviors within 10-15 minutes to having a dog that walks beautifully to heal it's far less physically uh traumatic than having a flat collar pulling on their trachea it disperses the pressure evenly.
there's so many excellent things about that prong collar now again i always like to use as little uh correcting corrections as possible when working with dogs and ideally if you do it right from the get-go you can never have to use physical corrections and that's the process that we preach in our perfect puppy course doing it right first time round means that you never need to use one of these tools but if you have a dog that is reactive on a walk pulling on a walk i can tell you that utilizing a distraction based approach with food rewards work and nine times out of ten when people come to me they have already been to three four five plus positive bass trainers for the same behavior as pulling on a walk who has tried to use a distraction luring them away approach and has never worked they're then pulling their hair out considering sending their dog to a shelter or giving it away or even putting it down and i become their last ditch effort and they physically are moved to tears a lot of the time when they see how quickly we can tune a dog up by using a balanced correction based approach redirecting them to the desired behavior of walking nicely to heal so we correct them we redirect them to walk in to heal then we can ally the praise when they're in that desired behavior then the food reward can come in then the praise can come in but we now have the ability to tell them what we do want but also the ability to tell them what we don't want so again it's one of those topics that we could spend i could do multiple day seminars on pulling and the use of corrective based tools it's one of the uh the behaviors i will often reach straight into that bag for just because of the the distress that it causes owners because of the money that they've spent on all these different trainers that for this behavior in particular.
as soon as there is something that is more alluring to the dog than the food that you have the dog is going to ignore the food and pull pull towards the dogs pull towards other people and it becomes miserable and that basis of distracting with food simply doesn't work now it also layers on the fact that we're now bribing our dog we're in a bribery relationship the analogy i always use is if my son walked into the studio here with a sharpie and started drawing on the wall i'm not going to get a 20 pound note out and say come here mate if you stop that i'm going to give you a 20 pound note i'm going to correct that behavior i'm going to verbally tell him and if he doesn't stop i will physically remove him from that behavior because i care about him i love him and i want to make sure that he can go out into this big wide world as a good human being not a lunatic that thinks it can draw all over the walls and my principle for dog ownership is exactly the same i will tell you if you are doing something that is causing harm to yourself harm to other people or is causing significant property damage so again i think if more people take that approach in a fair consistent loving way based on leadership and relationship there is no need for any dog owner in the world to struggle with them pulling on walks and we're going to do more videos around exactly how we do that if you want to see me do that with um with all the rescue dogs that i volunteer at the local rescue center for me i do that with all the dogs i work with you can go and check out the training channel and see that in person me actually doing it but with these webinars i like to be make them much more focused on mindset and a theory because i truly think that that's the most important thing so i hope you got something from this you do not need to struggle with your dogs pulling on walks it's something that can be addressed very quickly and if you don't want to do it yourself or you think that that's a bit overwhelming seek professional help from a balanced trainer who has the skill set and utilizing corrective tools to be able to address these behaviors fairly quickly and efficiently to get you to a point where your dog can then enjoy the world and you can enjoy living with them i truly think that if you love dogs and you want to have that wonderful joyous relationship with your dogs then it's a no-brainer to get on top of this and just like my analogy with children we correct children we discipline children because we love them and because we care for them there is nothing wrong in doing the same thing with dogs as long as we do it fairly and consistently and that does it no questions about it doesn't create fearful dogs lack of leadership lack of guidance and direction that creates anxious fearful dogs good boundaries rules and expectations with consequences that creates happy dogs because they can trust in you that they can get their guidance and direction from you and as long as you're being fair and consistent that is how you get a happy dog so again i hope you enjoyed that little quickfire webinar there you have it guys some really useful tips and tricks that you can put to practice straight away with your labrador to stop them from pulling on walks.
