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The Selbach family dog, Athos
Guilt
I’ve seen you use heavy chain-link as a leash before – could you explain why that is your preference with some dogs?
The weight of a heavy lead (I call it heavy-walking) helps the dog on a loose leash remember (relive from physical memory) the experience of doing the food motivational part of the heeling exercise (also on a heavy leash) when ironically enough, he felt weightless from the alignment/synchronizing movement in tandem with the handler. This is particularly helpful for hyper-active million-miles-an-hour types that have built up an intense association between lead and tractor pulling.
Could you elaborate on what you mean about the food motivational part of the heeling exercise? When you say that’s also on a heavy leash are you saying you are using leash pressure in the heeling?
Since so many dogs have high level motivational training these days, often food becomes “poisoned” in the sense that it is tainted with over stimulation instead of its more natural grounding and calming effect. It’s like jingling the car keys to catch the dog that slips out the gate and then snagging the dog so that the keys become poison pill to the dog on the loose. So once I teach the dog what a correction is, then if it’s a zippy-zippy kind of dog, I rig up the heavy chain lead so that he can more easily relive the physical memory of walking calmly without being in a stimulated state.
I know this isn’t your area of expertise, but you are with dogs in the woods a lot. Do you do anything for flea/tick prevention or have you run into any issues in regards to that?