loose-leash progress

Mango, after his first bath!

As I have mentioned before, one of the major problems Mango was having was his inability to walk on a loose leash. This was an obstacle for the two of us, especially recently because his pulling was making it difficult to walk with him because of his size. Leader Dogs suggests that you walk backwards, forcing the dog to go with you, instead of pulling on them, to make the dog look at you. I must say that I was very skeptical of this method at first, because it yielded no immediate results. However, Mango has made tremendous progress. In roughly a two-week time span, he has gotten the idea that "Hey, I can't go where I want to go, I have to follow her." In sum, he doesn't pull the leash while we're walking, for the most part. I'm still having troubles on getting him to settle down early in the morning when he hasn't been out for a while, or before he goes to eat. But any other time, he's pretty stellar.

Another problem he had was his barking. A leader dog has to be quiet and attentive to the owner, because s/he is acting as their eyes. Plus, a dog who has a tendency to be mouthy distracts others (for example, a movie theater). He would like to bark at others, which is a major issue. By squirting him with water with the purpose of startling him, he has pretty much stopped, which is awesome.

He's still easily distracted, going after dogs or people or simply skid marks on the floor, so that's another issue that needs to be addressed. So far, no new problems have surfaced with him. I think he's starting to calm down a lot. He's growing up, and I think that's helping. Plus, I'm starting to get the hang of things. When I used to get frustrated, I would let that emotion show and it would get Mango frustrated. It's finally hit me that yes, emotions DO travel down the leash to the dog. Now, instead of getting frustrated, I have much more patience with him and if he's being particularly difficult, I take a minute to calm down and make him do the same by sitting, so we all win.