With your dog on the lead, walking next to you, change direction suddenly (back the way you came from) and call them to you if necessary. Practice in a quiet location with few distractions first. Emergency ‘u’ turnĪn emergency ‘u’ turn is a great skill to teach your dog to get you out of a situation where they are either likely to react or have started to react to something. Do this frequently to build your dog’s association between the command and the action. Add the cue by saying “this way” and calmly changing direction as you are practicing your lead walking. Teaching a ‘this way’ will help with lead walking as it gives your dog the cue to change direction with you. This will mean you and your dog, or the trigger itself can pass, move to a safe space, or change direction. Teaching your dog a ’watch’ cue is a handy way to get your dog to look at you when you may be approaching something that may trigger their lead frustration. Resist the urge to try one more time! Watch Where possible, finish your session while your dog is still engaged in the training and enjoying themselves. Try to ensure that your dog is successful by increasing the difficulty gradually in each session. In order to increase your dog’s focus and attention on you, keep your training sessions short. When teaching any new behaviour, your dog needs to be able to reliably perform the behaviour in an area with no distractions (such as your house or the garden) before you attempt to ask for that same behaviour in more challenging environments such as the street or the park. View the audio transcript for this video Useful behaviours to teach a dog when dealing with lead frustration If your dog is displaying extreme behaviour when on the lead, we would recommend speaking to a qualified behaviourist who will be able to help one-on-one with your dog and figure out what’s happening and why. If your dog normally walks on a collar and lead, you could also try walking them on a harness, or vice versa, as they may have built up certain associations with pressure being applied in the different areas. You might notice that they may become bouncy, or vocalise and that they pull on the lead to try to get to other dogs. These are designed for dogs who are social with other dogs and people when off lead but get frustrated because they can’t get to them when they are on lead.

We’ve put together some tips and tricks that you can work on to help your dog to feel more relaxed when out on a walk. The most common triggers of lead frustration are often other dogs, or people. The way you help your dog with this will depend on why your dog is frustrated, and what they are directing that frustration at.

Dog reactivity