The leash is an essential piece of safety equipment for walking your dog – but did you know that the leash can exacerbate your dog’s reactivity? Many reactive dog guardians note that their dog is less reactive or not reactive at all when off-leash, yet barking and lunging on-leash is a big issue. Understanding the interplay between the leash and reactivity can level up your reactivity training skills and boost your progress tremendously.
There’s no “one-size-fits all” reason behind your dog’s on-leash vs. off-leash behaviour discrepancies. For some dogs, the inability to easily escape may heighten fear, leading to the reactive response. For others, the restriction of movement creates a reactive response rooted in frustration. For many dogs both fear and frustration play a role. In any of these cases it is typical that leash pressure is applied by the human handler (usually unintentionally) before or during a reaction. Over time, leash pressure becomes associated with reactivity through a mechanism known as classical conditioning. In dogs who have been reactive for a long time, leash pressure alone may “cue” them to have a reactive response, even if there are no triggers present in the environment! Simply put, when your dog feels the leash tighten up, they might think “it’s go-time!” and begin to respond before they’ve seen anything to bark at.
What Is Leash Handling?
How you handle your leash can make or break your reactivity training success. Generally speaking if the leash is kept loose, reactivity training progresses more smoothly than if the leash is kept tight because the dog is more readily able to relax on a loose leash. Leash handling skills allow us to keep the leash loose without sacrificing safety.
Leash skills broadly break down into two categories:
- Passive Awareness
- Active Maneuvers
Think of it like driving – when nothing else is happening, you need to know what’s on the road, how your car is handling and where you are (passive awareness). When something changes you need a specific set of skills (active maneuvers). If passive awareness is lacking, drivers might behave erratically on the highway or get lost. Lack of fluency during an active maneuver, like lane changing or parallel parking, may result in an accident.
Passive awareness in leash handling allows you to keep the leash slack as much as possible during your walk and enables you to:
- Spot oncoming triggers for reactivity (before your dog lunges)
- Prevent the leash from getting tangled in your dog’s front legs
- Monitor your dog’s body language signals to keep track of their emotional state
- Choose the most appropriate walking route
Active maneuvers, on the other hand, are applied intentionally when something changes. Active maneuvers might be used when you need to:
- Change speed or direction to avoid a potential trigger
- Lengthen or walk up the leash to shorten it, preventing a reaction
- De-escalate a reactive episode
- Stay safe from a dog who may aggress towards you or pull you to the ground
- Cue your dog to perform a behavior
Both Passive Awareness and Active Maneuvers can be taught and must be learned by the human holding the leash through mindful rehearsals and practice over time. As it turns out, dog training is not just about the dog; for best results you need to learn some behaviors, too!
The Leash Dip: Your New Favorite Reactivity Tool
While there are many Active Maneuvers that are extremely helpful, the leash dip is one performed by the human when the dog hits the end of the leash. This skill was defined in Kiki Yablon’s Loose Leash Walking Seminar, detailed in her blog found here:
https://kikiyablondogtraining.com/kiki-blog/2019/12/17/loose-leash-walking-lessons.
In Yablon’s course, the leash dip is a move that the human does in response to tension on the leash caused by the dog pulling. If the dog pulls, the human responds by lowering their hands to add some slack to the leash. Through training, this release of tension becomes a tactile cue for the dog to turn around. The leash dip works similarly to calling your dog’s name except, instead of a verbal cue, the same behavior is cued by a tactile or “felt” sensation in the change of leash pressure.
For reactivity training, I have modified Yablon’s Leash Dip to better serve our purposes as reactive dog owners. Something I’ve admired about their leash dip technique is the clarity it gives guardians about what to do in response to pulling, and if there’s any situation where guardians need clarity, it’s during a reaction. As humans, we have a tendency to grab and draw our dogs close when we get anxious. Unfortunately, this grab reflex will exacerbate reactivity in most cases as outlined earlier. By retraining your reflexive actions, you can apply more helpful behavior in an emergency – or at least buy yourself some time to think about your next move.
Adding slack to the leash can be dangerous for reactive dogs in the city, as extra slack added during a lunging incident may pull the human off balance and allow the dog additional reach towards the trigger; however, pulling back will cause a more explosive reaction. For your reactive dog, you need an active maneuver that puts you in a secure position without adding additional pressure to the leash. This is why I have modified the leash dip for reactive dog guardians. Instead of adding slack to the leash, move your hand down from its home-base at waist height and press it against your lower thigh near the knee, ideally with your feet shoulder-width apart. This puts you in a secure stance, with a lower center of gravity and hands tucked in. The angle change of the leash also serves as a tactile cue which your dog can learn to respond to. If you need to gain distance away from a trigger, and/or shorten the leash, you can do so now that you are in a secure stance.
How to Teach the Leash Dip
To teach a leash dip, start in a low-distraction environment like your living room. Place something enticing like a treat in one part of the space to serve as a controlled “distraction”. When your dog reaches the end of the leash, move your hand from its natural position around your waist down to rest against your thigh/knee. You should not add any extra pressure or pull back on the leash. As soon as your hand is in place, mark and then deliver a treat. Repeat this process 10-25 times to create an association between your dog’s new feeling of the leash and receiving a treat. Next, test this association by performing the leash dip cue and waiting 5 seconds to mark and reward. If your dog has made the connection, they will respond to the leash dip by turning around to collect a treat. Mark for the turn around and then feed a treat. Repeat this often in different locations with new mild distractions until your dog is able to turn around on the leash dip cue reliably. Now, it’s ready to use in other contexts with more moderate distractions, or in reactive episodes.
Remember this cue with the phrase, “Hand to Knee, Come back to Me.”
When To Use the Leash Dip
The leash dip can be used at any time when mild distractions are present, in order to practice the correct response. For dogs that lunge toward triggers, the leash dip allows us to “brace” the leash in the most minimally aversive way possible. The advantage of using a leash dip during lunging is:
- It gives you a clear “action” to do if your dog lunges, including during a reactive outburst. By training yourself to take this action, you avoid doing a more damaging action unintentionally such as yanking or hauling back on the leash.
- It puts you in a stronger stance. By getting a little lower and locking your leash hand against your body, it’s less likely to result in a fall if the dog pulls suddenly.
- You are now in a better position to slowly walk away if it does become necessary to move your over-threshold dog out of the way.
- The dog learns to reorient back to you when the leash dip occurs. This behaviour may not be offered if the dog is over threshold, but with enough practice under-threshold, this learned response can be extremely handy in mild to moderate real-world scenarios (in concert with more effective behaviour modification exercises).
- Intentionally practicing the leash dip out of the context of reactive incidents will reduce the association of leash pressure with reactivity, preventing the leash itself becoming a cue. This occurs through “counter conditioning”.
If your dog has reactivity, particularly if it is made worse by tension on the leash, consider adding the leash-dip cue to your repertoire.
Dr. Sarah Shapiro-Ward
Dr. Sarah Shapiro-Ward CPDT-KA, KPA-CTP has lived and worked as a professional dog trainer in two of Canada’s most densely populated downtown communities: Toronto and Vancouver. Sarah is best known for her viral trick training videos with her Cockapoo Percy, including tricks such as playing Jenga, Connect Four and Painting on Canvas. She also has a standard poodle, Eleanor, and a part-time horse, Echo.
Before becoming a dog trainer, Sarah completed her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 2015. Though she has long since left the laboratory behind, she still enjoys keeping up with the literature and applying her skills of critical analysis to dog training scenarios.
Sarah is a frequent guest on the live call-in radio show CBC BC Today, answering Vancouver’s dog behaviour questions. She has also been featured on Jimmy Fallon, The Daily Mail UK, NHK Japan, Good Morning America, The New York Post & others.
Besides training tricks, Sarah teaches group classes and private lessons for city dog owners across Vancouver through When Hounds Fly. She can be found on Instagram and TikTok @prancingpoodles.
C. C. Bourgeois
LEASH (n.) c. 1300, "thong for holding a dog or hound," from Old French lesse, laisse "hound's leash," ultimately from Latin laxus "loose" (see lax), perhaps via noun use of fem. form laxa. The notion seems to be of a string loosely held.
