We mostly do what TeresaM said, except we don't stop walking at all... Nikko tends to get really distracted if we stop walking, and his curious nose pretty much zaps any self-control he might have had. So we we just keep right on walking at a nice brisk pace, and whenever he pulls a certain direction, we just give him a little tug back toward us and say "pay attention!" His leash is always very very short.
From the time we started taking him on walks like this daily, it took him about three 10-min walks to mostly get the hang of it. Within a week, he had become a really pretty excellent walker, unless something super exciting caught his attention. Now, almost a month later, all we're really doing is working hard to ignore the "distractions" and focus on the walking, but it's definitely getting better. I think one of the main tricks honestly is just walking your dog a LOT - like definitely once a day - for nice fairly long walks, where she will encounter plenty of distractions that she can learn to ignore.
Lauren & Nikko |