Springtime Training Regression

Watson was excited to walk down the NYC Marathon route in Brooklyn before the runners arrived.

Picture this: You've worked hard on your dog's polite leash walking skills all winter and they're getting great! Suddenly they're barking at dogs, pulling on the leash, and seem to have gone deaf to all your cues.

What happened?

Spring happened. It's warmer and folks are coming out of their self-imposed hibernation. So there are more distractions out there. More people, more dogs, more scooters and skateboards, more e-bikes, more food dropped on the ground, more of everything. All those things make it harder for your dog to process their big feelings.

The good news is that this is perfectly normal training progress. We teach new skills in a low distraction environment and, as the skills are refined, we carefully increase distractions until our dogs walk like perfect angels in almost any situation.

The not so fun news is that your distraction level just increased without your knowledge or consent. We can't control the whole world but we can adapt our training so we continue to make progress when life gets in the way.

The best thing to do is take a few steps back in your training plan to account for the distractions. You'll get back up to your current level soon enough if you give your pup that extra support. If you don't go back a few steps and try to power through the distractions it will likely take longer to work back up to your current beautiful walking. 

If you need help figuring out how to adjust to the new level you're playing this leash walking game at, I'd love to help!

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