Jackie walked Ashley successfully for a couple of days right after we brought her home from the shelter, but then we had a couple of incidents where the dog pulled her over, or yanked the leash out of her hand, and we realized that it wasn’t safe for Jackie to be the dog walker.
Over the past couple of years though, Ashley has gradually become more tractable, and today we decided to experiment once again with Jackie being the dog walker.
It worked great! Ashley pulled some, but I don’t think Jackie was ever in danger of being pulled over, or of losing the leash.
We were thinking of it especially because tomorrow I’m going to spend close to 10 hours at an all-day sword fighting workshop organized by my local club TMHF, which is bringing in three well-known HEMA instructors to teach classes. There’s a group lunch, but I’m going to have to miss it to dash home and walk the dog. But since this outing went so well, hopefully next time there’s something like this, Jackie will be able to do the dog walking. It’s also a useful backup, just in case I’m sick or injured, to have Jackie able to do what’s necessary.
@philipbrewer Even our much smaller dogs were quite strong. Have you thought about using an alternative leash, like the Gentle Leader, I think it’s called?
@Miraz We bought a Gentle Leader, but were never able to get it on the dog. :-/ What we’re using is a Martingale collar, where the leash goes once around the dog’s chest and then back through a loop in the collar. When the dog pulls, friction across the chest absorbs a lot of the pull.
@philipbrewer Ah, that’s one I hadn’t heard of.