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TRAINING: SILKY LEASH TECHNIQUE FOR LOOSE LEASH WALKING

Silky Leash is not part of BAT, it is a technique for leash walking. It teaches a dog to pay attention to the feeling of very light pressure on the harness. Any time we can use body language or verbal cues to get the dog to move with us, that’s better, but sometimes there ends up being information passed down the leash, and this technique helps it happen clearly, without pain or pressure.

Here are some clips of me doing Silky Leash many years ago. Now that I pretty much always use harnesses when walking any dog, I would do this technique on the back of a harness instead. You can also do this with Slide on the leash versus doing any actual gripping of the leash. That may help you use the appropriate amount of pressure, which should be so tiny that it barely puts the leash in a straight line between you and your dog.

The feeling of the leash should not be something the dog is working to avoid. It should be so light that he notices it and only happens to move in the direction you want. As he is reinforced for the movement, your dog will learn to move that way on purpose.

For the videos below I talk about using a flat collar for this. This is an older video. I prefer that all dogs walk on harnesses now, so I’d recommend doing this on your dog’s harness. You can also use the Slide leash skill from BAT, and reinforce when your dog notices.

[vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/135893147″]

[vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/135893146″]

This is an excerpt from my book, The Official Ahimsa Dog Training Manual:

So what is Silky Leash? That’s the name I’ve given to a technique first brought to my attention by the online posts of Shirley Chong, an amazing clicker trainer. For the Silky Leash method, think of guiding your dog along with a single strand of silk. The basic idea is to put the tiniest bit of pressure on the leash and reward the dog for moving toward the leash. Dogs, like human toddlers, have a strong opposition reflex: if you pull on them, they will pull away. Silky Leash isn’t about pulling the dog around, but it teaches her that any light pressure on the leash is a signal to move in that direction, rather than a trap from which she must escape.

Silky Leash has several steps. You will need to really follow this technique to the letter to teach your dog to notice the lightest flutter of your leash, even around big distractions. Until things are going really well using the Silky leash method, clip your leash to the front ring of a harness for your walks or attach a double-ended leash to the front ring and the collar, using only Silky Leash flutters for the back of the harness.

There are two students here—you are learning to give instructions by leash very softly and your dog is learning to listen to them. If things aren’t working, examine both students! Stay at each step below until your dog is responding quickly.

As your dog gets better at this, you’ll start to practice on real walks, but at first, you will set up the whole situation so you have full control. In the meantime, walk your dog in a harness or some other type of temporary gear on any walks (or parts of walks) where your dog might pull.

Step 1. Sitting in a Tiny Room—dog takes one step. With a hungry dog in a tiny, non-distracting area, like a bathroom or exercise pen, set up a chair for you and have the clicker in your hand and treats accessible. I usually have treats in a pouch and the clicker and leash in the same hand (my right). The leash is attached to harness–whatever you eventually want to walk your dog on. The room should be small enough that when you sit in the chair, your dog cannot pull—the walls are closer than the length of the leash.

If a friend had a collar around your neck and she wanted your attention, you wouldn’t want her to yank on the leash. Your dog agrees! Pretend that you have a raw egg in your palm, with the leash wrapped around it. Say the amount of pressure your normally put on your dog to stop him is 100; what we’re looking for here is about 1 (so one percent of what you’d use to stop your dog).

Put a tiny, tiny bit of pressure on the leash, just enough to straighten it out. Keep the pressure low and wait. If your dog pulls away from the pressure, let your hand go with him, so that the pressure stays constant. Eventually, as your dog is not a frozen statue, and the room is small, he will move in the direction of the pull and the pressure will lower.

The clasp of the leash will probably dip down. Click and treat. If you are tired of waiting, you may vibrate the leash, just as a tiny chick’s heart flutters. After each click/treat, give your dog a few seconds to pause and then put pressure on the leash again. I hesitate to use the word “pull” here because that sounds a lot more forceful than what you should be doing. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Step 2. Sitting in a Tiny Room—dog takes two or more steps. Now you raise your criteria. Instead of just one step to ease off the pressure, we want more, about twice as far as your dog moved before! Remember that you are not trying to drag the dog around, but rather saying to the dog, “Move this way until I signal you to stop.” You aren’t putting enough pressure on the leash to make the dog move, just enough to signal that you’d like him to.

What you’ll do is just apply pressure a little longer than before. So you pull lightly on the leash (no harder than before, remember, this is your friend!) and when the dog moves toward the pressure, move slightly away from him, so the pressure stays constant. As he takes the second step, stop pulling away. The leash pressure will become zero again and you’ll click/treat. Repeat many times.

Shirley Chong wrote, “At this stage, it may well take the dog a while to notice the cue and respond. That is perfectly okay. For dogs who have been pulling for a period of time (YEARS for some of them!), it is going to take them awhile to re-calibrate what it is that they pay attention to.” Be patient with your dog!

Remember, we’re teaching your hands to be gentler, too. How are you doing? J

Step 3. Sitting in a Tiny Room—dog walks in a circle. If your dog is tall, you may have to stand for this step, but sit if you can. The goal for this step is to get your dog to move in a full circle cued only by leash pressure. Repeat Step 2, but now just wait longer and longer before clicking—ease off on the pressure later and later. Try both directions.

Step 4. Sitting in a Tiny Room—dog walks in a figure 8. Now we make the dog work a bit harder (and you!) by trying for a figure 8. Remember, you still want to have the finish be that the dog successfully got the pressure to go away and you click/treat for that. The main lesson here for the dog is that the pressure means something and that something is—go in the direction of the pull until it stops. Dogs have a natural reflex to go OPPOSITE of pulling, so we’re fighting against that.

Step 5. Walking in a Slightly Bigger Room—Follow the Leader. You’ll take turns playing follow the leader. Remember, we still don’t want a sudden jolt of pressure, so you may need to follow your dog (gasp) during this time. This is the one situation where I allow dogs to pull. The room should still be fairly boring, so they don’t want to pull a lot and small enough that you can follow them with constant pressure.

If things go awry at this stage, you probably didn’t practice the earlier steps enough times.

So you follow your dog for a while (no pressure) and then put a tiny bit of pressure on your dog. Click/treat when he eases up on the pressure (right away—no figure 8’s yet). If he walks into the pressure (i.e., pulls), follow him so that the pressure stays constant. Remember, this is supposed to be a smallish, boring room. Alternate back and forth between following him and then using a feather-light pressure to cue him to follow you. Gradually extend the number of steps your dog has to do before you allow the leash to go slack and then click and treat.

Step 6. Walking in a Slightly Bigger Area—Follow the Leader continues. This is where you head out to the yard. If you don’t have a yard, you might ask to use someone else’s house or an exercise pen that you’ve set up at a park, at least for the distractions. You want an area that you can still keep up with your dog in, so that may require cardboard boxes or ex-pens or something to make the area smaller. You can get fairly cheap temporary construction fencing from hardware stores.

Now you’ll be “practicing having your dog do turns, zig zags, serpentines and circles while you walk relatively straight within the confines of your area.” You are still clicking and treating your dog, as we’ve raised the criteria. If this setting is too distracting, practice more of this on Step 5 first. Don’t worry if your dog is distracted some of the time; that gives you a chance to flutter the leash and click/treat for him heading in your direction.

Remember that we’re imagining the leash to be a silken thread. It takes two to pull! You’ll still need to follow your dog if he heads off so you can keep the pressure constant and occasionally flutter.

You should still be walking your dog using a front-clip harness if your dog might pull you strongly. If he is at the end of a walk and is not likely to pull, go ahead and attach the leash the spot where you’d want to eventually walk all the time, like the back of the harness.

Step 7. The Real World. Now you’re ready for the big time. Continue to have soft hands, flutter your silky leash, and click/treat whenever your dog follows your cue. I would start with adding a few more distractions at a time, and walk in a place where it’s easy to go in any direction, rather than only two. In the best of all worlds, you’d be able to walk right past any distraction. At first, though, you may have to do a lot of “Transitions.”

Transitions are turns and speed changes.

Big distraction up ahead? Flutter the leash and take a right turn, take a wide arc around the distraction, or gradually turn away and retreat. Click/treat your dog for following each cue. Super-big distraction? You might want to clip the leash back to the harness for that one.

Over time, you’ll need to make fewer transitions and you’ll be clicking less and less as your dog gains confidence and skill. You’ll also be using more “real world” rewards, like squirrels in trees. The less your dog has practiced pulling before you started, the faster this process of weaning off of the treats will be.

More from Shirley Chong: “When walking your dog, remember the training principle of determining what your dog wants as a reinforcer and using that thing. If your dog wants to investigate the tree that the squirrel ran up, go there using transitions as needed; when you finally arrive, encourage your dog to investigate the tree.”

Keep it up, wean off of the treats, and do NOT let your dog practice pulling on the goal attachment (like the back clip) in between sessions. Remember, your dog is always learning. Shirley writes, “And then everyone will tell you ‘well, it’s easy for you, your dog just never pulls!’ You can just smile and mentally add the truth: your dog never pulls because you never pull.”

 

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