Despite challenging weather and sometimes being bombarded by bugs, I enjoy walking with my dogs.
Most of the time.
Ideally for me, both dogs are off-leash, sticking close by me and responding when I give them a command, more specifically when I recall them.
And my dogs always come when they are called.
Siriusly, you didn’t buy that did you? Because if you did, please contact me privately, I’m sure I have something very special that is one of a kind that I can sell you, for a large amount of money.
Delilah has proven time and time again that she is not reliable off-leash. So now Delilah walks on a 15 foot leash, I also have one the same length for the times I need to leash Sampson as well. No point having one dog on a six footer while the other leads the charge.
I carry treats, plain old treats and I also carry beef hearts. The plain old treats are for when I say, “This way” or “No” or “Leave it.” The beef hearts are for when I say “HERE!”
I try and use HERE at least once or twice per walk, because I want to reinforce that I have good treats and when you come when called, you get the goods.
My biggest struggles are when we encounter people or other dogs. Last Sunday for instance, I had let Delilah off-leash in the deep part of the forest to practice her off-leash. The first time she’d been off-leash in six months. She was doing great and then she spotted some people.
Here did not work and both my dogs ran up to a woman with two children and a small dog. Thankfully the small dog was super good with other dogs, so there was some sniffing but no barking or growling. My dogs are not typically jump up on you dogs, so I think the kids (who seemed to be in the 7 to 10 year of age range) were mostly startled to see two large dogs charging at them.
Naturally I apologized profusely and leashed both my dogs.
And here is where my walks become stressful. While it’s true, Delilah on a long leash can be a pain in the bum, for the most part we manage well.
When Sampson gets on a leash, he turns into a different dog. If you don’t believe me, here are the pictures to prove it.
Sampson off-leash; notice how he’s ahead of Delilah, enjoying his walk.
Now add the leash. As you can see he’s crossed her more than once and tangled his leash up.
You may have also noticed how close he is to me.
I can’t get him to move out of the way.
That and his leash drags on the ground, which means I’m either jumping leash or stepping on it. Neither of which is very fun, not to mention all the crap that the leash picks up from dragging on the ground.
This has a tendency to turn my nice, relaxing walk, into a frustrating, stressful experience.
I’d love your suggestions for ways to handle this. I’ve tried so many of the recall methods, but nothing I have in my pockets can compete with other dogs or people. And in Delilah’s case, I can’t figure out what she’s hunting when she runs off into people’s yards.
AND for those of you who walk more than one dog on leash, how do you manage?
P.S. Have you seen the Dogs of Blogville Calendar? Julie has the entire calendar up on her blog so you can check it out. Remember ordering is finishing up today!! Be sure you don’t miss out on this opportunity to have this one of a kind calendar.
Ah, long leads are a pain when your dogs knit. When we’re walking other people’s dogs we generally use shorter slip leads – they can’t knit with those and they’re super safe. We use long leads on our own dogs and have to spend time most walks undoing the stitches.
Have you tried walking them on a coupler? That way they are together and you only have one leash. I have used one pretty successfully several times and so has a friend that has multiple dogs to walk. They make them different lengths now too, I think. So you don’t have to get the really short kind. Sounds like you don’t always have to leash Sampson so for the short term parts of the walk that he needs on a leash you still only have to deal with one leash.
What about shortening Sampson’s leash up when you walk, since he likes to stay close by you anyway? Then you might be able to juggle it easier, or stop him from weaving through Delilah’s leash.
But this is just a theory, as I have not managed the “dual dog” walk either. 🙂 When I walk my guys or take them places, it’s one at a time.
I’ve only had to walk multiple dogs when dog-sitting. The worst was walking my beagle (who would stop and sniff) and my mom’s beagle (who would charge ahead). I would stand there between the two of them with my arms/the leashes stretched to the max. I’m sure it looked like they were trying to draw and quarter me. I always felt like an idiot trying to walk those two!
Ah – the joys of walking two dogs on long leashes. 🙂 I have similar problems. I have looked for a leash that lets you hook two dogs to one leash, but I haven’t found one yet. I think it would work well for when they behave, but I have two concerns for when they are more mischievous: 1. It reminds me of the harness system used for sled team, which concerns me as the walker of two strong dogs (namely, I’d be the sled behind their sled team…MUSH!). 2. One dog is fast. The other is not so fast, and I picture my poor Lightning being dragged along by a runaway Thumper.
That exists! It’s called a swiveling coupler. I actually have one and it does work really well on short leads. I’ve never tried it with my long one.
If Delilah had been on leash, do you think Sampson would have run up to those people or do you think that he was just following her lead? If it’s that she is a bad influence, I think you have your answer… 1 dog on & 1 dog off.
Alternatively, if you get the cable “tie out” style leads, I usually hook Fe’s onto Kol’s, like you would a zipline. Since I’m not trying to hold both, they tangle much less, but that’s in open fields with no underbrush…the woods definitely make it more challenging
Thankfully, I am the one and only walking with Ma in this house…however, I can be really good at getting tangled around Ma. BOL We do have a 15 ft leash for training; we use it for hiking too since I cannot be trusted off leash as well.
As Pip is ancient it is only me nowadays but I can play up pretty good too. We know what it is like to have a stressful walk. Hope you get some handy tips. Have a marvellous Monday.
Best wishes Molly
Mom has used those long leashes and they are just a tangled mess to trip over unless you don’t hold onto it, and let it drag. Sometimes this works just as well as holding it since us dogs think we are leashed. Try retractable if you want to have it in your hand and not be tangled up. As for walking multiple dogs, we each have our place. I’m left, Katie is right. We rarely cross over. It takes some time to learn but not that long and it works. Now adding the third to the mix is more difficult. They need to assume the middle position and then stick to the right or left from there. It works if you are firm with it.
I walk Alma and Moses together, with Alma on a hands-free leash and Moses on a 6 foot leash. Either or both of them could be on 100ft leashes and it wouldn’t really matter, though – Alma walks beside, and Moses walks beside or behind. Both of them learned to on-leash walk with us (Moses from a puppy and Alma since we adopted her – she’d never walked on leash before), so we set the boundary for standard on-leash walking at heel (or behind for Mo when he’s tired).
But I love the hands-free walking once the dogs are used to it – it’s easy on everyone. Actually, here’s a video I made for a blog post a long time ago – Alma and Juniper (friends’ Bernese Mtn Dog we were looking after at the time) are on hands free and Moses is on a 6 foot.
Our walks include criss-crossed, tangled leashes, much pulling, plus exactly what Jackie described. They don’t walk, they run. I have no idea what a “nice, relaxing walk” is. It doesn’t get to that point until they’re exhausted, at which time they’re ready to go home. They can’t be trusted off-leash, so they are only off-leash in the backyard (fenced).
What I’m getting at is that I have no useful advice for you, lol. Well, not lol. I really would like to have been helpful, but no 🙁
Thanks to everyone for mentioning couplers… I have never tried one, but now I think I will.
It’s interesting how Sampson stays close to you when he is on a leash. Neither of mine do that and I struggle to keep them in the heel position. I have to walk them both separately, otherwise I am likely to fall flat on my face and lose both my arms! Both my dogs are fairly good at recall… until they see another person or another dog. So the only place Maya gets to be off leash is at the dog park. Pierson never gets to be off leash except in the back yard.
Looking at that picture, the first thing that comes to mind is to put Sampson on a *very* short leash, then just drop it when he wants to go ahead since he doesn’t have a recall problem.
Off leash?? What’s that?
Jodi, thanks for making me laugh. Sorry, I don’t have any suggestions other than keep them on a short leash. 🙂
I let both the dogs off leash as much as possible. Torrey is getting better with, “No” and “stay”, and “come here”. But…not perfect. When they are on leash they are on a 5 foot lead and they both walk on my left side. I trained Torrey that way from puppyhood and that helps a ton. Roxy…she walks on either side but stays close anyway.
With northern breed mixes with little to no recall and no homing instincts, we live by the law of the leash. Also, Indiana has an actual leash law, so technically we couldn’t let ours off leash even if we wanted to. I am honestly quite jealous of those whose dogs are perfectly reliable off leash.
We just use the coupler method for Cosmo and I – My Mum won’t let me off leash as she says I can’t be trusted as I have too much herding instinct and she thinks I would prefer to chase a cat or whatever over listening to her – she’s probably right!
I hope you find something that works for you
Wags to all
Your pal Snoopy 🙂
I’ve seen a lead splitter – I don’t know if that would be any god for you?
I started laughing at the beginning. Yeah. I know Delilah doesn’t always come. No need to sell me anything. 🙂
I have the same issue with Jasper. He cannot be off-leash unless we are at our dog park. He chases runners, bikers, people in running suits (not kidding) and fast moving animals like deer, squirrels, rabbits, etc. I just don’t trust him anymore. No treat or ball works.
You are brave. I never walk the dogs on long leads. If we use a check cord, it is dragged and we only grab in an emergency. I have walked Thunder and Storm together. Both on 6 ft leads and I make them walk side by side at heel and I hold both leads in one hand. Now if they run, they have e-collar (we have two that work off one controller). Since we now have three dogs, Storm and Freighter get the ecollars. Thunder’s recall is pretty reliable, but to be honest, we usually just walk two at a time.
There are also those split leads where you can clip two dogs to one lead (it is a kind of extension that clips to one lead). But I am not sure how it would work with a long lead.
Hey,
I didn’t read through all the comments, but donna’s comment is what I was going to say – if, on-leash, Sampson always walks next to you, then you might as well just have a short leash for him – hell, you could even get one of those ones that has a belt thingy, so you would still have a hand free.
Gwynn loves peoples’ houses. He has run into two people on my street’s houses when they’ve had a door open, and this with the distraction of being in the middle of playing with those peoples’ dogs. Nope, he chose snooping in a new house over a fun wrestle session. In parks, he’s pretty good, though recently he’s started barking at people when he’s on-leash – only, from what I can tell, when I don’t notice the people until they’re quite close.
I walk at least two dogs and sometimes three on leash without much problem. One thing I’d suggest is shorter leashes. They can’t tangle up so badly and you’ll have more control keeping the dogs closer to you. It just takes a little practice. Flattery is still learning but she’s getting pretty good, provided we don’t see any cats on the way. One thing I LOVE for our walks is the Zero Shock leash we got from ezydog.com. http://store.ezydog.com/zero-shock/ It has made life a lot easier!
Poor Sampson he looks sad. I don’t know if there is a great way to walk more than one dog. I walk 3 with three different leashes hooked to a giant carabeaner and they still tangle each other up.