Dog pulls on the lead: how he learns to walk beside you

A dog who hangs off the lead is not being stubborn and he is not trying to be in charge. He pulls because it works. He puts pressure on the lead, he moves forward, and so pulling delivers exactly what he wanted.

That is how a dog learns it, too. Every time pulling gets him where he wanted to go, that is a successful repetition. And this goes for everything: whatever works, your dog will do more often. Including the things you do not want.

So this piece is not about holding him back. It is about pulling no longer getting him anything, and walking beside you getting him something.

Two things that often get mixed up

Before we get to the method, this first, because a lot of confusion sits here. You are teaching your dog two different things, and they do not sit next to each other but on top of each other.

The loose lead is a rule. It always applies. In no situation does the lead go tight, whatever else he is doing.

Heel is a position. It is one place he can walk, and free is the other. In heel he walks at your side, at free he may go further ahead and sniff.

Mixing those two up is where people get stuck. They think free means the rule is off for a moment. It is not: free only says something about where he may walk, not about the lead. At free it stays loose too.

Preventing this is a lot easier than undoing it

A dog who has never learned that pulling gets him to that tree faster does not pull either. With a puppy you are not really undoing anything, you are only making sure it never starts working.

With a dog who has been doing it for years it is a different story. He has thousands of successful repetitions behind him, and you are putting new repetitions up against those. That works at any age, but you will need more successful repetitions than with a young dog.

And pay attention to the breed. A dog bred to follow his nose picks up pulling faster than a dog who does not have that in him so strongly. Not because he is more stubborn, but because that scent simply gets him more.

There is no "not right now"

This is where it goes wrong for most people. Not on the method, but on the times it does not suit. You are late, it is raining, you still have shopping to do, so today you just haul him along.

That one time is exactly the repetition that teaches him pulling still works sometimes. And something that works sometimes is what a dog keeps trying the longest.

So it is every walk. And it is everybody who walks him. If you keep to it and your partner does not, you are training against each other and it gets better for neither of you. That is a conversation you would rather have beforehand than after three months.

Rest first, then the lead

If your dog cannot settle indoors, it is certainly not going to happen outside. Out there everything comes in at once and there is far more to react to.

Here is what people often get wrong: they see a busy dog, decide he needs to burn off energy, and go for a walk. While that walk can make it worse. A dog who sleeps too little does not get calmer from more going on, he only gets fuller.

So look at the day itself first. Has he had enough sleep, is there enough rest in between? You see it straight away in how he walks.

If it really is not working outside, you can practise indoors. There he can still think clearly and he learns what you are asking without something coming past every ten metres. That is not a standard step, because for most dogs outdoors is fine. But if the outside world is too much, that is where you start.

The walk starts in the hallway

Not at the front door and not on the pavement. A dog who shoots out of the door starts the walk without any calm in him, and then you spend the first five minutes just recovering.

This is how you build it. Have him sit quietly and put the lead on there. Go outside first yourself, check that it is safe, and only then give him the signal that he may come. So he does not go through the door ahead of you.

Does he get up while you are busy? Then have him sit quietly again before you carry on. Outside you do the same: he waits while you close the door, and then you put him straight into the heel position. Not out in front of you.

If tension means he cannot listen any more

Sometimes a dog is so full already in the hallway that he no longer hears your commands. There is no point in carrying on asking for them. You need an in-between step.

I use "find it" for that. You say find it and throw a piece of kibble on the floor. You wait until he has found it and say it again. You keep doing that until you notice he is busy with you instead of with everything around him. That is the moment you can ask something again.

Does he get too busy in between, then you simply go back a step to find it. Outside it works just as well. First get the attention back, then heel.

A Y-shaped harness and a fixed-length lead

I walk with a Y-shaped harness myself. That puts the pressure on the chest and not on the neck, and that is exactly where you want it.

With a collar all the pulling force goes to the neck. In research from 2025 into pressure inside the eye in dogs, that eye pressure went up with a collar and not with a harness. In flat-faced dogs it happened even while standing still. That is no reason to panic, but it is a reason not to let that force land on the neck of a dog who pulls hard.

I am not a fan of retractable leads. You have too little control over them, and a lead that always gives a bit teaches your dog that there is always another bit to be had. A fixed-length lead is clearer.

Why I do not use slip leads or prong collars

Choke chains, prong collars and shock collars often work faster. I am not going to deny that. But you are fighting fire with fire, and nothing changes about the reason he pulls.

I want a dog who walks beside me because he wants to and finds it pleasant, not because pain or a fright follows otherwise. A walk should be enjoyable, for both of you. Tools that work through discomfort do not fit into that.

How to teach him the heel position

Start with luring. Hold a treat by your leg, let that bring him to the right spot, and reward him as soon as he is standing there. Say "good boy" with it, so he knows which moment you mean.

Instead of a word you can use a clicker here. It does the same thing: you are marking the right moment with it, and that is what this is all about. A clicker always sounds exactly the same, where a word moves with your mood, and that makes it clearer for your dog. Which one you pick does not matter, as long as you do it at the right moment and something always follows it.

You only add the word "heel" once that spot is clear. That is the step that happens too early most often. Say the word while he is still standing somewhere else and you are attaching it to the wrong place, which only makes it more confusing. Luring is still fine at that point, as long as he really is on the right spot.

Start with the word afterwards. He is standing right, and then you say "good heel". Only once that has been going for a while do you start saying it beforehand.

And then the most important part: wait. If you ask for "heel", wait one or two seconds before you help him. Let him think for himself. Once you notice he is understanding it better and better, make that wait longer. Sometimes he is not ignoring you but processing what you just asked.

What you do when the lead goes tight

This differs per dog, and you may well switch around here until you find what works.

Standing still is the best known one. You do not take another step as long as the lead is tight, and you only walk on once he comes back. For some dogs that is enough. For others it does not work: they shoot forward again just as hard on your first step, and half an hour later you are still standing at the same lamp post.

Turning around works better then. You turn and walk the other way. Forward no longer gets him anything, because forward is suddenly the direction he has just come from. Many dogs find the way back easier anyway, so you immediately have a calmer stretch to build on.

What you do not do in either case is pull back on the lead. Then you are applying pressure, and against pressure a dog pushes back. This often gets called the opposition reflex, but it is not an actual reflex: it is mostly behaviour he has learned. That makes little difference to you, because the effect is the same. Holding it tight makes it worse.

Give a signal before it

What made the most difference for me: I always gave a signal first, just before I stood still or turned around. That can be "no", or a sound. I use a click with my tongue.

Whatever you choose, it is about the order. That signal always comes before whatever happens next, so it becomes part of it by itself. In the end you only have to give the signal. He then checks for himself whether he is still walking well and adjusts it if he is not.

That is the point you are working towards. Not that you put him back, but that he corrects himself.

Reward the walking beside you, not the coming back

Reward at the moment he is walking nicely beside you, and not straight after he has come back.

Otherwise you teach him a loop: shoot forward, come back, treat. Shooting forward has then become the first step of an exercise, and you do not want that.

So if he shoots forward, you give your signal, no or that sound, and you help him back to the right spot. Or you turn around. Only reward a few paces later, once he is walking nicely again.

Reward him for looking at you too

What you want in the end is contact. A dog who glances up at you regularly during the walk is busy with you and not only with what is going on around him.

So simply reward that, every time he does it of his own accord. You do not have to ask for anything and nothing has to have gone wrong first. He looks, you reward.

That helps with the walking itself as well. A dog who looks up at you regularly notices sooner whether he is still in the right spot. Which means you have to remind him of it far less often.

Look at why he struggles in that particular place

Do not be alarmed if he walks nicely in one street and suddenly not in the next. That is normal, and it tells you something.

Ask yourself why it goes wrong there. Does he perhaps still need to pee or poo? Is it busier than he can handle? Or does he know where you are going and is he excited about it?

For that last one you can do something. Walk that way regularly, but do not go there: turn back earlier, or walk past it. That way he stops linking that route to that destination, and you will notice it gets easier every time.

Free: when he is allowed ahead

Walking in heel is not the whole walk. He also has to be able to sniff, and that is part of what a walk is for.

The difference is in who decides. You give "free" when he may sniff, and then he may walk further ahead. The lead still may not go tight, because that is the rule that always applies. Without that word he stays in heel.

Which word you use does not matter, as long as it is always the same one. "Break" is just as common for this as "free", so pick whichever comes out of your mouth most naturally and then stick to it.

You teach free differently from heel. With heel you lure him towards a place, with free you are sending him away from you. You say "free" and then throw a treat away from you, so he goes after it. Watch the order: the word first, then the treat. Throw at the same time and he is already gone and has not heard you.

Do not let him start it himself. Finish with a heel and only then give free. That way it stays something he gets from you and not something he takes.

Also just give it regularly. It does not need a reason, a bit of freedom and a bit of sniffing is enough. Only do not keep it going too long in one stretch, and keep asking for a heel in between.

That sniffing is not a bonus, by the way. In research from 2019 dogs who did two weeks of nosework became measurably more optimistic than dogs who did heelwork over that same period. People often say sniffing calms your dog down, but the evidence for that is a lot thinner than you would think. That it does him good and that it shifts his attention is what you see in practice, and it fits with what that research showed.

If he has already fixated

Sometimes you are too late. He has seen something, the lead is tight and he does not hear you any more.

Pulling back works worst of all here. What I do is get his attention back: use find it, or go and stand where he is looking so that I am in the picture, or lure him the other way with something nice. Away from what he is looking at, without a fight on the lead.

What you are working towards in the end is that his reaction to that thing changes: that he looks at you instead of responding to what he sees.

The mistakes I see most often

Three things keep coming up.

Pulling back on the lead, which only makes him push against it harder. Keeping the lead permanently tight, so there is no difference left between tight and loose and he has nothing to learn from. And asking for commands he does not know at all.

That last one is the most common. A few months ago I walked past a woman shouting at her dog: HEEL! HEEL! That dog clearly had no idea what she wanted from him. All she achieved was more tension, and no dog walks better on that.

A command your dog does not know is not a command. It is noise.

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