Love It: Gentle Leader

Athena is a pretty big puller when we take her on walks, especially if there are distractions in the environment.  We have been working to eliminate this pulling behavior by teaching the heel command and encouraging her to walk at our side rather than in front of us.

For the past 4 weeks we have been using the Easy Walk Harness when we take Athena on walks.  However, Athena's underarms were irritated by the rubbing of the nylon from the harness and she got a hot spot.  We are currently treating it with a steroid/antibiotic spray for the next two weeks, so we can't use the Easy Walk Harness during that time.

We have been wanting to try the Gentle Leader head collar after hearing about how it gives the most amount of control for dogs that pull on the leash.  It was on sale at Petsmart for about $17.00 so we decided to give it a try.

When first putting it on Athena we gave her lots of treats and praise.  She clearly didn't like the feeling of the collar on her nose because she kept pawing at it.  We distracted her from doing this pawing by having her do commands (sit, down, stay) for treats.

Athena wearing the Gentle Leader head collar

Once we had the collar attached to the leash, we took Athena outside.  She did a few gallops and tried to get the collar off of her nose.  The person at Petsmart who helped us fit the collar on Athena told us that we should keep her in a trot rather than a walk when first introducing the collar.  This is because the dog will lose it's balance if trying to paw at their nose at the same time as trotting.  We took Athena on a quick 10 minute walk to get her used to the collar.  For her evening walk we took her out for 20 minutes.  Today we were able to take her on an hour walk in the morning and she didn't seem to be bothered much by the collar anymore.

Overall we have seen a big difference in the amount of control that we have when walking Athena.  If she begins to pull we can give the leash a gentle tug and she is back at our side.  The control of the collar allows us to gently lift her nose if she gets too focused on sniffing and it also allows us to keep her mouth closed if needed.

Although the collar looks a bit like a muzzle, it allows the dog full range of motion with their mouth.  They can pant, drink, eat, and bark.

We plan to keep using the Gentle Leader and are hoping that it will continue to eliminate Athena's leash pulling behavior!

-A