Positive Petzine

OK picture this - you're recovering from a broken ankle so you strap it up with a mile of tape then head for the hills with two big dogs. You climb for about half an hour up a steep, slippery, rocky hill and realise that it's getting late and the wildlife is starting to stir, which could potentially cause the dog off-leash to give chase or the dog on-leash to pull, which would risk an injury to your weakened ankle.

You do a quick review of the situation and decide that, although you will have to walk DOWN the steepest hill on your journey, it will be much quicker to return via that route and there will be less wildlife along the way.

The problem is - one gentle pull on the leash at the wrong moment while traversing the steep, unstable slope could cause a serious injury to your weakened ankle.

Here it is: my proven recipe for "Broken Ankle Downhill Dog Walking" that could save your life one day!

What you will need:
1 dog trained to walk on a loose leash at least most of the time
1 big bag of tasty, easily consumed treats (I use loaf or sausage style dog food cut into small cubes)
1 leash, 4-6' in length
1 flat collar
1 clicker
1 each Velcro dots, hook and loop

Sew the Velcro dots about 4-5" apart, near the handle of the leash. Join the two dots together, forming a small loop in the leash. This will be your indicator, if the bond between the two dots breaks, well, it could have been your ankle that broke! Hopefuly it wasn't, but you know for sure that your dog pulled too hard - no ifs or buts.

If your dog is already trained to walk on a loose leash "most of the time", you can probably begin out on the street or somewhere with a few mild distractions. Or you could do what I did, limp up a great big hill miles from your car then walk back down it with wallabies bounding off in every direction! Your choice.

Take one step, then if the velcro dots are still joined, click and give a treat.

Take two steps, then if the velcro dots are still joined, click and give a treat.

Take three steps, then if the velcro dots are still joined, click and give a treat.

You can keep walking while you click and treat, just resume the count after you have given then treat. Don't worry about counting the steps that happen between click and treat.

For every successful trial (the ones you click and treat), raise the criteria for the next trial by one step. For every unsuccessful trial (the ones where the velcro comes apart), re-set your criteria back to one step. For those of you who have been following my writing for some time, you will recognise this as an interpretation of the "300 Peck Method" which you can read more about here.

That is the basic idea. In practice, this could get tired very fast and most dogs who are already trained to walk on a loose-leash most of the time will be able to do better so there are two variations you can make:

- when a trial is failed (velcro breaks), you can reset the count at a higher number, say 10% of the highest count you have achieved so far; e.g if you have done around 100 steps, reset the count at 10 steps after failed trials
- when a trial is successful (click and treat), you can increase the count for the next trial by more than one step; e.g two steps, or three steps. Uber-geeks might like to use prime numbers (yeah, you know who you are!)

(If all this seems confusing, just stick to the basic recipe until you have your head around that, then think about the variations)

Here's a tip, if you really are walking down a giant hill with a bad ankle don't be afraid to use a cue if you think the velcro is about to come apart. The cue must mean something though, it must be trained. You can use a cue that signals loose leash walking, or an eye-contact cue, or a cue to target your hand. Click and treat, but re-set your count to one because in all likelihood if you hadn't used the cue the velcro would have broken. The idea is not to teach your dog to give you eye contact or to target your hand, but to walk on a loose leash by default. The cue is simply to minimise the number of errors because errors can be reinforced all too easily.

So how did we go? Did Sabella pull me over and break my ankle? I'm pleased to say that she did not, and in fact when we returned to the car we decided to walk another (flatter) track and managed 300 steps without the velcro coming apart or a cue being used. In fact, the next time we walked in that area we managed 300 steps several times and I walked out with half the bag of treats left over.

Any questions? Feel free to post a comment below...