Update on Sienna’s lead and harness training

Following on from the wonderful breakthrough with Sienna and several sessions of her walking beautifully on a harness and lead in the paddock we decided she was ready to move forward again.

We still use treats when putting the harness on, allowing her to choose to put her head through rather than luring her or just quickly putting it on.

Choices = confidence

Putting her harness on is a much quicker process than it used to be, through careful management and ensuring it is always a positive process.

Instead of going in the paddocks this time, we took her out of the reception door into the front lawn area.  Initially, I walk with her as this is what she is used to.  Lot’s of sniffing and curiosity, which is how a dog’s walk should be.

It is really important to keep the lead loose so that she does not feel pressure and we reinforce every time she comes alongside.

She did so well we swapped handlers! Look at this lovely video clip as she walks beautifully with Tony, the kennel owner. Tony is calm, confident and relaxed which builds confidence in Sienna as she trusts him. Careful handling is needed with the lead – watch how well Tony handles her.

Some lovely sniffing and investigatory behaviour in the car park with so many new smells. She is a little uncertain at first about going forward but simply follows Tony and sniffs some more!

As we begin to move away from the kennel car park she becomes a little more uncertain and checks on me walking behind her.  We decide to do a Sprinkles session on the grass verge. You can see a little tension in her hind quarters as she sniffs through the grass, but this soon disappears as she becomes engaged in the sprinkles.

We are keeping Sienna’s world small at the moment as we do not want to overload or flood her with too many potentially scary stimuli.  We finish the session with an extended Sprinkles session on the grass area.

You can still see some tension in her hindquarters and she looks up several times on hearing a sound from further up the road.  Her movement is quite clumsy at times and she is rapidly searching for the treats. While Sienna does love her food, this is mainly due to some underlying stress about being in a new area.

This is a lovely video as you can see her begin to relax and after glancing up several times to check noises out, she immediately returns to her sprinkles.

We will do several more sessions like this, before introducing other people while out walking. With progress like this, it is always tempting to push forward but if we do not go at her speed we could cause her to panic.

Such a privilege working with this gorgeous girl.