[Leirion]

Hi I have a 19 week old Lhasa apso crossed with an italian greyhound puppy called Tori. When my partner and I got her at 11 weeks old the breeder hadn't implemented any training at all luckily for us she is very receptive to pretty much everything we've taught her. There's just two issues that we can't seem to get passed.

1. Tori and I go for a walk every morning around a lake/park near my house, at first she used to have a standard lead but she would not walk with it at all. Eventually I put her homeline on her, wrapped it around my hand several times until it was slightly longer than a normal lead and she was fine. The walk itself is a very fun time for the both of us but she pulls on the lead a lot and does like a bunny hop with her back legs, this puts a lot of pressure on her neck which i'm concerned about as she starts to pant. I've tried the stopping and calling her back to me method (for some reason she won't eat her treats outside not even her absolute favourites) I give her lots of praise and set off again. As soon as I start walking she's pulling me forwards so I repeat the process, i've been doing this for around 2 and a half weeks and i've seen absolutely no progress at all. Tori gets even worse with the pulling when she sees anything that moves especially if it's a dog or a human, she's very friendly but tends to fixate so I've also been working on getting her attention back onto me which has been working. I absolutely love our walks but her pulling the lead has actually caused my shoulder and arm to really hurt afterwards.

The second issue we're having if her aversion to rain. At first it was all rain but slowly I got her to walk in light rain and now she loves it. The problem is I live in England and during the winter we tend to have quite a bit of heavy rain that sometimes lasts for a couple of days if not for a week. We bought her a rain coat which protects her but still she won't go out if it's raining any harder than a drizzle. During winter I don't want her to lose out on her walks because of the rain but I'm at loss as what to do about it.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[SassyCat]

I have to say that if she won't eat outside there could be two reasons:
1. A serious trauma associated with some stimuli ie. a certain smell, object, person or animal
2. She's not hungry

I'd work on this problem first because using food in your training will help you greatly.

 

[Leirion]

Tori will eat her favourite treats out in the garden but when we go out on walks she's far too interested in sniffing everything. At least that's how I interprated it as or if she isn't sniffing she'll take the treat but then will drop it when she sees either a human nearby or a dog. Tori gets very excited by dogs and humans at the park so even with a treat in my hand she'd prefer to pull me towards the people/person or dog/s.

The only kind of trauma she's had is when a big dog ran up to us (offlead) and started growling quite aggressively. Tori freaked out, started screeching in the end I had to pick her up (with the dog right in my face) and walked out of the park putting her on the pavement when it was safe to do so. I don't see that being the issue with the treats because when we got her and first started taking her for walks she had no interest at all in having treats outside. Tori is ecstatic when we train her indoors and in our garden using treats, it's just her walks but I have no idea how I can remedy this.

 

[hanksimon]

Raining: In general, dogs don't mind water and rain... of course some love it. However, dogs hate to be pelted with little pebbles, and that's what water falling on them can feel like.

I believe that positive reinforcement - walking in rain and getting lots of treats, or even feeding the dog's supper (dry kibble), one at a time during the rain - may help. Start out before the rain gets hard, and come in before it rains cats & dogs ... and Incrementally venture out in harder rain.

I'm speculating .... I bypassed the problem.... I own a Lab.

 

[Leirion]

hanksimon first of all thank you for taking the time to reply. When I first got her out into the very light rain I gave her lots and lots of praise as in the above posts I mentioned Tori absolutely will not eat treats outside the garden, it was unfortunately even worse in the rain. Usually she will accept and sometimes eat a treat in the garden but with the rain she just dropped and left it. So instead I took her food with me hoping that would work, no dice so i've been getting her into the garden when it's raining slightly heavier than a drizzle and praising her everytime I can get her to walk with me. Unfortunately that's not often and after less than 5 minutes outside she will pull me towards my front door, sit down and no matter how hard I try to entice her into walking she won't.

I'm trying very hard to give Tori good walks but the pulling and the rain issue are really starting to take it's toll, i'm left in physical pain from her pulling on the lead so strongly. I'm considering buying an anti pull harness from pets at home in the hopes that this will help as all training i've tried to teach her just isn't working for us. Everything i've read on the internet about helping a dog walk in the rain mentions that you need treats to reinforce but that's a big problem as Tori won't accept treats on walks. This is the first dog I have tried to train on my own and I really feel like i'm failing her.

 

[hanksimon]

1. A harness rather than a collar might help.
2. Sometimes small dogs don't like to get their feet wet. IN addition to your large umbrella, You could try some booties, and a raincoat for her ?
3. You might train her to use a doggy litterbox inside ?