Running (and stopping) with dog (Page 2)

Oooh.  Business idea!  Add some water bottles and a pouch for your iphone to that belt, and sell it to all we dog joggers!

But seriously- that photo of you with the 4 Huskies.... very cool.  I'll bet the dogs love it.

The second they see/hear me start to get the lines or harnesses out, they all crowd around the garage door ready to be geared up.  They absolutely love it.  They love bikejoring even more though because they can get some real speed then.

How do you steer them in the right direction?  Do you use verbal commands to get them to turn?  Seems like you'd need to have a fair amount of space to go out like that and running/biking with them in a more urban area might not work.  Looks like a blast though!

If I properly trained them they'd know their left from right based off of verbal commands, but I haven't put that much time into it yet.  If it's a clearly defined trail they are all great at staying on it.  If you've ever met a Husky you know they haven't met a single person/dog that shouldn't be their friend, mine especially so.  Much to my great surprise once those harnesses go on, the lines get hooked up, and they've got a trail in front of them, they ignore everything around them and just go.  We've passed other dogs, adults, kids, turkeys, and even deer, but none of it phased them.  The only thing that's distracted them has been horses.  When it comes time for turns they typically will want to continue in the direction they're already going, so just some vocal encouragement will get them to turn.  They've gotten familiar with the phrase "let's go" so if they hear anything else they figure they should be picking a different option.  If there's multiple options, I just keep up with the vocal encouragement until they pick the one I want and then I say "let's go" and they're off and running again.  More dedicated mushers/canicross/bikejoring/skijoring people teach their dogs specific commands for left and right, it's rather amazing.  I might get to that point eventually, but for now it's just something fun for the dogs to enjoy parts of my training with me.

In a more urban area you'd just want a shorter line so that you have more control of the dog(s).  That way they can't get too far ahead of you and potentially get crossed up or worse an unsafe area.  Shorter lines also typically have a handle on them for even greater control.

My lab wears the prong collar for MY own protection. He is good about everything except rabbits. If he pulls I am going down . With the prong collar on he behaves.

We had a chihuahua we adopted from the shelter for a while. He came with assorted issues and one of them was wanting to pee on EVERY single lamp post or mailbox in sight. Really it was bizarre. I've never had a dog who had such a strong desire to pee on everything in sight. He was so small I was afraid of using a prong collar with him so I used to carry a small squirt bottle of water. He pulled the leash - he got a squirt in the back of the head.  He hated that, one squirt and he was the best boy the rest of the walk. Eventually he figured out if I was carrying the bottle and he would behave no squirts needed. The downside, of course, if we didn't have the bottle he would try to go at it again.