Why Your Dog Pulls on Leash, and What Actually Fixes It

Ian Dunbar puts the problem in one sentence, and it is not a training observation. It is a physics one.

"Once the leash is tightened, you can no longer control your dog."

Everything people try after that moment is negotiation from a losing position. The dog is already ahead of you, already braced, already being paid for it. Which is why the useful question is not how to stop a dog that is pulling, but how to stop the leash from ever going tight in the first place.

Why dogs pull

Dunbar gives three reasons, and none of them are about dominance or stubbornness.

1. Pulling is enjoyable. He describes it as "intrinsically enjoyable and self-reinforcing for many dogs," noting that most dogs treat a walk to the postbox as "a work-out for the Iditarod."
2. The owner lets the dog pull.
3. The owner follows. The dog pulls, the walk continues, the pulling gets paid.

There is a fourth thing worth understanding, because it explains why a pulling dog also stops listening to you. A tight leash is, in Dunbar's phrase, "a taut telegraph wire through which it may sense your every move and even your very intentions, thus freeing its nose, ears and eyes to 'scope the 'hood."

Read that again, because it inverts how most people think about a leash. A tight leash does not give you more control. It gives the dog more information about you, at exactly the moment it stops needing to look at you. The dog can now track your position through the rope, so its eyes are free for everything else on the street.

A loose leash forces the dog to check in visually. That is the whole mechanism.

The rule most owners break in week one

Dunbar's standard here is harder than almost anyone follows:

"no one, that is NO ONE, is allowed to walk the pup on-leash outdoors, not even a single step, unless they can walk the puppydog without it pulling."

His argument is fairness rather than technique. "It is utterly unfair to let a puppy develop a leash-pulling habit, knowing full well it will be punished for the same habit as an adolescent."

Most leash problems in a two-year-old dog were installed at ten weeks by people being kind. The puppy was small, the pulling was cute, the walk was short, and nobody wanted to be the person standing on the pavement doing nothing. Then the dog grew. Dunbar's scale reference: the canine weight-pulling record sits around 10,000 pounds.

Before you pick up the leash at all

Two prerequisites, both of which happen without a leash.

Your dog should follow you willingly around the house and garden, and should hold a sit-stay in front of you for a good thirty seconds. Dunbar's reasoning is blunt: "leash-pulling does advertise the fact your dog wants to get away from you. So, give your dog a reason to stick around. Lighten up, brighten up and maybe offer the dog an occasional kind word, pat or treat."

If the dog does not want to be near you off leash in a quiet room, the leash is not going to fix that. It will just hide it.

The leash itself should mean nothing. This is Michael Ellis's point and it is the one most owners have never heard.

"We bring it out. We do a little engagement. I drop the leash. I do a little engagement. I pick the leash up. I do a little engagement. I unclip the leash. I do a little engagement. I put the leash back on."

The failure mode he is heading off is specific. If you only ever clip the leash on at the end of the fun, "the leash becomes a signal of non-reinforcement and the dog becomes avoidant to you. As soon as you pick up the leash, you're like, uh-uh, fun's over."

So never end a session by putting the leash on. Clip it, work, unclip, work, drop it, work, pick it up, work. The dog should reach a point where, in Ellis's words, it thinks "go ahead, put it on. I know a reward's coming right after."

Red light, green light

This is Dunbar's core method for teaching the dog that a tight leash stops the world.

Start indoors. He gives three reasons: you can begin before the puppy's shots are finished, there are fewer distractions, and it "avoids the embarrassment of making a spectacle of oneself on the street."

1. Put the pup on leash. Grasp the end loop with both hands held close to your body.
2. Stand perfectly still. Pay absolute attention to your pup and ignore everything happening at the other end of the leash.
3. Wait. The pup will eventually sit or lie down. Dunbar is emphatic: "Yes, it will."
4. The moment it does, say "Good dog," give a treat, say "Let's Go," take one step forward, then stand still again.
5. That single step will detonate the puppy. Ignore the antics. Wait for the sit again.
6. Repeat, extending the sit a little each time. Then two steps. Then three. Then six or seven.

Once you can run sequences of six or seven steps, you are walking your dog on leash without pulling, and it will sit automatically whenever you stop. If the leash ever tightens mid-walk, stand still and wait for the sit before moving again.

Dunbar's description of what the dog concludes is the best part:

"you have duped your puppy into believing that it is training you. Perhaps your canine companion muses, 'My owners are so easy to train. Just barely tighten the leash, and they stand stay. Sit down, and they move ahead.'"

The other method: do the opposite

For dogs already in the habit, Dunbar offers a second approach that works in a park as well as a hallway. Hold the leash with both hands close to your body, giving a couple of inches of slack, then walk and keep walking. Whatever the dog does to alter your intended direction, do the opposite.

• Lunges ahead: smooth right-about turn, head the other way.
• Pulls left: turn right.
• Drifts behind you on the right: turn left.
• Drifts in front on the right: speed up to cut it off, then turn left in front of it.
• Slows down to sniff or pee: this one is not a fault. "That's fine, this is usually the reason we are walking the dog." Slow down and wait.

Two specific situations he calls out. Doorways provoke lunging, so practice leaving and re-entering the house several times in a row with a sit before and after. And dogs forge on the way out and lag on the way home, much like horses. If the pup pulls on the way out, say "Steady," about turn, and walk it back home to start again. The first lap around the block can take a very long time. The second and third are progressively easier.

Where the trainers genuinely disagree

Here the sources split, and since we sell training treats it would be dishonest of us to bury it.

Turid Rugaas made 2025 her "loose-leash-walking year," and her basic principles are three lines long:

"harness and long leash / no treats ! / walk slow enough for your dog to start exploring and relaxing"

That "no treats" is not a throwaway. It is a direct contradiction of Dunbar's red light green light, which is built on marking the sit with a treat, and of Ellis, whose entire engagement foundation runs on reward delivery.

We are not going to pretend that tension away. What we would say is that the two camps are optimizing for different things, and both are legitimate walks.

Rugaas is describing a decompression walk. The goal is a relaxed dog exploring at its own pace on a long line. Food changes that picture, because food puts the dog's attention on you, and attention on you is the opposite of what that particular walk is for.

Dunbar and Ellis are describing trained behavior. The goal is a dog that can hold position and check in when the environment gets difficult. That is a skill, skills are built with reinforcement, and food is the most practical reinforcer for most owners.

Most dogs need both kinds of walk. A dog that only ever does structured heelwork never gets to be a dog. A dog that only ever does long-line sniffing has no mechanism for a crowded pavement. Decide which walk you are on before you leave the house, and use the right tool for it.

Rugaas closes her note with a line that would sit comfortably in our own copy: "Everybody can learn to do this. There is no excuse for not trying."

One more option: pulling on cue

Dunbar makes a point most trainers skip. If pulling is genuinely fun for the dog, you do not have to abolish it. You can put it on cue.

"if the dog has got a bee in its bonnet about pulling, if pulling on-leash is such a thrill, why be a killjoy? Why not let the draught doggie pull at acceptable times?"

"Pull," "Mush," "Hike," whatever word you like. He uses it for his own dog up a flight of steps and in sled harness in the Sierra. The rule is simply that the dog pulls when invited, not when it decides.

This is worth knowing because it removes the last reason to feel mean about the rest of the training. You are not taking pulling away from your dog. You are taking away the dog's authority to decide when it happens.

The short version

1. The leash going tight is the failure, not the pulling that follows it. Train so it never tightens.
2. Do the off-leash prerequisites first: your dog follows you willingly, and can sit-stay thirty seconds.
3. Neutralize the leash. On, off, dropped, picked up, all the way through a session. Never end on clipping it.
4. Red light green light indoors: stand still, wait for the sit, one step, repeat. Build to six or seven steps.
5. Outdoors, do the opposite of whatever the dog does. Practice doorways separately.
6. Sniffing is not pulling. It is usually the point of the walk.
7. Decide before you leave whether this is a training walk or a decompression walk.

The first lap round the block will take a long time. Dunbar promises the second and third are easier, and thereafter, "it's a breeze." Conditions do not change whether you go. They change how you go.

---

Sources

• Ian Dunbar, How To Teach A New Dog Old Tricks, "Walking On-Leash."
• Michael Ellis, Engagement With Distractions Added With Ollie (Volume 1, Video 12), "Neutralizing the leash."
• Turid Rugaas, "Loose-Leash Walking Year 2025." http://en.turid-rugaas.no/loose-leash-walking-year-2025.html