Good girl, Chelsea!
Yes, that's how Beyorne and co. were off-leash. There was a lot of peace of mind knowing that they were not going to go anywhere.
After posting about not trusting Krypto, I remembered that I've wanted to make him safer, and more reliable.
Dh didn't want to do it, originally, though I don't know why. However, he agreed this afternoon.
The procedure starts with a longe line, maybe 30-40'. We drop it, and let them wander. When we walk away, we don't want them to let us get too far away w/out following, and then when we go toward the house, we call them - whoever it is, we've done this many times. If the dog is more interested in what he/she is doing, we use a little bribery. I'm never beyond that to bump start training.
Once the dog does it perfectly, we switch to a regular leash, and tie thin rope to the handle to extend it's length, though making it much lighter, and proceed as before.
The idea is that they don't realize that we don't have our usual control over the leash, and also that we can step on it if we need to stop them for any reason.
After a while, once the dog reliably will not let us get more than a few feet away without joining us, then comes immediately when called at the door...or sees us getting to the door and joins us on their own, we replace the leash's extension with a heavy light line...which weighs even less, same everything else.
After that's good, a piece of fishing line on the leash.
In the end, just a piece of fishing line on the collar, no leash. But, only when actually training, since fishing line can be dangerous without supervision.
And, because they really don't feel/connect the line with anything on them, that's it. The dog is going to be far more trustworthy outside.
Though, I never put the line on and go straight out the door, or they do connect it. I put it on and sit down to read while they lie down for a nap with me. Then, after a while, tell them that it's time to go out.
It's more time consuming that difficult.
So, that's the plan, with caveats for our current situation.
A - We're only going to do this during the day. At least for a while.
B - We're going to keep the lines looped up in our hands at first, so that he can alert us to animals. If there's a deer, fox, or squirrel nearby, then we would scratch the lesson.
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