TAG | stroller
Did your dog promise to quit pulling for his New Year’s resolution? Here’s a solution for those of you walking the baby and the dog together.
Before our son was born we did stroller training with our dogs to desensitize them to the stroller and have a fighting chance to take a walk without risking the baby’s safety. Our Cocker Spaniel, TJ, picked up walking with the stroller no problem, but it took a little more work with our Golden Retriever, Rankine. This is a recent video of me walking with Rankine. You will notice that I keep treats in the adult drink cup and I reward very frequently when he is by my side. For most of this walk, the leash was simply draped over the handle bar.
One down, three to go! Today I worked on training Rankine, our 2 year-old Golden Retriever, to walk with the stroller. The first block was a challenge - Rankine pulling, the stroller rolling away – thank goodness there was no baby in the stroller. I realized that Rankine was very motivated for the treats, but I was not rewarding enough or quickly enough as I was fumbling around trying to push the stroller and get treats out of the bag. So, I decided to put the treats in the parents cup holder. After a few rewards, Rankine associated the treats with the cup holder which just happened to keep Rankine in a perfect heel position – success! The rest of the walk was a breeze, even easier than without the stroller, I am starting to wonder if I should walk with a stroller all the time.
Ok – so Hubby was right - I did feel abit odd pushing a stroller around the neighborhood 7 months pregnant. I was thinking to myself that either people couldn’t see in the stroller and thought I was crazy for having two babies so close together or they could see in the stroller and thought I was crazy for pushing an empty stroller. I will say there was an advantage with pushing a stroller just from a support standpoint when you are waddling around.
Enough about me… on to the dogs. I started stroller training with my Cocker Spaniel, TJ, who is generally the easiest to walk. He seemed a bit perplexed by the stroller as it put a kink in his normal sweeping pattern. By this I mean that TJ likes to zig-zag in front of me when I walk to check out all the yards and smells. He tried to cross in front of the stroller, but then the leash would get caught and he would get tapped on the bottom by the stroller. With the help of a few treats and the command “With Me”, TJ quickly figured out that he needed to stay at my side and any zig-zagging needed to be done behind me.
TJ was able to adapt to the stroller with just one loop around the neighboorhood – here’s hoping it will be just as easy with my bigger dogs.
