Does your dog lean sideways on walks?
Have you seen this?
I see it most often in spaniels. The dog is walking so far into the lead at an angle, not in front but to the side, that their body is fighting the laws of physics.
Why?
Well, this could be a few things but most commonly it’s down to a natural behaviour called Opposition Reflex.
As you may have seen I also work with horses and this behaviour occurs with them too – if you lean into a horse they lean right back. Pushing a horse away when they’ve stood on your foot, they are slow to budge. Pulling a horse onto a trailer, they pull right back, even walking backwards. This is called the Opposition Reflex, it’s a natural behaviour, its not personal, and to work alongside humans we need to teach animals how to move with us, not in opposition.
Lets look more at horses. They group together as a herd, safety in numbers because they are a prey animal. Having close contact with the herd benefits their survival success rate. However, when another horse walks directly towards them, moving into their space, they will move away with the aim of creating a safe distance. Up close and personal movement is responded to differently than the space around them getting smaller as another comes close. Their instinct is to keep the space intact. Dogs do the same with each other – head-on approaches cause tension which can lead to play, conflict or the other dog circling out the way to keep a safe distance and control the approach.
We pull the lead, they pull themself away. We give space, they enter that space moving towards us. We walk directly at them, they move away to keep the bubble around them. Pushing in play, the dog dives in for more contact. Leaning into a dog, they often lean back.
Animals speak with their body, so this distance is important to their survival too, the space allows each to hear one-another. This consideration plays heavily into encouraging a dog to accept walking within close proximity because we are also walking into their path, we don’t really walk straight even though we walk straight ahead, we are also walking in a line where they prefer curves.
Guiding a horse forward by moving into a curve is often more successful than simply setting off in a straight line because this is more natural, feels safer, it avoids this reflex being triggered. Same with dogs – ever had a dog just stop on their walks and refuse to go the direction you want? Walking in another direction and then curving around to the original direction can be enough to bypass that internal tension they felt come up.
Let’s now consider how the restriction of a lead being pulled can trigger this Opposition reflex. Instinct tells a trapped animal to escape by pulling in the opposite direction, we experience this too. Even though logically pulling away can cause further pressure we all do it. So with this in mind, a loose-lead is ideal.
But what if you keep lengthening the lead to free them up a bit, only for them to pull it tight and sideways once more? A dog can share wonderful bond with the person they’re walking with, even walking to heel off lead, but as soon as they are bound by the lead their arousal (stress/excitement) levels increase and their reflex is to pull away. I’d say these dogs have lost trust in the lead and that when attached they believe they have little choice and control over their space and safety. Improving the association to wearing the lead is going to be highly beneficial here.
See why applying ‘lead yanks’ to train a heel can cause greater problems for dogs? They just do what their instinct tells them, and feel powerless either way.
Bodily communication, centre of gravity /balance, avoiding conflict, and habit.
There’s a number of techniques to resolve lead walking issues and bypass the Opposition Reflex, and it works pretty fast. The running thread is to show the dog that it’s safe to walk so close beside us, no matter which direction we turn, or how straight we walk…or not. I recommend doing that through games because when learning is fun it works two fold – speeds up learning and improves their trust and therefor desire to be closer to us and walk in lines.
Get in touch if you’d like to practise this with me in person.
