City Dog: Walking Two Dogs at the Same Time

One of the hardest, but most necessary, things about having multiple dogs in the city is learning to walk multiple dogs at the same time. The city distractions can make it difficult to walk one dog, which is only magnified when you add a second pooch. Plus, since most of us don't have yards and we need to go on 2-3 walks a day, which quickly becomes a tiresome 4-6 daily walks if you need to walk the pooches separately.
I first 'met' Willie & Nabi's mom when she emailed to ask tips about how I learned to walk our pooches at the same time. But I was stumped. I had forgotten the steps I had taken. Now that she has been working on walking Wille and Nabi together, I thought it would be great for her to share her experiences: successes and struggles.

When A asked me to guest post about learning to walk two dogs, my first reaction was, “But I’m still learning how!  What could I tell anyone?”  Then I thought how one of the great things about the Sociabulls community is that it is owners helping owners, and how it is helpful to hear about the “Before” as well as the “After”.  

I first found this blog through Project Rescue Chicago, the awesome group that rescued puppy Bella, as well as our smiley Willie, who we fostered and then adopted about 6 months ago.  I was so impressed how A was able to walk 150 pounds of dog at once, because I was struggling to walk a mere 80 pounds of dog at once.

After a couple months with us, we started thinking of Willie as our Jekyll and Hyde dog.  Indoors or off-leash, he was super mellow and seemingly perfect.  On-leash, he would get overexcited, pull a lot, and react to other animals (sometimes dogs, but especially stray cats, squirrels, pigeons, or the housecat-sized rats that roam the streets of Chicago) by lunging and “barking smack” for half a block at a time.  Also, he would remember *everything*, so if he saw a rat on one walk, he would start reacting in anticipation the next few times he passed that same spot, even if nothing was there.          

Our other rescue, Nabi, is generally pretty good on leash, but true to her breed, she also has a high prey drive, and she has previously snatched and killed a pigeon out of mid-air while on a 6-foot leash.  

When I first started trying to walk them together, as soon as one saw a squirrel and got excited, the other would copy, and it was a mess.  We’ve recently started working with fellow Sociabull Maize’s trainer, and although we are definitely a work in progress, we are beginning to see some great changes.  Here are some of the things that we’re learning:

One Step at a Time.

Like Miss M and Mr. B, Willie and Nabi don’t have a yard, so we rely on daily walks.  We were used to doing long multiple walks a day with Nabi, so at first we were trying to work on Willie’s pulling and reacting during those long walks.  Inevitably, he was getting away with a lot of pulling on those walks (because otherwise they would’ve literally taken hours), and the more he was able to pull, the more excited he would become.

We switched gears by starting to walk Willie alone, without Nabi, because Willie was more excitable with Nabi present.  Our trainer had us break down walking with Willie to literally one step at a time, two steps at a time, etc., while never moving forward if he was pulling, rewarding for being “in position”, and “resetting” if he got ahead of us.  We use mainly kibble as training treats and began feeding most of his meals through training rather than out of a bowl.  He does get to run and sniff for parts of each walk, but only when we “free” him so he knows we’re no longer working.  Our street is a big challenge due to several dogs left out in their gated areas who charge the fence, a big stray cat population, and squirrels, so as part of every walk, we try to practice going back and forth on our street several times.  This type of walk doesn’t cover as much ground distance wise, but seems to tire Willie out by being mentally challenging.      

Not Cheating.

As you can imagine, practicing walking one step at a time can get tedious at times and sometimes the temptation to just get going already is great.  However, we have noticed that if we cheat, we have setbacks.  We especially noticed this when we took the dogs out to the suburbs for a couple days over Thanksgiving and were a bit more lax while in vacation mode.  When we returned to the city, it took a couple walks to get back to where we were before Thanksgiving.  

On Equipment.

I feel like before we started doing this, we were searching for a “magic pill” in different equipment.  We tried a couple different styles of no-pull harness, the Gentle Leader, and a prong collar.  Each would make a difference for the first few days as Willie got used to the new equipment, but then he would adjust to it and learn to pull against it, and would still get just as excited around squirrels, because we weren’t effectively addressing the underlying behavior.  I think different equipment can be a great management tool, but probably not in the way that we were using it before.  

Voluntary Check-ins.

Working with a trainer has changed our perspective from trying to get Willie to constantly follow a series of commands to letting Willie make his own choice to pay attention to us.  As an example, instead of us constantly telling Willie “watch me” like we were at first, now Willie can look where he wants, but he only gets rewarded when he voluntarily chooses to look at us and be at our side, which encourages him to keep making that same choice.  We noticed that using the first method, Willie would look at us while we were giving him a command, but not much at other times, but using the second method, he’s checking in much more frequently on his own, which helps him not get as carried away.            

Impulse Control.

We’ve also been working on other exercises like “leave it”, hand targeting, and recall, to help with focus and impulse control.    

We’re just at the beginning stages, but seeing great changes so far.  Just last week, Willie had a breakthrough moment, where a squirrel ran right in front of him, and he whimpered a couple times, but visibly made an effort to stop himself and then look at us instead!  We have noticed improvement when he is outside with Nabi as well.  Seeing how he is trying so very hard just endears him to us even more.

I love the support our Sociabulls community gives each other in trying to help our dogs be their best, from A sharing her experiences walking 150 pounds of pit bull to Maize’s mom telling us all about different trainers.  We are learning so much and looking forward to more.  Anyone else have experiences to share on working with pulling and prey drive, and learning to walk multiple dogs together?