A few years ago, I had an MS (multiple sclerosis) attack.

An MS attacks mean my previous symptoms would return, or new symptoms would appear. This particular attack left me unable to walk down a flight of stairs without holding the banister. Besides that, whenever I bent my head, I would feel dizzy.

Shortly before all that happened, I had accepted a dog-sitting job. My featured image shows the dog. He was a Doberman mix named Bob. He was very strong and had been pulling on his leash for years.

Fortunately, his family wanted to treat him kindly. They bought Bob an Easy-Walk harness to decrease the amount of damage he could do if he pulled hard on his leash.

Another symptom I didn’t account for was cognitive impairment. Even normal people dislike the design of the Easy-Walk because it is so confusing to put on a dog. The image below shows how impaired I was cognitively.

If this looks wrong, that’s because it was.

Looking at Bob wearing the harness incorrectly felt incredibly frustrating. I felt like a failure. Every time I attached a leash to the harness, even indoors, I knew something was off. I just couldn’t figure out what.

In my frustration, I recognized there were gaps in my knowledge as a professional dog trainer.

I have been a professional dog trainer since 2003, and I was taught to use negative punishment for leash-pulling. This meant standing still whenever a dog pulled on their leash.

Considering that I could barely walk down a flight of stairs unaided, I knew that was a dangerous game of Russian Roulette for me.

Colleagues suggested that I put a prong collar on Bob, “To correct him for pulling.”

I didn’t want to do that. I knew the prong collar was designed to cause pain to Bob. I resigned to using positive reinforcement.

But what could I do to teach a long-time leash puller not to pull?

I realized helping Bob understand where to be relative to me was the first thing.

3 Things That Changed Everything

1. I bought Bob a different harness (in the featured image). That one was easy to put on and almost impossible to do incorrectly.

2. Reinforcing Bob for doing nothing. I started this in his family’s living room. The photo above shows exactly what I did: I would find him standing next to his couch and slide next to him to pop a piece of food in his mouth.

3. Helping Bob generalize the behavior to different areas: indoors and out.

Within 48 hours, he walked beside me without pulling on the leash.

I realized what that meant.

My purpose was to show others how they could get their dogs to walk on a loose leash without scaring or hurting their pets.

The price I paid was losing my coordination.

Totally worth it for dog welfare.

The best part? This text from his owner.