Excited dog before walk

We've been going to dog class now for 5 weeks and the improvement with Oreo has been significant.

Her pulling has reduced and we have even had a few sucessful 'walking to heel' without a lead. She is a great dog and we expect to pass our Bronse award soon.

We have even managed to stop her jumping at people and have worked hard in getting her to calm when visitors come to visit.

However we have one issue that even our trainer is struggling with and could do with ideas.

When Oreo realises she is going for a walk, whether that be her third walk of the day or first she goes mental. She will listen to me as far as sit and wait but she will bark and bark and bark. She will continue barking until she has got to a small piece of grass and had her first wee.

From then on she is calm and very easy to walk.


We have tried to have different ways of leaving the house and even put her in a seperate room (while we put our coat on etc) but she always knows when she is leaving.

We have left leads around the house to de-sensitise her against this but she just walks around the house with her lead in her mouth, mumbling and talking.

We have also tried the returning to the house or taking our coats off when she makes a noise, this just seems to work her up more.

When she goes off on a barking fit she is almost impossible to keep quiet.

Any ideas?

I think it get have been Gwen Bailey who suggested ridding the dog of some of their excitement before a walk, so half an hour of playing in the garden with a ball or whatever, real vigorous exercise before you even leave the house...then clip the lead on and leave quickly. Can you leave in different ways I.e. from a back door or straight from the garden after exercise. As well as continuing all the good things you are doing already I would also introduce clicker training and click and treat and tiny bits of quietness you get, try to get some clicks and treats in before the barking starts. Good. Luck!

Hi I agree with Cat, distraction,distraction,have a kick about,though Fay has only just got over being scared off the ball,before if we throw a ball,she would run thinking we were throwing the ball at her.The other thing is to have someone knock on the door,have her on a leadand put her in the sit position,if she moves,the person then goes out and again knocks,you continue until she isnt bothered.Gemini54

If she leaves the house in that state of excitement then she may think that this state of mind works as it gets her outside.
Get ready to leave and then just wait until she gets fed up of making a fuss and calms down. You can reward the calm state with a high value treat. When your ready take a step towards the door and if she starts again you repeat the process. Refuse to move forward until she is calm.

This takes a lot of patients. It's probably best to give no verbal instructions to the dog, its just a calm waiting game, but each time should get easier.

As many as the hospital? LOL.

We've done a lot of work desensitising Bentley recently. As I work away in the week, walkies with me at the weekends are very exciting (it's nice to be loved ) We realised just me changing into my dogwalking leggings and jumper was raising his excitement levels. Oreo's trigger may be something that you haven't even realised you're doing? I wasn't allowed to talk to either of the dogs or make eye contact before we left the house when we first started doing this, as OH says I make them excited

This is some of the stuff we've done to help reduce his excitement levels before we leave the house:
I spent quite a few weekends wearing my dog walking clothes ALL the time. He gave up trying to guess when we were actually going for a walk. That's no longer a trigger for him now.
We put Bentley's collar on at least 10 minutes before we leave the house. He still wags his tail when we put his collar on but is no longer rushing to the door and whining to go out.
We wander around, unload the dishwasher, anything that isn't leaving the house for a walk (I did this a few times in the winter in my full kit, coat, hat, boots; I was pretty sweaty by the time we left the house ) and basically wait for him to go and lie down on his bed or other calm behaviour.
When we leave the house, we then let him have a wee in the garden before clipping lead on, but he must sit and give us a 'watch' so that we know he is focused on us before we leave. (I use hand signals so he can't get any excitement from my voice)
Often we then get into the car and drive to a walking hotspot. Same process again before leaving the car when we arrive: wait, watch, clip lead on, release command. If at any point he breaks focus or barks like a loonie at another dog we stop, close the boot back up and wait for him to stop barking before we start again. I had to do this 5 times a couple of weeks ago as he was barking at a crazy lab running rings around the car park. The female owner came over to ask if I was alright, I explained he was telling her dog to calm down and that I won't let Bentley out of the car until his excitement levels are lower, as it can lead to incidents during our walk...it was as if I had spoken Japanese to her

We started putting all of these little things into practice 6 months ago, we started to see real results just after Christmas. The first few weeks with the barking, sweating and back and forth were the worst but we got there. I hope maybe something I've said will be useful and you can find what Oreo's trigger is and fix it, best of luck

Really admire your dedication Tess great tips, thanks so much

Can you get her to wait? For food etc to teach her patience. Then start to get her to wait for her lead to be put on, Treat when she is quiet.

2 of my dogs got very noisy when OH had to take them out as I was ill. When I was able to take over, they had to sit & wait, soon they would sit quietly & wait for their treat without being asked to.

Thanks for the tips so far, exactly what I am looking for

In regards to the above, we make her sit and wait for her food and she is very good with all that. She doesn't bark at the door bell, and hardly barks at all. The only thing that sets her off is a cat, but only if it comes into the garden, if it's sitting on a wall across the road she just looks at it.

The barking only comes when she has to wait for me to put my shoes on for example or put on her harness. She still listens and sits but she continues to bark.

I sometimes sit down or remove my shoes etc if she gets barky and it works, until we get outside and she starts the barking again.

As soon as she hits that first bit of grass for a wee she stops the barking and walks normally without any trouble.

The trouble i have is that she is golden at our dog class, and doesn't show any of this behaviour while were out.

Would teaching to bark on command and be quiet on command help with this ? We had a similar problem but ours was a screaming terrier, as soon as leads appeared he would start, and he wouldn't stop until we had walked a hundred yards or so from home. It was a bit of a nightmare going out, but barking might be easier to stop I think.