Leashes Prevent Leadership

Leashes prevent leadership. This is not a blog advocating for just abandoning leashes. So discard that notion now.

There are two events I’d like to discuss: The first, I was walking Rollo in the dark around a park, something caused him to stop dead in his tracks and refuse to move. After a few seconds I caught sight of what it was, something highly reflective on the ground across the road. Perhaps 30 to 40 metres away. My initial reaction is one of disbelief, and in fact I start giggling as I spot what it is. Rollo has essentially gone into a cautionary fear response, his brain is trying to figure out what it is and whether he can be indifferent towards it, or, if not, which of fight or flight are required. To aid his decision making, he looks at me to gauge my reaction. This is Rollo looking to me for leadership. This is a good thing, it shows he values my opinion. The problem is I’m attached to him by a 2m rope, a leash. Unfortunately, there’s a reasonably busy road between the object and us.

Rollo looking at me for guidance

The video of this occurrence is on my YouTube Channel, and can be found here, its only 4 minutes long:

https://youtu.be/HyVUxoqo9yY?si=a3HrMFUtqHZqbplY

Part of Rollo’s reaction whilst he’s processing the thing he’s concerned by is to plant his feet and refuse to move. So I’m left with only a few options; 1) Drag Rollo along by his leash because he’s being silly and irrational, or, 2) Cajole him along one inch at a time until we get to the object, or, 3) I put the leash down and go over to the object and show him that there’s nothing to be scared about.

No 3 is the correct thing to do, however, I ruled out No 3 due to the busy road. I am not going to drag Rollo by the leash, that’s not fair at all, and would create active distrust in me. So No 1 is out too. No 2 it is.

The problem with this, as you’ll see in the video is that it takes a long time as the distance to the object has to be closed for me to get anywhere near it, and Rollo has no desire to actually move towards it. The conundrum as Rollo sees it is that I am not offering him any assurance in the harmlessness of the object because I’m not going toward it, I’m staying with him trying to encourage him to move toward it with me – in Rollo’s head I am more interested in keeping him close to me and trying to push against his fears than in demonstrating the required leadership and going over to the object and showing him it’s harmless and letting him come to me based on trust. In some ways that can be read as me agreeing with Rollo that the object is scary because I’m not going near it either. My tone of voice and general demeanor are therefore contradictory to Rollo who is trying to figure out what is going on.

So option No 2 sits in some weird halfway, non-leadership, but ahead of Rollo trying to say it’s ok to go toward the scary thing, but I don’t want to be apart from you, but come on its not scary, mess of a situation. The road scuppered my route to the required solution (No 3), but it was during this moment that I realised that holding onto that leash was preventing me from demonstrating what Rollo needed from me for him to overcome the fear – leadership. He was asking me to show him that it was ok, by demonstrating that it was ok. Not by talking at him in a nice voice. That’s why he planted his feet and looked at me. He is asking me to solve the problem via leadership, and I didn’t, because I needed to hold onto the leash more than anything else.

The second incident was in my town centre on a Friday evening, I usually walk Rollo there as I like to keep up his indifference to areas busy with people all around. It’s certainly something that has to be worked at, it doesn’t come easily to guardian breeds. Anyhow, Rollo decided he didn’t want to go into town, he wanted to go to the park (again), so after looking at me a lot to communicate this, and refusing to move, in a huff he lay down in the pathway and refused to move. Wonderful.

The deal is, he gets the park, after we walk through the town. Sometimes I allow him to choose the park first. On this occasion he’d been in the park first and didn’t want to go into town, no deal from my perspective – and yes that means I’m punishing him, I know.

We were attached by the 2m leash, as usual. It occurred to me that unless I’m prepared to put this leash down and walk off, or drag him along using it, Rollo is in control of this situation, and he knows it. He is offering me a test, it’s twofold; am I a tyrant or a leader, and, does Rollo have much say in what we are doing? It was so immensely tempting to just drag him by the leash. I really can feel that inside me as the annoyance at his laying down builds up. I did wait him out, but in all honesty I wasn’t far off capitulating and dragging him along, 30 seconds left before I acted, perhaps.

I repeat this walk on the next Friday, but I cheat, I take him to the same place but on the 20m long line. Oddly enough, Rollo does the same thing in the same place, he lays down, he doesn’t want to go into town. So I walk off and unfurl the leash behind me as I go, I don’t even look back until I feel him move through the long line. I got to about 6m away before he’s up and jogging to catch up to me. Why did he move? I showed him leadership, even in doing something he doesn’t particularly want to, he would rather follow me and be with me than not - as I mentioned earlier, places busy with people are not the natural or comfortable habitat of guardian breed dogs, and so Rollo wants to stay pretty close to me.

Rollo laying down on the long line

In analysing what happened in all that, the short leash prevented leadership. It prevented us communicating via our bond. I basically stood there begging Rollo to come with me whilst resisting the urge to drag him along, all the while he can read my conflicted emotions like a book. He knows what I’m feeling, intimately, he’s waiting on the outcome of my internal wrestling, and he will judge me and the state of our relationship accordingly, based upon my actions.

Now, I could have put the 2m leash down and walked off, but I’ll admit that in my town centre that still scares me a bit, and would probably scare joe public even more as Rollo shoots up and jogs down the path to catch me, dragging a leash along behind him, so I don’t think that’s a great idea, but the point stands, leashes prevent leadership and tempt you to either beg your dog to come with you, or worse, be a tyrant to your dog through force.

Our dogs need leaders to follow, not beggars or tyrants, that is the crucial part of the healthy human canine relationship.