Ollie will be 11 months on 12/1. I am the primary walker and he shows aggressive behavior towards me at the beginning of each walk. Jumping, nipping at my arms or hands - with the focus being getting a hold of his leash with his mouth. When he was younger it was much worse - almost vicious behavior. Of late it appears to be more playful, yet a bit aggressive. I've tried a number of things, from out Alpha-maling him to sitting him down, calming him and often giving him a treat. This works for most of the walk but often, as we approach the house he'll do it again. He also stops the bad behavior if he's distracted - seeing another animal, person, etc. He's always been a bit mouthy, and his bad habits on the walks seem to be related to the nipping. While in the house he's as cuddly and loyal as our previous goldens.

This problem appears over and over again on the forums. I'm surprised we don't have a standard answer. My pup is also like this. My trainer thinks it's a combination of over-excitability and lack of deference (vs dominance). There is an element of bad habit. And in fact, one way to approach this is to change things around so that you don't trigger the behavior. You don't want the dog to practice it. As an example, my dog would start jumping around at the bottom of the driveway. I realized that the trigger was the left turn I was making towards him. He thought I was wanting to start some game by walking into him! So instead if making that 90 degree turn to the left, I make a 270 degree turn to the right. Dog says, oh, OK, no problem. Once he forgets his whole left turn thing, I can stop the spinning around. I'm sure the purists are appalled my dog is not learning the left turn, but my dog is learning to behave on walks. He's a year old, we have plenty of time for left turns.

Mostly the dogs that do this are around a year old. A couple of people said their dogs basically outgrew this. I wish we had more information about how many just outgrow it.

My 17 week old puppy has just started to exhibit bad behaviour when walking on leash. He's been ok ...a bit of pulling, but as he has only been walking out in public for three weeks, since ten days after his final vaccination, he is still very new at leash walking. Last week he began chewing on his lead, jumping about & tugging as is playing tug of war game. I'm being very firm with him, & he does respond & behave himself, but making me a bit apprehensive, after reading some serious walking issue problems. I think I will look into the Gentle Leader if my young boy gets worse, or keeps doing it. Have you thought of using one of these on Ollie? It seems to be quite effective with issues like you are facing. I hope you manage to resolve this & once again get back to enjoying your walks with him.

Good luck. Max is five and walking is still a challenge.

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