Wanting your dog to be off-leash is not just some power move to show your neighbors you are better than them. It can actually be life-changing for your dog and save them in case of emergencies. However, there are a few things you must teach and get out of the way before you embark on this new adventure of off-leash training. 

In today's episode, I go over exactly what you need to teach and feel confident in before unclipping the leash for the first time. You will also learn exactly how I have taught over 12,000 dogs and their owners to have reliable dogs that they can trust off-leash wherever they go. 

Here is a free PDF download on stopping bad behaviors without punishment to get you started in training and succeeding. https://www.matadork9.com/resolvingbadhabits

If you want to work one on one with me schedule a discovery call here and let's make sure this is a right fit for you. https://www.matadork9.com/coaching

Episode Transcript

00:00:35:12 - 00:00:59:05
Michael J. Accetta
What I want to talk about today is off leash training, off leash training and the prerequisites that are required in order to have an off leash dog. It's not as simple as just unclip the leash, although a lot of people just do that. That actually gives me anxiety. That makes me nervous when someone just unclip the leash. And I've been around enough trainers and enough individuals that I know.

00:00:59:10 - 00:01:20:04
Michael J. Accetta
Some people just do it. They just go, Oh, it's going to be totally fine. Let me just unclip my dog's leash. And, you know, they're not going anywhere. I know they're not going anywhere. Great. Okay, that's wonderful. But for me, I need to have some reassurance. I need to know that there's been training involved. I need to know that I have multiple boxes checked off before I unclip my dog's leash.

00:01:20:14 - 00:01:42:10
Michael J. Accetta
So we're going to go over those things. What do I need to check off? In order to make sure that my dog's ready to have the leash taken off that are we can start having off leash adventures that we could go into the woods and go for hikes or in the event of an emergency. I know that I can call my dog when I need to if the leash breaks or the harness snaps or I trip and I dropped a leash.

00:01:42:10 - 00:02:01:13
Michael J. Accetta
I've seen all of these things happen when your dog's running away. How do you get them to come back? Now, I was thinking the other day was walking with my family of a three year old son and my significant other. We were just walking. We were kind of enjoying our day. We had the dog with us, and I started thinking my son has never worn a leash.

00:02:02:01 - 00:02:24:12
Michael J. Accetta
My three year old son has never worn a leash, but my dog has. They've always worn leashes. And I started to think, what if society said dogs can't have leashes? Like we don't put leashes on kids, okay? There's a certain prerequisite to a child being able to walk around, right, without being carried or put in a stroller. They have to listen.

00:02:25:01 - 00:02:41:11
Michael J. Accetta
They have to understand what you're saying and they have to have some type of engagement with you. They want to walk with you. They want to hold your hand. Right. They want to ask you questions. So they're engaged with you. And we don't even think about that when it comes to our kids. But we never think about it.

00:02:41:11 - 00:03:06:05
Michael J. Accetta
When it comes to a dog. So I was really thinking about it and I was like, okay, let me let me look at this from a scientific perspective, because that's what I do as a dog trainer. Our dogs get used to having the leash on and we get used to the leash being there. We've essentially become dependent on the leash keeping our dog at a certain distance, it being, you know, six feet or ten feet if you have a long legs or 30 feet, if you have a really long range.

00:03:07:00 - 00:03:26:14
Michael J. Accetta
I like to walk with a four foot leash because I like my dog to really close. But if I just lost the leash and I had to practice building my dog's engagement and rewarding them heavily, wouldn't it be different for them? Would it change something? And that's what we're going to talk about today. The prerequisites to having an off leash dog.

00:03:27:05 - 00:03:52:09
Michael J. Accetta
What I do with my clients when I want to build engagement is I tell them to get rid of the leash because there's two main things we need to have in the beginning engagement. Actually, there's three things. There's engagement there's confidence in socialization before you take the leash off your dog. So that engagement comes from practicing, giving them treats, giving them praise, having them want to interact with you.

00:03:52:09 - 00:04:05:06
Michael J. Accetta
If they don't want to interact with you, then you can't have an off leash dog because once you take the leash off, they're going to go run after something else. They're going to go run after the squirrel. They're going to go say hi to somebody. They're going to go sniff the grass over there and you have nothing to get them back.

00:04:05:06 - 00:04:22:14
Michael J. Accetta
No reason for them to want to come back. Okay. So you have to have me engagement aspect there. If you don't have the engagement aspect, nothing is going to happen. You just you don't have the confidence to let your dog off leash. And I think that's one of the biggest pieces that are missing when we have our kids.

00:04:23:01 - 00:04:43:02
Michael J. Accetta
Our kids want to engage with us. They want to talk with us. Or if you went for a walk with a friend, your friend doesn't just take off in another direction. No, they hang out with you, right? They want to interact with you. You guys are having a conversation. If something was really blown out of proportion and they ran off to go somewhere else, well, the conversation wasn't as important as that.

00:04:43:02 - 00:05:01:02
Michael J. Accetta
Something else. My point being, there's a simple way to build engagement with your dog, and that's treats. That's what we always talk about, right? Something that can reward the dog and encourage them to continue hanging out with us. The more you reward them, the more they want to hang out. The more you get to reward them, the more they want to hang out.

00:05:01:09 - 00:05:23:01
Michael J. Accetta
And then we talk some about some advanced stuff where you don't have to reward them as much. But that's a later episode. So once you have the engagement down, your dog wants to engage with you. You then need to build confidence and socialization. You cannot have an off leash dog if they are nervous or unsocial. So if you have a reactive dog, then you can't have them off leash.

00:05:23:06 - 00:05:48:08
Michael J. Accetta
Kind of makes sense, right? My first dog, her name is Breezy, but she's still alive today. I think she's nine or ten years old. She lives with my parents and she is terrified of the world, or at least she was for a majority of the time. We've done a lot of confidence building over the years, but in the beginning, when I first got her, she was terrified and we were always nervous about her slipping out of her collar or the leash breaking or the harness breaking anything could happen.

00:05:48:10 - 00:06:11:00
Michael J. Accetta
This is where my brain, my my brain, my brain goes all the time, right? I'm constantly thinking about what is going on, what could be the potential problem And so instead of waiting for it to happen, I intentionally trained for it. So we worked on a recall very, very subtly every day. We just did a little bit here, a little bit there, building engagement outside, trying to build up her confidence.

00:06:11:09 - 00:06:41:09
Michael J. Accetta
And one day she ran out of the front door, sprinted down the block after our money, and I was able to call her name and get her to turn around. She practically skidded on the floor. And it made it so much easier and better for me because of all the practice that we did, because otherwise my dog would have ran down the street, gone to a main highway chasing after this funny and potentially gotten hurt but because I had engagement, because I did a lot of practice, I was able to at least get her attention.

00:06:42:09 - 00:07:03:03
Michael J. Accetta
Then she freaked out because she was outside and she was nervous about being outside and she just kind of froze. So we had to then work on confidence. We had to work on the obedience part of being out in the world and socializing. And that's what we're going to get to in a second. What confidence if your dog is nervous, they can't think clearly when they're nervous.

00:07:03:11 - 00:07:22:09
Michael J. Accetta
A friend of mine had a German shepherd who was afraid of lightning and rain. It got out during a storm. Of course, the lightning happens, the rain happens, the dog freaks out. And then it ended up a couple of blocks away. I think it was lost for two or three days because it got afraid. It got so scared, it ran to try to protect itself.

00:07:23:10 - 00:07:47:10
Michael J. Accetta
And the owner couldn't then go get the dog, couldn't recall the dog, couldn't get the dog's attention, couldn't do anything because the dog was that afraid. And so if you know what your dog is afraid of, I encourage you to practice everything you do with your dog. It doesn't just have to be recalled, doesn't just have to be engagement, doesn't just have to be obedience, but tricks, manners, Agility it, conditioning.

00:07:47:10 - 00:07:58:05
Michael J. Accetta
Anything you do in your dog, you should practice in the situations where they might be a little nervous. It's going to build up their confidence, their certainty in their capabilities of what to do when they are nervous.

00:08:02:04 - 00:08:26:05
Michael J. Accetta
I want to take a moment and thank all of our loyal followers. This podcast would not be possible without you. Leave a review and let us know what you like and want to learn on the next episode of the Acknowledged Dog podcast. Now back to the show and then you need to have a dog that's well socialized. As I mentioned before, if your dog is reactive, they're barking at people and barking at other dogs.

00:08:26:05 - 00:08:56:08
Michael J. Accetta
They're barking at squirrels, cats, bicycles, skateboards, cars, whatever it is, your dog is not well socialized enough to be trusted off leash What do I mean by that? You, my dogs barking at people. I can't take them off leash because eventually they're then going to go run to the person and they're going to be so worked up and all over the place that they end up either, you know, maybe biting the person potentially if they're reactive, maybe they get up there and scare the person and the person starts swinging at the dog.

00:08:56:14 - 00:09:14:02
Michael J. Accetta
Absolutely. Can happen. And it's absolutely happened. Right? So you don't tick tock all the time on social media all the time. So your dog needs to be socially seized with those things. They need to not necessarily love them. They don't have to love them to be socialized with them. They just need to know that they exist and that they're normal.

00:09:14:14 - 00:09:46:04
Michael J. Accetta
Like socialization does not necessarily mean your dog has to love something or play with it or enjoy being around it. They just have to be neutral. Around it. They shouldn't be overly dramatic on one side or overly excited on another. Usually people get this confused when they get puppies. So if you have a puppy and someone saying, Oh, you got to socialize your dog, it doesn't necessarily mean bring them to playdates or go to the dog park or bring them to PetSmart or bring them to a boarding place where they can play with other dogs every day daycare.

00:09:47:01 - 00:10:12:07
Michael J. Accetta
And it's not what socialization means. Socialization means they can be neutral in the presence of anything a bike, a car, a shopping cart, a guitar, someone with a hat on, someone with glasses on, someone stomping and workman's right, holding them upside down, grabbing them, squeezing them. Those things they have to get socialize. Do they have to get used to those and know that they're normal?

00:10:12:07 - 00:10:35:00
Michael J. Accetta
If they don't know they're normal, they're going to be a little weary of them. And if you're out in an environment your dog's off leash, either by accident or intentional in something spooks them and they're not used to it. Ride a car like those big trucks that whistle, then do not do it. All right. Those trucks often scare dogs or 18 wheelers.

00:10:35:06 - 00:10:52:06
Michael J. Accetta
Those often scare dogs because they're just not used to them as much unless you live in an environment where they hear them all the time until you it would behoove you to play sounds like that in your house while your dog eats best way to do it. There is nothing for them to actually get afraid of sight wise.

00:10:52:06 - 00:11:17:09
Michael J. Accetta
They don't smell anything but they can hear it. They can use the the south. Then when you're out in the environment because they're used to one aspect of it, the sound, you can start to focus on the site and the smell of it. You're kind of your chopping away, if you will. If you have this giant piece of marble, you're chipping away at all the pieces that might cause a problem and you're leaving just a masterpiece in the middle, which is all the success of the off leash ness that you're striving for, that you're looking for.

00:11:18:07 - 00:11:43:10
Michael J. Accetta
So the three things engagement, first confidence. And then socialization. Now that's just an emotional kind of prerequisite, behavioral wise, the behaviors that our dog does. There's three more prerequisites that you need to have an off leash dog. Now, this can go over any type of obedience that you want, and that's totally fine. It could be sit you can be down you could be heel.

00:11:43:11 - 00:12:01:04
Michael J. Accetta
They could stand in between your legs. It could be a place map, right? You just walk around with a blanket, throw the blanket down, have your dog lay on it. But these are the three requirements Number one, it must be reliable the first time you say it the first time, not sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. It should be sit.

00:12:01:12 - 00:12:30:01
Michael J. Accetta
My dog does it immediately. Okay. Before you even finished saying the word, they should start the behave. That's how you know that your dog is reliable in the behavior. Okay? They know what the behavior is. If they don't know what the behavior is, they're not going to do it. Oftentimes, that's the problem. When your dog's not listening, you tell them to do something, and either it's not the right word that they've associated or it's not in the same environment that they learned it.

00:12:30:02 - 00:12:50:08
Michael J. Accetta
So they're a little confused Dogs don't generally as well. And so if you tell your dog to get off the couch in the word, you always do say as off, right? To say off, off off. Eventually your dog does pick up. That off means get off the couch. But today you said get off the couch. Well, those are two different things.

00:12:50:08 - 00:13:11:00
Michael J. Accetta
Right off and get off the couch are completely different. So if I say the word often, I know my dog can jump off. Great. Now I can reward them for listening to the correct word and the right terminology. And the behavior that they did. But if I say get off the couch and they don't do it, and then I scored them for it, they go, Oh, well, I don't really like listening to mom or dad because they scold me when I don't understand.

00:13:11:06 - 00:13:33:09
Michael J. Accetta
Nobody wants to learn when they're getting scolded for not understanding something nobody wants to learn when they're getting scolded for not understanding something that just doesn't it doesn't help them learn. It doesn't make them feel confident, doesn't make them feel comfortable. It doesn't open their brain to the possibilities of what life could be like if they learned that material.

00:13:34:12 - 00:13:50:14
Michael J. Accetta
Same thing with your dog. Your dog is going to shut down and go. I don't know why mom and dad are mad at me, but I'm going to go do something else. So they have an off leash dog. You must have that level of reliability when I say sit, my dog has to sit every time. They can't ignore me.

00:13:51:01 - 00:14:15:05
Michael J. Accetta
They can't choose not to. They can't get distracted by something every time you say sit, they must do it now. The second prerequisite to obedience behaviors is having them at any distance. And any duration. Rabbit. Okay, any distance or duration. So if my dog is 100 feet away and I say the words sit, he still has to sit.

00:14:16:06 - 00:14:33:10
Michael J. Accetta
If my dog is ten feet away and I say Sit, they have to sit or down, or he'll write. Even if it's at a distance, they're 100 feet away. I say he'll they should run all the way over and then he'll next to my leg. So you have to be able to do it at a distance because if your dog is off leash, they're going to get far away from you.

00:14:34:03 - 00:14:46:11
Michael J. Accetta
Like that's the whole point of having an off leash dog. If you're going to go hiking with your dog or maybe you're going to go to the lake or maybe going to go to a field and start playing fetch or whatever it is if your dog is off leash they're going to be farther away from you than normal.

00:14:47:01 - 00:15:08:02
Michael J. Accetta
If they were going to be close to you, you might as well just put them on a leash for safety reasons. But if they're going to be farther away from you than normal, you need to practice having them listen farther away from you than normal. Oftentimes people run into the problem of having the dog on a 30 foot leash and practicing on a 30 foot leash and then once they take that 30 foot leash off, the dog knows, oh, 31 feet.

00:15:08:05 - 00:15:28:14
Michael J. Accetta
I don't have to listen. That's often the problem with using punishment to get your dog to do something. There's a contingency involved. The leash is there, the collar is there. My presence is there that says, You must do this. Now, if you don't do it, I'm going to correct you, okay? We don't want that. We want it or to want to do the thing.

00:15:29:01 - 00:15:48:06
Michael J. Accetta
If they want to do the thing, then we can reward that and they start to think, Oh, I'm the one making the decisions here. Dad just seems to give me stuff. When I do stuff, I can make him give me treats. That's fantastic. I'm fine. With that. If my dog thinks that it's great, I let my son think that he's in charge half the time.

00:15:49:06 - 00:16:06:12
Michael J. Accetta
Okay, when we go out to eat, I say, Hey, do you want this or this? I give him the option of two things, and he goes, Oh, I want that great choice. I love that. So he he's kind of in a box where he can make a decision and that's what we're doing with our dog, especially when you have a leash or you're doing some kind of setup like that, right?

00:16:06:12 - 00:16:26:03
Michael J. Accetta
You're creating a situation where, well, they can either go ahead and get nothing or they can come towards me and get a tree more. Which is it? Which do you want to do? And we just make the one so interesting, so inviting to them that they choose the option we wanted them to choose in the first place. But in their mind, they thought they figured the game out.

00:16:26:06 - 00:16:40:01
Michael J. Accetta
Oh, I figured it out. All I've got to do is go to Dad and he's going to give me a tree. And then, of course, there's advanced techniques to getting rid of the tree and later on. Okay, would you dog needs to be able to listen at a distance. They also need to be able to listen for duration, for timing.

00:16:40:10 - 00:17:13:05
Michael J. Accetta
This is often overlooked, and it's one of the fundamentals to having a dog that listens reliably and on the road to off leash. So what do I mean by duration? I mean how long it takes your dog to do something? No, actually mean the opposite. How long your dog is capable of doing the behavior. If your dog is sitting and they sit for 5 seconds and then they just pop up expecting a treat or expecting to go somewhere or do something else, or that's just the habit that they've gotten into now what ends up happening is that's the routine.

00:17:13:05 - 00:17:28:12
Michael J. Accetta
I sit, I wait for 5 seconds, I get up and I go do something else. What we want to have happen is when you say sit, you should sit forever. Until you tell them to do something else, whether it be you tell them down, you tell them to recall to you or you release them, you can have a release word.

00:17:28:12 - 00:17:57:00
Michael J. Accetta
Right? Okay. Is my dog's release work? Meaning you can go do something else. So the duration is highly important because if you're going to teach it down at a distance, and it's an emergency behavior, right? It's an emergency obedience behavior. My dog is running after something and I say down. I need to be able to get up to them and grab their collar because the situation might warrant not being able to recall them to me.

00:17:57:00 - 00:18:30:04
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe I was lucky to get the down because of the level of distraction in the environment. I don't want to then push my luck by trying to recall them, which releases them from the down and creates the potential for them to run after the thing that they were running after. So I need I need to have something that can keep them there also, duration is going to help create space between whatever it is that's distracting them and the urge to get up and go after it.

00:18:31:06 - 00:19:04:11
Michael J. Accetta
What do I mean by that? If my dog can sit in and down uninterrupted by any distractions for 3 minutes, once we start to increase the level of distractions, we increase the difficulty. The duration is going to go down. This means if 3 minutes with no distractions turns out to be 30 seconds with distractions. So I've actually given myself a better opportunity, better chance of succeeding, given my dog a better chance of succeeding simply because I practiced a little bit more duration than normal.

00:19:05:03 - 00:19:23:03
Michael J. Accetta
Then maybe what I need in an average life right? My dog just got used to it. Oh, 3 minutes. I'm going to stay in this down. Perfect. That's fine. Then, with the distractions. Oh, it's 30 seconds, whatever it may be. Okay, now there's one more prerequisite when it comes to emergency behaviors that you have to dial in. Nobody talks about this.

00:19:23:03 - 00:19:47:04
Michael J. Accetta
Nobody does it. And it is one of the biggest mistakes okay? If you're going to have a dog that's off leash, they need to be able to listen in any orientation. What the hell do I mean by orientation? I mean, in relation to you, if you were to think about a compass or a clock, it's easier to think about as a clock if you're facing 12:00 they're facing 12:00.

00:19:47:07 - 00:20:15:07
Michael J. Accetta
Will they still listen? If you're facing 12:00 and they're facing 6:00, will they still listen? Right. Oftentimes we're facing 12:00 and they're facing 6:00. So we're looking at each other like this. What happens when they're looking the wrong way? What happens when they're looking away from you and they're running away from it? That's what happens when they chase after something and when you don't practice them listening, running away from you, they don't ever learn to turn around in order to come back.

00:20:15:09 - 00:20:42:10
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe you don't want them to. Maybe you want them to stop and face the direction they're going. Maybe you're doing hunting work or you're doing bite work or some kind of sport event. So you want them to continue, drop into a down and stay facing their direction. That's totally fine. You can train them, but most of the time when we're talking about an emergency recall or having a dog off leash, when we say their name we would want them to turn around and then we could call them to us, or we can have them turn around and then down so that we have more of their attention focused on us.

00:20:43:08 - 00:21:05:02
Michael J. Accetta
But they're still added distance and that's totally fine. But you have to practice having those different orientations, whether they're facing away from you. They're the angle that aside or maybe you're in front, maybe you're facing the wrong way for whatever reason. Okay, that's more of a what's called a permutation and permutations, the orientation of two points now and how they're related to each other.

00:21:05:10 - 00:21:28:08
Michael J. Accetta
And so if you're permeated one way and they're permeated the other way, they're behind you, then, well, they still listen. Those are the things you need to practice. Okay. That's a lot of prerequisites. I want to go over all of them again, just for those who are tuning in now, it's the prerequisites for an off leash dog. One confidence two engagement.

00:21:28:10 - 00:21:54:11
Michael J. Accetta
Three, Socialize with the environment, especially the one that you're going to be in when you're off leash. Then you need to have emergency obedience behaviors locked down. They need to be one reliable. The first time you ask to, they need to be in control of distance, duration and distractions. Okay. And then number three, you need to be able to do it in any orientation or permutation.