Group neutral walks can be so beneficial for all dogs. The goal is that your dog stays mostly engaged with you and less on everyone else around us. We have had many a reactive dog successfully join our group walks. When we set up the environment so everyone can acclimate, everyone gets to benefit.

We start in an open space at whatever distance everyone needs from each other Here we do some engagement and loose leash walking exercises. You could do tricks your dog knows well or some of the examples here in the video like the up/down pattern game, walking in a figure of 8, direction changes, pace changes. It doesn’t matter what you do, the purpose of this time is for the dogs to acclimate and build some focus on you.

From there we head off at whatever distance everyone needs and we have some stop/checkpoints along the way. We stop at these points to collect anyone that needed a bit more time or space. There is no pressure to stay close together.

If dogs accidentally greet like you can see in the video we just keep moving so that it’s only a very quick sniff and move on. If your dog won’t be able to handle an accidental greeting then keep a bit more space between you. It rarely happens on our walks as everyone is working towards the goal of staying connected with their own dog, but I just happened to catch it on video and thought it would be useful to share.

The walk can be as social as you want it to be, it’s great to connect with like minded owners but it’s also equally fine if you need to put all your focus into your own dog.

If you organise your own neutral walk with a friend or a few please do let me know how you get on and if you get a photo at all share it with me and we can post them up in here.