Tuesday 10 July 2012

Take The Lead

Which lead to use is the subject of a lot of debate in my family!

Dogs Trust lead and collar

When we first adopted Saffy, she came to use with her yellow Dogs Trust collar and lead. However, this didn't last very long. It took a while for her to understand how to walk on a lead properly and she spent a lot of time jumping up and chewing it resulting in a very worn, very scruffy lead that was about to come apart.



Control Training Lead
£12.99 Pets at Home
Nowadays the lucky girl has a choice of two leads to go on walkies. My preference is this Control Training Lead from Pets at Home. It's longer than a lot of leads which is good because it allows me to give my dog a bit more freedom. It's also very sturdy so I feel like I have good control. It's a multi-purpose lead which means it can be used in various different configurations. The long length means that I am able to use both my hands if necessary to hold the lead. Before getting a dog, I was taught to handle horses which are obviously far larger and stronger. I was always taught never to let the horse drag you along which is something I have applied to dog-walking. With a long lead, I can prevent Saffy from pulling infront of me by holding the lead across my body and having one hand down beside me to keep her beside and slightly behind me.


This photo is the best I could get to explain what I mean about using a long lead. Usually I would be holding the middle part in my right hand as well as the looped end- but here I have a rosette to carry instead!





The lead that the rest of my family prefer is this Classic Compact Extending Lead by Flexi. This is a 5m lead at its longest. It does give far more on-the-lead freedom than the control lead does, but generally I feel that if its appropriate for her to have that much freedom, its probably ok to have her totally off the lead.
My main problem with this lead is that my dog tends to pull a lot on it, and because it's so thin, I can't hold it in the same way I do with the control lead. Also, it can get very tangled very quickly and unlike a normal lead, you can't just drop it to sort out the mess because it rapidly recoils which frightens a lot of dogs.
It does do everything it says though- it's strong, it has good locking and quick release mechanisms and my parents love this. For me, it's a just a matter of personal preference.

As for Saffy- well she probably prefers no lead at all!

2 comments:

  1. We have a small basic puppy lead ready for Ollie and we -were- going to buy an extendible, but your post just made us think that we will probably be better off with a proper lead until he's got walkies manners! We live in the city so it's important for him to become well mannered both on and off.

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  2. I ended up having to put a lot of time and effort into getting Saffy walking nicely on the lead because we didn't do it properly from the start. Extendable leads are great for being out in open spaces, but for teaching them to be well mannered on the lead on the pavements I would definitely recommend a normal lead. I also live in quite a built up area, so most of our walks tend to be along roads to the park where I can let her off. I could see how it might be useful having an extendable lead if the majority of the walk took place in open space

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