A frequently asked question of me here on the podcast is, Susan, how do I walk multiple dogs?

And today, we are going to discuss that very topic.

Hi, I'm Susan. Welcome to Shape by Dog. And there's one really, really important

skill that you have got to have before you can walk multiple dogs. Any guess what that might be?

You have to have the skill of being able to walk one dog. That that one dog completely

understands all the things they need to know to walk calmly and happily beside you no matter

what the distraction. So, we're going to talk about that today, what that looks like, how

you achieve that, the cues you need to have, some of the equipment

that might be helpful. Once you get that with one dog, then you can add the second dog.

And you might be saying, well, Susan, what do I do in the meantime? I have two dogs. I have to

walk them. What I always do is I walk the dogs separately. So one dog doesn't get added to

the walk until they have all the skills

that the other dogs, or in my case, the other four dogs have. So, if I'm going to walk one or two

or three or four dogs, together, they all need to have the basic understanding of the cues that I

want to use. So let's get started. And first,

let's discuss what those cues are. I have an informal cue that is with me. With me is I want

my dog to walk in an arm's length distance of me. They can be a little bit ahead of me,

a little bit behind me. They're walking informally with me. They can look around. They can

take a sniff on the ground. They can say, hey, mom, I got to stop and pee here. It's very informal,

yet it does have the criteria of that arm's length distance. So, I need to be able to get a cookie into their mouth if that's something

that I want to do. Now, how I achieve that is I have two what I call reinforcement zones,

a place where the dog needs to be in order to get that cookie. And one on my right side or

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