You are listening to your new puppies podcast. Starting you and your dog off on the right paw. Here's your

host Debbie Salento. Hello and welcome to episode 81 of your new puppies podcast. I'm Debbie and today I'm

going to talk about my rules for what you and your dogs walk should look like and

that actually might be a little misleading because I'm going to talk more about

what my rules aren't than what my rules are. Because here's the secret. There is no should when it comes to your dog's walk.

As long as your dog is six feet from you, you and your dog are both enjoying the walk and everyone around you safe, then you can make your walk your own.

So this might be far from the image you have in your head.

Usually it's they're at your side or right behind you, not

being distracted by anything and you know maybe walking at a good pace and only

sniffing when you say it's okay.

That's a really tall order for a dog and that's why so many of us have trouble

teaching our dog loosely leash walking because that's the kind of

walk that we're trying to get our dog to do and it's quite the opposite from what our dog

wants to do. Now I'm not saying that we're going to bring our dog out and let them do whatever they want.

That is not what I'm saying. But let me quickly go through my rules again because I just kind of threw them out there. So you might have missed that that's what it was.

So your dog is within six feet from you, which means no retractable leash, just a regular six foot flat leash.

Both you and your dog are enjoying the walk

and everyone around you is safe.

That's it.

I don't care if your dog is walking in front of you, behind you, to the side of you, if you're letting

them stop and sniff every single tree, every single blade of grass, that doesn't matter. It could take you a half an hour to walk one mile.

For my metric folk that's about 1.6 kilometers because you're just strolling along. This is your walk with your dog. If you're

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