Puppies love to sniff! But what happens if they love to sniff EVERYTHING and your 15-minute planned walk quickly turns into 45?! Here’s how to get more focused walks with your new puppy!
The Puppy Academy student: Roscoe!
With smell being their most powerful sense, sniffing is something all dogs, from puppies to adults, do. Especially while they’re out for their walks!
Let’s make it clear from the get-go: your puppy will always sniff and we’re not trying to stop this behavior. It’s how they take in and analyze the world around them! But, there are a few ways to get your puppy focused on walking instead of stopping to sniff every few feet!
In this blog, we’re sharing our tips we use with our students at The Puppy Academy so they learn when is “work-walk” time vs when it’s “sniff-time”.
Note: If you haven’t already read our previous blogs on teaching your puppy to walk nicely on leash, or if you’re new to our blog (Hi there and welcome!) head over to: Puppyhood Made Easy for New Owners: Tips to Master Walking Outside with Your Puppy! to start working on the foundations of walking on a leash while distractions are present.
Prefer videos? Watch a summary of our tips in this blog here:
1. Start indoors first!
Being able to get your puppy’s attention to stay on you instead of the wonderful smells around them begins with teaching then to focus on YOU first! You have to remain more relevant to your puppy than anything else around them. To do this takes a little time, but putting in the work now can make walks a breeze in just a few weeks!
Doing some simple training routines with your puppy (which we’ll get into below) can help establish this habit of your puppy always checking in with you, and working indoors will help eliminate the majority of distractions while they build up this practice!
2. Build focus using their food
With your puppy on harness and leash, hand-feed your puppy’s meals for 2 weeks while you work on basic commands like Sit and Come. Encourage eye contact with you by pulling the food up to your eye and reward them with their food each time they look at you and perform the command! Your pup is learning that you are the source of their food, and they get it when their attention is on you!
Practice their leash work and Heel, using food to guide and reward them along the way. More on how to teach your puppy to walk on a leash here!
3. Take it outside
Once your pup is doing well indoors, it’s time to practice outdoors! But don’t venture out around the entire neighborhood just yet. Start right around your front porch or walkway, using food to get their focus and lure them back to you if they start moving towards sniffing an area.
As your pup gets better, you can start slowly extending the walk areas to practice more and challenge them.
The Puppy Academy student: Rio!
4. Let your puppy sniff specific locations
This might sound counterintuitive but stick with us! New puppy parents often ask us if they should ever let their pup sniff, and the answer is: of course! The key is making it permission-based while you’re walking. This keeps the walk itself more like a job for your puppy to do, which helps them stay focused. And we want to keep that focus!
Our advice: pick a spot or two for your pup to explore on your walk for a limited amount of time. For example, this could be for several seconds at their favorite potty spot. Letting your puppy sniff the same spots along their route will encourage them to focus on going to those spots consistently versus sniffing aimlessly. Allow your puppy little sniff breaks along the walk to decompress from walking alongside you in Heel and get their fill of scents, but don’t do these too frequently or for too long!
Make sure over time your puppy doesn’t start pulling towards those spots! This is very common for puppies to do. They should only be sniffing when you give them their release word (like “Break” or “Ok”). If they do pull, as you approach the area and you anticipate them about to go for it, ask for a Sit or do a Heel turnaround to get their focus again, and have them pause before releasing them to the area. Don’t forget to use their food to help with their focus!
After their allotted sniff time, it's then back to the regularly scheduled walk — alongside you in Heel!
5. Teach your puppy to walk in Heel position
As we quickly stated in the above section, if your puppy already shows a tendency to want to go sniff everything they pass by, give them something to focus on! Heel training takes time and a lot of practice indoors and out to get your puppy to check-in by looking at you and following your lead through all the distractions the world presents them.
Luckily, we have a lot of resources to help you work on Heel training including our blog: How to Teach Your Puppy to Walk on Leash! and our classes in our Online Puppy School where we show you step-by-step how to teach your puppy to walk on leash, in Heel, and around distractions so you can get a calm, controlled walk with your puppy, every time:
6. Use leash guidance and rewards
When you start working on walking your puppy outside and notice them going off to sniff, your puppy’s leash will be a very handy tool. We don’t mean drag your puppy where you want them to go, rather combine the command “Let’s Go!” and slight pressure going in the opposite direction of what caught your puppy’s nose. If you've been praticing this indoors consistently for the last several weeks, this muscle memory your pup's built with it will help immensely now that you're outdoors!
The moment that you notice your puppy dip their head to the ground, they’ve caught on to an interesting scent. This is your cue to turn on the excitement, say “Let’s Go!” and slightly apply pressure on your puppy’s leash guiding them in the direction that you want them to go.
“Let’s Go” is a very motivational command and far more relaxed and fluid as opposed to “Heel”. It’s meant to be delivered in a fun and upbeat tone of voice which makes it far more attention-grabbing for your puppy! Though it won’t stop your puppy’s drive to want to stop and sniff, it may help you refocus your puppy so you can move through distractions easier. You can learn more about working on “Let’s Go” in our blog:Puppy Training 101: Introduction to Walking on Leash!
Finally, don’t forget about treats! We recommend that whenever you’re training your puppy to walk on a leash outside for the first time, or are in the throws of advanced Heel training, make these walks your puppy’s feeding time. Allow your puppy to work for their meals while learning good manners. The addition of food rewards will create a positive experience for your puppy and make them want to walk with you, and be less inclined to go toward a new scent or distraction. And in case your pup doesn't seem to be interested in their regular food when you're outside, use some special high-value treats that you reserve just for walk time to pique their interest and help bring their focus back to you!
Have more walk-sniffing questions? Ask our trainers LIVE every Wednesday at 1 pm PT on our Instagram @thepuppyacademy during our Ask A Puppy Trainer Show! All replays are posted afterward, and you can catch up on our last ones on our YouTube channel or Podcast.
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