SkiDogs.Ca
Home of the A.M.H.L Ottawa Fun Race, Mush Larose, and sundry Canadian skijoring info

I like to start my puppies young. In the picture below, a lid with a dog treats on it gives my retriever pup a reason for pulling forward.

Later on when Max was older and stronger, I used a larger piece of wood, and took him walking off leash in a nearby field. The piece of wood was large enough to occasionally get snagged on a clump of grass. At first Max would stop, thinking that the resistance meant he was stuck. But after a few tries, he learned that a strong pull forward would un-stick the drag. This was the beginning of really learning to pull.
As he grew up, Max got to pull a full sized tire up the road, in exchange for praise and occasional treats. During these lessons, I taught him not to stop to investigate things beside the road. “On by!” means leave that squirrel and keep moving foward. I used the leash on his collar to tug him forward every time he began to veer to the side towards a distraction.

You can make your “On By” lessons very effective by planting your own distractions beside the road - favorite dog toys, food, neighbours with on-leash dogs, etc. That way one lesson you can practice “On by” twenty times. It’s an important lesson for your own safety while scootering and skijoring. It is worth going out of your way to teach it to your dog.

Over several lessons, Max became more confident, and started running ahead of me pulling strongly. At that time I moved the leash from his collar, to the back of his harness. Now he was pulling the weight, and a good amount of resistance from me too. He was ready to try pulling the scooter.

Keep the speed slow and only rarely let the dog run as fast as he wants. This teaches the dog that pulling is part of the fun of scootering. Dogs that are used to running with little resistance will be completely confused as to what to do when they come to a hill. Most likely they will stop and look at you, hoping you will stop pulling on their harness so they can go forward.

With my current dogs, I used tire training to teach the word “Pull”. For this lesson you need to use enough weight that the dog has to pull quite hard to get it going. Every twenty foot pull of the tire earns a dog treat. Once the dogs knew the word “Pull”, it was easy to use the same word when we started up a small hill, when skijoring. Once again I rewarded with food for the first few times until the lesson was firmly learned. Now I just praise them and thank them at the top of every hill.

If you’re lucky, you might have a dog who is born with a natural passing instinct. But most dogs have to overcome either excess curiosity about other teams, or excess fear of strange dogs.

Here are some ideas about passing.

1. Learning Not to Worry: The dog must learn from experience that in a skijoring or sledding situation, other dogs are not going to approach them, so there is no need to worry about them. It’s your responsibility to make this true. When you are training a team to pass, do not train where loose dogs will approach your team looking for a fight, or even expecting to be greeted. Whenever you stop your team, stop out of reach of other dogs. Teach your team to pass by passing only teams that know already how to pass, or who are under good control of their driver. If your dogs are not extremely solid at passing, keep them well away from bad teams with “alligators” - dogs that lunge out and try to grab passing dogs. In fact, It’s wise to avoid those teams at all times, even if your dogs are well trained. The last thing you want your dogs to think is that other teams are out to get them.

2. Learning What is Not Allowed. The dog must learn that he is not allowed to veer towards other teams. The root of this lesson can be taught with “on by” training in the summer. Make sure that as much as possible you use other dogs, on leash, and out of reach, as distractions when teaching your dog to “On By”.

Until your dog can pass a strange dog on-leash, without angling over to visit him, your foot work is not yet done. No point trying to teach this lesson when you are on skis, or way back on the sled. This lesson is taught most easily on foot. Once your dog knows it and knows it solidly, you are ready to try it in a real skijoring or sledding situation.
If your team is being passed, you want to teach your dogs not stick their noses out half way into the trail, sniffing the passing team. Some dogs are going to feel threatened. The passing team may become nervous about passing next time. Even if all your dogs are friendly, how do the dogs on the passing team know that?

You can practice passing on every group run, by taking your dogs back and forth past trucks of parked dogs, or by getting a friend to hold a dog on leash, just beside the trail. It never hurts to go back to basics, and take out a single dog on a leash until they do it right. Keep working on it. It’s very important.

3. Learning to Keep Going. Your dogs catch up to another team. They pass! Then they slow way down. They might even stop! Aieee what to do? This is a really common occurrance with novice dogs.

Technique #1: Train the dog alongside an experienced leader who knows to keep going. Great advice, but how many of us have an experienced leader hanging around?

Technique #2 A tip that helped me was given to me by “Old Musher”, Steve Knight. Get a friend with a well behaved but much slower team to come out and practice with you. Give them a good head start. Let your dog catch the slow team. Now here’s where you need to ask your friend’s help in advance: After your dog passes your friend’s slow team , your friend should stop. Your dog will now as usual, slow down. He is waiting to see if the other team will catch up. But, the other team never will. Your friend will keep his team way back behind you, even if you have to stop a hundred times to line your dog out. Sooner or later your dog will start moving again. If your dog moves well for 15 or 30 meters, stop him again, go up and praise the dickens out of him. Make a big fuss! He’s a genius!!! Give him a treat! Then continue on your way, with lots of stops and fuss every time you think he’s doing a good job. It might be a fight the whole way, but no matter how much your dogs stops, the team behind must not get close.

What you are teaching your dog is: After you pass another team, they are gone. Don’t think about them.

To make the lesson easier at first for my dog Griffin, I did these things:

1. The first few lessons were done running towards the truck, which is the direction he likes to go most.
2. The first lessons running away from the truck were done with my retriever running loose ahead.
   
   

I repeated this lesson all fall one year, when teaching Griffin to skijor solo. He still remembers the lesson well , and he knows that he is a very good dog every time we pass another team and keep going.