7 month golden retriever biting leash and jumping on me when in yard to go potty

[PATRICIA MORGAN]

I brought Molly home at 7weeks and 3 days.  She excelled at potty training, learned to ring the bells early on and virtually has had no accidents in the house.  I don't have a fenced yard, therefore, she must always be on her leash outside.  For quite sometime she finds the leash to be more of a toy and nearly always grabs at it and jumps all over me.  Training her not to jump off leash is not a problem, but trying to get her to sit, stop biting the leash, and jumping all over me is not going well.  At times, I can distract her by holding a treat in front of her nose, telling her to 'drop it' and sit but it doesn't always work and I find myself terribly frustrated. What do you suggest?

[Adrienne Farricelli]

Hi Patricia, 

Great job in helping Molly get potty trained so quickly and to use a bell! In the case of leash biting, I can share some general guidelines for pups who jump up and bite on the leash while walking. However, it would be helpful identifying if there are any particular triggers/events evoking the behavior (the dog wanting to go sniff something and frustrated she cannot, or seeing other dogs or people walking by) or if this is just simply a combo of play/ seeking soothing things to chew. In any case, the goal is to tackle this early before it becomes an established habit. 

We can accomplish this in two main ways:

1) distracting Molly in a timely manner and keeping her mind off the leash by providing alternate behaviors to engage in

2) making the leash less enticing to bite 

So with distracting, you'll aim to toss treats on the ground *before *she has a chance to grab the leash.  We are basically preempting the behavior prior to it occurring, this though may distract her from doing her business if she hasn't been trained to go potty on command. https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/advanced-potty-training/potty-on-command/

When catching her before she bites the leash, you'll be reinforcing the behavior of not biting the leash, therefore creating a replacement behavior. You pup can't be focusing on grabbing the falling treats and grabbing the leash at the same time since his mouth is already occupied by chewing treats. You can even teach her to put her nose to work by scattering treats on the ground for her to search for so that she's more focused on the ground than upwards. 

As she gets good at this, you can also insert some training. For instance, you can try distracting your pup by asking a few steps of attention-heeling every now and then with a tasty treat at high level, that surpasses the leash in value (in other words, the treats attract the pup more than the biting the leash as dogs can't bite the leash and eat at the same time). https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/brain-training/obedience-101/heeling-attention-heeling/ 

With making the leash less enticing to bite, you can use a metal chain leash or temporarily you can slide a 5-foot piece of narrow-gauge, lightweight PVC pipe over your leash (although impractical). The metal leash works well in many cases because dogs don't typically like to chew on metal. 

I hope this helps, keep me posted on how things go.