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November 27, 2009

Over the years, we’ve worked on teaching WHOA (which means “stop where you are”). Some people use WAIT, but I prefer that for when I’m closer to Lilly. WHOA, for us, is more a distance behavior. We practice this A LOT in our drop-in advanced pet dog training with Gigi. Lilly does great when we use a ledge or other visual marker to trigger a stop, but on the flat, we’ve always struggled. Until recently. Check it out.

Granted, the first one is a little sloppy because she takes a few steps before stopping, but she has some a LONG way from when she thought every cue had to be executed within very close proximity of me. After all, that’s where the treats are. That’s where all the good things happen. That’s where Lilly spends a great deal of her time … right by my side.

I will begin working on giving this cue from behind as well, but for now, I’m happy that she can stop while facing me (from a distance, no matter how small) … just in case there is ever something dangerous between us.

You can see the hang signals for WALK UP and WHOA in my shadow.

About the Author Roxanne Hawn

Trained as a traditional journalist and based in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, USA, I'm a full-time freelance writer for magazines, websites, and private clients. My areas of specialty include everything in the lifestyles arena, including health and home, personal finance and other consumer interests, relationships and trends, people and business profiles ... and, of course, all things pet related.

I don't just love dogs. I need them in my life. Seriously.

  1. We teach this to FEMA Urban Search and Rescue dogs who are trained to work in a disaster situation like a collapsed builing. We call it the emergency stop and it is performed it a similar fashion as we see Lily doing, except that it is done at 25 yards distance and with the dog coming toward us a normal recall rate of speed. The dog just has to show an immediate change of gait resulting in a stop, the stop could be a down, sit or stand. It is harder and probably far more useful to teach the WHOA as the dog is moving away from you, I haven’t not done that yet. I am also interested in skijoring and scootering, Maery do you live in Colorado? I have the equipment but have not really invested the training time to do it correctly.

  2. It really depends on how the dog was conditioned to think about the leash. Breed matters as well. The goal, really, is to have a dog that behaves the same on leash and off. Too many people make a BIG deal about a dog being put on or being taken off the leash, so the dog learns the leash means something more than it does. There is a good game in the book called “We Don’t Need No Stinking Leashes” that tries to retrain this idea.

  3. Maery – I’ll try to write more next week about how we taught this. That blog friend in Canada, who skijors with her dogs, said they learned WHOA really fast because she’d holler WHOA when she fell and they would stop.

  4. I’ve been trying to train Java to whoa, gee, haw, line out, and mush to prep for skijoring, but I’m not really sure what I’m doing. I’ve been doing whoa from behind. It might help to do it your way first so I have the eye contact.

  5. I’ve never used WHOA, either. And why is it that a dog will behave better unleashed than leashed? That’s how my dog is. On a leash, she goes nuts. Without one, she listens to every command. I just find that so strange.

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