Almost every morning before work, I take my dog Rosie for an off-leash adventure on the trails near our house. I run or ride a mountain bike; she sprints at warp speed, skinny legs churning, tongue lolling out of the biggest dog-grin. It’s the best part of both of our days. While I stay on the trail, she runs into the woods, chasing and exploring and sniffing like dogs are meant to do. It seems like she’d run forever. But the wonderfully, heartbreakingly sweet thing is, she always comes back to me. When I call her name, she wheels and barrels toward me, sticking around at my side for a few moments before she’s off again.
I love that feeling. And I want to help as many people experience it as possible. So I talked to James Hamm of Lonestar Dog Trainer, an expert in off-leash dog obedience. He’s trained dogs for more than 40 years, including military dogs in Afghanistan, and now helps train pet dogs for civilians.
If you want to train your dog to run or ride with you, let me just say—you can totally do it! Dog training requires time and consistency, not magic. I’ve outlined the basics below, and you can build on them to train almost any behavior. If you’re struggling, local trainers can help almost any pup (and owner) get on the trails in leash-less bliss.
Let me know how it goes—you can find me on Instagram and Twitter @taylorrojek. I can't wait to see the fun you and your pup will have.
Keep sessions short, and practice lots.
Dogs are like people—they get frustrated and cranky after too much thinking. “In the beginning, I keep sessions short, maybe 10 minutes or less,” Hamm says. “As the dog gains proficiency in the task, I can stretch the training sessions out longer.” Keep sessions simple by focusing on a few commands per session, and do two to three sessions per day. And once your dog gets it, there’s no need to keep working on that task. “I end a session when a dog performs a command successfully three times in a row,” Hamm says. If your pup is having trouble getting it right, “go back to a simpler task, and repeat.”
The Best Gear for Training a Trail Dog
SportDog Fieldtrainer 425X E-Collar
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Small Cow Bell
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I put a bell like this on Rosie's collar. It helps me hear where she is, which is especially helpful in dense brush.
Dexas Popware Collapsible Travel Bowl
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With her black fur, Rosie gets hot easily on warm days. I carry this to make finding a drink easy.
First Aid Kit
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There are tons of first aid kits on the market, which you can tweak to include anything your pup might need. This is a good starting point.
Find a safe and legal spot.
If you’re working off-leash, look for areas that are separated from major roads and hazards, either by distance or by obstacles like a ravine, fence, or river. Make sure that off-leash dogs are allowed (that info is generally available on the park’s website or on a trailhead sign). And to be polite, avoid peak times—not everyone is comfortable with a loose dog, especially ones still learning to be good loose dogs.
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Start small, advance slowly.
Rosie is a smart dog. But that’s pretty relative: She will go out of her way to find and eat poop, after all. So if you expect your dog to perform a difficult command the first time around, you’ll be disappointed, Hamm says. And recall, which requires your dog to give up on doing the finer things in life, like chasing deer and eating poop, definitely qualifies as a difficult command. “Some dogs are smart enough to handle it immediately, but most need you to break things down into steps for them.”
Make your commands as easy as possible by teaching them slowly and removing distractions. If you’re working on recall, start in your living room and call the dog to you from a few feet away. Once your pup is perfect at a command, up the difficulty: Make your dog hold the command for longer, try it from farther away, or add distractions, which can range from another dog walking by outside to a squirrel sitting nearby. Keep building up until your dog is ready to respond to you in the presence of a ten squirrels doing cartwheels.
Be more stubborn.
When you give the dog a command, make sure the dog performs that task. You can’t decide midway through that it’s not that important, or give up because the dog isn’t listening immediately. That teaches the dog that he or she doesn’t always need to obey your commands, and maybe they should wait a little while and see if you really mean it.
Make sure your dog knows who’s boss.
Your pup needs to remember that you’re in charge all the time, which can be a struggle. Rosie is half Norwegian Elkhound—a breed designed to corner moose and elk in the woods and bark at them until the dog’s owner arrived. When she sees a deer: zoooooom! At first, no matter how much I called her name, she ignored me until she was done chasing. That was not okay.
So I took her on-leash to a park near my house that has tons of deer. If she lunged toward a deer, I walked quickly in the opposite direction, telling her “No.” She didn’t want to be dragged, so her attention focused on me (boss lady!) after a few steps. This is a hard thing and we’re still working on it, but we’re at the point where I can see her take notice of a deer. If I say her name sharply before she starts to chase, she remembers that she needs to listen to me and comes back to my side.
Make it fun!
Your dog should think that coming back to you is the best thing in the world. So we make it a party! Rosie is what dog people call “food motivated”—a phrase I also identify with. So when I’m training recall, I bring lots of extra-tasty treats (hot dogs and string cheese, YUM), and act like a fool when Rosie comes back (“OHMYGOD you’rethebestdogeverI’msoproudofyou!!!”). I also make sure to not to tell her to “come,” when I want to do something not-great, like take away a toy or end a play sesh. Instead, I drop a treat on the ground and grab her when she comes to get it.
Get the right gear.
You’ll need some kind of water source for your dog—there are collapsible plastic bowls on the market that are easy to carry, and some of my friends have trained their dogs to drink out of Camelbaks (not like a human, though that would be amazing—these dogs sip from a stream of water).
You should always bring a leash with you in case you need it. And you should bring some basic medical supplies, too. “I always bring a first aid kit that’s more for the dog than me,” says Hamm. (Google to find classes on canine first aid near you.) I also bought an e-collar—a collar that can deliver a muscle stimulation when I press a button on the included remote. It doesn’t hurt her; in fact, she goes full excited-freakout-mode when I get it out, because she knows it means we’re going on an adventure. Hamm approves: “Off-leash, e-collars give you a level of safety and security by helping you communicate with your dog without having a tether.” It made it easy to remind her to listen to me when she was a little farther away, or distracted.
Pay 👏attention 👏to 👏your👏dog.👏
Dogs can overexert themselves when they’re trying to keep up with their owner, says Hamm, which can have pretty serious consequences for their health. Dogs that are extremely overheated can die, and if they survive, they’ll always have issues with staying cool in the future. “When a dog is tired, it’ll just lie down. Some people get angry about that and try to push their dog,” Hamm says. That’s exactly the wrong way to handle it.
If your pup is acting in any way like it’s tired or wants to stop, you’ve probably already gone too far. Watch for signs. If your dog lies down, is gasping for breath and tilting its head back, drools excessively, is cramping, or is panting heavily, it’s time to rest. If you’re able to get your dog inside to air conditioning, do that, Hamm says. If not, get your pup some shade and spray isopropyl alcohol (which should be in your first aid kit) onto your pup's torso and paws. It will open their pores to help cool them down.
If weather is cold, make sure your pup isn’t shivering, and check for frozen paw pads, Hamm says. If either of those happen, get your dog out of the cold and someplace warmer. In the future, prevent them by outfitting your dog with a Neoprene coat, and coating paws in a product called Musher’s Secret, which forms a waxy barrier that protects paws from ice and snow.
Luckily, temperature issues can be prevented by better conditioning and preparation. Gradually increase distance and intensity on your run or ride. Start with slow, short runs (think one mile or less), Hamm says, and slowly up distance or speed. And if they ever get tired, stop and let them rest.
Start on-leash.
“To teach off-leash control, you have to teach your dog on-leash control,” Hamm says. I started training Rosie on the mountain when she was about 6 months old. I was on foot, and she was on leash. I’d call her back to me from the end of her leash, make her sit, and give her a treat and praise. Every time she did something right, I acted like it was the most amazing, wonderful thing I’d ever seen. (Dogs LOVE when you sound like an idiot.) Once she was good on her six-foot leash, we moved up to a 30-foot version. That meant she had more freedom, and had to work harder to make good choices. We worked again on recall. Then we progressed to dropping the leash behind her and letting her drag it. And once she was perfect at that, I let her off leash.
Now this is the part where it would have helped me to have some professional advice: I had mediocre success with her off leash at first. She knew the second I took it off—she could feel the weight disappear—and she would bolt. Hamm says it’s better to step back down from the long leash to the short leash again. That reduces the weight that’s attached to her collar, making it less obvious when you unclip the leash.
Introduce a bike.
You want your dog to listen to your pretty much perfectly before you introduce a bike—it just complicates the whole process. (Spoiler: Dragging a bike out of the woods while your leashed dog tangles you up is not fun.)
You should train your dog to stay near you, but not stop in front of you. So any time Rosie darted in front of me, I yelled, “MOVE!” in a commanding voice. Either it's a sentiment that can span species, or she just didn't like the idea of being run over, because she got what I wanted immediately. After a few rides, she learned to stay away from my front wheel without any prompting.
You can add other, mountain-bike specific commands after this, like “off trail,” to tell your dog to move to the side, or “wait up.” We’re not at this point yet, but the method for training them is just as simple as any of the other commands we’ve mentioned. Be clear about what you want, gradually introduce distractions, praise your dog effusively when they get it right, and repeat.
Taylor Rojek is an associate features editor who has been writing, editing, and testing gear with Bicycling and Runner’s World since 2014. She was nominated for an American Magazine Award in 2017 for her work on the information-packed feature “How Cycling Works.” She has a depth of experience in both sports—she’s split the last two decades between racing on foot, with distances ranging from 800m to 26.2 miles, and on all kinds of bikes, including road, mountain, and cyclocross. This year, she’s moved away from the starting line to focus on training her dog Rosie to join her on the trail. She balances that activity with her current quest to bake—and eat—perfect homemade bread.
