First thing I do is I teach my dog how to be attentive - without attention, I have very little to base training on.
I do this through a series of steps, marking and reinforcing for attentive behavior and gradually requiring longer amounts of attention before I reward. Once I get stationary attention, I can start taking a step or two, still marking and reinforcing that attention. As I've mentioned before, the tips for teaching attention are on my website (
www.kippsdogs.com/tips.html).
Using this method results in a dog that does that head-up attentive heeling:
For walking on a loose leash, I still start with attention and name recognition, so the dog learns to look at me when I say his name. Then I refuse to move unless the leash is loose. Yep, it takes awhile at first. I mark any loose leash behavior and reinforce it, as others have already described. As the dog becomes more proficient at walking on a loose leash (or heeling, depending on what we're working on) I gradually increase the criteria by adding in more distractions. We do a LOT of work in various parking lots where people are walking by, eating, pushing carts, etc.
Today I was working Khana (in the photo above) at the local mall. Kids were skateboarding past, people were pushing strollers and shopping carts, and some "cool" guy in a hot-rod car pulled up and blasted music - bass drum so loud you could feel the vibrations .. *L* (he'll regret that in about 20 years). Khana was absolutely solid, except for one time when three little kids got out of a car and were mesmerized by her. I had Khana do a bunch of tricks for them and rewarded her for that, but you could tell that what she wanted more than anything was to go over and be loved on by those kids! But she was a good girl and listened to me (the Mom told the kids not to go up to her, and I respected that).
My thoughts on a prong collar is that it fixes nothing fast. It may provide an instant change in the dog's behavior (because the dog doesn't want the pain it provides). But it doesn't teach the dog anything except to not pull WHEN the prong collar is on. This is not training - this is merely using something aversive to stop a behavior. People who do this end up walking their dogs on a prong collar the rest of the dog's life because it never learns what it's actually supposed to do.
My concept is that I want the dogs I work with to learn to walk on a loose leash even if it's only a piece of baling twine. I don't want people to have to run and find the prong collar in order to walk their dogs - they should be able to clip a leash on the dog's regular collar and go. So I use the method I mentioned above and it works great. On occasion I'll find a dog that is more easily distracted and determined to pull, and I will go to a Gentle Leader harness (the type that has the ring at the chest - this is not the head halter, it's the harness). I prefer this over the prong because I prefer to first try a tool that doesn't use pain. This is very effective. But, using tools like the GL harness or the prong doesn't mean the dog is trained - they simply give you an opportunity to train properly by keeping the dog from pulling long enough for you to mark and reinforce the "good" behavior. My philosophy is that you should use this as little as possible and work towards having a nicely behaved dog without having to use a tool to get them to walk quietly.
Melanie and the gang in Alaska
Khana heeling in her first rally competition