Course Title: Train Your Dog to Pull
(Class available soon: Expected 10/2007)
Purpose: The purpose of the course is to teach you how to teach your dog to pull on command with a purposeful, happy attitude without veering for sniffing or playing or chasing.
Course cost and length:
Live: $200.00 This class meets once weekly for 60 minute classes for four weeks.
Recorded: $180.00 (Four sessions)
Course Info: The Train Your Dog to Pull course starts with an overview of the pulling sports, proceeds to the training that you do on the ground before hitching the dog to a scooter, and ends with introducing the dog and you to pulling the scooter. You will find that training never really ceases. Once you start scootering with your dog, you are not only training continually but also conditioning your dog to greater fitness.
What you can expect in this Course:
1. Basic conditioning/fitness
2.
Ground training exercises and importance
3.
Commands and how to train them
4.
Organizations/businesses/talk lists involved in the pulling sports
5.
Overview of the sport’s different activities
6.
Activities and training logs
7.
Sidewalk and trail etiquette
8.
Equipment comparison
9.
Dog safety and weather
10.
Human safety
Prerequisites:
1. A healthy dog, any size as long as the dog loves to run.
2. A fitted harness designed for pulling. These are available from mushing outfitters. Mushing harnesses range in price from $20 to $30. My favorite outfitter is Alpine Outfitters in Marysville, Washington. If you are planning to pull a cart or sulky, you will need a harness specific to that vehicle. They cost up to $300. Weight pull harnesses differ from mushing harnesses. This course does not cover weight pull training.
3. A tugline which is also available from mushing outfitters or a sturdy line with a snap at each end.
4. Two leashes and a training collar. (With many pulling type dogs, the prong collar works best.)
5. Several “drags”. A drag is what the dog pulls in order to learn to pull. What a drag is varies according to the size and age of the dog. For my 4 month old puppy, I had her drag a leash for several walks. Then she dragged the leash attached to a branch. Soon she will drag a bicycle tire and/or a plastic bottle with a few pebbles in it. For large, strong dogs, a drag can be firewood or car tires. The size and weight of the drag depends on the physique and level of training of the dog and on whether you are training to accustom the dog to something dragging behind him or to build fitness.
Usually people work dogs under a year with light, easy-to-pull drags. As the dog matures, heavier drags are used.
6. Treats.
7. A scooter or sulky. (needed later in the training)
8. A comrade to help with the later steps is useful.
Instructor: Daphne Lewis has been scootering since 1996. In 2000 she bought her first sulky and opened her business DogScooter. Please see her web site http://www.dogscooter.com for information on training your dog to pull. Daphne began the 
email talk list DogsLovertoRun@yahoo.com soon thereafter. This list is for people who run their dogs whether with scooters, skiis, bikes, sleds or canicross. Daphne is a member of ChariotsoftheDogs@yahoo.com which is a list dedicated to discussing driving dogs from a sulky. She is president of her local scooter club k9ScootersNW and is a member of ISDRA (International Sled Dog Racing Association) and IACP (International Association of Canine Professionals). Daphne is now the happy owner of two chinooks, a breed of sled dog that does double duty as pet dogs. She and Brett and Rosy love the early morning dashes thorugh the woods, along the brush to the lake whether on bike, scooter, or sulky. Once playing and retrieving in the lake is finished, the three of them are off trotting and running to explore the trails meandering nearby.
Student Information
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