Pulling at the end of our walk

[Diesel'sMama]

My Diesel will be 16 weeks on Friday. I only started walking him last week after his second DHPP and neuter which was sooner than we planned (due to an umbilical hernia). He is really doing great but here's the problem...I've been walking him twice a day since the day after his neuter and hernia correction as he bounced back so soon. I literally started with going up the street five houses and back. Now I've increased it to only two blocks. I allow some drifting but he's great at keeping a loose leash until about the last small bit of our walk when he starts to pull. I can stop him and tell him to wait then give a let's go but he will instantly start to pull again. I've shortened the walk again and get no pulling. I've also done this longer walk while going different directions so he can't really tell where we are but regardless the direction we come from I get the pulling at the last stretch of the longer walks. I've been thinking it's because he has to potty. When we get home he greets our other two dogs then goes straight to the backyard. He is completely house broken but as we have a dog door and don't crate him but restrict him to only the kitchen where he has access to the dog door when we are gone we don't use the "go potty" command any longer. He just goes when he needs to at home. Since he's joined our family he has only pottied one time outside of our backyard. I know our Bailey wouldn't BM ourside our backyard after she was housebroken for her first couple of years. Even if it meant holding it overnight at times when we traveled with her. So I guess the question is would you concur that he is in need of the facilities? If so, I can take him to the park during part of our walk and work on "go potty" where it wouldn't be on someone's front lawn because even though I would clean up after him I wouldn't want him to BM on someone's lawn. If not, what do you think and any suggestions on how to correct this?

[jetscarbie]

Just my 2 cents

I go for miles with my dogs. Neither potty until we get back in our yard. Well, my male will mark a few pee spots along our road. Yours is still young.

I'm not sure of the correct way or what other's say.....but I like my dogs only pooping in my yard. I like the scheduled poops. I walk in the mornings...soon as we get home, both poop. Walk in the afternoons, as soon as we get home, they poop.

All my dog's pull right before we get to the house. They know the house, so I assume they are excited to be back home. When they pull, I just stop walking until they calm down, then proceed.

[Kaz]

GSD's are home bodies. I have trained my pup to poo/pee outside during the walk. So when we are returning home, its not that he has to relieve himself, but he still pulls his leash, because he wants to get home to his surroundings.

Manfred is exceedingly sharp, he would start pulling the moment we turned around and headed back the way we came, so I learnt to change routes on the way back.

A bit of anxiety to get back home is not bad. Its not leash pulling in the true sense, but just a baby wanting to get back home to his crib.

[Oskar der Drachen]

I'll echo this too. Bear will start to pull into the leash when we are close to home. He wants to get back home!

I have largely cured this by turning round to walk the other way as soon as he leans into the leash.

It took us a *long* time to get home the first few times, and I learned to not go too far when training this one, just round and about close to home.

He is largely over this now. He will also do it when he starts to get tired when we are on a leash regardless of where we are. A few minutes quiet sniffing/lying down time fixes this one. Then back home shortest route.