Do you let the leash go tight when you have your dog on the leash? The leash is the link between you and your dog. Dogs can feel the vibrations you send through the leash. The tight leash is one reason why dogs will aggress or show dominating behavior because to the dog a tight leash means to be tense since the leash is "tensed" up too. The tension message felt through the leash causes your dog to fight against the leash by pulling, straining and struggling which develops dominating and aggressive behavior. By your dog being the leader out in front of you or held tight next to you, this causes a dog to be the leader of you. The tension tells the dog that you are fearful or nervous of something. Since dogs can smell fear pheromones and probably sense or smell nervousness in people, this can cause the dog to react aggressively as a means of scaring off the cause of your fear or nervousness. The cause may even be something you or your dog does not even see. If you generally have nervousness toward a situation, the dog may react toward it aggressively. If you have an aggressive dog and you fear or are nervous toward the dog, the dog will sense this and could react aggressively toward this emotion. Fear and nervousness from the owner and other people is a big factor to cause aggression while the dog is being held by a tight leash. In the training for protection dogs, they purposely use a tight leash to cause this reaction and with the owner pretending to be scared to promote the dog to aggress. For more on protection dogs go here.

What you need to do is let there be slack in the leash and when your dog gets to the end of the leash, jerk the leash in a quick snap or yank while commanding, "No!". Then quickly bring the leash back into the slack position each time your dog pulls and this will teach her to not pull you or let the leash go tight while he or she is on leash. You may have to repeat this quickly until he or she stops the pulling. This way you won't have to have your dog at the heel position all the time, if your dog knows the heel.
 
 

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