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Luna and Lola, the Old English Bulldogs
- Oct 3, 2023
- 2 min read
I absolutely love these two dogs. They are so cute and so friendly, and they just look at you adoringly, no matter what you do.
They walk on the lead like chalk and cheese. Lola wants to walk extremely slowly, what we call Nana pace, and Luna wants to walk a lot faster. I describe this as gears in a car. Lola is comfortable in first gear. She's walking nicely and slowly. Luna, on the other hand, is in second gear. She's walking that a little bit faster because she wants to get places quicker, and she naturally walks faster. The owner, on the other hand, is walking at that pace in between both gears, whereas if it were a car, it would be over-revving, but then not quite ready to change into second gear.
So, what we've decided to do here is match Nana's pace or Lola's pace. We're going to walk nice and slowly here, and then what Luna did was every time she got to the end of the lead, she would just stop, she would check back in, she would walk nicely at heel, get a treat, and just be a brilliant dog on the walk.
Lola was happy, the owner's happy, and now they have a nice calm walk.
Previously, their walks would be a nightmare. They would both be reacting to other dogs and pulling towards the dogs and people and now they both walk nicely on the lead.
They're not bothered by other dogs, they're not too bothered by people, and they are just very lovely dogs and extremely well-behaved dogs.
The owner put in an awful lot of hard work and been one of the hardest workers that I've had, and it's all paid off. She's done fantastic, and she's got the dog she wants.
Well done, everyone!
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I’ve seen so many people try to speed the slow dog up, but it usually just creates tension and then the faster dog feeds off it. Setting the baseline at Lola’s pace and rewarding Luna for choosing heel feels like one of those “simple but not easy” fixes. It’s a bit like check this out where the best outfits happen when you pick one consistent direction instead of mixing five different vibes at once. Do you ever swap which dog is closest to the handler to help with that check-in behavior?
The part about Luna stopping at the end of the lead instead of powering through is huge — that’s the exact pivot point where walks go from stressful to manageable. I also liked that you didn’t force the owner to “keep up,” you just picked the pace that set both dogs up to succeed. Random aside, the whole calm-and-consistent vibe made me think of this site where the style only really shows up when the base picture isn’t rushed and messy. Have you found bulldogs respond better to slower reps like this compared to more high-energy breeds?
The lead walking description felt very real — it’s not that either dog is “bad,” they’re just in different gears and the human gets stuck in the middle. Choosing Lola’s pace as the default makes so much sense, because it gives Luna a clear job (check in, heel, treat) instead of a constant negotiation. Kinda like how https://hrefgo.com organizes a messy pile of options into something you can actually follow. When you’re proofing around other dogs, do you keep the treat rate high the whole time or fade it once they’re passing calmly?
That moment where Luna hits the end of the lead and then chooses to check back in is the kind of tiny win that adds up fast. I like how you framed it as finding one pace everyone can succeed at, rather than “making” the faster dog go slower. Oddly it reminds me of a good cipher identifier tool — you look for the underlying pattern first, then the solution becomes obvious. Do you ever reintroduce a faster “second gear” as a reward after a stretch of calm walking?
I’ve got two dogs with totally different default speeds too, and the slower-one-first approach stopped so many little leash arguments before they even started. The bit about Luna checking in at the end of the lead is such a good “real life” marker that it’s working — made me think of how BlockBlast forces you to slow down and place things deliberately instead of rushing. Do you find the calmer pace also reduces the staring/fixating before any reaction happens?