Most of us know the feeling of waiting while our dog inspects one patch of grass for what seems like forever. It's tempting to give a little tug and keep moving. But for a dog, that patch of grass might be the best part of the walk.
I make hands-free climbing rope leashes in the length you choose, so I think about this a lot: what actually changes for a dog when the leash gets longer? It turns out someone measured it, and the answer comes down to the nose. If you've ever wondered whether a longer leash really makes a difference, here's what they found.
What happens on a longer leash
Cristina and Aurélien Budzinski, two French dog trainers, ran a field study they called "At the heart of the walk" and shared the results on their site, Dog Field Study. They walked 61 dogs three ways: on a 1.5 m leash, on a 5 m leash, and off-leash. The dogs were all kinds: young and old, big and small, calm and excitable. Each dog's heart rate was recorded for 15 minutes.
The biggest finding was simple. On the 5 m leash, dogs spent 2 to 3 times more time sniffing than on the 1.5 m leash. That held for dogs who go on walks every day and dogs who rarely do, for every age, size and sex, and even for dogs who never pull.
The heart rate data showed something else:
- Sniffing lowered the pulse. Each time a dog stopped to sniff, their heart rate dropped, even while still walking. The more intensely they sniffed, the bigger the drop. In one example they share, a dog's pulse dropped from around 165 to 140 beats per minute (about 15% lower) during an intense sniff.
- Shake-offs lowered it too. You know that full-body shake a dog does after a tense moment? It brought the pulse down by 12% on average. 80% of the dogs shook off at least once during their 15 minutes, and shakes happened a little more often on the long leash.
One honest caveat: this is a field study by trainers, not a peer-reviewed scientific paper. So I'd take it as an interesting real-world observation rather than final proof. But it matches what many of us see on our own walks.
Why sniffing matters to your dog
A dog's nose is how they read the world: who passed by, when, and what they were up to. Sniffing isn't a distraction from the walk. For a dog, it often is the walk.
There's peer-reviewed research behind this too. In 2019, Charlotte Duranton and Alexandra Horowitz published a study called "Let Me Sniff!" in Applied Animal Behaviour Science. They gave pet dogs a test that measures optimism. First, each dog learned that a bowl in one spot always had a treat and a bowl in another spot was always empty. Then a bowl was placed somewhere in between, and the researchers timed how quickly the dog went to check it. A dog who goes over quickly expects something good. A dog who hesitates expects nothing. After that, for two weeks, one group of dogs did daily nosework (finding things by smell) and the other did heelwork (walking neatly at their person's side).
Afterwards, the nosework dogs went to that in-between bowl faster. In other words, they had become more optimistic. The heelwork dogs hadn't changed. The researchers concluded that giving dogs more time to use their nose improves their welfare.
Nosework and a walk on a long leash aren't the same thing. But both come down to the same idea: letting a dog follow their nose instead of following us.
What Yoshi taught me about pulling
When I first got Yoshi, I didn't know much about dog gear. I bought her a harness and a 1.6 m leash, and she spent most of our walks at the very end of it, pulling. I tried different techniques to teach her not to pull, and none of them really worked.
The more I learned, the more I wanted to try something else, so I switched to a 3 m leash. Our walks got more comfortable straight away, because she finally had some space. And I noticed something: on the longer leash, she didn't really pull unless she was overwhelmed.
That changed how I looked at it. I started paying less attention to the pulling and more to how she was actually feeling. Pulling is just the behavior. The real question is what's underneath it, and for Yoshi, that's usually anxiety and feeling overwhelmed.
I liked the idea of a hands-free leash you can wear, but every one I found was too short. So I started making my own.
For me, a hands-free leash isn't really about free hands. It's about knowing Yoshi is always attached to me and can't get away, without me having to hold on tight. Walking her feels so much lighter that way. Being able to enjoy a coffee on our walk now and then is a nice bonus, though.
So how long should your leash be?
There's no single right answer. It really depends on how and where you walk. For city walks, I love a 3.5 m convertible leash: enough room to sniff, but still easy to manage on busy streets. For parks and nature, 5 to 7 m works well. And if your dog can't run free, a 10 m leash in open fields can give them almost the same sense of freedom. Just keep in mind it's much harder to manage in the city.
How to make your walks a bit sniffier
You don't need to change everything. A few small things go a long way:
- Give more leash where it's safe. Parks, quiet streets, open fields. Shorten up again near traffic or busy paths.
- Let your dog lead as much as you can. Wherever it's safe, let them decide when to stop and where to go. A walk is mostly for your dog, not for us.
- Wait out the long sniffs. If your dog is deep into one spot, give it a moment before moving on.
- Watch for the shake-off. It's a good sign your dog is letting go of a tense moment. No need to rush past it.
- Notice why your dog pulls. Look at what's going on around them. Are they excited, unsure, overwhelmed? Maybe they need a bit more space, or some reassurance from you.
I make my leashes with walks like these in mind. Each one is made by hand to order in Amsterdam from climbing rope, in the length that suits your walks. You can wear it crossbody or around your waist, so your dog stays attached to you even when you're not holding it. When they find the perfect patch of grass, you can just stand there and let them have it, sipping your coffee if you like.
Sources
- Budzinski, C. and Budzinski, A. Pulse Study: At the heart of the walk. Dog Field Study. Field study, not peer-reviewed.
- Duranton, C. and Horowitz, A. (2019). Let me sniff! Nosework induces positive judgment bias in pet dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 211, 61–66.