The long line is TRAILING, on the floor, I do not touch it unless there's another dog in sight. So most the time, the line is away from me, but he's not the running around, getting rid of energy sort of cocker. He just loves sniffing and trotting around. Yeah, sometimes he goes away to sniff something about 20m away, but I don't worry as I know if I need to, I can run and grab it. He can run free. He goes to training classes every week and he sees tons of dogs there and says hello to them all, and he meets dogs on walks, and he sees his girlfriend (a little cavalier) regularly. He's very well socialised, and actually we have met a few aggressive dogs, today for example, saw a terrier being very aggressive to Ollie and other dogs whilst on an on-lead walk.