Cheers for the feedback. Yes the lead never felt right but at the time I couldn't figure which joint to use to get the right result, but reading your message made me think of the problem again and realise my mistake. I was trying to trying to create it with a single joint where I should have had many smaller joints linked like a chain which would have behaved much more like a rope. There still would have been some physics quirks between the two characters but at least there wouldn't be the really weird stuff like the man pole vaulting over the dog.