B. Paws-itive Pet Dog
Training
OBEDIENCE TIPS
Come
when called
The most important thing to understand about training your dog to come reliably is that dogs learn through cause and effect. When you give the command
"Come!" to your dog, it is vital that you be prepared to
show the dog what his response to this command should be.
Every time you give your dog a command in which you don't have a way to show him the right way to respond to your command, you are going in the wrong direction. Let's say your dog is off leash. You see a small child approaching and you think to yourself that you had better get Fido under control because he has a tendency to jump on toddlers and shower them with kisses. You call your dog and he doesn't come. You call him again, a littler louder. Surely he would have come if he had heard you. Now he's running in the opposite direction. Now he's got the toddler pinned on the ground and he's enjoying the leftover oatmeal on her shirt. Now you're calling, "Don't worry! He's friendly!" to the furious mother of the toddler. Sound familiar?
The problem is that you just taught your dog how to run in the opposite direction when you say "Come!" This is surely the opposite of what you intended to do. Dog's learn by demonstration. They see cause and effect. When we teach them to sit for the first time, we say "Sit!" and then maneuver them into a sitting position. See, Fido? This is called a "Sit." We don't expect Fido to read our minds and we are willing to gently show him what we mean the first 100 times or so. It is exactly the same with the Come command. We need to show the dog what he should do when he hears the Come command. There is no way we can do this without having him on leash.
CLOSE
THIS WINDOW