NEVER call your dog to you for ANYTHING your dog sees as negative 

(and every time they do come to you make it a good thing).

This is where you need to be aware of your own actions. Sometimes we have to change our own habits first, which we all know isn't easy.

The recall command isn’t about getting your dog to listen; it’s about you being in competition with their environment.  We don’t want him to have any idea in their head that coming to you is the wrong decision.  Every single time he comes to you it's a good thing because one day it's going to be a choice between you and that squirrel across the street and you want to give yourself a fighting chance.

For example, he's running around, he's playing outside, you call him to you and you bring him inside. From your dog's point of view, he was playing and having fun and when he came running over to you he had to go inside (boo!).   

How about when she's playing with something she shouldn't have. You call him to you and then you take it away from her. Well, all she knows is she came running over to you and she got him new fun toy taken away.  

This goes for bath time, or clipping their nails, or giving them medicine (unless it’s wrapped in peanut butter, then feel free to call them to you).   Anything that your dog is going to see as not fun, you go to your dog, do not call him to you.

Before you call your dog to you, look at it from his point of view and decide can I call him to me or should I go to get him. 

It's gonna take a little practice to start seeing things through your dog's eyes. It's something to practice and to always, always keep in mind.  We want to be doing this every single day so it becomes a habit for us too.

NEVER chase your dog 

(and teach games where your dog chases you). 

Chase is one of those fundamental games that dogs love, love, love to play. If you watch a group of dogs playing, you will almost always see a game of chase happening.

Your dog has probably tried to play this with you.

DO NOT CHASE THEM.  Even in play.

If you play the chase game with them, you know the one, he has a toy maybe you're running around the yard.  It is a fun game to play, but you don't want him to decide to play that game when he has something dangerous or he just got off-leash and he’s in the middle of the street. 

If it's a game that he's never played with you, then he's not gonna think to play it in those times.

What I DO encourage you to do is flip the game and get him to chase you.  You get him all excited and then you run in the other direction.  Then if he knows the game of chasing YOU,  when he get’s off-leash, you can get him all riled up and run back to the front door. He'll be like, “oh yeah, I know this game. We play this game all the time!!”

Test this out. Next time you call your dog to you, shuffle back a couple of steps you’ll notice him pick up his speed.   It's a natural instinct for dogs to chase something that is moving away from them.  Any time we can work with their natural instincts, let’s do it!

It’s a great tool and a great game to have in your back pocket when you need to get your dog off the street or back on his leash or away from the fence, or the unfriendly dog that might be walking down the street.

Add a collar grab

The last thing I want you to do is incredibly simple and you will thank me for it one day.  I want you to include a collar grab into your dog’s everyday training.  

To do a collar grab is simply slip two fingers under your dog’s collar and then immediately release. 

A good time to start this when you‘re training him to sit.  Before you give him the treat, reach down grab his collar and then give him the treat.   You can also do this when you are playing with their toys or scratching their belly, or anytime you are handling them.  Do this a few times a day so it’s something they are used to you doing and even have a good association with it.

There are a couple of reasons this will help you. When the time comes and you get them to come to you, she's not going to think twice about you reaching around and grabbing a hold of his collar to put his leash on because you’ve done it a hundred times.

Any of us who has that dog that will grab a treat and run or just sit out of arm's length from you or try to play keep away you know how this can help.

If we make it part of his everyday training, then it's something that he expects.

A second, and equally important, reason why I like to have my clients do this is because it's the most common for a dog to bite someone he knows is when you grab his collar. 

The reason this happens is when two dogs fight, the first thing they do is go for their neck. And when we want to get a hold of our dog we grab the collar.  Think about if you saw a dog running around the street and you want to grab them for safety, whether you knew the dog or not, you're probably going to grab his collar cause there's nothing else on them to grab.

So we want to desensitize him to it and associate it with something good.  I like doing it when you teach your dog to sit because treats are usually involved. It doesn't have to be every time, but enough where he's used to it and he's being desensitized to it. So when it does happen, he doesn't get defensive.

Freebie

The very last thing I have for you is a PDF download that is all about a game that will help you reinforce everything we talked about.  I’m always very excited to teach this game to all of my clients.

I call it Rover Round Robin (for the young ones you can also call it Puppy Ping Pong). The general idea is that you have the whole family and your friends participating and you're going to have the dog running from person to person each in turn.

It’s great exercise, it’s great bonding, AND it reinforces that running to whoever is calling him is SO MUCH FUN!  It’s a win, win, win!

But that’s not all…there's different ways to modify the game to teach him additional skills and up the challenge. You can start to teach your dog everybody's name (including his own). You can turn it into a game of hide-and-seek.  The possibilities are endless. I give you a whole bunch, but you can make up your own.