Hey everybody, Matt Covey from Suburban
K9. Today I'm going to teach you how to get your dog to come, when called, every single
time, and I'm going to break it down into three separate steps. So the first is teaching your
dog what “come” means. This sounds obvious; it's not obvious to your dog. So I'm going to show
you how to do that. Number two, this is a big one, a lot of people make mistakes at this stage.
What they do is they teach their dog to come when called, but they don't teach them not to run
away. Sounds obvious; it is not, so we're going to spend some time there. And the third one, this
is a huge one, this is probably the most common: that people teach their dog to come when called,
they teach them not to run away. They teach them that's a problem, but their dog learns to play the
game. If your dog is playing the game, that's an issue. You're going to be frustrated, and they're
going to be frustrated. So let me show you what I mean by that later in the video. Okay, this is
Wallen. He is a young boy. He knows the come command. He's a good little dog. He is on a leash
right now. I've also got a long line but I'm going to show you how I start this process, just so you
understand. Wallen sit. Good boy. Stay. So if I have a dog who's never done come before, I put
him in a sit-stay. I want him to learn his name, followed by the word come, means to come to me.
So I'm going to say that. I've got a treat here, just you know, a little bit of a lure to catch
his attention. I'm going to back up. I'm going to praise him, and then I'll have him sit. Wallen
come. Yes! Good boy! Sit. Good. Here you go. Good boy. Free. I would do that over and over and
over. Backing up matters. That gets him moving. It catches his attention on me. And you can also
do it when they're standing. I like the sit-stay, because it, it means they're kind of in training
mode, rather than distracted. It's a little bit easier on the dog. But same thing here. Wallen
come. Yes! Good boy! Sit. Good. So I do that over and over and over again, until he's got it every
single time. You're free. Then I start working on it, and I drop the leash as they're coming to me.
So I might start with the leash in my hand and I might say “Wallen come”. Yes! Good boy! Sit. Good.
There you go. Free. And then I let them go. I do that over and over and over again, until they're
perfect. You know, for a trainer this might take me three days. If it takes you two weeks, that's
fine, because you're not doing this for a living, but work on this until they're perfect.
Now that's teaching the come command. Most people do fairly well there. Uh, the next
step is where we start to see more issues, and that is teaching the dog that come, not only
does it mean come, but it means don't run away from me. So picture little Wallen here, I've just
done this for a week or two, or whatever. He's learned come means “come over”. He gets a treat,
and that's great, right? He's learned that well, but he hasn't learned not to run away. So let
me give you a human example. If you were to say, let's say you said to me, “hey Matt, you come
over, when I put my hand up, you come over, you give me a high five, and I'll give you
a dollar.” Like, cool, yeah, let's do that, right? So every time you put your hand up, I
run over, I give you high five, I get a dollar, and I make $10. Everything's great, then all of a
sudden I get distracted. Let's say, I don't know, my wife walks by in short shorts, and I'm like
“oh hey, I'm gonna go say hi to her!” so I walk off to chat with her, and you put your hand
up, and I don't come. Like, well no, I don't, I don't need a dollar right now. I'd rather go
talk to her, right? I'm distracted. I'm intrigued by something else. I want to chat with her. I
don't want that dollar right now. And what happens if you get mad at me, and you're like, “hey,
that's a big problem. You should not do that”, right? You were supposed to come get this
dollar. How do I know? You never told me that, right? You never said I had to get that dollar.
You showed it to me as an option. That's what Wallen would have learned right now, right? He
would have learned that every time I say to come, he comes over, he gets a treat or he gets petted,
he gets something. But when did I teach him that going over there and getting distracted is bad?
Never, right? He's never learned that. So people make a mistake where they do this for a week or
two, everything's great, and then they let the dog go. They call him and the dog's like “no thanks!
I'd rather go over here”, right, “I'm way more interested in this squirrel, or this other dog,
or whatever, rabbit poop.” It could be anything. So you have to teach your dog come means come when
called, but it also means don't run away. There's no option here. That's where the long line comes
in. So I've got this long line. The idea here is that I can stop the dog no matter what. So now
I can call him to me, but if he doesn't listen, I can teach him running away is a problem. So on
this long line, calling him the same thing, um, you can see he anticipated, right there, which is
fine, but I could use a treat or not, but I might say “Wallen come”. Yes! Good boy! Sit. Good. Free.
Okay, so we've got him on the long line. That was easy. Not only did I have a treat to catch his
attention, but there's no real distractions. You know, we're at the park, but I don't see any other
people around right now. So this is pretty simple, but let's say he didn't listen. You have to have
a way to teach him that running is bad. So here's what I do. This method, it seems simple, it is
simple. We've been working on it since 2006. This is what we do with every single dog. You
have to have a correction that's consistent, that makes sense to him. So if I were to call him,
I said his name followed by “come” and he ignores me. Instantly mark it with a “no”. That's one of
the most important steps right there, to show him that's what I don't like. Then I would go to him,
and I have the long line, so if he were to run from me I could step on it. If he just stood there
and ignored me, I would just go to him, but when I get to him I have to give some sort of correction,
and I have to enforce what I want. So let me show you what I mean by that. I'm not going to tug
on the line, because he's done nothing wrong, but pretend this is a long line, and I told him
to come, and he ignored me. I would tell him “no”, I would go to him, I'd pick this up, and I
would back up and I would tell him “come, come, sit”. You're a good boy Wallen! So I would
tell him “come, come, sit” with those corrections, with the idea that I'm making him do it, right?
He's hearing that command and he's finishing it. We have to do that every single time. So he
needs to realize that when he doesn't come, it's bad, right? Now people hear the consequences,
or the word bad, and they think about, you know, a lot of negativity. There has to be some sort of
consequence, right? If there's not a consequence, he's going to do it whenever he feels like it.
So, which isn't going to be all the time. So this is my consequence. It's not harsh. It's not
loud. The level of your correction depends on the dog. It depends on a lot of things. Depends on the
dog, depends on their age, their temperament, how long they've been in training, also what they did
wrong. So he's not my dog, so if his client, I'm sorry, his owner, my client was right there, and
I told him to come, and he came halfway and then he ran over to sit by them, my correction would be
very soft, like what I just pretended right there. But let's say I called him, and he decided he was
going to run away. There's a highway over there, and he was going to take off running. That's a
huge problem. That's dangerous. I'm going to step on the line, my “no” is going to be a lot sharper,
and my correction is going to be harder. It's not going to be crazy, but it might look like this:
come, come, sit. With the idea of, I want to break his focus with each of those tugs, and I want him
to know that that, right there, was bad. So very, very important. Hopefully that all makes sense
to you. Now, the next thing I want to talk about is when you have a dog that learns to play the
game. And this happens, I see it all the time, we get called in on this, you know, from a lot of
clients. Their dog has realized they don't have to come when called every single time. And it's for
a couple reasons, but I want you to stop and think as a human for a minute, uh, my favorite example
is speeding. Imagine if there was, you know, right now we get in trouble if we speed, right? There’s
some sort of ticket, or if you're going too fast, you could go to jail. There’s a lot, you know,
there's some sort of penalty. Imagine if someone told you “hey, for the next month there's no way
you could get a speeding ticket. Not a chance. There’s no way. The cops are not going to enforce
it.” What are you going to do? Now 90% of you, there's probably 10% of you that are like “I still
wouldn't speed. That’s wrong. I wouldn't do it. It’s dangerous. It’s scary. I just, I'm not going
to do it.” The, you know, the dog word we use for that, when I get a dog who never breaks rules even
though they could, I call them a natural. That’s great, right? So you'd be the natural. You’d
be the one who just doesn't break rules. But you know what I call the other 90%? Dogs, right?
They’re dogs. Dogs make, they make mistakes, they challenge, so do humans. So 90% of you, if there
was no issue with speeding whatsoever, if you're not going to get in trouble, I bet you're going to
speed. If you're, maybe you'd speed all the time, maybe you'd speed sometimes. You'd go to the speed
limit every once in a while, and then you're late to work, and boom you're going 70 in a 50 or
something. Uh, maybe you speed for fun one day, because you just like to, you know, hear your
engine roar and drive fast. Maybe you speed, you know, because, whatever, you see a car up
ahead you want to check out, and you want to get up there quickly. But, point is, when you want to
speed, you probably will. So that would be a dog with no consequences. And that's uncommon, but if
you had no consequences whatsoever, your dog will come only when they feel like pleasing. Now here's
where it gets tricky. Dogs, these corrections I explained earlier, they're not harsh, right?
You picture that come, come, sit he's not doing come because he thinks like “oh my gosh, that
correction is so bad. If I get that, that's the end of the world.” That's not it at all. He
learns to listen because when he comes, cool stuff happens, right? I praise him, I tell him a good,
he's a good boy, I pet him, you know, he learns that come is a fun thing to do, right? Oh, buddy.
But he also learns that the odds of him getting away with it, of running from me, are zero. He
has to learn that. He has to realize there's no way he's allowed to ignore me. What happens is,
if you don't use a long line or a remote collar, or something, or in a smaller yard, you have to
be really good at catching them. If you don't have some sort of consequence every single time,
your dog starts to realize, like, “all right it's 50/50 or 80/20”, right? They realize they don't
get called, I'm sorry corrected, every time they don't listen. So you call your dog, you say “come”
and he's like running up and down the fence line with the neighbor dog. And you, like, ah, and you
just walk off and go inside. Your dog internalizes that. He understands that. He starts to realize
he can get away with it. So now you have a dog who plays the game. And they're going to come
in a couple scenarios. That they come when they want to. They come when it's super easy, right,
in the house, where there's no distractions, or they come when they think “oh man, they can
get me right now, and they're probably going to do it.” So they might realize “okay, when you're
like 10 feet away in the yard, I have to listen, but if you're at the door, no way. I know you're
not coming to get me.” So then you have a dog who plays the game, and they ignore whenever they feel
like it. So these three things, super important. Start from the beginning. Teach your dog properly.
And then you have to make sure you have some sort of consequences that you enforce all the
time, and as you're using these consequences, as you're enforcing them, you need a tool. I
love the long line, but showing you again what this looks like. Wallen, come. Yes! Good boy! Sit.
Good. Free. It's not rocket science. It's pretty easy, as long as you have this method. Work on
it every single day. If this video is helpful, please hit the like button. It does make a big
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