Hi my name is Sindy Flaim and I’m a dog trainer. Today, we’re going to talk to you about how to teach your dog to come when called. One thing about coming when called is that you really want to find something that’s non-emotional, so, I’m going to load a sound for bear here. Who’s offering me all kinds of tricks right now, and I’m going to load him a sound.
So, the way you load a sound with your puppy is you have them sitting right in front of you. You can use their dog foods. You can use yummy treats. Remember that if you’re under high distraction and maybe you’re outside at the park like we are today, you can use something higher motivating. So I’m going to pay you more money you come when i call you than when we’re at home we can use dog food. Outside you’ll probably want to use something a little bit tastier. So I’m going to load the sound or whistle and every time i do that sound/whistle, I’m going to hand bear a treat. I can do a variety of different ways to teach him to come when i call him, and you can use a variety of sounds, but if you can whistle, that’s probably the best thing. So, if it’s noisy, busy, they’re playing with other dogs, they can probably here it pretty well.
Now, if you’re dealing with distraction like playing with other dogs, you might want to make sure that it’s going to work before you start repeating that sound. You don’t want to become background noise. One of the best ways to load this is to do it at home, and then start at a park that doesn’t really have a lot of high distraction. That’s the simple part of loading. Once you’re getting the sound loaded, then I want you to start playing games with your dog. So we can do things like throw a toy, and I’m going to fake bear out with a throw. Once I fake him out, I’m going to make my sound to let him know to turn around. The reward in this case is playing with the toy.
One of my favorite games to play at home to teach your dog to find you and to locate you is hide and seek. It’s the best way to get your dog to know where you are at all times. So, when you’re playing hide and seek, if you have another person, you can have one person hold your dog, you go hide somewhere, and let’s start making it easy at first, just go behind a door or something and then once you do you make your sound/whistle. Your dog runs and finds you; they get a handful of food. It’s a fun game to play. It teaches your dog to find you, instead of you looking everywhere, going where is my puppy.
So, loading sounds, keeping it non-emotional is one of the best ways to teach your dog to come when called. You can also do things like load their name, and then their get rewarded, good puppy/dog. The value of the name is important. If you use words like come, good, good dog. Come, good. And a dog’s favorite game, in the whole wide world, is chase. Make sure you play it a lot with your dog. If they look up at you, and you see that they’ve noticed that you’ve called them, take off running, see if they chase you. Nine times out of ten they probably will.
Be patient with your puppy and you will get a great dog, and now you have learned to train your dog to come when called.