Training "Come"

This is one of the most important commands. It could save your dog's life one day. But it is also one of the most mistrained commands.

First realize that come needs to be trained. Dogs do not have a natural come. They might come to you sometimes, but I am talking about the instant they hear the word come, they whip their head towards you, come dashing at 90 miles an hour, away from anything, even a steak fillet on the ground or their favorite friends.

There are four rules we teach in class that help with this command.

#1. Always positive. When you call your dog come, amazing things must happen to the dog. They get the best treats ever, they get tug games, they get to go for a walk. Anything your dog loves, they get. Every single time, it must be lights out fantastic.

#2 Never negative. Flip side of #1, but important enough to say twice. Do not call your dog come and put her in the crate. Do not call her come and scold her. Don't call her come and give her a bath (unless she loves it). Don't call her come: to grab the underwear out of her mouth, to stop a doggie play session, to take away her toy, etc.

If you train a come and it has been for both positive and negative things, your dog now has two definitions of come. If your dog was in the street, and a car was barreling down, you call come, your dog will turn and pause. She will look at you and try to figure out by your body language and tone of voice, if this is the good come or the bad come. Is she going to get pizza or whacked in the head. And that pause is dangerous. Your dog is hit by the car before she decided to come to you or not.

#3 There are levels to come. A pre-school up to a PhD level. All these levels must be taught. Pre-school is in your living room, you have a good treat 1 inch from your dog's nose. I bet she will come to you. There's nothing else interesting going on. PhD is outside on a trail maybe, she is chasing a bunny and you call her come. A common mistake is training a pre-school level and then allowing your dog to get into higher level situations. Do not do it! You must train your dog at every level for her to be successful. The things that make the level harder are distance from you and distance from distractions. If you are right next to her and another dog is 100 feet away, it will be easier for her to come to you. If she is right next to another dog and you are 20 feet away, that will be much harder.

#4 In our classes we build in a safety mechanism. When the dog comes to you, and you are feeding her, gently slip your hand into her collar. This allows you to have control over your dog, in case you need to get out of there quickly or just put a leash on her. If you do not train this, when your dog comes to you in a real situation and you lunge for her collar, she might freak out and jump away. Then the game is on. Now she realizes "you can't catch me can you."

You do not want a dog who does the come anf go. You call come, the run over, but dance just out of your reach. You want the dog to realize the command includes coming in close and allowing the collar to be held. Then and only then does she get her cookie.





To train this, start in your house, get a great treat. The dog is on leash. Put the treat right in her face, say come and you *quickly* back up a few feet. She will probably follow the treat. After a few steps, stop, hand in collar, give treat. It's best to give the treats slowly, spread it out over a few seconds or more. She will learn to hang out with you instead of coming and dashing off.

*Always* train come with a leash. If you call you dog come in the backyard, and she smells flowers instead, she is learning come has no meaning in the backyard.

When you are training, be enthusiastic. The more energy you put in the more she will, too. You want her to whip her head towards you and come dashing over. If you accept her to slowly walk over to you, she will learn come means go to my person at my own time.

And very important, you must back up away from the dog as you are saying come. Do this before she is coming to you. If you say come and stand there, there is no sense of urgency. Some dogs will come, but after they pee, smell the bushes, chase the grasshopper. No reason to hurry, you are standing right there. If you walk away, you are leaving them and forcing them to choose. She is on leash, so if she doesn't choose you, you can gently show her she needs to.

Pay off big time with come, If you give one treat for sit, give 5 for comes. Then sometimes jackpot and give 10 or 20 treats. Treats should be small. Not a whole milk bone. We only use rice or pea sized treats for training.