"Come"
Hi, you all were so helpful with my spay question, I thought I'd pose another. Sachi will be 6 months old at the end of the week and I've had her since she was 8 weeks. We have taken training classes with a positive reinforcement behaviorist, or whatever they are called. Only treats and praise. I have actually, never shown her any anger or frustration, because she is good and I don't have many expectations of her. She will sit or lay down for a treat immediately, she is great at "leave it." She has a very soft mouth and is pretty good on a leash; any faults are mine. However, I am having difficulty getting her to come. If she is outside, and I call her, it is very unlikely that she will come unless I go get her or entice her with an extra special treat. Usually if I walk outside just a few feet she does come, I don't chase her. I have a little extra time over the holidays and want to do some extra training. Does anyone have any ideas to make "come" more fun. I truly think Sachi is like my cat. He comes when I call, if he feels like it, too. Thanks in advance for your ideas!
Comments
It's a struggle, and I think it is one of the harder things to teach,esp with NKs, who often aren't really that interested in coming when called. My AA is pretty reliable--meaning he always will come when called, though if he is laying down outside in the snow on the deck in his "watch dog" position, he certainly won't come right away. (I still consider him pretty good, since the Shibas are not likely to come when called at all!)
I ended up training him with two different recall words, because my husband uses "come here" all the time and never bothers to really reward it, so I knew that "come" would quickly lose its value as a command. So that's what we say when we mean we'd like him to come, but if he doesn't, it's not a huge deal. He probably responds to that about 70 % of the time.
But I worked pretty hard on recalls with a totally different command and really good rewards (in his case, I started with treats, but moved on to squeaky toys which he adores), and so if I say "to me" and put my hand out for the nose touch, he's really pretty good about running over to do it, so he can get his favorite, for special occasions only toy.
You have to spend a lot of time working on it without distractions first, and make sure if you use a super special recall word, as some people do for emergencies, that they ALWAYS come when you use that word, and they get whatever the love best as a reward--the absolute best treats ever, or a special toy, or whatever.
I'm lucky that Oskar has always had a desire to be with us, and as a puppy loved the "follow me" game that made recall fairly easy, but I do think you can really work on it with special treats, and just make sure to save the actual recall command for times you're certain you can get them to come, so they always do it and always get rewarded. That's why I like the having two different commands thing.
And Oskar is not reliable off leash, of course, but I don't even try that! I think getting him to come as much as he does is pretty successful, at least compared to the Shibas! With them, it's a good day if they come in the house at all!
As for the recall, I always tend have the best luck by getting the dog's attention and then running AWAY from them just a couple steps or using the 'puppy voice' and crouching (as if for petting). The latter works wonders for my Malamute who has a very 'che, whatever' response to the 'come' command when he's found something interesting.
Now we no longer need to go out with the leash, she is much better at calming down and sitting when you go up to her, and then she will "go upstairs" happily. Even if she is too squirmy to let you come near her, you can still kind of get her to go upstairs. So we have basically made no progress on COME. But GO seems to work much better.
The real problem is still when she gets out of the yard - when we catch up with her she knows her funtime is over, so she pretends she doesn't see us or hear us and keeps running around until she gets tired.
When I read about the super special command for a reliable come, they suggested using only a very special high value treat, something pretty smelly too, like sardines or something. Messy, but if a dog likes it, it's a pretty high value reward. So you may have to find special really desirable treats for this command only.
Oskar also is pretty decent if we're hiking--he doesn't like to get far away and checks in very reliably too.
If Sachi loves briny ocean things you may also want to try nori. Both my guys also love that. Again I just check that there isn't salt added to the ones I purchase.