“Come” is probably one of the most important commands but often, the hardest. Dogs vary in their overall response to a come command. Dogs that are more socially oriented seem to come when called quite easily. Dogs that are more environmentally motivated are more likely to tune you out when you command them to come to you.
Let’s break this down into five key steps to help improve your dog’s rate of compliance with the come command (it is better to work these steps more frequently and for a shorter duration. Consider maybe five minutes two to three times daily. You can do more sessions if you have time, but it is best to keep them short).
First: Watch for negative associations. Dogs are a bundle of impulses, and they follow their nose, eyes and ears in conjunction with many motivations. Some of these include curiosity, predation, hazard avoidance through fear and not wanting their fun to end. Consider this: each time you call your dog to you he is ALWAYS doing something he wants to be doing. That means that come can be a difficult choice to make because the dog must STOP doing what he is doing and return to you post haste. Basically, come just about always ends their fun.
Coming when called from something the dog wants to be doing creates conflict for the dog. Dogs then will engage in a quick cost benefit analysis. Is it worth it How much better is the trade to return to you from what he is currently doing? Many times, the observed response from the dog is akin to, “Hang on – just a minute. I’m a little busy now but I hear you.” We then continue to call them and frequently become more authoritative with each command. If the dog finally does return to you after several minutes of calling and insisting, the last thing you want to do is reward him.
From the dog’s perspective, the come command is a big disappointment because it is used to sabotage his happiness, exploration and curiosity. Therefore, coming when called becomes a low-likelihood behavior and ignoring you becomes a high-likelihood behavior. The more you call, the more irrelevant the command becomes. This is called learned irrelevance. To help minimize this sequence, you should not call your dog to you to end his fun or to make him do something he dislikes. So, expecting your dog to come while doing a threat assessment of the sounds coming from the neighbor’s yard isn’t highly likely to happen. If you are calling your dog to crate him so you can leave for work, we have a double whammy. Not only are we calling to end his fun, but also to make something HE considers bad likely to happen if he complies. In these situations, it is better to either simply go get your dog with gentle collar guidance, a toy or treat lure, or with a quick leash hook up to get him inside. You can also try working on WHY he doesn’t want to come to be crated in our example. You should crate him at random times and random intervals. This will help dilute the prediction of your departure when he goes into the crate.
Second: Turn your dog into an opportunist. Enlist the help of a friend or your housemate and put maybe 10 tiny treats that your dog loves in your pockets. Then you both split up across a room or two and call your dog back and forth. Be excited and use a repetitive, staccato, higher pitched command. Like, “Come, come, come, come, etc.” It has been proven that animals tune in and then hurry along with higher pitched, staccato sounds. Conversely, they slow down and stop for long drawn-out sounds in a deeper voice. Think how you would say, “Stay” to a dog. It’s no wonder that an authoritative, deep voiced come decreases compliance. As soon as your dog is on his way to you, switch to enthusiastic praising. Continue the praising with the higher pitched, excited voice. This serves to motivate him to continue on his way to you and he’ll be more likely to tune out distractions on the way. When he does arrive, insure he is close enough for you to touch him and pet him before you fish the treat out of your pocket to give to him. Touching and/or petting your dog is critical at this step because you need him to be conditioned to come close enough to you to be touched in the event you need to secure him by his collar or put a leash on due to safety reasons. It is very frustrating when your dog comes just close enough to snatch the treat out of your hand and then takes off again on his adventure, making you unable to get ahold of him.
Treats need to be a true reward for doing something and not an offer made in exchange for something. (i.e., look what I’ve got. If you come, I’ll give you this tasty treat). Don’t bargain with your dog or you are more likely to teach him to hold out for something better or elect not to come at all if your offer doesn’t have a higher value than what he is currently doing. Remember, you don’t want your dog learning to do a cost benefit analysis. In this step, your goal is your turn your dog into an opportunist.
Third: Teach him to discriminate. After several repetitions, your dog will likely NOT wait for the next person to call him before running to get a treat. At this point, he has learned the game of back and forth for treats and he has become a perfect opportunist. Once your dog decides it is the next person’s turn to call him, he’ll head there anyway. You want to teach him to discriminate. This means that he ONLY gets the treat when he comes to the person who is calling him. So proactively approaching a person who has not commanded him will not result in a treat. This may mean that the same person calls for the next few times because the dog runs to the next person opportunistically without a command and therefore, doesn’t get the treat. You can move onto the fourth step once the dog is waiting for the come command before he approaches during the back-and-forth game.
Fourth: Time for delayed gratification. To solidify the come command with your dog, he must learn to accept a delayed treat because in the real world, you will not have your pockets loaded up with treats. While continuing with the back-and-forth game from step four, you only need to make one adjustment. That is to get the treats out of your pockets and onto something about three or so feet away. When it is time to call your dog, do so as before and when he gets to you, still praise, touch and pet him but then take of couple steps to retrieve the treat for him while continuing to praise.
As you continue with your practice of this process, make the treats farther and farther away so your dog must follow you to get his reward. This should result in you and your training partner calling him in all different rooms, praising and touching when he arrives, and then happily calling him along with you to get the treat out of the treat jar in the kitchen. Dogs MUST learn delayed gratification because that is the step that decreases the likelihood that your dog will conduct a cost benefit analysis of how valuable your reward is in relation to what he was doing. It helps to turn the recall behavior into more of a habit of expectancy; that it is always better to come when you call because, well, why wouldn’t it be?
Fifth: Now we must generalize it. Once you have completed the fourth step and you are able to call the dog to you and go with him to get his reward, you are ready to generalize his learning. With this step, you want to call him in many different locations, situations and distractions. This could be from outside to inside, from inside to outside, room to room, situation to situation. This includes being able to call him away from his filled dinner bowl on the counter while you walk to another location away from the bowl and call him. Once he comes to you, you can then praise, touch and go with him back to his dinner bowl to put it on the floor. Try to think of five things your dog would probably never come for and specifically train these things but be sure that the dog cannot simply take the decoy. During these generalization exercises, you want your dog to be successful so be sure you have control over your dog’s access to the planned decoy. You want the behavior of coming to you to become as automatic as possible. Dogs, like humans, are shortcut artists. They want the fastest, easiest way to get the things they want. Being called away from their dinner bowl that is waiting on the counter closest to them does NOT compute in a brain trying to be efficient. Short cuts are essential to routines and habits so one’s brain is not constantly analyzing problems. In this case, we want the dog to know that the fastest, easiest way to get what he wants is to come when called so you can then ensure he gets something great.
There are many additional steps and ways to teach the best recall possible. Beginning with these steps you will have a beautiful, positive foundation on which to build. Remember, at the end of the day, dogs are opportunistic, impulsive and self-focused (like humans) so you should not expect 100% at the end of training. There are always exceptions to compliance. People certainly don’t follow other people’s commands or requests expeditiously and without question so how could we ever expect a dog to be 100% on their recall? The goal is to get their compliance to about 80 to 90% based on habit and conditioning. The remaining 20 to 10% represents situations you did not think to train your dog during the generalization step. This then gives more opportunity for fine tuning his training when you discover his kryptonite. Help your dog to be successful by making recall positive and fun while you put the time into preparing him to comply as a matter of habit instead of analyzing his choices based on what he wants more.
Sam Freeman, CPDT-KSA, is the president and owner of Pet Behavior Solutions and Edu-Care for Dogs of the Valley. She is the creator of the Core Behavior Assessment, which is the behavior evaluation program used by many animal shelters and animal control agencies in Arizona. Freeman is certified through the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers and has completed specialized education and training in psychology, learning theory, ethology, family counseling, behavior modification techniques, aggression, canine and feline behavior issues, and grief counseling. Visit her online at petbehaviorsolutions.com.
