April 28, 2011

My big problem is with recall especially once I start to play with my dog and she isn't focused on training. I tried working her with an e-collar. What do I do now?

Full Question:
Cindy,

I have a 2y F GSD. I sent her to basic obedience training at around 10months. She has done well and follows her commands on and off leash. My big problem is with recall especially once I start to play with her and she isn't focused on training. Once I stop working her and just play, she will often see another dog and run across the park. I will yell here (I know she hears me but decides to ignore). As you can imagine the other owner isn't to pleased and I know it can become a safety issue with my dog Scout. Again, she does well in work mode but loses it at other times. I tried working her with an e-collar. Once again she did well during work mode then..booooom, there she goes (that e-collar didn't stop her). What do I do now?

Thanks so much,
Eric
Cindy
Cindy Cindy's Answer:
Eric

I think you need to back up your training. If your dog isn’t responding to you, there isn’t one thing wrong with going back to basics and reworking an exercise.

Do you have our Electric Collar video? I’d highly recommend it. With issues like this I recommend that people train their dog with a remote collar (or in your case, retrain).

We produced a training DVD titled ELECTRIC COLLAR TRAINING FOR THE PET OWNER. In this DVD Ed teaches people how to handle the foundation training and then how to use the collar.

Many trainers, especially hunting dog trainers and even some professional dog trainers use “escape training” when they train with remote collars. This is where they stimulate the dog, give it a command and then teach the dog how to turn the stimulation OFF by doing what’s told.

I don’t agree with “escape training.” I don’t think its fair to the dog. He is being stimulated before he is even asked to do something. In my opinion this is ass end backward.

Rather I believe in using the collar to reinforce a voice correction. In other words, I always tell my dog “NO” before I correct him. I give him the opportunity to change his behavior. My goal is to always teach my dog to follow my voice command.

If you read the article titled THE THEORY OF CORRECTIONS IN DOG TRAINING you will understand how to approach corrections. In the DVD Ed simply applies that philosophy to remote collar training. The article explains how to determine the level of correction to use on each dog. This varies according to the temperament and drive of the dog along with the level of distraction it’s currently facing at that moment in time.

The Remote Collar DVD shows how to determine what level of stimulation to use on your dog. That’s important. In this DVD we never used a level higher than a medium and most of the time it was on the low settings for every dog we trained.

We use a Dogtra 280 NCP or Dogtra 1900 NCP on our personal dogs. Other companies sell cheaper collars but in the remote collar business you get what you pay for.

I hope this helps.

Cindy

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Expert Dog Trainer Cindy Rhodes
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