How would I do that?

Also, if I train Kodee to know that both my voice command "come" and the pager means "come", is there any chance that he will get to where he doesn't respond to the voice command as well as he used to?

Hi Kori, we recently started teaching Max hand signals to go with some of his commands - like 'sit' and 'down'.

We started out by doing both voice and hand signal at the same time so he got used to the signal going with that command. He picked them up really quickly - prob because body language means a lot to dogs. Now we can just do the hand signal but he still responds to the verbal. When we do our training I just mix the verbal with the signal. Sometimes I use both, sometimes just one or the other. So now he knows both mean 'sit' or 'down' or whatever. (at least he knows it in the house with no distractions lol)

I think you could do the pager a similar way, as you say your recall word stim the pager so he starts to associate the page with the action.
As for not responding I think if you still train and reward the word he will understand they both mean 'come'. It's all about maintaining right?

Thanks, Rhonda. What hand signal do you use for "come"?

I use hand signals for some other commands (sit, down, place, roll over), but not others (leave it or watch me, for example). One reason I want to train the pager to = come is what someone else mentioned on another thread - that if their dog ever gets out of ear shot (which I don't plan on with Kodee, but better to be prepared), you can page him to come as long as he's still in range of the transmitter. So in that case a hand signal wouldn't matter. But I guess training a hand signal for come would still be a good idea.

Hi Kori,

I trained my GSD Dillon that the pager beep on his e-collar means the same as "come" by putting on his e-collar and attaching a 15 ft long line to his flat collar, putting him in a sit-stay, walking to the end of the long line, saying "come", beeping the pager and giving a tug on the long line all at the same time. Lots of praise etc. as soon as he started to come to me. After a few goes of this I did the same thing without saying "come", just beeped and tweaked the long line. If I remember right, he had it figured out in less than ten minutes. (He was of course already familiar with the command "come"). Then we moved on to beeping to get him to come to me without the long line from a sit-stay, then beeping to get him to come when he was distracted wandering about sniffing, and so on, increasing the distance and the level of distraction. I did have to nick him once or twice with the e-collar while we were proofing this to remind him that I still could "reach out and touch him" if he was more interested in doing something else than responding immediately to the beep.

Now I can beep him back to me from several hundred yards away when we are hiking in open country, or if we are in wooded or rocky terrain and he gets out of sight I just hit the pager. Much better than shouting to get him back, and hand signals aren't much good over any distance. I have been doing this for over two years and haven't had any issues with him ignoring regular voice "come" commands in other situations. "Come" means come, the pager beep means come, he responds to both just fine. As I think I mentioned in an earlier thread, having trained him that this particular beep means "come" I can't now use the same beep to mean something else - I'll have to get one of those fancy e-collars with multiple different tones if I want to take this long-distance communication thing further.

Hope this helps.

We started with him on a long line so he couldn't get away, and hit the pager button then backed up enthusiastically, praising as he turned to follow. This trainer we worked with didn't believe in using treats, so it was just voice and enthusiasm as a reward. He was pretty young when we started using the ecollar, so following us as we backed away was pretty natural for him anyway. Just my experience.

At the moment we really only have signals for 'sit' 'down' and 'bark'. I tried to think of others to use for 'look' and 'come' etc but it's hard to decide and I want ones that feel right.

I know it won't matter one bit to Max what the signal is but I don't want to look like a geek when I do it lol. So those ones are still in the planning phase.

Though I think using the pager would be much easier than a signal for the 'come' because if he's ever far enough away that he can't hear me I probably won't be able to see if he's looking at me. Little black eyes with a black dog not so easy for me to see at a distance.