One of the biggest issues we deal with is dogs of all ages not coming when called. In dog training speak, we call this RECALL. It really is the one command that could possibly save your dog’s life. I always give the example of your dog chasing a ball across the road or wanting to go play with another dog or person across the street. This would be the biggest test of a recall because the dog is fixated and moving towards what it wants. With working dogs, this is also the hardest thing. A handler sends a dog to bite a bad guy and for some reason he has to recall him while he is running at full speed to do his favorite thing in the entire world. If you watch it, you will see the dog come to a sliding stop and then return to the handler.
The scientific reason why this is so hard to train is because of something called auditory exclusion. Auditory exclusion occurs in all mammals during the fight or flight response. Basically, your hearing is severely diminished. This is understandable since many parts of the body that are not needed for survival shut down under extreme stress. As a dog runs away from something it wants to avoid or towards something it wants, it has no natural reason to hear anything. This makes it hard to get the dog conditioned that returning to you when called is better than anything else in the world. This takes 100% consistency in training and the removal of anything that is not beneficial.
By the time I see most dogs they have heard HERE, Cmere, or Come thousands of times. Those commands are burnt as in they are now useless because the dog has been allowed not to respond to them over and over. When the dog does not respond, people yell it louder and louder over and over. The dog is not deaf and heard you the first time. At this point people get frustrated and angry, square off to the dog, and yell more. Their words say come to me, but their tone and body language says stay away. Dogs respond to the tone and body language and not the words.
Add to this that the dogs name is usually used when correcting them, and you quickly begin to realize why you would not want to come if you were them.
For this reason, in most cases, we have eliminated the COME and HERE commands and teach the dog to respond to their name. We start on a long lead and call the dog and tug on the lead and reel them in if need be. Then we give them tons of praise, both verbal and physical. Until a dog has a command locked in 100%, never give it to them without the ability to physically enforce it, thus the long lead.
If you have ever read the book Winning Friends and Influencing People, you know that repeating someone’s name to them makes them like you more, but not if you are yelling at them. When your dog hears their name, it has to provoke a consistent positive response.
The truth is that during a stressful situation you will not yell a command, you will yell their name and that needs to do two things, stop them dead in their tracks and make them come to you. Coming back to you always needs to be the best thing in their world.