Rules of Recall, Come when Called - Season 2 - Ep. 5

Mike and Emery Talk Recall! The Best ways to practice getting your pooch to come when called by making it a rewarding behavior!

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SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hi everyone, this is Emory Kittle with Nature Select Pet Food. I'm here with Mike Deith of Keep It Simple Stupid Dog Training, and this is the 12 Minute Dog Podcast. Just wanted to say thank you for joining us, and you may notice that some of our podcasts are longer than 12 minutes. But if you look at the main part of it, our main topic, it's not going to go over 12 minutes. We're going to stop there. We may have ramps, we may have other things, but your main topic is not going to go past that. So anyway, today's wonderful topic is on the importance of recall. So, Mike, what is that?

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Well, you know, I guess the important thing is a lot of people don't even know what the word recall means. And I think the average person would probably call it come when called. Dog trainers like to use big fancy words like recall when really it just means if I call my dog, do they come to me? Okay. So over the years, I have figured out kind of some non-negotiable rules of recall that I think a lot of owners screw up, and that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. All right. I also kind of want to talk about the relationship between recall and leash work. And I think there's a correlation there where I really think they're the same thing. It's just kind of two sides to the same coin.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Okay. Well, I can definitely tell you we need both help or help with both of those things with our dog.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

So the number one thing that I always tell people is you can't use frustration or anger when you're trying to call your dog or recall your dog. Um it's kind of like if your boss sticks his head out the uh office, his office door and screams your name and says, Come into my office, a lot of people will take their lunch break immediately and head out the front door. Your dog knows what you sound like when you're angry, what you sound like when you're happy, what you sound like when you're scared. They also know the body language of all those things. So if you want your dog to reliably come to you, you need to be kind of even, keeled, and happy when you're calling him. Because if you're mad or pissed off, your dog's gonna look at you and go, I know what you're like when you're in this mood. There's no way I'm coming to you. So that would be the first tip. Try to be in a good mood when you're calling your dog, and if not, fake it to make it and use a high-pitched, happy, squeaky voice to you.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

So you just if you just ate your cheeseburger and you're hungry, you probably uh are gonna need to change how you're gonna how you're gonna call the dog to you.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

And that brings up another one of the rules, which is you know, and I'm a positive reinforcement trainer, I don't really go in for the positive punishment side of dog training, but if you're gonna punish a dog, the last thing you want to do is call your dog to you and then punish them. You've now really kind of snapped a really important bond and trust with your dog to where they don't know what you're gonna do when they come to you. Really, recall should be always in a happy-go-lucky. If you're a punishment-based type person, then you go to your dog and punish them. Don't call them to you. Um, I would make the argument that there are multiple ways of doing it before we ever have to get to punishment. But um, let's suffice it to say, recall should always be a rewarding command so that the dog wants to do it. Okay, so always give him something when you Yeah, absolutely. Um, one of my favorite games in the world when I'm working with dogs right off the bat is I will just sit with a cup of dog food and I'll throw a piece across the room and I'll say, go find it. And the dog will run away from me only to once they when they get to the treat, I then call them, hey, come here. And when they get to me, I ask for a sit and I hand them another treat. Then I show them the treat and I throw it across the room. So we do a lot of the hey, go find it now, come here. Go find it now, come here. Let's take a minute to meet our sponsors. Train the owner, not the dog company. Just call us at 913-269-7595 for more details. And now back to the podcast. And people get all into you have to use this word with my dog. It's really the tone of your voice, which goes back to what we were talking about a minute ago, which is be in a good mood, because if it's a happy tone, the dog's gonna hey, I want to go see what dad's doing.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

So yeah, I can think of a ton of reasons why recall is so important. I don't know if uh you've ever had this problem, but I've been out before and I've had my dog off-leash and he's having fun, and I need him to get back to me in a hurry, and he's not wanting to do it.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Absolutely. Well, you know, number one, from a dog trainer perspective, we live in a world of leash laws. And the leash laws are there not only to protect our dogs, but other people's dogs and all sorts of things. So off-leash, unless you're at like an off-leash dog park, um, I I am the the mean dog trainer that just says, I don't care how well your dog is trained, they should never be out in public off-leash. Um, that being said, you can buy yourself a nice long 15-foot leash where the dog has 15 feet to sniff and check things out, and you can practice that kind of go out and come back and go out and come back game on a leash, and you can even walk your dog on those long lines, which gives the dog the feel of being off-leash and some freedom, but you're still attached in case anything bad happens. Um the reason for the not being always being on leash. I don't know how many times I've seen this happen where somebody will have their dog off leash, the dog will run at somebody whose dog is on leash, and then you hear that, oh don't worry, my dog is friendly, only to hear the person on the leash say, but mine isn't. Okay, the reason that dog's on leash is because it doesn't like other dogs. Now, your dog who's off-leash gets into a dog fight and gets hurt, and you're gonna be mad because that person had a mean dog, even though you're the one who trusted your dog off leash and found out the hard way that in certain cases they won't come back. So, you know, I think recall is one of those, you know, always test and proof your dog and make sure that you know your dog can handle whatever environment, distraction, whatever you're working with. But you know, go out and invest in a good 15-foot long line and just practice. If you had to, you know, from a safety standpoint, you're at least you're at least attached. Um, I will say one of the tricks you can use is body position. Um, a lot of people, if we stand up, we're a lot taller than a dog. Uh we tend to kind of loom over dogs sometimes, our voice changes. Um, if your dog is hesitant to come to you, another thing you can always do is just kneel down. The minute you kind of lower your body position and get more on their level, dogs are more apt to come to you. Um I've had a lot of luck with if I see a dog that won't come to me that's just loose in the neighborhood, I'll park my car, I'll get out, and I'll sit with my back turned to the dog. And it's amazing how many dogs will come up and start sniffing you, kind of like, are you okay? Why'd you turn your back on me? It's kind of unusual for it to happen, so um, people will do that. So the other trick I would tell you is consider your body position, lower your body position when you're first teaching those skills so that you can work from a position of success versus failure, which leads to frustration, which leads to all these other things that we're talking about not doing. I love those ideas. Um, are those all your tips for today? Or do you have more? You know, I think it's also important. Um both of my kids are musicians, so I always use the example to say you're allowed to use tone and timber, you're not allowed to use volume and venom when training a dog. So um in my family growing up, my mom had that wonderful mom tone where she could look at me and say, I am so disappointed in you, and it would crush my soul. My dad was a little bit more of a yeller and screamer, and we just learned very quickly, just stare at his feet, don't make direct eye contact, and for God's sakes, don't interrupt him. And it would be over in about three and a half minutes. So I'll do the same way. If you're a yeller and screamer, a lot of times they will just tune you out or avoid you or run from you or try to get away from you. Um so use that that tone in timber. Use use the inflection of your blessing. Center is your body position and training. A lot of times I like to let people know that dogs and people are kind of like magnets. You know, if you turn them one way, they they they pull together. But if you turn them the other way, they actually force away. Um, a lot of times, if you're recalling a dog and moving towards the dog while you're recalling them, the dog will move away and it becomes a game of chase. Where the dog will at first think, hey, this is the greatest game on the face of the planet. I'm gonna run from you, you're gonna chase me. The owner will get very frustrated and start yelling and screaming. A lot of dog trainers will do it the exact opposite way if a dog's being stubborn is we might make two or three steps towards the dog really quick, but then we turn around and run the other direction. And it's almost like you flip a switch in the dog's brain and say, Oh crap, I have to chase him now, and they'll, you know, follow you right back in the house, or they'll just run right up to you. But a lot of times you have to consider your body language. You also have to consider that chase is probably the greatest game that a dog knows from their perspective. If you go to a dog park and watch, what is it? I'm gonna chase you, I'm gonna sniff your butt, then you're gonna chase me, and you're gonna sniff my butt, and all of this stuff goes on. We just are late for work, and the dog won't come in in the backyard, and then we start chasing the dog, and the dog starts running and play bowing us, but then we get mad. And the minute our tone changes, then the dog's like, ooh, I don't like you when you're in this mood. So then it becomes an avoidance game, not a chase game. And you, as a trainer, you can just watch all this happen, and it becomes a tornado that just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. And a lot of times we just need to relax um and go back to what works. Lower that body body position, run from the dog, do anything like that. These are all amazing tips. What else do you have? Well, I guess, you know, at this point, you know, we need to kind of discuss what I talked about at the very beginning, which was how how is leash work connected to recall work. I'm one of the weird trainers that I will start with a long line, that 15-foot leash, to teach a dog to walk on leash. And a lot of it will be just out in the front yard, letting the dog go to the end of the line, then call back, and then let him go to the end of the line and call them back, and we're just working in the front yard on recall. And then very quickly I start almost a moving recall game. Or I'll start walking the sidewalk on the long line and then just stop, and the dog comes back, gets a treat, and then we keep walking, and it's kind of a moving sidewalk now of long line work. The funny part is when I'm using a long line, I will tie a knot at 10 feet, and I will tie a knot at five feet, and I'll have the handle at 15 feet. So, in a sense, I have created a three-version leash. So I can have a 15-foot leash, I can have a 10-foot leash, I can have a five-foot leash, and I work at different distances, and it's all about getting dogs just to come back to me. Well, a dog who's coming back to you on a regular basis is not pulling. The other thing to consider is Newton's second law, and that is every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I see so many people start with a short leash and try to work from a position of struggle. Dog pulls, I pull, dog pulls, I pull, dog pulls, I pull. It's an equal and opposite reaction. The minute you go to that long line, the dog now feels like they're walking with you versus against you, and I can start long and then teach short as the dog gets it. So a lot of times, dogs who pull on leash just need the freedom to feel like they're not being walked. They want to walk with you, not against you. Um there are more people that when I pull out that long line, they're like, this dog is going to jerk your arm off. And the minute I get the treats out and start working with them, they do it. Well, my alarm is about to go off for our 12 minutes, and since Emory made our little statement at the beginning of we try to keep it to, you know, a 12-minute period, I would just finish with saying, don't forget that leash work and recall are kind of two sides to the same coin. And I think if more people spent time working on long lines with their dog in the backyard, in the front yard, the driveway, and just get dogs used to just being out in the world and not being distracted, I think they would find their leash walking and their walks would become much more enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

So that's fantastic, Mike. Thank you so much. And this is Mike Deeth with Keep It Simple, Stupid Dog Training. He's written many books on this, and in fact, I believe he's directly pulling from which book today?

SPEAKER_01 14:03

This book, the book is called How to Get Your Dog to Come Without Being a Butthead. I love it. Um, yeah, and um it's it's available on Amazon, and uh you can find it online. Um just look up Mike Deeth and uh you'll find it.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

All right, well, thank you guys so much. Uh stay tuned for our next segment. You'd like a rewarding career in the pet industry? Maybe dog grooming is for you. The Kansas City Grooming Academy is the only certified grooming academy in Kansas, and our amazing instructors will have you ready for your career in just 10 short weeks. We also have financing available, so give us a call or reach out to us at kcgroomingacademy.com. Hey again, this is Emory with Nature Select Pet Foods, and I'm here with the nutritional nugget. And today we are going to talk about allergies in dogs and specifically food allergies. While dogs can get allergies to lots of different things, including what you put in your yard as far as fertilizers, to what you put out for uh snow, rock tall, things like that can cause allergies. Food allergies are the most common for pets. And what is a food allergy? It's probably a good question and a good place to start. So a food allergy is when your pet immune system overreacts and produces antibodies to things that it would normally tolerate. So in an allergic reaction to food, antibodies are produced against some part of the food, usually a protein, can be a complex carbohydrate. But it's something that uh normally doesn't happen initially just right off the bat. Your pet normally has to build up antibodies to whatever the allergy is to, so it can take a little bit of time. One of the reasons we recommend switching foods or switching at least recipes about every 10 months is because pets can become allergic to the same food if they're fed it over and over and over again. So, what are some signs of a food allergy? Um normally the most common is when your dog is itchy. Sometimes it'll be chewing at its paws, sometimes it'll get a hot spot from just scratching and scratching in one area. It can also include um diarrhea or vomiting, and it can even be a weight loss or a lack of energy. So now dogs can develop allergies to really any kind of food. Some of the more common items are chicken. It's pretty pretty common for dogs to be allergic to chicken. Corn is another uh ingredient. Wheat. Boy, I know my body doesn't like wheat, even though my taste buds do, but uh the gluten in wheat really causes a problem with some dogs. Soy is another item that's really high on the list. Um one of the reasons why a lot of people say to avoid corn, wheat, and soy in any pet food. So, what do you do about that? Well, usually just switching your food makes a big difference. You can switch between blends, you can switch between brands, but uh if that is still seeming to have problems, then what I recommend is going to your vet and seeing if they can do an allergy test. So that will normally pinpoint the items that your dog is more prone to have allergies to. Another great way is to do an elimination diet. While those can be kind of challenging, it's a great way to see what is triggering your pet's problems. So, anyway, I think we'll stop right there for now. If you have more questions, feel free to reach out to me at emory at n atkansascity.com. That is emory e-m-e-r-ly at in like natures, at like selectkansascity.com. Thanks and have a great day.