Dog Ownership & Training

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Good recall and basic obedience training are essential to building a relationship with your dog and keeping them out of trouble. In order to get started, the first thing you will need to do is make sure you have all the proper equipment: a clicker, leash, collar, harness, treat pouch, and training treats are the bare necessities of recall and obedience training.

Clicker Training

Start by using clicker training to create the association between the reward/treat, the clicker, and your dog's name. Most puppies and rescue dogs have a new name and probably do not know it yet, so this will help them learn their name and the sound of your voice. If you adopted a rescue dog and are worried about changing their name, go ahead and do it. Many rescue dogs are renamed when they get to a shelter or rescue because whoever found the dog has no way of knowing their old name, and even if the rescue does know their old name it could be associated with trauma and anxiety.

Begin training by standing near the dog and calling their name just once. Wait until the dog looks at you and immediately click the clicker, THEN present the treat. Don't even reach for the treat until they perform the desired behavior and hear the click; this way they can pinpoint exactly what they did to earn the reward. This is also why you only say the verbal cue once; if you say the dog's name repeatedly and then give them a treat as soon as they look at you, you are teaching the dog that they only have to listen a fraction of the time you ask them to do something in order to get the full reward. Wait until the dog turns their attention to something else, and repeat this training exercise. Once the dog reliably responds to their name, move on to recall training.

Recall

In a relatively sterile (non-distracting) environment, call the dog by saying their name and adding whichever verbal cue you intend to use for recall (e.g., 'come'). It is ok for now if their name is enough to call them to you, but as they learn more commands you will want a word specifically for recall. Once your dog has basic recall down, you will want to begin increasing the difficulty, first by increasing distance and then by introducing distractions. If you have a fenced-in yard, increasing distance is easy; if not, you'll have to find a dog park with an empty area (try checking the park on a weekday) or use a long line and go to a local park that isn't busy. Introducing distractions is typically easy, too, but you should consider whether to use natural distractions (e.g., wildlife, dogs) or planted distractions (invite a friend and their dog over to help). Never work on off-leash recall unless you are fenced in; we have spent hours searching in the cold for a friend's client's dog who ran after a deer during off-leash recall training and we didn't find her until the next day.

Basic Obedience

When your dog's recall starts becoming more reliable, you can start mixing in basic obedience training. Dogs are much better with body language than with verbal cues, so choose a specific hand gesture to go with each verbal cue you intend to use, and stick with it. Throughout initial training, use both the hand gesture and the verbal cue; later on, you can do one or the other, but this will help prevent confusion for now (for both you and the dog). Usually, people start with 'sit,' 'down,' and 'stay,' but you can add in whatever you think will be useful ('shake' or 'paw,' 'up,' 'leave it,' 'off,' 'quiet,' 'gentle,' 'go away,' etc.). When you start introducing multiple commands in one training session, make sure you aren't using the same sequence every time or the dog will think you want to do a down-stay (for example) every time you tell them to sit.

Walking

In order to train loose-leash walking, you should start in a very non-distracting setting (inside your home or around the neighborhood at a time when nobody is around) and focus on getting your dog to walk alongside you. Walking commands (e.g., 'heel,' 'slow,' 'whoa') can be super useful here, and you may also want to train your dog to sit by default. This can be done by stopping mid-walk, waiting for the dog to sit (with or without a verbal cue or hand gesture), and click and feed as soon as they sit. This will teach them impulse control and help with loose leash walking. Once they have this down, anytime they are too excited and start pulling, you can just plant your feet and wait for the dog to sit (then click and feed, of course). The Kikopup channel on YouTube has lots of excellent videos on training loose leash walking and a variety of other things.

Canine Good Citizen

The AKC has a title available for all dogs called CGC (Canine Good Citizen), which just means your dog has good manners and excels at basic obedience. This title is often (but not always) a prerequisite for therapy dog registration, but it does not necessarily mean the dog is fit for therapy work. Whether you decide to get your dog certified as a CGC or not, you should train your dog to be able to succeed at all of the testing criteria. Learn more about CGC here.

Canine Sports

If you have an intact, AKC- or UKC-registered dog, you can compete in the show ring and work toward titles for your dog. If your dog is fixed or mixed, you cannot compete for conformation titles in the show ring, but you can still title your dog in just about any sport. Generally, the purpose of titles is to prove that a dog is worthy of being bred (by showing that it has the correct form, function, and/or temperament for their breed), but it is also useful/helpful if you want to prove the lineage of your dog (e.g., title your dog to prove that their littermates are worthy of breeding). Aside from show titles, there are a variety of field and sport trials you can use to prove your dog and/or their lines:

Field Trials: Pointing, trailing, flushing, and retrieving are all tests in which gundogs can compete.

Herding Trials: Test the natural herding instinct of your dog.

Rally Obedience: Tests obedience and focus of the dog as well as the relationship between dog and handler—you are allowed to talk to, command, and praise your dog in these.

Agility: Your dog must complete an obstacle course as quickly as possible (including jumping through hoops).

Dock Diving: Leap for distance.

Barn Hunt: Search for rats in a barn (the rats are safe from the dogs and systematically desensitized to their presence).

Lure Coursing: Chase a lure and race other dogs.

Flyball: Relay race in which four dogs jump four hurdles and retrieve a ball.

Weight Pull: Self-explanatory.

Schutzhund (IGP): Tracking, obedience, and protection skills. Most people competing in this sport or training personal protection dogs in general use force training, but this is absolutely unnecessary and results in dogs who are extremely unstable. These "trainers" teach these dogs to be "protective" by harnessing the power of unbridled aggression, but that is a huge liability (often specifically mentioned as training that is not covered by liability insurance policies) and not an ethical way to train dogs. Positive reinforcement training is absolutely appropriate for bite work, and it is necessary if you want a stable and predictable dog. Some dogs are even capable of simultaneously being service dogs and personal protection dogs, and these dogs are invariably trained via force-free training.