May 14th, 2020 by Amy Varley

Have you ever had dog envy – where you’ve been in the local park and seen someone controlling their off-lead dogs, with perfect recall and obedience and wondered how you can possibly get your tearaway dog to listen to you? Here are our top tips to get your pooch to pay you more attention and most importantly, listen to you!

Engagement

Engagement is basically the bond you have with your dog – how much attention they pay you. For better obedience and recall, you first need to increase the engagement with your pooch, so they think you are the best and most rewarding thing in the world! Increasing engagement can be done through play and food. Make your dog work for their food and hand feed their meals – more on that later. Playing games with your dog such as tug, and teaching them new tricks, spending time with them and engaging with them, should help strengthen your bond and make them listen to you more.

Teach your dog

This might sound obvious, but your dog doesn’t actually understand commands until you have shown them what you mean and expect from them. Take ‘sit’ as an example. This is often the first thing we teach our pooches, but just because they will sit for you in the house for a treat, doesn’t always mean they will sit in the local park when the temptation of running around with their furry friends is too much! Teaching your dog to do anything should always be taught with the ‘Three D’s.’ These are distance, duration and distraction. Still using ‘sit’ as an example, first teach your dog to sit, then slowly increase the distance between you and your dog when you ask them to sit. Once they’ve understood this, slowly increase the duration of their sit (you might have to teach them ‘wait’ for this too), and finally when your dog has a perfect sit for 5 minutes with you stood at the other end of the garden, add in some distractions! This will teach your dog that they have to listen no matter what is going on around them.

Use your ‘dog voice’

While dogs don’t exactly understand human language, they do read our emotions and can understand our tone. Your tone of voice is very important when communicating with your dog, the high pitched, soft voice is what you should use to praise your dog and attract their attention, whereas using a deeper, stern voice should be used to let them know they’ve done something wrong or need to stop what they are doing! Even if you have taught your dog particular commands, your dog will often listen to your tone of voice before thinking about what the command means! Dogs understand short sharp sounds better than elongated words, so asking your pooch to “sit!” As opposed to “siiiiiittttt” will be much more effective!

Hand feed them

Ok – this one might sound strange, but ditch your dog’s bowl and feed them every scrap of kibble by hand. Turn their mealtime into a game! This increases your dog’s engagement with you because they are having to work for their food, playing and bonding with you, and learning that all food comes directly from you. A simple meal time game you can play, is to firstly have your dog sat in front of you, and throw a piece of kibble across the room. When your dog goes to eat it, entice them back to you with another piece and say ‘come’! Repeat this but throwing the kibble in different directions each time so your dog has to think about where they are going to get their next snack. This will not only help with recall training, but will keep their brain working and tire them out quickly. You should find they will probably want to have a nap after feeding them a meal like this!

Patience

Patience is key with dogs. They don’t always get everything right the first time, and they can get distracted very easily, it’s almost like having a toddler that never really grows up! If we get frustrated with our pups, this in turn makes them frustrated, and that means we don’t end up getting anywhere! Dogs are very in tune with our emotions – when we get frustrated, they feel like we are about to lose the plot – making them want to leave us to it and go do their own thing! Instead of getting angry with your dog if they aren’t obeying you, you should become more determined, and firm with them. Or even leave what you are doing, ending any training you’re doing until you are calmer and then try again.

Practice

Repeat, repeat, repeat! Dogs are creatures of habit, and will learn to listen to you when they have learnt over and over that this is what they should be doing! This is why it’s important to have good engagement with your dog, once your dog learns that distractions are not for them to engage with, and their owner is the best thing since sliced bread, then you will be the centre of their world and you will always be listened to! This is never going to happen overnight though, it’s hard work, and as every dog is different, every dog will take a different amount of time to learn how to behave how you want them to. Make sure training sessions are short to keep your dog interested, with high value treats! Keep at it – you will get there!