How to Teach Your Labrador to Come When Called

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village, and today we’re going to talk about training dogs. Now this Labrador retriever needs to learn how to come. Coming when called is something that every dog owner wants their dog to do, and it’s one of the things that dogs tend to not do so well. Reason being we set our dogs up to fail: we often ask them to come when they’re not paying attention, and so they learn that the word come means to run away faster. Well at Taurus Training we actually use a completely different word, because most dogs have learned to ignore the word come. We use the word here, it doesn’t matter. Keep in mind that the best time to teach your dog to come is when he or she is a little bitty puppy or during that kind of honeymoon period, the first two or three weeks that you have your dog. If you constantly positively reinforce your dog for coming to you in the house, outside in the yard wherever, then it becomes a really positive experience. Remember to never ever, no matter how angry you are with your dog for running down the street after the chickens, don’t yell at them when they come, because they associate that punishment with the act of coming to you, not with the naughtiness of running out the door. So this Labrador retriever is very intent on the play yard in the background. So I’m going to have to make some noise, get her excited to want to come to me. Here, good girl, oh, now she ran away past, and I’m glad she did because that brings up an important point. We want our dogs to come front. Labradors, if they’re hunting dogs, will be taught to actually come to the left side and face front to get ready for the next shot. It doesn’t matter what kind of dog you have, whether it’s a Labrador or otherwise, you want them to come directly to you, not come to you and make an evasive maneuver, Lula, here. So I’ll teach her to come directly to me. You can also teach them to come and sit front. That’s very nice. I’m going to use a body block here because she’s distracted by the squirrel, and use some body language, good, to get her to focus back on me, good, sit, I’m going to have her in a sit, because there are all these distractions around. Here, good, so using the food there more as a lure to set her up to succeed, and then I can make that lure and reward random, and finally drop the lure altogether. When it comes to Labradors by the way even though they’re walking stomachs and they’re very easy to train with food, don’t hesitate to train with a stick, or a bumper or a ball. "