How Do I Train My Dog Not to Run Away

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Ty Brown with dogbehavioronline.com. We're here in Riverton, Utah today talking about how to train a dog. The topic of today's discussion is how to train a dog to not run away. Now there's two facets to teaching your dog not to run away. There's one when you're at home, and there's one when perhaps you're at the park or at another public setting. Now if you're at home and you have a dog that runs away, what you need to do is get a good fence. If you leave your dog outside, that dog needs some sort of boundary so that he knows that he's not allowed to go. A fence that's sturdy, a fence without holes is what you need to do to teach your dog not to run away. Now if you're at a park, however, and you have a dog that you let off leash and he's prone to running away, what you need to do is use something like this. This is called a long line. You can get a twenty foot long line, you can get a thirty foot long line. And what you do is you use it to teach a dog a command that's such so that when you're walking around and he gets a little bit away from you, "Rocko come," and a little tug and he's on his way. When he gets to me, "good boy, good boy." And every time he starts to get a little too far from me, "Rocko come. Good boy," I give him just that little tug on the leash and get him to come back and show him how fun it is. And in doing something like this over and over and over, your dog is soon going to learn, "hey, every time I get a little too far away, they call me back with this little tug. Maybe I won't go too far in the first place." And with lots of repetition, you can eventually get your dog to the point to where he doesn't need the long line. But in these beginning stages, it's critical that you have some means of communication. And a long line is the best tool for accomplishing that. So use these techniques, and you can affectively teach your dog how to not run away."