Who’s the Alpha?

Come--A Natural

The first basic obedience command you will work on is COME. You will start here because it is a natural for a young, friendly puppy to want to play with her new best friend. For the older or rescue dog, it is also a natural instinct for her to want to reach out for love and affection to make her feel safe and secure. Also, this exercise will chain several behaviors together that will make our future training even easier.

Start out by getting down on the floor and playing with your canine on leash. Whether you chose to use a toy during this session is up to you, but at some point in the play, your canine will move toward the end of the leash area and have her attention somewhere else. When that happens, say her name and the command COME once in a low even voice. Stretch the command word out almost into two syllables instead of one. Show her the hand signal and then IMMEDIATELY begin gently reeling her toward you (the hand signal for COME is to rotate your arm at the elbow, sweeping toward your chest with a flat hand). When she arrives in front of you, place her in the sit position facing you.You place her in the sit position by holding the leash close to where it fastens to her collar, holding her head up slightly, placing your other hand around her hips, squeezing gently and pushing down. Once she sits, say “Good girl” and OK in a relaxed but happy tone and give her a one-bite treat.

We have mentioned the use of the release word earlier. The release word OK is a very important word going forward, and will be used as a release or to tell the dog to go ahead and do what she wants to do like take the treat or toy from you. This word becomes even more important for door and gate training.

Let her go back to playing or whatever she wants for a few minutes--until her attention moves away from you, at which point you should repeat the exercise. By the way, the one-bite treat can be a training treat or just a single nugget of her puppy food or a Cheerio. Keep it small, or she will get full and lose interest too quickly. Repeat this process as many times as possible over the next 5 to 15 minutes, or until your puppy shows signs of losing interest or getting sleepy.

As you can see, the procedure is very simple. However, at the mental and psychological level , a lot is going on. You are teaching your puppy to come when called, that’s obvious. But you are also teaching her to always keep part of her attention on you, her Alpha. You are also teaching her to give her full attention to you when you use her name. You are chaining the command COME with the behavior of sitting at the end of her return to you, and you are teaching her the release word OK. You are teaching her your voice and how she should listen. You are also conditioning her to associate the behavior you expect with happy, secure feelings, making it very likely that she will always chose to obey your commands. You are making one really great ‘Scratch n’ Sniff’ mental file!

As a general note, it is important that your puppy enjoy these play-training sessions. So try to end each session on a well performed behavior or a good romp together. We want her to love to learn and perform these behaviors because it makes everyone happy, both her and her Alpha.