by Chris Hester

Created on: November 28, 2008   Last Updated: November 12, 2010

If you have ever owned a dog, you know how annoying it can be to call him and they just look at you and go right back to doing what they want. These are the times you feel like everything from the sky to the ground is more important to your dog then you are. This is not the case!

Dogs don't automatically know to come when being called. Some dogs seem like they naturally know, but you have subconsciously taught your dog to come. Teaching a dog to come may seem hard to some, but it's really not. All you need in order to teach this command is a few simple tools, the items needed to teach a dog to come depends on which one of the several methods you choose to use.

We are going to learn to teach our dogs to come using the clicker. All that is needed to teach the come command with a clicker is some treats and the clicker, of course. Dogs are more motivated when human food is the treat so I choose to use cut up hot dogs.

Time to start training! Let's take a hand full of hot dogs in our hand, make sure your hand is in a loosely closed fist. Put your hand in front of your dog's nose and call their name followed by the word come. In our demonstration the dogs name will be Spike. Again let's put the hot dogs in front of the dog's nose, Spike come. Now slowly take a few steps backwards while feeding a couple pieces of hot dogs into Spike's mouth, every time you give a treat give a click with it. Now stop and praise him verbally and by petting him.

The next step is to call Spike without him seeing the treats. Once he gets to you, take a few treats, give him a click, and reward him. After doing this several times we will switch to variable reward. This means you no longer reward him each time he comes, as time progresses use the reward less and less until they're no longer needed. A few other tips that can be helpful are: Don't use your dog's name with any other command besides come, never raise your voice when calling them, and don't call them for baths or other things that are not enjoyable for the dog.

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