Always Enforce Your Commands

There are a few key rules I give to people just starting dog training. One of them is: never give a command you cannot enforce.

The commands I give are not optional. I say the word and the dog does it. Every time. Whether they want to or not. The one caveat here is that the dog knows the command. Teaching commands involves a little different process, but once a dog knows a command, that's the rule.

The primary reason I hold fast to this rule is so the dog never has to internally question whether they need to obey or not. We practice every command hundreds and thousands of times and they have to obey every single one of them. This creates a very strong pattern in the dog to always obey because they have to anyway.

It's easy to find situations in our daily life where it isn't a big deal whether they obey or not. You said sit and they laid down instead. Big deal? Not really to us. But we did just teach the dog sit has some options. If you do that with recall, you can run into a much more serious problem. You might need to call your dog back from a danger that they are very interested in. Coyotes, snakes, and moose are all pretty interesting to a dog. I don't want my dog getting anywhere close to any of them, so their recall needs to be bulletproof.

This is also the reason I tell dog owners to give commands once and only once. Every single person struggles with this rule including me. Again, assuming your dog understands the command, when you repeat it, you are teaching it that it is optional. We do not want that. Give the command. Give them a second to make the right decision and then enforce the command. Very challenging for us. Very important for the dog.

Enforcing commands can come in a variety of ways. Leash pressure, e-collar, and walking up and grabbing their collar are all great methods. I personally recommend leaving the prong collar on in the house (never when you are not there) with a leash attached. If you have a tiny dog, get a very thin and light leash that isn't a burden for them to drag around. Letting them drag a leash always gives you the most control over your dog and enforcing everything becomes incredibly easy.

Some dogs do become "collar smart" when you do this. They obey when the leash is on them. Not so much when it isn't. This is one of the reasons I really like e collars. It's very easy to leave on all the time and maintain control. The dog needs to understand what the e collar pressure means and I have lots of videos on my YouTube page teaching that.

I use the e collar and the leash in the house method with all the dogs I board and train. Very quickly dogs learn they can't get away with anything around me and they become very obedient very quickly.

One quick side point. If I know I can't enforce a command, I do not give it. If a dog is free in a huge backyard and I don't have an e collar or some other way to force the recall, I don't use my recall word, "Here!" I may use "come" or some other variation and make it exciting to get close to me, but I do not use recall unless I can enforce. This keeps that word special and very important to the dog. This is super important in the learning stages before the dog have a proofed recall.

Most people run into problems with their dogs when they give too much freedom. It's natural and extremely common, so I don't mean to shame anyone for it. I did it with my dogs and I paid the price for it too. See my post on crate training for that story. Over the years of training dogs I've learned that a huge key is always enforce your commands.

It will make your life so much easier. I promise.