Teaching COME

Teaching a Puppy COME by the Fear of Being Too Far From You Method

Young puppies want to be with you and become worried when all of a sudden they find they are further from you than they feel comfortable with. Then they run to you. While they are coming to you give them your word for their action. COME or HERE or whatever you choose.

You don’t need treats as puppy’s relief at being safely back by your side is a powerful reward and motivator. Praise, pets, cuddles will help reinforce the action. You can treat if you want.

You can up the practice by hiding behind bushes and corners. Make it a game of hide and seek, you hide. If you are lucky enough to have off leash areas that are safe for a pup then visiting them will help. It must be just you and pup, no other dogs and no other people. And I will repeat, it must be safe.

Once puppy gets comfortable being further from you and becomes interested in exploring on his own this won’t work. This might be around 16 weeks old, give or take. This is popular in the UK for teaching COME as you can see at this site: Puppy off lead

This is called contiguity training on natural behaviours. You wait till puppy does what you want and assign a word. You do exactly this when you potty train. My puppies were solid on COME after two weeks, making them 9 and 10 weeks old. It’s the first command they learned.

I'd love to know how this works for you. Please leave me a note. It worked impressively for me.

Submitted by SNOWSHOE

I didn't know about this method but I did just like it with Latte. In an area where there is no distractions, I hide from her and when she is running towards me I say ''Here'' and give her a treat. When there is distractions, she isn't solid on come yet. We are working. The thing you say about treats is so true. When I say ''here'' (and when she is solid on it) She runs towards me and doesn't wait for the treats all the time. Just praise is enough. This is quite good. And I hope she'll be solid soon.

Great post!

Maybe you can help me with the opposite problem. Archie is so velcroed to me that getting him to sit/stay while I move away is not going well at all. Would love to get him his CGC but I know he'd pitch a fit when I walked out of sight.