Rob Barlow

Gundogs & E-Collars - Part II

by Rob Barlow

Last issue we talked briefly about introducing the electronic collar to your young dog. This issue we take that topic a little further and review techniques on how to condition your dog to sit, how to enforce the sit command, and how to teach the recall or come in command.

CONDITIONING YOUR DOG TO SIT
This exercise will be used along with the heel exercise. You will need to use your lead and choke collar for this as well as the electronic trainer.

To begin the exercise you will need to start your dog out at heel. As you are walking, stop and give the command to sit, while pulling up on the lead. Your dog should respond accordingly. Do this a couple of times, “walk, stop, and say hup, pull up on the lead”. After you have done this, you can start to stimulate your dog with this command. Do so by walking the dog at heel, stop give the command to sit, pull up on the lead and stimulate. As soon as the dog responds, stop stimulation immediately. It shouldn’t take too many times of repeating this procedure to condition your dog to sit. The one thing you should notice is that every time you stop walking your dog will stop and sit, probably without a command. This is exactly what we’re looking for.

As with the heel command you can intermittently use stimulation at this point. Make sure that your dog understands your command before doing so. Once you have your dog sitting quickly to your command with this method, you can start teaching your dog to sit on command without you having to stop walking. To do this, you simply give the sit command and than stimulate, but don’t stop walking. If your dog sits and doesn’t follow you, you should be impressed, because that shouldn’t happen. More than likely what will happen is the dog will continue to follow you. Don’t panic, this is usually what happens. Why? Because we didn’t show the dog what we wanted. This time walk along, give the sit command, and pull up on the lead vigorously and stimulate. You should stop walking at this point, also. Once your dog is sitting, take a couple of steps away from him and let him know that he did what you wanted. Now step back and start again. You may have to repeat this a few times in order for your dog to understand your command. Don’t get frustrated at this point. If you stop and think about what
happened in our previous lesson. In the heel exercise, we taught the dog to move with us at all times. Now we are telling him to stop moving with us. All that is happening is your dog is becoming confused. He’s trying to do what you taught him, but now you’ve changed the rules. Some dogs will catch on fast and some won’t.

Once you have your dog sitting on command, regardless of whether you’re
moving or not, you can drop your lead and let it drag on the ground. Work on putting these two exercises together. We will call this exercise the “heel, sit” exercise.

At this point, you are not walking very far from your dog; you take a few steps away and then walk back and start again. All we’ve been doing is conditioning him to the heel command and the sit command, nothing more. Now you might think that this exercise is not really worth doing, but if you want to have your dog sit when told regardless of what is going on around him, then I suggest you stick with me a little bit longer and see were this goes.

When your dog is able to sit while you continue to walk on, you can then start intermittently giving stimulation with this command. This means you can give the sit command, then stimulate, then the next time give sit command with no stimulation. But be ready to repeat the sit command and stimulate if you don’t get the response that you want. You should work your way to be giving stimulation only with every third or fourth command.

At this time, I introduce the whistle command to sit (I use a single peep for this). This is fairly simple to introduce. Just go back to the beginning of this exercise to start this. When you give the verbal command to sit follow it with the whistle command and then stimulation. Do this two or three times and then give the whistle command then the verbal, after a couple of times of this you should be able to use the whistle command only. From this point on you can use the whistle command as well as the verbal command. Once you have this part of the sit command accomplished you can move on to the next step.

ENFORCING THE SIT COMMAND
When you have your dog sitting on command and you are able to continue walking. You need to take a few steps and turn to face your dog. Your dog should stay where he’s at and look at you. If he will do this, then you want to slowly walk around him while quietly telling him to sit. If he gets up and moves give the sit command and stimulate. Stop stimulation when he sits down. Once you can circle the dog going in both directions, you can move to the next step. As your standing in front of your dog, gently pull on the lead. Your dog should remain sitting and probably even be pulling back a little. If he should get up and come into you, you need to give the sit command and stimulate and release as soon as he responds. This lesson shouldn’t take to long, I have had dogs literally let me drag them around in the sitting position. If your dog will remain sitting while you are pulling on the lead your ready to move on to the next lesson.

THE RECALL OR COME IN COMMAND
For this command you can use any word you want to use such as come, here, or whatever. Just keep it brief. I’ll be using the word “here”, for no reason, except that it is what I’m comfortable with.

To start this exercise you will need to have your dog sitting down in front of you. Just like you taught your dog in the sit exercise you also need to keep your leash in your hand.

Now let’s start this exercise. Once you have the dog sitting in front of you, with lead in your hand, gently pull on the lead and give the “here” command. Your dog will probably pull back against the lead. If he does, that’s fine. He’s just showing you he has learned his sit command very well. This time when you give the “here” command pull hard enough on the lead to pull your dog to you. When your dog gets right in front of you tell him to sit. You might have to pull up on the lead when telling him to sit. Remember, we are teaching your dog something new. If he seems to be a little confused, that’s all right. We’ll just show him how to do it right. You’ll also notice that nothing was said about giving any stimulation to your dog at this point. Remember, we need to show your dog what you want him to do first.

You may have to repeat this part of this exercise several times before your dog is coming in to you with just the “here” command and a gentle pull of the lead. You should always have him sit in front of you when he comes in at this time. Once your dog is doing this part of the exercise and doing it well, you can start to add stimulation with your command.

To do this, you need to give the “here” command and pull on the lead and stimulate at the same time, releasing when your dog responds. Tell the dog to sit when he gets right in front of you.

You will soon be able to give the “here” command and stimulate. Once you are this far along with this exercise you can start intermittently stimulating your dog. Eventually, your goal is to give stimulation on every third or fourth command.

You have just conditioned your dog to respond to the “here” command.
Although this has been only from a short distance away (five to six feet), your dog will have the basic conditioning he needs to start increasing the distance.

Now let’s talk about one of the problems you’re going to run into with this exercise. You have been conditioning your dog to three basic commands, heel, sit, and here. The heel command should have gone smoothly, for this is one of the easiest commands to teach. The second command was to sit. You spent some time with this command conditioning your dog to sit, even though you are still moving. Then you taught your dog to come in when called. This is where the problem is going to start. If you did your sit command thoroughly, your dog should have resisted you when you told him to come in. This is what you
should expect from your dog at this point. Then you had to put some pressure on your dog pulling him sharply to you. You may have had to do this several times. Here again, you have just confused your dog. You conditioned him to sit; now you want him to move. The problem you’re going to experience is that the dog will no longer stay sitting. The reason for this is all the pressure you had to give your dog to get him to come in. Although this didn’t seem like much pressure to you, if you are having this problem, the dog is telling you that it was.

This is how we’re going to solve this problem. Your collar should have continuous and momentary modes. One other thing that I do with this type of collar is to go up to the next level of intensity. For instance, if I have been using a level two intensity mode, I will jump up to a level three.

To start this, have your dog sitting in front of you. Give the “here”
command and stimulate using momentary stimulation. Tell your dog to sit and back away from him. This time just pull on the lead gently. If your dog gets up give the sit command and stimulate with continuous stimulation, release when the dog responds. All we are doing here is reinforcing the sit command. Repeat this process several times to condition your dog to the sit command and still have him conditioned to the “here” command.

Once you have your dog responding to both the sit and “here” commands, you can reverse how you are giving the stimulation. With your dog sitting, give the “here” command, pull on the lead and stimulate with continuous stimulation, again releasing when the dog responds. By doing this, you are creating pressure on the come in. This will make the dog want to come in without being told to. When your dog gets up without being given a command, you just give the sit command and stimulate with momentary stimulation. You may have to go back and repeat this process several times. Don’t be in a hurry with this; be very thorough. By doing all of this, you have conditioned your dog to the sit command and the “here” command in a very thorough and complete process.

When you have your dog conditioned to the “here” command and have followed up by reinforcing the sit command, you can start to lengthen the distance between you and your dog. To do this, you need to leave the lead and choke collar on your dog.

Start by giving the “here” command, pull on the lead and stimulate with
continuous stimulation releasing when the dog responds. This will show the dog what we want from him. Now drop the lead and back away four or five steps. Give the “here” command and stimulate. Once the dog starts moving towards you release stimulation. It is very important that you stop stimulating the instant that your dog moves toward you. The reason for this is we want the dog to think he shut off the stimulation by obeying your command. You should remember to have your dog sit when he reaches you.

Once you have this exercise completed you can continue to move further away from your dog. Do this in short increments. Once you have been able to move thirty to forty feet from your dog and have him coming in well, you will have completed this task.

If you are having a problem keeping the dog staying in the sit position as you increase the distance from your dog, you can use the same method described earlier about reinforcing the sit command.

This would be a good time to introduce the whistle command for “here”. Start out by giving the verbal command here followed by the whistle command. Repeat three or four times and then reverse the order three or four times, and then go to the whistle only. Make sure your “here” whistle command is distinctly different then your sit command whistle. I use three quick peeps for the “here” command. (peep, peep, peep). You should run your dog through the entire “here” command exercise again, using just the whistle command for “here”. This is an important step! You will be using the “here” command whistle once you are out in the field.

As you go through this exercise, don’t forget that you can stop at any time and “happy your dog up” by throwing him a few retrieves with a training dummy.

These basic commands are the foundation of having a reliable gundog or trial dog. It’s up to you to condition your dog thoroughly to these commands. The effort that you put into this will dictate the quality of your dog. You get what you put into it!

When you properly condition your dog with avoidance training you and your dog become a team; your dog enjoys working with and for you. When doing your yard work, take your dog to the place or places that you will be doing your fieldwork. By doing so, your dog will become accustomed to obeying your commands in new areas. This should be enough work to last you for a while. The next article will take these basics and put them to work in the field.