Alex Bornemann
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I’m just gonna copy paste some exercises from my e-book “Learn to Speak Puppy”. Hope the formatting is not too bad haha
Circle Recalls
This recall game is very easy and fun and serves as a good way to introduce yourself and the puppy to recalls. It is great for a family setting or a group of friends but requires at a minimum 2 people. If your puppy seems to have an almost stronger bond with others than with you and you want to focus his attention more onto you, we do not recommend you do this with a group of friends or strangers but either skip it or do it only with those you wish to have a strong bond with your dog. If that’s the case then contact us and we will guide you through how you can get your dog to focus more on you.
Sit in a circle, feet spread out and touching the persons feet next to you if you’re more than 2 people. Otherwise sit across from each other about 2 meters apart from each other. Every person will have some treats in their hand or behind their back. Place your puppy in the middle between you and then one person brings attention to himself by saying the puppies name and clapping, whistling or otherwise enticing him to come to you. As he is approaching mark “good boy/girl” or click and follow up with a reward when he is with you. Then it’s the other persons turn to do the same. If it is two people only, switch off constantly. If you’re in a group switch off without creating a pattern. Once your dog is coming to you every time and you feel comfortable with the mechanics you can add the “here/come” cue to call him over to you. Make sure you say it only once. The command is “here” not “here, here, here”
Frequency of game: Every day for the first 3 days of training then fade out with other games
Repetitions: about 3-5 minutes depending on size of group and attention span of puppy
Progression: You can slowly increase the distance between people as your puppy progresses
Reward: Basic food reward and low energy petting
Training equipment: Off – leash in secure environment————–
Hide-and-Seek
Hide-and-seek games are especially helpful in teaching your puppy to stay close and keep track of you. Take your puppy to an unfamiliar area where he may safely be allowed off leash, e.g. a friend’s fenced yard, a fenced playground, an abandoned tennis court. Let the puppy explore and get distracted then duck behind a tree or into the shadows. Don’t worry if your pup gets a bit anxious, if it helps whistle, clap your hands or make any other type of noise to catch his attention.
When your puppy comes and finds you throw the party of a lifetime, give him lots of hugs caress him hug him, run with him or whatever else comes natural and of course it does not help to give him a good amount of high value treats.
Repeat the same process after a short time, though you will notice that after the third or fourth time your puppy will likely have caught on and will not lose sight of you so easily. If your puppy is not at all interested in finding you, you have some serious bonding issues which need to be addressed. Luckily we go over some bonding exercises down the line.
If you cannot go out of your house due to a global pandemic or anything similar (what else could there really be?), then of course you can also do this at your own back yard, and you can also do this in your home hiding behind doorways, behind the sofa, underneath a table or even in the closet. Start easy and increase difficulty.Frequency of game: At least every other day until 6 months then as you see fit
Repetitions: 3-4 times
Progression: Slowly increase the difficulty of your hiding spot, be creative, go up a tree, inside a shack. start
giving cues like whistling and as your puppy gets better use these sparingly.
After some time you can even teach your family members names like this: “Go find Joe”
Reward: Imagine you have been lost for days in the wild and this is a rescue dog that has saved your life.
That’s how high your energy level should be when found. High value food rewards help as well.
Training equipment: Off – leash if puppy is under 6 months and in secure environment. 30’ leash otherwise———–
Chase me:
Time to work on your physical condition as well, this may bring back some memories from gym class in high school 🙂 For your puppy it will help him to set the foundation for recalls form a distance, and for getting fast and high energy responses. Show the puppy a treat or a toy if he is already highly toy motivated while your training buddy restrains your puppy. Turn your back on the puppy and start running away without turning back to the puppy. When you are about 5 meters away turn around to face the puppy, this will be the cue for your friend to let go of the puppy, who will now start flying towards you. Keep running but do let him catch up, your’e not trying to set a World Record here. As the puppy is catching up to you, you can face him, as he gets closer stop and bend down and open your arms to receive the puppy. Throw a big party as he arrives towards you and give him a treat.
The first couple of times that you do this exercise, do not use a verbal command like “here or come”. Once you are sure your puppy is coming to you and you feel comfortable with the exercise, you can say “here or come” as soon as you pass the 5 meter mark and turn to face your puppy. Then mark “good boy” before he even gets to you and follow up with a treat.Frequency of game: At least every other day until 6 months then as you see fit (alternating days with hide & seek)
Repetitions: 3-4 times
Progression: Add a verbal cue once you’re confident that your puppy is running to you and you are
comfortable with the mechanics. With time you can increase the distance until your partner lets
go of the dog. At a later point you can run, and then stop to call the dog without being in motion.
Progress slow, do not rush training.
Reward: Lots of sincere praise paired with medium to high food reward.
Training equipment: Off – leash in a secure environment————-
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Hey Joseph,
as Daria mentions, using a long lead to teach fetch or tug of war is pretty muc always necessary. What you want to keep in mind is that you have to keep control of the toy and of the game, but also you have to be the most interesting part of the game. At first your dog may not be very interested in the toy or may not want to play with you, use jerky motions, changing speed with a toy on a rope for example. Let the dog win but show him that playing with you is going to be so much more fun than taking the toy away and chewing on it.
It is also a good idea to have food as a trade off when you are done playing, that way you get to keep the toy but he does not see it as a loss.
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Hi Dave.
Not sure I can give you 100% sound advice because of two reasons:
1. I’ve been slacking a bit on the training.
2. I’m not a full time dog trainer yet.
Nevertheless, we have 6 dogs (all except one rescues with their own past) and I’ve had as many as 13 dogs at home a few months ago (fostering some rescues, which gradually became less and less until I was back to our own 6).
First of all the age is important. My wife and I had originally 1 dog each, before we met each other, then a few months later came number 3 and 4. They were all close to 1 year old by then. We left our house in Cabo San Lucas and were doing a road-trip from Baja all the way up to Montana for several months. So getting them enough exercise was no problem. Exercising certain leadership skills was a bit more tough, because there was no home to set rules into except for when we stayed at hotels. One of the new dogs (Dalmatian-GSD mix) had huge anxiety issues and fear aggression, as he was a rescue who had been abandoned and had some sort of personality disorder too. He started getting into fights with my Malinois. Most Trainers in the US told me I’d have to give him prozac for him to be able to focus. I did not get the answers I was looking for (my main motivation to become a dog trainer myself). There we re-introduced the military folding crate which we carried with us to give him some alone time and re-introduce leash walking even if we were in complete wilderness, where they could roam free. To keep both those high energy dogs occupied, I made fetch their job from the beginning. They would work together, create bonds and get the extra energy out they needed.
An organized game of fetch, including commands mostly sit, down, wait and of course fetch and out. This would always get the extra energy out of them.
Now they are around 5 years old and the Mal and the GSD mix keep needing a lot more exercise than the others. The new 2 are fully mixed breed dogs. One with a bit of terrier in him and still a puppy at 5 months old, with an according need for training and energy outlet. He is involved in the fetch game with the Mal and the GSD.
We know the needs of each dog well and go into it accordingly for them. Our Pitbull-Rottie Mix Lola, has low exercise requirements and has a solid character so the amount of training I do with her is limited and she gets some perks over the others like being allowed to sleep overnight in the car, which she loves 🙂
The GSD and the Mal, both have the highest energy requirements and the most need for obedience and good leadership. We take them out with us often to run around with us or play fetch, or to walk through town and doing obedience exercises downtown with distractions. Apart from that at home they get several intensive spurs of playing frisbee, fetch or tug. I find it more efficient to do let’s say 15 minutes intensive every 90-120 minutes when at home than just two or three long sessions. (Unlike with you, it’s not hot where we live now). And at least once a week we do a trip on which we take them with us and perhaps some of the other dogs. Here we often go to a river where they can play fetch in the water – water wears them out nicely. Often we try to find new places as the new smells and experiences wear them out more.
The puppy I’ve been taking with me to many places in order to work, socialize and challenge him with new situations. But we always take one or two dogs with us to most places we go and include the training in small interactions.
The other two dogs do often go out with us, and usually we take one of them with us to many social gatherings, who is the one most balanced and best behaved with other dogs and humans. He as well needs little training because I am fully satisfied with him and his balance, though the recall could be improved when his pray drive goes on and he’s off chasing other animals. With him we often do a bit of freestyle tricks but not too much obedience.
With him we let him roam around off leash about once a week which is where he goes off hunting and running around with us – but we can do that pretty much in our back yard as we live adjacent to a little forrest and away from cars.
Other training sessions we do as needed. For example 4 of them started rushing out to chase some animals that get active at night behind our house, so now we started training with them to stay when we open the door and are introducing for them to come out one by one as their name is called.
When I train with multiple of them, often I leave some in down position or I crate them if it is something too exciting or bite work that I’m doing with them.
Doing nose work also wears our dogs out greatly
We live in Panama, there’s no dog sports here. But if it was offered I’d join one for the high energy dogs.
To sum it up:
We adjust the training and exercise needs to each dog.
We do several short sessions a day and include a lot of training into our daily routine.
We troubleshoot if some unwanted behavior comes up
We take the dogs with us in pairs of two to as many places as possible (adapted to the requirements and character of each dog)
We have an additional excursion at least once a week where we take as many dogs as possible and often try to combine it with a place for them to swim.
We use fetch with several short intense sessions a day and many times include obedience here.
I used to also go running or biking frequently and take the two high energy dogs with me, but I have to retake that habit.
As I said before, I’m still tweaking with the training and lately I have slacked a bit having had to focus on the rescue dogs I was fostering and our first new-born.
Still I hope this helps at least a bit. Interested in seeing if anybody else shares some experience that I can learn from as well. I must add, that I work from home so it is easy for me to get out with them frequently and the climate here at altitude allows me to take my dogs with me and leave them in the car with cracked windows.
Here you can see two ways we include working their mind and their body:
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