Free Tips on How to Train a Dog to Stay in Your Yard

For this Omaha training session, we were called in to help a family with a common dog training lesson: how to train a dog to stay in your yard.

Cooper is a nine-month-old Yellow Lab who lives in Waterloo with Echo, a seven-month-old Australian Shepherd Border Collie mix. The puppy’s owners scheduled a training session with me. They wanted to teach Echo, a high-energy dog, not to pull on the leash. They also wanted to teach her to stay in the yard instead of running through the electric fence with some dog boundary training.

How to Train a High-Energy Dog

The dogs were in their kennel when I arrived for the session and were pretty excited as the guardian let them out.

I recommended that the guardians start adding a pause to letting the dogs out of the kennel. Many people mistake excitement for happiness. But when a dog is over excited, they’re in an unbalanced state of mind. Just like humans, dogs have difficulty concentrating when in an unbalanced state of mind.

I prefer to open the kennel door then stand in the doorway to block them from exciting. I wait for the dogs to settle down before letting them out. By doing this, I am rewarding a calm state of mind and helping the dog learn to be calm on their own so they can leave the kennel.

Delaying gratification this way can help dogs build up self control which in an important skill to have. I recommended that the guardians look for other situations where they can delay granting the dog permission this way. The more your dog restrains itself, the more prepared they are to listen to you and behave how you want in other situations.

I suggested the guardians make rules, enforce them, and set boundaries using nonverbal cues. I suggested creating a routine for petting the dogs and using passive training to reinforce good behaviors. This means giving them rewards when they behave well.

Since Echo is a high-energy dog, her owners should make sure to give her more exercise every day. Having too much energy likely caused Echo to run through the electric fence.

Before starting to work with Echo on respecting the boundary to the yard, I took her outside for a little dog skiing. I have found that rollerblades are one of the best ways to exercise a dog. This allows people to move faster, helping dogs burn off extra energy more effectively than a walk.

Fortunately, one of Echo’s guardians knows how to rollerblade. After I demonstrated how to ski with Echo, they took the leash and did just as well. If the guardian can dedicate 20-30 minutes each morning to the dog skiing exercise, they should see a significant improvement in Echo’s behavior and manageability.

Once we had burned off the excess energy, I spent a few minutes sharing some loose leash training tips. It didn’t take long for Echo to catch on and was walking next to her guardian with no tension on the leash in no time.

After the leash training, we went back inside to teach Echo how to respect boundaries without using an e-collar.

As you can see in the video above, it did not take long for Echo to catch on to this dog boundary training exercise. By breaking it down into multiple steps, it’s easier for puppies to learn.

How to Train a Dog to Stay in Your Yard

Now for the first stage of this dog boundary training technique, you want to train the dog to approach the flag, and reward it for doing so. This seems counterintuitive if your goal is to have a dog stay inside the area marked by these flags. But we need to introduce the reward and relate it to the flag. Echo had a bad experience with the flags before, so I put the treat on the flag to help her feel better about them.

The dog should no longer see the flag as something bad. The guardians can then encourage the dog to approach the flag without giving it a treat. When she touches the flag with her nose, the guardians should click, then give her a treat when she walks back to them (only a foot or so away). The idea is to get the dog to go to the flag, touch it, then move away (back to you) to get her treat.

This allows us to train the dog to move away from the flag. Once the guardians get to this stage, they should start moving the flag progressively farther away each time. I like to practice this step in side the house for a week to really establish this behavior.

One note, I made an error by clicking a second time when Echo went over, touched the flag and then came back to me. When doing this exercise, only click when the dog touches the flag, not when it gets the treat.

Once the dog is consistently approaching the flags and coming back to the human for the reward, it’s time to move this exercise outside. I suggest the guardians change the flag color and move them slightly closer to the existing flags, then take out the old flags altogether.

The next step is to put Echo on a long leash (10-15 feet) and then take her outside to where the flags are. She should go over to the nearest flag and touch it with her nose. The guardians should click when she moves away from the flag and comes back to the human, then give her a treat. The human should stay about 10 feet inside the new flag boundary while doing this.

Humans should practice this step several times a day, with short training sessions lasting 1-2 minutes each. Aim for 10-25 treats per session. Practice this exercise in different areas along the flag boundary. This will help the dog understand that the boundary includes the entire property.

If the guardians practice this enough, the dog will start returning to the guardian automatically. Scientists call this method classical conditioning, similar to Pavlov’s experiment with dogs. It is a great way to teach a dog to react in a certain way when they come across a particular stimulus.

The owners should keep training their dog to walk on a leash towards the flag and then come back to them for 5-9 weeks. The more the humans practice this exercise, the better the dog will respond so a lot of short practice sessions are key to success.

After a few weeks, Echo should be getting better at returning to the humans. When this is the case, it’s a good idea to start increasing the distance the human stands away. Start at 10 feet away, but aim to be about 50 feet behind the boundary.

Now when to practice is an important element when it comes to a dog succeeding. It’s difficult for a dog to focus if there are other animals nearby, like dogs, squirrels, or rabbits playing in the yard next door. So if any distractions are present, the guardians should delay practice until the distractions are not around.

Now this is not to say we don’t want distractions. At first, we avoid distractions when training the dog on the leash. After a week or two of practice outside, we gradually introduce mild distractions. The dog will face distractions and temptations in the future, so we must train them gradually to prepare them for this.

The key is to go slow and gradually increase the intensity of the distractions. We can do this by increasing the distance between it and Echo’s yard or having the distractor moving slowly or staying still. The guardians should enlist the help of neighbor dogs that they can control and direct.

If Echo is having trouble focusing during training, the guardians should move farther away. They should continue practicing until Echo can consistently perform correctly. After that, they can gradually increase the intensity. Then they can gradually increase the intensity.

The final step is to practice again, but without the leash. When transitioning, guardians should choose a quiet time to help their dog succeed without distractions.

We want to prevent the dog from running past the boundary. Removing temptation is a good way to achieve this goal. It is possible that the guardians may need to go back to using the leash if the dog bolts. This is not unusual and is simply an indication that the dog needs more practice at the lower level.

If Echo does run off, it will be important for the guardians to NOT punish her for doing so. They should simply call her back and reward and encourage her when she does. Dogs learn through association and timing is important.

This will make her less likely to do it again, in the future because she will associate coming back with being punished.

ROADMAP to SUCCESS

• Increase Echo’s daily exercise, especially early in the day.
• Practice the leash training technique after roller blading to help Echo practice walking with a loose leash in a heel.
• Pet the dogs with a purpose.
• Only release the dogs from the kennel when completely calm.
• Stop petting the dogs when over excited like when coming home, or getting out of the kennel.
• Use passive training to reward the dogs for desired actions and behaviors.
• Only use the command word when rewarding the dog. Avoid using “good boy”, etc.
• Practice training the dogs to go to the dog bed using the command word “cabo” as demonstrated.
• Introduce rules and boundaries inside the house and enforce them consistently.
• Have friends and family members pretend to visit (texting ahead of time) so the humans can practice claiming the door with the dogs behind an invisible boundary.
• Practice the come exercise with Echo inside the house using the cupped hand technique.
• Gradually increase the distance as the dog gets better at this skill
• Disagree or reward the dog within 3 seconds to help them understand why you are giving it attention.
• Provide a high-energy dog with plenty of toys and things to do in the yard. Making the yard more appealing will decrease the dog’s desire to explore.
• Practice the flag exercise as detailed in the above video and text. Go at her pace and practice, practice, practice.