Obedience Training Helps a Malibu Boxer Learn to Come When Called

For this Malibu dog training session, we did some obedience training and taught 1 year-old Boxer Rachi the leadership exercise to help him learn to listen to and respect his guardians.

The session turned out to be almost exclusively with the humans as one of the families children had had a birthday party the previous evening. The guardians had taken Rachi to doggy day care during the day and spent the night. As a result, he was exhausted and slept throughout the entire session with exception of when I showed him the leadership exercise.

I shared my petting with a purpose method as well as tips on how to get the kids involved in training Rachi. Since dogs learn through consistency, repetition and good timing, motivating the 5 children to engage in desired actions will dramatically accelerate Rachi’s learning.

I also went over the importance of recognizing and rewarding desired actions through Passive Training. Each time Rachi comes to a human on his own without any influence from the human, they should pet him within 3 seconds and say “come.” They should also do this for sitting and laying down, but since failing to come when called was a big issue for the guardians, reinforcing and rewarding the behavior when offered voluntarily will help fix that dog behavior problem.

To help the guardians better communicate what they do and dont want from Rachi, I decided to show them how to do the Leadership Exercise. This obedience training exercise is something I developed about ten years ago. In addition to helping the humans practice communicating with the dog in non-verbal ways, it helps the dog practice listening and developing more self control. You can watch me teach Rachi this exercise in the free dog training video below.

Because Rachi was so tired, the leadership exercise was very easy in this session. I suspect this may not be the case when he is fully charged up in the future. I told the guardians to message me if they have difficulty practicing this positive dog training exercise later. They may need to send me a video of fully energized Rachi’s behavior if he doesn’t cooperate when they try it later.

Because he was so zonked out for the session, I promised the guardians that I would include links to a number of the topics that we discussed so they can remember how to do then when Im not there.

This link will help the guardians train Rachi to come when called. Reinforcing the come by petting him when he comes on his own will give this command a big boost.

Now some of the dog’s decision to not come when called is due to the lack of rules and structure in place. Training a dog to come when called involves teaching it to come but also involves the dog wanting to obey. Many people fail to include rules and structure into their dog’s day to day life which causes the dog to see itself as your peer or equal. If a dog does respect your authority, its not unusual for a dog to refuse to come when called.

Another problem that Rachi’s guardians wanted to address was his habit of jumping up on people. This link shows a free dog training video that include tips to stop any dog from jumping up on people when its excited.

To stop Rachi from snatching food away from the kids, it will be important for the guardians to teach the dog how to respect boundaries. This link shows how you can train a dog to stay behind an invisible boundary. Having the kids snack on the couch or different parts of the house will give the parents the opportunity to practice and help the dog develop this skill.

Because I didn’t get to work with the dog directly for most of the session, it will be important for the guardians to stay in touch over the next few weeks as they practice the dog behavior and training tips they learned during this in home dog training session in Malibu.

It’s pretty common to need to make minor adjustments in the week or two after one of my in-home visits but in this case probably much more than normal, LOL. Its always better to send a quick text message question than practice an exercise the wrong way and need to undo a mistake later.

To help the guardians remember all of the dog behavior secrets I shared in this Malibu in home dog training session, we shot a roadmap to success video that you can check out below.