Passion
08-19-2006, 05:10 AM
Hey everybody :)
I own a beautiful 12 month old Border Collie x German Shepherd puppy named Gracie. We brought her home when she was 8 weeks old from the RSPCA. She is the first puppy that my family and I have ever owned and we had no experience in dog training prior to her. She is very intelligent and she learnt all the basics very quickly (sit, dinner manners, walking on the lead relatively well, her name, she's really well socialised with dogs and humans) but we didn't know how to teach her recall and so she hasn't learnt it yet.
I've read up a lot on this topic, and now I'm fairly sure on how to go about teaching her. The problem is, she's had so much time being allowed to run rampant off the lead that she's got it imprinted in her head that she can do whatever she wants and get away with ignoring us. My mum constantly calls her name to try and get her to come, but she totally shuts her out and ignores her. I know that calling her name repeatedly is the wrong thing to do but my mum refuses to listen to me :/ Anyway. It's a good thing that we haven't been using the command "come" because otherwise she'd have learned to ignore that, she doesn't yet know the meaning of "come" so we can still use that to reteach her.
But we did all the wrong things at first, like calling her and putting her on the lead, calling her to end a game, calling her to take her home from the park, calling her a lot while she just ignores us. So now she will not come at all, not even for food treats (she isn't really food motivated, especially if there's another dog/person around, which I'm assuming is going to make it a lot more difficult) and I was wondering if it was too late? Do I need to go about another way of teaching her rather than food rewards because she's learnt to ignore us? Is it too late? It's really important that we teach her this because every time she sees a dog she will run up to it and want to play, which is ok if the owner has the dog off the lead, but if the dog is on the lead it may be aggressive/shy or the owner just doesn't want to be bothered - and other than that its both frustrating and embarrassing when she goes charging off.
I'd really like to get started on this soon, and any suggestions you may have would be very helpful.
Thanks!
I own a beautiful 12 month old Border Collie x German Shepherd puppy named Gracie. We brought her home when she was 8 weeks old from the RSPCA. She is the first puppy that my family and I have ever owned and we had no experience in dog training prior to her. She is very intelligent and she learnt all the basics very quickly (sit, dinner manners, walking on the lead relatively well, her name, she's really well socialised with dogs and humans) but we didn't know how to teach her recall and so she hasn't learnt it yet.
I've read up a lot on this topic, and now I'm fairly sure on how to go about teaching her. The problem is, she's had so much time being allowed to run rampant off the lead that she's got it imprinted in her head that she can do whatever she wants and get away with ignoring us. My mum constantly calls her name to try and get her to come, but she totally shuts her out and ignores her. I know that calling her name repeatedly is the wrong thing to do but my mum refuses to listen to me :/ Anyway. It's a good thing that we haven't been using the command "come" because otherwise she'd have learned to ignore that, she doesn't yet know the meaning of "come" so we can still use that to reteach her.
But we did all the wrong things at first, like calling her and putting her on the lead, calling her to end a game, calling her to take her home from the park, calling her a lot while she just ignores us. So now she will not come at all, not even for food treats (she isn't really food motivated, especially if there's another dog/person around, which I'm assuming is going to make it a lot more difficult) and I was wondering if it was too late? Do I need to go about another way of teaching her rather than food rewards because she's learnt to ignore us? Is it too late? It's really important that we teach her this because every time she sees a dog she will run up to it and want to play, which is ok if the owner has the dog off the lead, but if the dog is on the lead it may be aggressive/shy or the owner just doesn't want to be bothered - and other than that its both frustrating and embarrassing when she goes charging off.
I'd really like to get started on this soon, and any suggestions you may have would be very helpful.
Thanks!