She writes quite a lot in this book about the many ways that dogs and humans can misunderstand each other. One example often takes place when people are calling their dogs to come to them — the recall is a term often used to describe this.

She says it so well, I will quote a bit:

When we call dogs to return to us, we humans tend to look straight at their faces and move slightly toward them. Why shouldn’t we? That’s the polite way to initiate social interaction with another human, and it is so ingrained in us that we don’t even think about it.

However, in dog language that direct stare and forward movement is a stopping signal, one that means the opposite of what we intend. Your dog is much more likely to come if you turn your body sideways and move backward a bit while you call, “Come!” (page 226)

My Embarrassing Disclosure

I read the book a few weeks ago, and I thought about what a good point it was. (McConnell says she has gotten a lot of mail from people about it, some even saying that it saved their dogs’ lives.) But about an hour ago, my husband went out for a walk with Lola, our Rottweiler. I left my computer to have some fun with LarryDog, in our yard, with some tiny bits of hot dog from our freezer. (I mean tiny: each one is about 1/100 of a hot dog.) I asked him to do various things and tossed the bits of hot dog to him as reward.

In practicing the recall, several times I stared straight at him and took a step toward him. Once I even thought to myself, “This will encourage him.”

Well, duh, what about the quote above? I was already planning to blog about it today. Seems to me that our body language is so deeply ingrained in us that it may take a good bit of conscious attention to make changes. I’ll be working at it, and I suggest you do too! Comments about your experiences of this sort are welcome below.

Your Body Position When You Call Your Dog to Come is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

You can use her methods with a dog of any age, with any established habits. It will take more time in some cases, but it’s really worth the trouble. Poignantly, a couple of days after I did those pages, I was surfing the net, for once not even with dogs on my mind, when I came across a sad blog entry in Australia, by a woman whose dog had been killed by a car a few days before. I can’t even type this without tears coming to my eyes. Our dogs are so precious, they give us so much! Here is something we can do to make their lives safer.

Want a REALLY Reliable Recall? is a post from: Training Dogs Blog