[krisgil88]

I'm having a big problem teaching my 5 month old puppy to come when we call him and also to stay when asked. If I call him to come, he doesn't respond. I've tried treats, and special toys but neither work.
If someone knocks at the door, he will not sit and stay but rather runs to the open door and jumps on whoever is coming through the door. I've had success with having him sit by the door when we practice with our immediate family members though.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Hambonez]

You train them both kind of the same way. With come, you have him about a step away from you, and say come and offer a treat and he should take that step and get the reward. You gradually move further away, and reward reward reward when he comes. Our trainer also has us do an exercise where you have the dog near you, throw a treat, when he runs to get it call him back with "come!" and when he comes back throw another treat. It's about associating coming to you with the word come with good things happening.

Stay is the opposite. Get into a sit or down, say stay, take a step back. If the dog starts to get up, he gets a no reward marker ("Oops!") and is asked to sit or down again if he got up. If taking a step back is too much, then you just sort of lean back, and reward when he doesn't move. Eventually you move up to taking a step back and rewarding that, taking a few steps, etc... Then you have to train "stay" with you facing the other direction, and going out of sight, and turning around, or stepping sideways, all sorts of odd positioning on your part that could happen when you ask for a stay. Sometimes I can get to the other side of the room with Hamilton. A lot of the time he wants to just follow me, velcro dog that he is. Another one that our trainer uses for short term stays is "wait" - which is similar to stay except it's meant for just a moment. We do "wait" before we step outside - the reward for that one is getting to go out the door!

 

[hanksimon]

I agree with the method.... however, be patient with the little baby, b/c he is probably teething, losing his baby teeth, and his gums are sore while his adult teeth come in, so he's a little distracted.

Keep training, and in about a month, you'll see some improvement....

 

[krisgil88]

Thanks for the responses, Hambonez and hanksimon. I'm going to start this tomorrow.