What e-collar do you use?

[MichiH]

Yes. You will want to heavily, heavily, reinforce recall now! She needs to know what it means and come a majority of the time. Keep the long line on and use it for physical pressure alongside the stim. If you just started with no long line and stimmed her, she would likely run away and not towards you, which would be scary!

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Yes, we do recall everyday inside and outside on long line. She really does respond well even when sniffing. Lately, her age of course, shes been up and down with commands.

Yikes, yes, don’t want her to run off. I was thinking about that today too, how she may run off and so thank you posting this info!

A friend of mine was shocked she was not off leash at 4 months… I said umm she is 4 months and not even close to off leash for a long time.

 

[DracoDobie]

Yes, we do recall everyday inside and outside on long line. She really does respond well even when sniffing. Lately, her age of course, shes been up and down with commands.

Yikes, yes, don’t want her to run off. I was thinking about that today too, how she may run off and so thank you posting this info!

A friend of mine was shocked she was not off leash at 4 months… I said umm she is 4 months and not even close to off leash for a long time.

Draco's off leash skills have always been impeccable, don't know why tbf.

But I would do what @Rits said too, use the leash for pressure, and to make sure she doesn't bolt and ALWAYS comes back to you.

You can use a harness if you are afraid of her hurting her neck maybe?
I taught Draco that the stim/vibration meant "come here for a treat" and every time he came back to me, I gave him a treat. Start with the lowest level possible, try and see which one she feels, as it widely depends on each dog, and work from there;
now we only use the vibration, and the stim is solely for extremely dangerous situations, specially if I see a dog he has had a problem with in the past, that's the ONLY time his recall can fail, as he'll try and start a fight.

She's super young, I'm sure you'll be able to teach her in no time! Training a solid recall will really really help you both, and her live her best off leash life.

Do keep us updated please!.

 

[MichiH]

Draco's off leash skills have always been impeccable, don't know why tbf.

But I would do what @Rits said too, use the leash for pressure, and to make sure she doesn't bolt and ALWAYS comes back to you.

You can use a harness if you are afraid of her hurting her neck maybe?
I taught Draco that the stim/vibration meant "come here for a treat" and every time he came back to me, I gave him a treat. Start with the lowest level possible, try and see which one she feels, as it widely depends on each dog, and work from there;
now we only use the vibration, and the stim is solely for extremely dangerous situations, specially if I see a dog he has had a problem with in the past, that's the ONLY time his recall can fail, as he'll try and start a fight.

She's super young, I'm sure you'll be able to teach her in no time! Training a solid recall will really really help you both, and her live her best off leash life.

Do keep us updated please!.

Thank you!

Good idea about the harness. I want her get her zoomies out on her long line, but she listens sometimes about hitting the end of it.

Our yard is enough, but not enough for her to get going and keep going.

E collar just arrived and I’m going to read up on it now.

Again thank you!!!

 

[Ravenbird]

Yikes, yes, don’t want her to run off.

I have never seen a dog run the opposite way. It's a mystery to me, but they come to you and stick like glue. I've only trained my one dog on an e-collar, but since I was going to my friends behavior group classes for Asha on and off for years I saw her teaching clients how to use the collars on a great number of dogs with lots of different behavior or training problems, from Dachshunds to Great Danes to shelter mixes. They all wanted to stick close to their handler after a stim. I think she also added reward related to the stim/returning but I never did when I was teaching it. The main thing that I remember being so important is that the dog understands the command. After you find your dogs lowest level of sensitivity you are ready to begin.If you say come and the dog ignores you, then follow it with your lowest acknowledged stim and the dog will come. If you are ignored again, turn the stim up a few numbers rather than repeat the command. You are conditioning to respond to the voice command and the goal is to not have to use the stim at all. If you repeat "come" 3 x you're teaching her that she can wait for 3 calls before you mean it. That's a very short version of how it should work. Adding distance and distractions is part of the process. As previously stated, use your long line until everyone is confident. Also keep in mind while training progresses that if the dog reacts to a 10 in the living room, a 10 may mean nothing when in high arousal running after a rabbit.

 

[JennG]

We also have the mini educator and absolutely love it! I would definitely suggest getting a quick-snap/bungee collar for it too.

June wears hers anytime were training and/or leaving the property. She runs in it, swims in it, rolls in the sand... and it's never had any issues. I opted to change the vibration to the beep and that's now our way of recalling her when she's off-leash.

 

[Ravenbird]

I opted to change the vibration to the beep

I don't have that option ( I have an older model Dogtra) but I wanted to add that my dog reacted more to the vibrate than a low stem. She really didn't like the vibrate at all.

 

[MichiH]

I don't have that option ( I have an older model Dogtra) but I wanted to add that my dog reacted more to the vibrate than a low stem. She really didn't like the vibrate at all.

Thank you! Interesting about the stem and vibrate too. We have the invisible fence and she reacts to the beep by running to me. Now she won’t even go near the areas that will make it beep.

I have to reverse my truck in the driveway for her to get into the back of it otherwise it’s too close to the invisible fence line, it won’t beep, but to her it’s too close she won’t go to my truck that way.

 

[Rits]

I pair the vibrate with their name and treats so the vibrate is always positive association, equal to me saying their name.

For me personally, when training, I use the lowest stim they respond to and hold the button while simultaneously applying pressure on the leash and walking/running backwards or running away from my dog. The stim turns off (pressure) and also leash pressure turns off (just by them coming to you) when they are fully committed to coming to me, which practically is 2 seconds tops.

The stim IS the same as the leash pressure. Low levels for a period of time is equivalent to pulling the leash. High levels for a split second is equivalent to a leash pop. Me then running away is extra encouragement to come as it engages their prey drive through chase.

Once they understand how to turn the pressure off and thus the ecollar off, that in addition to being heavily rewarded, they come at lightning speed every time. I've found the dobes are incredibly smart and figure this out almost immediately and it becomes really solid over a few weeks. Eventually, I don't need to have the stim used as pressure anymore and only use the vibrate or my voice. I do then increase the stim level to much higher to then be used as a leash correction if they for some reason aren't listening but rarely do I have to use it. At that point, their recall is so consistent the ecollar is rarely used but instead becomes like a seatbelt for the unknown like a bunny running in front of them or the equivalent rare scenario.

Edit: I forgot to add, teaching them how to turn off the ecollar immensely helps in the situation such as they are chasing something...I'm not going to tap the stim like a leash pop if they are in full blown chase. I'll be HOLDING that button down until they stop dead in their tracks of that chase and turn around. This is why I first teach them how to turn it off from the start via holding it down at a lower level vs solely using it as correction only for not listening (tapping) from the start.

 

[Two Dobes]

There are some good videos on You Tube about how to get them introduced to the E collar too. I like this guy, although I had never thought about 'poisoning' the command...so I thought that was interesting. I have always done as Rits said; pair the 'bell' or vibrate to my voice. In this video, he talks about using the stim before the command.

 

[MyBuddy]

Just ordered the mini educator for Pepper.

I ended up getting the mini educator for Annie too! I've been working with it on her for a little over a week now and she's doing very well! Before I got it I was always working on her keeping your eyes on me. If we took a walk and she was busy doing her own thing, I would disappear behind the tree or something and watch her reaction. You can see her look around like okay, where did she go? And she would always find me. I don't have a whole lot to hide behind out back but it was always a fun game and just a way to teach her to look for me and not me look for her.

I also whistled one day and she really perked up and came running to me! So I expounded on that but I really can't whistle that well! I really wish I could whistle like my son. You know, the kind where you put your fingers to your mouth and it's real loud? That would be awesome since she responds so well to that. I do have an actual whistle that I bought a long time ago for Buddy. I'm going to get that out and start teaching her to that too. Cuz it was pretty cool that she really reacted so well to it. I do it as much as I can when she's within earshot.

Now with the e-collar she is out free when we take walks and she can run a bit. I even started her following me on the golf cart. We already had her sitting in the golf cart which she rather enjoys! She'll jump up there no problem! And I love it! But sometimes I want her to run along side and still have control of her. But I love that we started her sitting on the seat. I don't think I ever got Buddy comfortable enough to jump up there and sit with me. So I like that she does that and I encourage it sometimes.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the mini educator.

 

[Ddski5]

I’ve dealt with the mini educator for last 10yrs and love it. I can always rely on it to charge, work on demand and have a consistent signal.
The controller was acting up and I call the company. They said to send it in and they replaced it for free.
Really pleased with the mini educator.