The most important thing to teach your dog

What does a dog need to know? Is it important that he can sit, stay, roll over and shake hands? Should he be able to bring in the newspaper or play dead? Some of those things are very useful, some will impress your friends but for my money there is only one thing that absolutely every pet dog should know.

That one thing is a bulletproof recall. A dog that comes immediately when he’s called anywhere, anytime and in any situation is a pleasure to own. Yes, it takes some work to achieve but if you put the time in you’ll find it’s well worthwhile and it might just save your dog’s life.

Q. But isn’t it more important for my dog to stay so he won’t run away?
A. If you can call him back it doesn’t matter if he runs away.

Q. Shouldn’t I teach him to stay off the road?

A. You can call him back before he gets to the road.

Q. What about chasing cats, fighting, jumping on people, etc.?

A. When you can reliably recall your dog, you can prevent or stop any of these behaviours by simply calling him away.

Q. So all I need to do is teach my dog to come when I call?

A. If you only want to teach your dog one thing, then yes. But you also need to ensure that he will come reliably in any situation. You also need to make sure that you are always around to call your dog out of harm's way.

When you know they'll come back, you can all enjoy the freedom

A more sensible solution is to teach other useful behaviours like stay and keeping off the road in addition to your bulletproof recall but the recall is the most important.

In my experience people like to train the easy fun things like sit and shake hands before they worry about recall. They think “he always comes in from the other room when he hears me open the dog food so he’ll be alright.” Then they take him to the beach or the dog park and have to chase him around for hours trying to get the leash back on him.

So teach the recall first, practise it every day wherever you go with all kinds of distractions - and keep reinforcing it forever. You’ll be glad you did.

Recall tips:

• Start simple in the backyard or the house, when he can do that you can try the front yard. Don’t challenge him too early.

• Never call your dog back to punish him – you’ll only make him less inclined to come in future.

• Call your dog frequently, give him a pat and let him go free again – if he only ever gets called so you can put his lead on and take him home, he’ll work it out fairly quickly.

• Don’t call him if you don’t expect him to come – standing at the park repeatedly calling your dog’s name while he runs around with his friends achieves two things, 1. You feel stupid and 2. He learns to ignore you. Until he has reliably learnt the recall it’s best not to call.

• When you’re practising recall on lead don’t let him get to the end of the lead before you call him back – he needs to learn to come for the call not the pull.