Working with fearful and reluctant dogs©
By Gary Wilkes Copyright 2019

There are many ways to achieve a behavior. One of the most neglected is the use of compulsion. In our modern world, compulsion is assumed to be bad. However, if you have every hustled to get across a street to avoid oncoming traffic you realize the hollow nature of that conclusion. Compulsion is present any time you must do something in order to stay safe or achieve a goal. Technically, a melting ice-cream cone compels you to eat faster. Having an appointment may cause you to shower quicker than usual. Leaving your keys inside the house may compel you to break a window or jimmy a door. In these examples the behaviors were already present. The compulsion forced them to occur in a specific way. So it is with teaching a reluctant or untrained dog to come or be handled.

Low-Stim Recall:
In most cases, the best way to teach a dog to come to you is with treats, affection and games. If all dogs were universally and always stable that would be the process of choice. The downside is that it takes a long time and is only marginally effective. A dog taught to come exclusively with treats may be overwhelmed by some emergency and the behavior is gone with the wind – and the dog. Since not all dogs are Rocks of Gibraltar, to fix soft or momentarily frightened dogs by other means. Some dogs are innately fearful of strangers. They may come to their owner – or not – but never approach someone they don’t know. In the presence of a stranger, they won’t take treats, so that strategy is plainly silly. In like manner, some dogs might be unwilling to enter an area that scares them, approach other dogs or get into a car. Regardless, you can endure the inconvenience and condemn the dog to periodic fear, for life…or you can fix it.

We call the fix a ‘low-stim recall’. Low stim describes a low level of shock applied by a shock collar. While many trainers assume this is the only modality for this process, it is actually as old as domestication. For eight years I applied this same process using a slip lead, daily. No shock collar was required. Whether you choose a primitive tool or an electric collar to apply aversive control is only different in detail. It is the same process and works the same way. We compel the animal to come to us. When using a slip-lead, I would sit on the ground and the dog would be at the end of the lead – often pulling hard to escape. If you are wondering what circumstances would require this knowledge, I learned this process working in shelters and doing animal control. I honestly do not remember being taught this and may have simply invented it independently. I know that many people throughout history have used similar means to compel animals to approach them. If you are compelled to handle fearful animals, you, too, will invent this process…because it works.

Fear and Flight:
Fearful dogs do not automatically come to whoever calls them. On the contrary. Most often they will try to get as far away from you as possible. You have a simple choice – the one I laid out above. You can live with the inconvenience and condemn the dog to being fearful or you can fix it. Since dragging a dog by the neck isn’t the best image of ‘humane’ treatment, teaching the dog to approach a human for reassurance makes a great deal more sense. The process is quick and for the rest of the time the animal is in the shelter, at least one person can gain the dog’s trust and passivity.

For this examination, I am going to tell you how to do this with a shock collar, but I often prep the dog using a leash and collar, manually, just like old times.

The Collar:
All modern shock collars have gradient control over the level of shock. Low-stim recall is initiated at levels that are annoying but not painful. It is done in a calm setting. The first step is to discover the level of shock that the dog can perceive. With many collars, the shock is gradated from zero to 50 or even 100. So, start low. Test it on yourself before you try it on the dog. While dogs and humans have differing sensitivities to an initial shock, there is no better way to go forward that to find out what your level of perception is. Why? Because sometimes you can start at a level below human perception. I once stopped a horse from bucking using a level of shock below my own perception. Horses are especially sensitive of things like flies biting their skin. It can make them highly sensitive to electric shock. If I had assumed the size of the animal made a difference, I might have started at a level that was not matched to the horse. I don’t like sloppy work. While it would have been unlikely to cause any harm, it would have given me less leeway for moving forward. If a teaspoon will do, using a cup is wasteful.

Next Step:
Now that you have found a level the dog can perceive, bump the collar up about 10% of its total range. If a dog can feel Level 5 of a collar that goes up to 50, bump the number up to ten for a working level. Don’t panic if the first application causes the dog some duress. You probably did the same thing the first time you shocked yourself. It’s mostly from a startle response and goes away quickly. If it doesn’t. drop the level to a seven – meaning ‘split the difference’ and try again.

First training step:
Put the dog on a six-foot leash. Make sure the collar is secure enough that the dog cannot pull out of it. You will be pulling the dog to you so having it slip of the collar will cause a delay in your training. Let the dog move to the end of the lead or move so that you are at a distance to the dog. Now press the button for continuous stimulation. Turn on the collar and pull the dog to you until its body is touching your legs. Then you turn off the stim. Repeat. This is such a soft process it is going to take many repetitions – like putting bricks in a wall. It will eventually be very strong.

First Threshold:
The first threshold will be when the dog starts to hover – meaning it will not leave your side because it knows that at the end of the leash the stimulation comes on. This will take an average of 15-20 repetitions. Once the dog is hovering, you will need an assistant. Once the dog is pressing against your legs, slip a finger in the dog’s collar and hand the end of the leash to your helper. The helper backs away to the end of the leash.

The Cue:
At this threshold, I start adding the word come to the process. Imagine this scene. You are standing and bending slightly over the dog. You have a finger slipped in the dog’s collar to hold it in check. The helper is holding the loop at the end of the leash at six-feet distance. The helper says come. You press the button for continuous stimulation and let go of the collar. The dog is now free to be pulled to the helper. When the dog touches the helper’s legs, let your finger off the stim button.

Now the helper holds the dog’s collar. You say come. You press the continuous button on the transmitter. The helper lets go of the collar. You pull the dog until it is touching your legs. Repeat many times.

Next Threshold: Loose leash.
Over the next ten to 30 repetitions you are going to notice something. The dog starts moving at the sound of the word come. The tension on the leash starts lessening. Eventually there is no tension. The dog is doing the behavior on its own. When you get to loose leash, add this wrinkle. When you say come and the handler lets the dog go, have the handler drop the leash. If the dog correctly comes to you, no problem. If the dog doesn’t, drop back and continue to use as much pull as needed to make the dog complete the behavior. You cannot go to the next step until the leash is always loose.

Increase time/distance:
Our next goal is to increase the amount of time the dog is moving between people. Remember that car coming at you or that ice-cream that is melting? We wish to inject the next level of knowledge. If the dog moves quicker, the unpleasant experience, the shock, lasts a shorter time period. We accomplish that by having you and your helper move farther apart.

Move about 12 feet apart. You are holding the dog’s collar with your fingers and also holding the leash. The helper says come. You press the stimulation button. You then move the dog in the helper’s direction with the leash. The dog should move without tension. Over a series of repetitions, try to let the dog go in front of you. Go back to dropping the leash as you release the collar. Once that is accomplished, take the leash off the dog. Give a bit of a pull on the collar to launch the dog forward. If this fails, go back to the last threshold and do it some more.

Change Location/Distance:
Now start moving around so that your location is identified by the sound of your voice. Increase the distance in a ping-pong fashion. Ten feet, 15 feet, five feet, 22 feet, 11 feet. Do not try to make the distance predictably longer. Stay in a comfort zone where there are few failures. If failure increases to more than one in ten, go back to using the leash and walking the dog across to the helper and vice versa.

The goal if this is to drill the rules into the dog’s head via rote memory. When someone says come the path is laid out. There is no repetition where the dog doesn’t go to the person giving the command.

End of the Road: Punishment for failure
After you have normalized the recall you will have to make it stronger and unconditional. Practice with the collar on and the stimulation on. Start using clicks and treats after the dog gets to your location. This is actually unnecessary but harms nothing.

Now we get to the moment when the dog blows you off. You say come and the dog doesn’t. That requires that you say “NO” (or use the tone function of your collar to offer an electronic version of “NO”) and then apply a punishment to the dog. You may use a bonker or the collar itself at a level that is clearly more powerful than what you have been doing – like 20% greater than any level you used for this recall.

You aren’t done yet:
Now go back to low-level and practice. Do a lot of repetitions. If you are using treats at the end of the recall, you are still using stimulation throughout. You are trying to form synapses in the brain. Imagine it is like putting many coats of lacquer on a piece of wood.

Now create a situation where you think the dog would fail to come. Repeat what you did before. Identify the failure with the word “NO” or tone. Then punish the dog. At this point you can decide if you need to drop back and do more leash work or just continue and respond as needed.

Note: Many trainers use variations of this, but many of them leave out some important components. I prefer sure-and-steady-wins-the race. EG: I taught a game pit bull to do this. When she became aroused at the sight of another dog, she infused her recall and her passion to attack other dogs and would slam into my legs like a freight train. That was proof that my work was sufficient for the real world. It’s a good tool to have in your toolbox. I use if for virtually all fearful dogs, especially the ones that are afraid of strangers, initially, that includes me.