[yorkipower]

Your fears are warranted. The “come” command is THE most important thing you can teach your dog. A year into Bun’s coming to live with us, and half a year of obedience training, I was training with some friends in a local park that back against the Southern State Parkway. Bun got scent of some “varmint” and decided that it seemed more fun than me so he took off and ran ACROSS the off ramp of the highway, only nearly missing getting hit by a car! He has never gotten screamed at before like that from me – I was ash faced and shaking when I finally threw myself on top of him in the street and rolled him to safety (that’s the second time in my life I had to do that for a dog – the first time was in Manhattan walking a Basset Hound who was afraid of men and shyed away from a guy friend of mine and snapped her collar – running into the street). Anyhow, that little four legged goofball of mine has got to have a guardian angel up there!

Now days, I can heel him off lead just about ANYWHERE but that didn’t happen over night. It took a long time of patient training and consistency. I always tell people that training a dog to respond to commands is like training to build muscles. The more times you repeat the exercise, the stronger them muscle and the stronger the command. But like my advice above, you’ve got to start with baby steps. You can’t expect your dog to respond to you outside your apartment if she isn’t responding when you call INSIDE your apartment. Start with a small, defined space – you might even want to start on leash. Work on the command “come” with your dog no more than a few feet away from you – so that if she doesn’t’ come the first time you ask, you can pick up and bring her to you. At first, reward every attempt at coming to you (if you know how to use a clicker, you can reward her the instant she heads your way so she knows that she is responding to you correctly). But no repeating the command! She comes the first time you ask or you go get her and start over (you don’t want to punish her, you just want to make the correction (come means you come to me – now let’s try that again. Generally, you do not want to punish a dog for failing to come as this will only make the dog NOT want to come to you)! Karen Pryor does this thing with puppies which might work well for you – esp if you can enlist the rest of your family members. It is always better when everyone is on board because dogs are smart and they quickly learn which rules apply to which person (Bun has his “gradmaw” wrapped around his paw – he constantly begs at the table when Grandmaw is around – knowing that my mother cannot deny her granddog anything. He does NOT try that with me!). She has people sit on the floor in a circle, taking turns calling the puppy to them. As soon as the puppy comes, he gets a click and a treat. This makes for a very motivated puppy. You could start here and work up to standing up, and making the circle bigger and bigger – increasing the distance your dog needs to go from one person to another. Once you think your dog really gets it (comes on the first command), start randomly reinforcing the come – not giving a treat every time but keep her guessing when the cookie is coming. Then take the show on the road, but go back to reinfoircing every attempt when you change “venues” until your dog is again showing real understanding.