Why doesn't my dog come back!

MY dog never comes back when I call him - what am I doing wrong and how can I get him to respond to my call?

I would want to know 'why' first of all. There is always a reason why a dog is doing what he does. Perhaps the owner is using different tones of voice or too many words and sounds when asking the dog to come, such as: come; come on; come here; get here; Rover this way; clapping hands; waving arms; shouting and screaming. The dog would be very confused with all these commands thrown at him and would not really understand what the owner wants.

Use one word only and stick to it, using no other words. Start again to re-teach the dog, using for instance the word 'here' in one happy tone.

'Come' is a word we use to much, for just about anything. We expect our dog to come to us when we say 'come' ... or we may really mean we want him to come away from what he is doing, expecting our poor dog to know the difference.

For example sometimes we say 'come on' when we want our dog to come near us or if we want our dog to come away from an area but not want him to come directly to us. Then when we really do want our dog to come directly to us, we expect him to know the difference.

At first, condition the dog with treats to the chosen word, then making bigger distance when calling and treat each time the dog comes to the word. Then once it is strong in the home area the treats can be given randomly when he comes to the word.

Then the recall can be trained again in another environment and so on, just as it has been done in the home area. Add small distractions once the behaviour is established and work up to bigger distractions.

Perhaps there have been problems with the dog because the owner makes coming back un-rewarding such as when the dog returns he is put straight on a lead and all the fun is over.

In this case show the dog that coming back is rewarding. Perhaps a toy would be handy here. The owner could take a toy out to play with and each time the dog returns to his owner he gets to play with the toy, then he is released. The play can be at random so the dog never knows when he will get to play or when he will have his lead put on. Perhaps a treat when the lead is put on so he sees that the lead can be rewarding too.