dog will not come, or stay in our yard

Question
We have a 2 yr old  female lab mix dog. She will not stay in our yard, and will not come when called. As old as she is we still have to guard the door so she doesnt get out, and the times she slips thru are a total nightmare,and danderous to her also. Please help!

Answer
Hi Denise, you need to get your dog signed up for obedience training.  You will have to start on-leash (which means she will obey when on a leash), but if you keep up with it, you can teach her to work off-leash.  Her problem is simple obedience training.   A dog can not learn off-leash work until you teach them on-leash first.  Hope this helps,

Dawn

Unfortunately I can not obedience train your dog over the web.  That is impossible for anyone.  If she has gone through on-leash training then she should know to at least come to you while on a leash.  To teach a dog to do things off-leash, you have to build a trust & relationship with the dog which requires a lot of hours of practice on-leash, plus some dogs are incapable of being trained off-leash.  They simply can not be trusted for various reasons, or their on-leash work is not precise enough to start attempting the off-leash work.  This is where you require a trainer in-person to show you how to build up a trust between the two of you and also have them evaluate whether the dog can do the off-leash work or not.   For example, If your dog has terrier in her, the hunting instinct can be too strong in her to where it takes over when she is off-leash so you can not trust her to not take off because the hunting instinct is so strong in her.  This is a common problem in terriers.  Instinct overrides obedience, so no matter how well trained your dog is, if they have a very high instinct in something like hunting and say for example a squirrel crosses their path, you can not trust them to stay at your side off-leash when the hunting instinct takes over to go after the squirrel.  This is the best way I can describe to you what off-leash training is about.  You can try getting a book on Dog Training that might help you as you can actually visually see pics and things, but most people don't have success that way either.  Many of my clients are ones who have tried books & videos with no success.  You did not tell me what type of training your dog has had on-leash. Did she go through a formal class, what type of device do you use to train with i.e. choke collar etc.?  What commands did she learn?  These things are very important when you want to go on to off-leash work.  If you would like to let me know the answers to these questions I might be able to give you a little more advice to help you.

Dawn