Training help: Dog thinks recall command requires crotch punch

[kathleenloveschrist]

Hoping this serves as a laugh to some of you. But also, please advise on how to proceed.

Tl;dr- I say “Come” and my dog thinks the command involves high fiving my thigh/crotch. He did it to my poor dad and their relationship may not recover.

—————————————

I started recall training with my dog after some of his early escape attempts. Naturally, I was freaking out that my 9 month old dude was going to run away and get hit by a car. So I taught him “come.” Our trainer at the time said to 1. Put a treat right between my legs at his eye level, 2. Back away from him, 3. Say Come! once, 4. Give him treat when he came.

Little dude did it but instead of stopping in front of me, he would smack my thighs with his front paws and accept his treat. Trainer said not to correct him or confuse him with sit as introducing and reinforcing the recall command was the most important at the time. I didn’t want to introduce “no” or any words at the time that would diminish his recall.

Well, he’s now 18 months and over 50 lbs. Eveiry time I say “Come,” he paws me in the thigh or crotch before he sits/stands in front of me for his treat. As a woman, I don’t really care because I don’t have sensitive equipment there. However, he did it to my dad a few weeks ago and I’m sure you can imagine the look of pain on dad’s face after the incident…

lately, I’ve been backing away, waiting until he’s coming towards me, and saying sit when he’s pretty close. Unfortunately that seems to confuse him because instead of coming all the way to me, he’ll sit wherever he is at when he hears “sit.” I’ve tried “heel” in place of sit but he’s used to heel meaning left side specifically, so he’ll go to my left and pass me or just smack me on the left thigh before sitting.

 

[luke22_42]

@kathleenloveschrist I've never fully gotten rid of the dick punch for myself, but have gotten him to stop doing it to others.

The best move though is just to hip check them. Turn sideways into their jump. They learn it's not as fun

 

[peacefulwarrior71]

@luke22_42 Yep 2 of mine have done this over the years. Its a natural instinct of mine when ever dogs approach.

 

[cloelace]

@kathleenloveschrist Do the following:

1. Separately train a collar grab. Grab collar. PAUSE. Say "yes". PAUSE. Don't even reach for the treat pouch when you pause. Then reward.

2. Once he's OK with the collar grab, when you recall him, the moment he comes close you grab his collar. Then you praise and feed, while grabbing his collar. Start with a short distance, obviously, so that he doesn't have the momentum to bump into you hard. If he manages to put his paws up you anyway, then tell him to get off (if he's previously trained to understand what it means) or take his collar and gently pull him off, and don't praise or feed until he is off you.

I trust he'd get it pronto.

Important: Do not show the reward before issuing any command -- obedience to you, not to cookies.

 

[de2105]

@kathleenloveschrist My girl thinks everything requires a crotch punch Could just be a Heeler trait maybe?

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@de2105 Mine believes every command ends with my hand in her mouth. I’m like ok next time less teeth please.

 

[lazvre]

@kathleenloveschrist My bf and I play a game called "touch" where we say the command and he must touch his nose on our hand. This may help. It also helps when he doesn't respond to his usual recall and we get him in "play" mode. Than we can leash him if needed!

 

[davidjb]

@kathleenloveschrist retrain holding a treat at your head level…

 

[graceabound]

@kathleenloveschrist My red heeler (~4 year old male, approximately 50/50 heeler/pitbull) is a chronic dick puncher. Every time I get home from work, one paw straight in the junk. Try to get his attention with a tennis ball to start a game of fetch? Punch in the junk. He's excited about going outside to bark at poltergeists? Walk over to open the door for him and it's a guaranteed nut punch. As far as I can tell, the breed (or at least some large fraction of them) is just uncontrollably over-excitable. If you find a way to train that out of them, I'm all ears.

 

[roguemouser]

@kathleenloveschrist Our male will put you on the ground with the balls punch. I swear they know!

 

[byhisgrace2014]

@kathleenloveschrist Train a target behavior, his nose touching your palm. You can look up “hand targeting” but basically you can say “touch” and when he touches you palm with his nose you reward.

You will build this up as a recall running away and calling him over to “touch” and make it very reliable. Next, you will practice calling your dog with “come!” And as he approaches, show your palm and say “touch” but keep it off beside you. If he touches your palm, reward the recall. If he does anything else, try again without reward. Do not reward the recall in any way if he barrels into you.

Now you can do one of two things: change your recall word to “touch” from now on. Or train this same command but instead of “touch” say something like “here” from the start and use that. After some practice first saying the old cue “come” then the new one, you can drop the old cue.

The second option, if you want to keep the old cue, you will have to rework how you reward the behavior very slowly. Basically interrupt using the hand target before he can crotch punch you and never reward again for rough contact. With such an important, potentially life saving behavior I would train a separate second one on a new cue to avoid losing or convoluting your recall but I understand that the word ‘come’ is universal. You just have a long reinforcement history to overcome so it’s likely cleaner and easier to retrain.