In this tutorial I talk about what to do if you were in a situation where your dog ran away from you and didn’t come back. Now obviously, the solution is to not get into that situation to begin with, by training your dog to reliably be with you off leash and to reliably come when called and not having your dog off leash or in unsafe areas. But I created this video because I often see people suddenly in a situation they have not planned for and do not now what to do, for example, yesterday when I was at the park and a woman was trying to catch her loose dog. What happened, as I explain in the video, is that when she caught her dog she did something that would make the dog less likely to come back to her if the dog were ever to be loose again.
This video doesn't explain what to do to prevent your dog from running away, nor does it explain how to get your dog to listen to you no matter what. This tutorial is for those who find themselves in the situation where their dog is off leash and suddenly not listening to them.
Proofing a recall – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIR3MtTSyIw&t=151s
Touch – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWSJVwZybwo&t=32s
Jump up for little dogs – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uasHnMzJC4k&t=190s
Collar grab – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62NNwZtbtIA
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– Emily Larlham (AKA Kikopup)
This is a good point! It’s like a child that you will punish when they run away! They’ll come back if you give a reward instead. I love your videos, thank you!
Thank you for making this very important video. You are a very special person who took the time to understand the soul of dogs. Everyone told me it is impossible to let a husky off lead, but thanks to your good training methods and a lot of patience I’m able to let him run free in safe areas. Your dog training principles transfer well to interacting with other creatures too! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
Awe 🙂 Thanks! Yes, the dogs that are supposedly “stubborn” and “hard to train” like huskies and beagles… in actual fact, they just are just too smart… and know what they want. When you teach the dogs to WANT to do what you want them to do… you suddenly have the most well trained dog in the universe 🙂 When there is conflict… usually a husky can outsmart a human lol.
I recently had my dog escape the house. She is pretty new to me and has a very shaky recall, which is why she’s never off lead. But she pushed the front door open for the first time and went on a joy run around the neighborhood. When I found where she was, it took everything in me to NOT let my fear show and cheerfully call her back. She, fortunately, came running. I made sure to reward her when she came back too. Though of course part of me was upset, the better management of that situation in my mind is making sure she can’t get out again, not punishing her for coming back!
Well done!
This exact thing just happened to me. I was thankfully able to recover my dog at this grass area he likes to do his business on but I was scared I was going to lose him forever. I will always be super attentive when I open my front door now.
My dog will run towards the street if I let him go off leash in the front! We have a HUGE area in the back! He’s got a “girlfriend/furfriend” he HAS to go visit!! I’ve got video of him doing that. It’s down a back lane, through a hedge! I can’t say I “let” him go but he does come back!!! He doesn’t stay long. He is very close to me and doesn’t go where he can’t see me except when he goes to visit that neighbor. If I turn my back & say, “Bye!!” He will run behind me!!
@T. J.
Yes I’m thinking of letting my dog go, as she loves running to pigeons to play. But she is a big Bull Terrier so I freak as people might not like her jumping on them, as she loves people.
I feel she will come back as she loves me, and loves the Toy poodle I have too. I’ve got not not free out I suppose.
Thanks for being a big influence on my dog training.
You are very welcome.
Thanks for this video. I just had this situation today with my dog, who used to come when called anytime, her recall was pretty much 99% successful and we were working towards obedience off leash. But at some point she just started to run farther and farther away from me when off leash and breaking boundaries we had set (like not running into streets). I live in a tiny village so the streets are empty most of the time and cars are going slow, which is why I allow her to walk on the sidewalk with me off leash. Lately for some reason the recall doesn’t work anymore in most cases and today, after looking back at me and not listening to all kinds of recalls which once worked, she actually ran into a street when she saw another dog on the other side! Luckily the car stopped when I ran in to pick her up. I figured I’ll have to bring better treats with me again and reinforce long range recalls with better treats…
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I have a 3 year Akita and she runs away when she’s out the front door and ignores my commands. Treats or shock collar does not work! What should I do?
@A D The thing about treats and shock collars … they function the same way… you have to condition them first before using them for training…. If your dog is running after a rabbit and you try to give him a piece of kibble, or if you were to hurt him… he will most likely not notice because hes chasing the rabbit. You have to condition the food to be reinforcing to the dog and conversely someone who trains with a shock collar would do the same with the collar. The food and the pain dont “make” the behavior “happen”. I would suggest to use positive reinforcement because that is how I train. Reinforcement mirrors punishment in how it is conditioned and how it functions. I choose to use reinforcement because it is fun for the dog and doesnt have the side effects that pain and startle cause. The key though, is breaking the training up into steps- where you are conditioning the dog to want to come back to you, with easy things first before getting to the hard things (when the dog is over aroused). I suggest playing recall proofing games inside your house and then in your yard, like in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIR3MtTSyIw Then when outside dont have the dog off leash until you have a 100% reliable recall.
I’ve got a 8 month old Chinese Crested Hairless dog his name is Xiao-ping. He has blue eyes and a bad overbite. He’s so cute, but he doesn’t want to “sit pretty”. I’ve tried everything but it doesn’t work and he will run away from me. What should I do?
My lab is running to the road and if i tries to bring him back he bites me😥🐶
@A D 2222rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I am loving your tutorials .
I have actually pretended to run away from my dog on occasion – (in a very safe place) and that sure gets her attention.
Kikopup, your educating humans is just as beautiful as your dog training: everything is easy to follow and everything makes sense. I’m a great fan of dog training which is not based on physical or psychological intimidation. My dog (a rescued dog) used to be quite a problem dog (fearful of people, with a tendency towards using aggressive strategies when in danger, with quite limited social skills as far as other dogs are concerned). I went with him through a whole course of traditional training (with a prong collar and a choke collar) and of course none of his problems were solved that way. Then I came across wonderful people involved in positive training, and especially training based on good two-way communication and on the recognition of the importance of emotions. And this was how my whole dog adventure really began: I started learning a lot, my dog started to make progress in many respects… Today he is still problematic in certain respects, but at the same time he is a great dog – I’m really impressed by how successful he has managed to be. And, in fact, our life now is quite smooth – I only need to take into consideration his limitations. As a fan of positive dog training methods and a believer in education I even happened to translate some of your dog training texts into Polish (I am from Poland) – they have been posted on the website of my friend dog trainer, of course with due authorship acknowledgements and a link to the original website. I just wanted to let you know that you’re doing a great job how to work and be with a dog – I really appreciate and admire your work!!!
Thank you Agata! So wonderful you were able to help your dog.
Who’s here watching this because their dog just ran away?! 🤣🙋♀️
*edit* laughing because the first thing I did after I got my dog back was come & search YouTube for videos on how to make sure it didn’t happen again, not cause I think it’s funny someone’s dog ran away. 🤦
Sadly me, I’ve got a rottsky, he’s a lettuce.
Awe. I am so sorry. 🙁 When I was a kid I had a beagle and she ran away from me many times… She was amazing off leash…. until… she saw a rabbit and then she’d disappear over the next hill through thick canyon… Id end up all scratched up from having to crawl through dry brush to find her. So it did happen to me
Me, i just got big scratches on my knuckles and both elbows coz i stumbled 2 times lol
Shelli Black here!!!!😭
Lmao me and pissed too but this video makes sense
my dog just started doing this at 6 months! I’m not going to lie I got mad
Dogs basically lose their brains between 6 – 10 months or so…..lol
My dog is 4 month old
First dog i had as a kid did this. Dad beat the dog bad! I was really sad, but the dog never needed to wear a leash again. Always stayed in the yard and walked beside us on walks.
My puppy was fine walking off the lease between 4 and 6 months. Then his normal call of treat offers or clapping on my thighs, which worked fine previous months in our garden and out in the park just did not work. I had to ask a passer by dog owner to pick mine up whilst my puppy tried to jump at him. She likes to jump on people, in case they will give her treats. I just do not trust my puppy to respond to any trained recalls, so just allow her to run around using 50 ft lead. She comes back on recall, unless there is another dog around where she wishes to run to. When loose she was not interested in dogs, as she wheezed past all of them in very fast zoomies around them. I have learnt my lesson. Now she is almost 8 months and not thinking of giving any opportunity to not come back to me. It has been 2 frightening experiences for me. My husband never allowed her off the lease. He does not feel she responds to recalls. Until we are sure sge is good on recall, we will use 50ft lead, which gives her plenty of exercise. We also have 30ft tunnel, which she loves zooming around it in the house and also around our secure garden. Being a small breed she is only allowed 30 minutes a day walk. She loves doing more or gets bored easily. I have trained to do a lot of tricks. Thanks to Kikop, whose videos have been amazing!
@FracturedFox So sad. I hate when I hear animals getting beat. I imagine that was traumatizing to watch as a child.
Thanks so much for this video, my dog just ran away and took about 15 treats to grab his collar and we got him home safely. He just thought it was a game when we called his name, very scary he ran across a very busy street. Be safe everyone
Thank you so much for this! I just needed to do a collar grab because our pup was getting too rough and we needed her out of the room where the kids were studying, she clearly hated it, I felt awful. Definitely know what we need to work on now!
Awesome videos. Very helpful! I recently rescued a 7 month old female pitbull and this helps by giving me insight for training. Thanks
So much. Much love from Texas!
Nice video this instantly worked on my 5 month puppy. She always has the zoomies and I admit to taking out my negative emotions on her as she gets me irritated because she’s trained to come to me when I gesture but I will keep in mind to use more positive feedback to get her to WANT to come to me. Great video!
This is VERY helpful. I have definitely scolded my dog after he ran away before. It’s really good to know the things I shouldn’t be doing. I want to eventually teach him to walk off-leash so these things are key in making sure he’ll come back. Thanks!
what I find helps to get my dogs back is squat down and making myself small, and holding my hand out so they aren’t scared of me, mostly for newer dogs, my dogs will come fairly easily now 🙂
Great video with good ideas. Most runaways are telling their owner, “Hey, I need more exercise!” Rescued my current dog, an Aussie who was seldom exercised because he was too strong for her to take him out. Naturally he’d bolt every chance he could. He’d just run around as fast as he could, hoping someone would chase him. Treats are great when they’ve settled down a bit, but a loud squeaky toy helps let the dog know the fun isn’t over, it’s just beginning and they’ll want to join you. If he gets his daily dose of run til he drops, much less likely to take off. We play ‘collar catch’ at the dog park with lots of treats multiple times each visit. I also have 30’, 60’, & 100’ long lines when we have to miss dog park time. A tired dog is a good dog. LOL
I LOVE how each of your dogs chill on the day bed while you’re demonstrating a technique with the other. I find it to be super adorable! It’s the little things…
This literally happened to me today. Wife took our other dog for a walk and the door didn’t close completely and our Dogo got out running into oncoming traffic. I was yelling but he ran faster. He almost died. As soon as I squatted down and called him in a high pitch voice he came back. Thank God! We just adopted him and he’s such an amazing dog! I praised him and hugged him so tight. I was shaking from fear. He was just licking my face. Wanna make a grown man cry? Yeah he knew he scared me.
How can you grow so attached to a dog that you just adopted 3 days ago? Idk but it would have devastated me if anything happened to him.
I know what you feel. We adopted a Patterdale Terrier 10 days ago. I trained her and after 10 days she has a really good recall outdoors.
We had 3 dogs. 2 we got a month or so ago. The the oldest one we had, Princesita, was a free spirit and ran out the door 70% of the time the doors was left open. She just loved to run around and sniff. I would always be terrified she would get hit by a car….sometimes I would yell at her because I was scared for her.
Well about 6 weeks ago she ran out the door for her usual free experience and I’m always mad when she does that because she could get hurt. Well this time for some reason she went too far and was on the road as a car came…
She died instantly thank God so she felt no pain. I do remember holding her little body in my arms and seeying those little eyes which would never look at me again and sobbing and sobbing. My mom loved her, it was the first dog she truly ever loved and my dog had looked at my mom the split second before she got hit. Yes my mom was bawling pretty hard. We buried her that day on the property we had just moved into a week or 2 earlier.
A Chihuahua/Pomeranian mix. She was about 3 years old.
Rest in Peace my little baby I hope I’ll see you in heaven one day. ♥️💔
Now I bought a course for the 2 remainder dogs (as now they are still puppies) and I won’t make the same mistakes I made with Princesita. I hope to train them so that they never die a sudden death, I wish them to die a natural death from old age instead.
God Bless y’all and the puppies and doggies which make our lives so much more complete. ♥️🐕
Oh my god😢… Today my dog 5 months old she started chasing an old man, i told him to stop walking so I could catch her but all he did was to keep walking and laughing. We were starting getting close to the road, the man wouldn’t stop walking and my dog was already on the road barking and chasing the man, she almost got hit by a car I cried so much into thinking I could’ve lost her. I was lucky bc there was a house close to the road which had a dog outside, my dog is pretty sociable so she ran onto the dog. If it wasn’t that dog i don’t know if I would ever catch her or if she would survive. This was my lesson to teach her before letting her be free.