How to Use Your Puppies Name in Training

Welcome to Puppy Talk, episode number 84. I'm your host, Dale Buchanan, and today I want to talk about how to use the puppy's name in training. This is different than teaching the puppy its name. Teaching them their name is very easy. All you have to do is get a dog clicker, some treats, and you're gonna set the puppy up to be distracted. When you say their name and they look at you, you're gonna mark with a dog click, and then you're gonna feed them the food reward. Do this about 25 times and they will know their name. It's called the name Game, and this technique is in my book, the Complete Puppy Training Manual. It's very easy to teach your puppy its name. What I'm referring to in this podcast is once they know their name, when to use it In dog training, when I go to a new client's home, they're usually doing something like this.

Dixie come, Dixie, sit, Dixie down. Dixie, stay Dixie. No, Dixie down, Dixie off. Dixie, Dixie, Dixie. Look at me. Dixie. Pay attention. Dixie stop. Dixie, sit Dixie down. And that's absolutely the wrong way to do it. You do not need to use their name before every single command that you give the puppy. Also, when your puppy is highly distracted, like when we take puppies on field trips, the owner's using the puppy's name a lot to get the puppy to pay attention to them. When the puppy is distracted by pallet jacks and forklifts and shopping carts and people and other dogs, they're calling them their name a lot, and the puppy's not paying attention. And they ask me, how come my puppy's not paying attention to me? And I let them know, well, you've said their name 50 times in the last five minutes, and they just block it out.

And this brings me to the point of this podcast episode. When you use the puppy's name, there has to be value to it. When you use their name, they have to look at you and pay attention, but you shouldn't have to say their name over and over and over again. There should automatically be a lot of value to their name every time you say it. And you should only have to say it once. The dog will eventually habituate or block out the name when it's used so many times because it becomes background noise. When I lived in Deerfield Beach near a train track, the first week of my residence at the apartment, I would hear the train, but after that, I would never hear it because it became background noise. I got used to it. So when you're saying your puppy's name a lot, it just blends in with all of the other noise commands and sounds that are in the area of the puppy training. There's no value there. There's nothing that the puppy's going to latch onto because they're blocking everything out. 

There are only two times That you really have to use the puppy's name when you're training them. One, if there's more than one dog present and you're giving that particular dog the command and the other dog doesn't get the command. Let's say there's Dixie and Charlie in the same room, and I'm training them both, and I say, Dixie, come. Charlie has to stay this way. Each dog has their own instructions. If you did not use their name before the command in this context, you would say, come and they both come. Or you would say, stay or sit or down. And they both do that. However, if you just want to isolate one dog, when there are multiple dogs present, you need to use their name first. Another time when you would want to use the puppy's name is for them to come to you. Let's say they're in the backyard, they're running around, they're going potty, they're playing, but you have to go to work.

You want to use recall. You want to get that puppy to come back to you. You say, Dixie, come in this example. I used the name before the word come, which is recall. And it has a lot of value that way. Every time you're using the dog's name, they relate to them coming to you. They relate that that's what they're supposed to not only look at you, but move in your direction. So it's really bad if you say Dixie, stay because what you're essentially doing is telling the dog to come to you and stay at the same time, and this gets confusing to them. These are the things that I observe when I work with new puppy owners, how I coach them and not confuse the puppy. You have to have value to their name. Only use it when needed. You don't need to use it before every command.

Use it when there's multiple dogs in the household or use it to get them to come to you. Those would be the two times that you need to use their name. After you teach them their name, just use very basic commands. Sit down, stay. If you want to get their attention without using their name, try whistling, clicking. Clicking your upper palate with your tongue, things like that. You don't have to use their name because like I've said, it's going to dilute the value of their name. I hope this information was helpful. If you have any questions, you can contact me through my website, puppy talk podcast.com.