FE425: Teenage Tyrants: Surviving Your Dog's Adolescence

This week’s SYS is the collar yield or collar give behavior. It can be really helpful in ALL no choice situations but must be trained thoroughly and reinforced frequently if it is intended to be used there. I do not teach my dogs collar restraint games where I want them to pull into their collar; pressure on the collar should always encourage my dog to yield to that pressure.

Start out with whatever amount of pressure you know your dog will yield to, and use placement of reinforcement intelligently too. If the food is out ahead, and you are pulling toward the food, you will have an easy time of it. Gradually do less and less luring, and more and more collar pressure, until you have a dog you can move forward or backward, away or toward, the food.

Here is a situation I found myself in with Teenage Tyrant Watson, where he would not gather with the group for a photo: 

And in a similar scenario: 

And here he is, after the behavior is trained, in a similar scenario: 

Start by just touching the collar and reinforcing: 

Then add your big hand cue, and move away so the dog puts his own collar into your grasp: 

 And eventually, ask the dog to move into the direction that you are pulling: