Go is one of the foundation skills I like to teach most dogs.
This is something I pet parents asking their dogs to do but I rarely see a dog who clearly understands what their people are asking of them. The skill is more technical than just simply getting out from under foot or moving away from the front door, or not begging at the dining table. All of these requests can be bundled up into one skill - Go away from me or away from someone or something else. If we flip the want around it tells the dog go to a designated location.
(This lesson is only available to the maintenance program level and above. If you have any trouble accessing this lesson or any other lesson contact your program trainer.)
When teaching any new command, or as we call it cue, we have to first define what it means to 'go away'.
The normal definition that pet parents give me is "I want them to move away from _blank_." This isn't a good definition since we are using the word in the definition.
To make defining our cue even more difficult we need to make it clear for a species that doesn't speak our language. So physically what is the dog supposed to DO when you give the go away cue?
Make sure your definition of Go away answers the following questions:
When/where is this request made? Are there times they are allowed to be in that space?
Where should the dog go to? (be specific)
How will the dog know they are in the right location?
How far should they travel away from you?
Do they need to stay in that location? For how long or until when?
If you answered all these questions your definition of "go away" might look something like this:
"go away" = Get out of the kitchen/dining space when the family is making and eating dinner every evening between 4-6 pm. The dog should stay in the living room. This separation of the house is defined by the carpet to hardwood floor in the kitchen and dining room area. They need to stay there until invited into the kitchen.
This skill can also be helpful if you have a tendency to trip over your dog on stairs or down a hall way, you can tell your dog to "go ahead" and they will move out of the way. A very important skill for dogs living with elderly or small children.
Further more, if you have a dog that tends to crowd the door when people come over. They may even jump on people. This go away skill can help you reduce jumping, door dashing, and over arousal around the door and to the door bell by teaching them to Go place when someone walks to the door or comes in the door.
These are just examples there are many ways that this skill can come in handy and be used to teach more complex behaviors.
If you have multiple dogs in your home I recommend having designated places for each dog in the home. This also is a game changer in households where there might be scuffles or confrontation among the dogs in the home. You can de-escalate a possible fight by sending all dogs to their places. Not to mention toning down the energy in the group quickly in moments when people are coming over, or play is getting too much and threatening to knock over grandma.
Below is the instructions for starting to train this valuable skill. Also, you will find a pdf document that you can print and use for tracking your training sessions.
If you want feed back on your lesson remember to record the lesson in your lesson library tab with your feedback and then be sure to fill out the 'training tracking' tab as well. If you got video of your training session you want feedback on feel free to message your program trainer and let them know you uploaded video in your video submissions folder.
This lesson is only available to the maintenance program level and above. If you have any trouble
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