When you have a new puppy,
there's a few exercises that you should be doing every single day.
The one that I'm gonna show you today has a lot of added benefits that I bet you
weren't expecting. Welcome back to McCann Dogs. I'm Kayl McCann.
Today I'm gonna be working with this little Border Collie puppy named Pursuit.
He goes by Percy and he actually belongs to one of our instructors named Megan.
Now, as you can see, it's nighttime.
Megan had to teach and this is the very first time I've met this little guy and
I thought, why don't I help Megan out,
tire her puppy out for her and teach you guys something in the process?
Now I get it, you have just worked all day, you come home, it's dark outside,
you're tired,
and you have a wild and crazy puppy that desperately needs to get
some exercise. So one of the things that I would recommend you do is a little
game that we call a restraint recall.
Now I'm gonna be going through a bunch of different benefits,
but one of my favorites is that it really works well at tiring the puppy out.
If you do a bunch of these, it's a great way for them to exude some energy.
They're also using their brain at the same time and it makes it a lot of fun.
Now, in order for me to have some success here with his wild and crazy beast,
I need to have a leash on so that he can't just run away and do his own thing
and I need to have some type of motivator that he really wants. Now,
Megan specifically told us that he had not had his dinner yet,
so I actually have some of his kibble for dinner in my hand. So I'm gonna just
put it right down on his nose and I'm going to get his attention. Now,
this is really important because if I wanna teach him to come, uh,
on his name and to move towards me with focus, I need to start with attention.
So I'm gonna tease him with the food.
My goal here is that when I call his name and I back up,
he comes to me immediately. Ready? Set Percy.
Yeah, . Good boy. So the process is really simple.
You're gonna call your puppy's name one time and then you're gonna back up
energetically using that motivator,
drawing your puppy in nice and close to your body.
So he learns right close to me, is where all the treats are.
Now he's a bit distracted by hearing a car on the road.
So I'm just gonna refocus him. Yes, good boy. Before I give him that last treat.
That is so good buddy. Yeah. Okay, we're setting up for round two. Now,
using a long puppy tug can be really, really helpful because it is dangly,
they can grab it easily. It's nice for them to grab.
We sell these in the McCannDogs.store if you wanna check that out. Okay buddy,
are you ready? So I'm gonna tease tease tease,
I gonna call his name and run away and let go of my little pulley system. Ready?
Set. Oh, you almost got it, Percy.
Good boy. Good.
You really wanna let the puppy win a lot when you practice this.
So I'm not gonna do super long ones.
I'm gonna go enough that I can keep him motivated.
You'll notice when I'm practicing this,
at no time is he going off and doing his own thing.
There's a couple reasons for that. Number one,
I'm using something that he wants, keeps him engaged while he's learning.
Number two, I've set it up so that there's very little room for him to be wrong.
Again, this puppy doesn't know me. We met five minutes before the um,
the video started, but I'm doing a short repetition.
I'm building a lot of excitement by getting 'em pumped up and ready.
And then we're having a party. What puppy wouldn't wanna do this?
I wanna talk to you a little bit more about the relationship piece because this
is something that a lot of people are a little bit unsure about. How does an
exercise like this actually improve your relationship? Well,
there's a couple things. Number one,
we're doing something that the puppy really enjoys.
And if the only time this puppy gets to have so much fun,
like this is when we're doing something together with his favorite toy.
Or maybe if your dog's not super crazy about toys yet you could use his favorite
treats or whatever it might be, it starts to build value.
What's gonna happen with this little puppy with Percy now, is the, you know,
half an hour that we spend together to film this video.
We're probably gonna be life buddies now because he's gonna associate me with
playing all these fun games together.
And that's what we want you to create with your puppy as well.
There's a couple things that are really important when you're practicing this.
It's essential that your puppy doesn't have the ability just to check out on you
and do their own thing. So it's important that when you're practicing this,
that you do have a few things in play,
like having your puppy on a leash or a line to ensure they stay with you.
Being in a type of environment where you're not, um,
competing against distractions.
I wouldn't do this for the first time at the park or around my other dogs or
kids cuz there's too much,
there's too many things that my puppy could pay attention to other than me.
And lastly, I need to find a motivator that my puppy says, Oh my gosh,
I want that. Eventually, the tug toy,
the love of the tug toy will turn into just the plain love for me to run towards
it, uh, to towards me. But when you have a young puppy,
they don't understand that yet.
We need to build an association with doing something that's fun,
with listening and doing things with me. And when you practice this and if
you're trying to build a, a stronger connection between your and your puppy,
don't overdo it. Go out for a couple minutes, practice a couple repetitions,
and then go inside and maybe do that several times a day.
Clearly we haven't overdone it with this puppy. There is still energy to burn.
So I'm actually gonna show you an additional version of the restraint recall
that can include your family members.
So if you have anybody that can help you with this,
this is actually a great way to get other family members involved,
which should also help build relationships with other people that the puppy will
be interacting with. Your husband, your wife, your kids,
Anybody can get involved.
So I'm gonna ask my husband to come and help me here. Hi pup.
So Ken's gonna hold on to, uh, Percy and again,
I have the leash on to ensure that he doesn't get, uh,
get off anywhere. Make sure he doesn't sneak away.
And I'm gonna get him excited with the toy. Oh,
I'm gonna call him and then Ken's going to release him. Whoa,
little alligator roll. Yeah. Ready, Set. Percy. Yeah.
Good boy. I'm gonna let him catch that toy.
What a good boy. And I'm gonna play a little game of tug.
Good. And just a little tip. When you're tugging with your puppy,
try to make sure that you keep your hands nice and low and that you're not,
not shaking the toy back and forth.
Any of the shaking that's happening with the puppy. Percy's doing that. Not me.
I'm just sort of going with the flow of the tug toy,
but I wanna make sure I'm not putting too much impact on his body,
but at the same time,
I need to keep the toy moving around to ignite my puppy's chase drive. Woohoo.
That's really good. And once I have for a few seconds,
I'm gonna reach into my pocket and I'm gonna trade him with some of his dinner.
What's this? Oh, there we go.
I can sneak that toy away and I can reward him for giving the toy up.
What a good baby pup. We talked about tiring our puppies out with exercise.
We talked about building a good relationship.
But where we're going with this exercise is that we are starting a great
foundation for teaching our puppy to have a really reliable response to name.
Now I've done several repetitions with Percy now,
so I wanna show you how quickly this can start to take action.
So I have my tr my toy ready here,
but what I'm gonna do is just sort of let Percy get distracted,
which is happening very naturally with all of these leaves on the floor here.
What I'm gonna do is I'm going to, without showing them the toy first,
I'm just gonna call out his name as happily as I did before.
And if he looks up at me and leaves his distraction,
I'm going to say yes to mark that he's correct.
And I am gonna take off running and having a party,
the same picture that he's seen before.
And then I'm gonna let him play tug when he catches me.
So I'm gonna wait until he's a bit distracted.
I wanna get a bit more of a head start cuz he's fast. Percy. Yeah,
I dropped the toy. I dropped the toy, I dropped the toy. Get this, get this,
get this. Yay. Good boy, you see how he snatched the leash there? So he said,
Hey, this is fun.
I'm supposed to be tugging on something and I just switched him for the toy.
Oh my goodness.
So only after a couple repetitions was he able to put together that word
Percy that you're saying, which he doesn't really get very much yet.
That means fun stuff is about to happen.
And that means that I need to be very, um,
consistent about making sure that when I'm training this, my puppy is focused.
What we don't wanna be doing is saying the name and then not getting a reaction.
So only test the puppy the way you just saw me do this if things are going
really, really well. That was amazing pup. Good boy.
Yes,
we just spent about 15 or 20 minutes outside practicing our restraint recall.
And you can see we have a much different puppy now, much less energetic puppy.
And that's why these games are so important to practice every single day.
You know, with a puppy that's a bit calmer,
I could maybe come inside and practice a bit, you know,
of my obedience exercises or maybe I wanna sit down and watch TV and have my
puppy hang out with me where he's a little bit more calm and he is not gonna be,
you know, nipping and biting and running around.
Or maybe you just wanna pop them in their crate to have a little nap and rest
and you can have, you know, a little time to yourself as well. Um,
but remember the, the restraint recall has a lot of value.
Obviously tiring them out is a pretty great one,
but it's also a good way to build your relationship. It's a good way to teach
your dog to listen to you, you know, when they're around distractions.
You can see how quickly Percy learned the exercises today.
But it's easy for me because I'm a professional dog trainer,
but it can be easy for you too. And I wanna help you with that.
So if you wanna work with me and the rest of our McCann Dogs team,
check out our online course called Puppy Essentials.
The link for that is in the description below.
I talked about teaching response to name earlier, but I only covered one point.
And there's actually a few more things that you need to know about in order to
have a puppy or a dog that responds every single time.
So if you wanna learn more about that, watch this video right here.
On that note, I'm Kayl, this is Percy. Happy training.