ADMIN – Hi Anne,

6 months is a good time to start training the dogs, before that most dogs have puppy brain and are too easily distracted. I am okay with starting a dog earlier if they are advanced (i.e. they can confidently do a sit/stay/come).

With younger siblings, training tends to be easier because they observe the older dog respecting the boundary and they naturally have an inclination to not wander too far from the older dog.

ADMIN – Hi Mark,

Unfortunately, there is not anything I am aware of that will limit the dog to pottying in certain areas.

Now he won’t go anywhere near enough to the flags, even to set off the beeping! I tried a couple of distractions (a ball, my kid walking through), but again, he’s not going anywhere near the flags.

Are we done? There are lots of different sides to our yard, and I’m not sure he is sufficiently well-trained at all parts of the boundary. What should I do?

ADMIN – Hi Andrea,

Sounds like he has got the basics down, but is overcompensating and is perhaps a bit fearful. That is common. You want to keep working with the dog, but focus more on positive time in the safe zone. Feed him out there, play with him, give him a bone, etc. Most importantly, project confidence when you lead him around the safe zone. He will get more confident, and start to get closer to the boundary – but it can take a couple of weeks.

It is definitely too early to let him off leash. I would complete the full two weeks of training and then do the compliance/temptation testing (what we call Step 3) before starting up leash)

ADMIN – Hi Kathryn,

I would start by observing the dog when they are going through and making sure they actually get the correction. Often, over time we get lazy about putting the collar on so there is proper contact, or the collar has stopped working and the dog is just staying inside out of habit. You will know the collar is working and correctly fitted if you hear the beep and you see the dog visibly react.

If all that is working, then we need to do a little remedial training. Put the flags out again. Make the boundary a little wider, turn up the correction level and go back to Step 2 and Step 3 of the training. In particular, borrow the a neighbor’s dog and use it as the distraction in Step 3 so the dog learns specifically that even if the neighbor’s dog is on the other side – they cannot cross.

Admin-Hi Reb,

It is common that after you start the training most dogs will not go anywhere near the boundary flags. After all, they have just learned that going near the flags is bad and they do not want to even be near the flags. You will see over the next couple of weeks that your dog will become more adventurous. They will start roaming further and further from your house and closer to the flags. However, you do not want to force the dog to go near the containment flags. That will just make them associate more bad things with the flags. Give the dog time and let them learn at his own pace.

ADMIN – Hi Jenn,

What kind of training did you do with the dog? I would go back through the training – particularly if you didn’t do the full training the first time. Concentrate your effort on the third phase of training where you are working with the dog on staying contained even when there are exciting temptation on the scene.

If the dog has become fearful, you want to spend lots of time doing positive reinforcement, like playing with the dog in the safe zone, walking in the safe zone, and feeding in the safe zone.

I would also increase the boundary width to at least 5 feet on either side of the wire, preferably more.

ADMIN – Hi Susie,

If you did not do the 2-week training, I would go back and do that. It will teach the dog that the only way to escape the correction is to turn and retreat and that running through is not an option.

If running through is still a problem, I would increase the correction strength and make the boundary zone wider to make running through more difficult.

ADMIN – Hi Kris,

Dogs that have remote correction tend to ‘get it’ much faster than most dogs because they understand they need to do something to turn off the correction.

If you just work through our training protocol you will be fine. In particular, our Step One where we teach the dog what we want them to do before layering in the correction is very useful where you have remote training experience. In Step One we teach the dogs what we expect from them with only the beep, before we add the correction. That way the dog knows exactly what is expected from them before you apply the correction. So when your dogs do get corrected, they will tend to make the connection to turning and retreating rather than heeling.

If you find the dogs are reacting to just the beep (because your remote collar beeped as well), do the Step One training without the collar at all, so there is no connection at all to the remote trainer.

ADMIN – Hi Mark,

That is not a problem. If you have multiple dogs, then you can train just one of them. They will just learn that different rules apply to them. (Unlike humans, the lab is not going to sulk around thinking about why life is unfair!).

One tips, when you are training the lab, keep the others inside, so they don’t distract the dog being trained. Often when there are multiple dogs present, they pay more attention to each other than to their trainer. So we recommend training dogs separately.

Here are my questions: for multiple dogs do we need to do individual training for each dog 10/15 minutes a day for 3 weeks? Secondly, our dogs must remain outside, how do you recommend doing the training while they are accustomed to being outside all the time and having the entire property surrounded by the new fence?

Thanks so much for your site….it’s very informative!!!

ADMIN – Hi Tracy,

You do need to do the training with each dog individually. It helps if when you are working with one dog, you hide away the other two. The dogs tend to focus too much attention on each other if they are all present.

The dogs should not be allowed to cross the border during the training as this will be very confusing for them. If they are outside dogs, I would keep them temporarily tied up, or on a zip-line. We don’t like tying up dogs either, but this should be temporary – they will soon have complete freedom.

If you need to take them outside the boundary during training for walks, load them in the car and drive them over the boundary. You can also carry them over, but this is probably not going to work with dog’s of your size! Again this is temporary, once they are trained we can teach them how to go over the boundary when we give them permission. But, for now we want to be very consistent and maintain the rule that they can never cross the boundary.