The tap that means “come to me.”
It started with a deaf English retriever
Early on, I went to a consultation for an English retriever. Nothing was working, and nobody could figure out why. Then, during the consultation, the owners and I figured it out together: the dog was deaf. He wasn’t ignoring anyone. He just couldn’t hear us.
So I had to find another way to say “come to me.” Everything about how Sit Happens trains today grew out of working with that dog.
The shoulder tap
Imagine I tap you on the shoulder. What do you do? You look to see where the tap came from. And if you don’t look? I don’t shove you or tap harder. I just tap you again.
Think of a kid tugging on mom’s pants at the store, asking for candy. Mom is busy, but that persistent tug eventually gets her to look. Usually it’s followed by a stern look, and nobody’s happy. We do it differently.
Where the e-collar comes in
Leash pulling is one of the biggest communication problems in dog training. In a house with mom, dad and a kid or two, everyone pulls on the leash differently. Usually the person who pulls hardest gets listened to, and everyone else gets ignored.
The e-collar fixes that, because the tap feels the same no matter who presses the button. Here’s how we teach it.
We set the collar to the lowest level the dog can feel and attach a 15-foot leash to a separate collar. I move about five feet away and start tapping the button while moving farther away. The dog, just like a person, starts looking around for where the tap is coming from.
Sometimes we get lucky and the dog looks right at us. When that happens, we say “Yes!”, get excited and move backward, away from the dog. That excitement and movement make the dog curious about what we’re doing. When the dog gets to us, we drop down to their level and reward them with love and enthusiasm.
If the dog doesn’t look, we keep moving away and tapping. When the leash starts to tighten, the dog looks at the leash, realizes it’s us and starts moving our way. The moment they move toward us, the tapping stops, and the party starts.
Once the dog figures out the game and keeps coming to us on the tap, we pair the tap with their name. The button and the name happen at the exact same time: we tap two to four times while saying the dog’s name, so the dog feels the tap and hears the name together. Every time they respond, they get more love and excitement.
Then we practice it over and over, name and button together at the same instant, followed by a simple command. Name and button, then “Come.”
Whether you say your dog’s name, tap the button or tug the leash, it all means the same thing: come to me. And if you come to me, you get a rush of love.
Think of it like times tables
Repetition is what makes it stick. Practice for four to six months, use the button as much as you can, and eventually you won’t need it. Because the name and the tap always happen at the same moment, the name ends up meaning exactly what the tap means. When you say your dog’s name, they’ll come.
Somewhere along the way you were conditioned to look when someone taps your shoulder. We just took it one step further and made the tap mean “come to me,” no matter what’s happening or where you are.
We never use it to punish. Ever.
We can’t stress this enough: using the collar for any kind of punishment or correction is not tolerated with our trainers. Not once, not a little, not ever.
Here’s why. You can’t build value in the e-collar if you ever punish with it. The whole point is that the tap means “come to me,” followed by a rush of love. The moment it’s used to punish, that meaning is gone, and so is the trust we spent weeks building. So at Sit Happens, the collar is only ever a way to talk to your dog.
It’s your choice
We don’t use the e-collar with every dog. We’d like to, but it’s not required. We show you how we use it during the free in-home consultation, when we demonstrate with our own dogs, and then you decide. You have the final say on what you’re comfortable using.
Why we train in your home
It’s a progressive system. Come, Sit and Place have to work in your house before they can work anywhere else. For the first week or two, we ask you to skip walks and outings and do the very specific homework we give you instead. A controlled atmosphere matters, because we don’t want you accidentally messing up your dog in the first few weeks. Lessons are usually once a week, and every step is proofed before we move on.
- Week 1: Inside your home, building Come, Sit, Place and Free (Free means “go be a dog”).
- Week 2: Doorways, boundaries, thresholds and just outside the front door. If we control the door, we control the reaction once we’re outside.
- Week 3: The sidewalk, the driveway and the start of walking.
- Week 4: Walking and position, with distractions added in.
- Week 5: Wherever you and your dog are ready to go next.
Fair warning: your dog will learn faster than you
Your trainer’s job is to take your dog as far as possible and get them ready for next week before you are. That can feel frustrating, because it seems like your dog isn’t any better for you. But it usually takes at least three lessons for you to start understanding what your dog already knows, and it really clicks around lesson four or five. Stick with it.
How we know it worked
There are two tests we love. The first is what we call silent recall: put your dog in a Sit or on Place, walk 10 to 15 feet away, turn around and tap the button. No name, no words, no hand signals, no leash. If your dog comes, the system is working.
The second is name only: just say your dog’s name, with no button and no other cue. If the conditioning worked, your dog comes.
Ready to see it in person?
Call us at (904) 248-8309 and a trainer will answer, seven days a week. We’ll come to your home, show you what a Sit Happens trained dog looks like, and you can decide from there.