How often do you need to grab your dog and they turn it into a game of chase/keep away? This happens primarily with younger dogs. It can often be frustrating when this happens. It also could be a safety issue if your dog gets out somewhere and they’re close to traffic.
People often try grabbing a treat and luring their dog in. This works sometimes but if a dog truly doesn’t want to be grabbed, they’ll catch on to this and avoid taking the treat in the future. So what should we do? What is the best approach? Let’s dive in.
1. When your dog isn’t expecting it, walk up to them, gentle grab them by the collar or pick them up and then while doing so, feed tasty treats for 10 seconds. Let go/put them down and stop feeding. Try to do this a couple times per day. What you’ll start to see is your dog feels that and starts to anticipate tasty things.
2. Practice coming when called for a food reward. When that is going well and your dog is happily running up to you (and not running away at all) you’re ready to add in reaching towards your dog and then following with the treat. You’ll need to do this for a few days so your dog has no thoughts that you’re going to actually try to grab them.
3. Now you’re ready to gently grab your dog’s collar before treating. This will look like:- “Fido, come!” - Fido runs over happily.- Grab Fido’s collar and then feed a treat.
4. Once your dog is happily allowing collar grabs you can add in picking them up before the treat is given.
Once you’ve built up to this and everything is where you want it you’ll need to be sure to maintain it. This means either do it every time for ever or at least most of the time forever.
*This is just a general plan. Many dogs will require more steps with a more detailed plan.
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