Leigh

Everyone is different on how they train dogs. Some are highly intense and want to teach their dogs commands with hand signals, a clicker, and all the things. Others are so laid back that they barely train their dogs. Then you have those in the middle (myself) that really just want my dogs to have some simple, basic commands that are easy to train and follow. But when you start teaching your new farm dog commands, it may mean life or death. Because I don’t know where you are in your journey, I am going to give you my commands to teach farm dogs and how to actually teach them.

Commands To Teach Farm Dogs

I am going to make a lot of assumptions here because if I don’t, this is going to take FOREVER to explain. Besides my attention span being short, I have other things to do. Like train my own dogs, plant, milk, etc. So in effort to keep this as basic, short and simple as possible we are going to assume some things.

One, you have some basic idea of how to train a dog. This means that you understand that if you are training to get your dog to learn sit, you know that you will have to gently (but firmly) push their butt down as you say sit, then give the treat. If you don’t know how to do those things, I suggest highly that you save this post, and go watch YouTube videos on how to train a dog to sit. Then come back for the rest of this post.

Two, we are going to assume that you know that when you and/or the dog has had enough training. If you are getting frustrated, they are not going to work with you. Dogs are incredibly smart creatures and they are more in tune with you than you realize. So if you are frustrated or pissed off, that is going to come through and the dog will thin you are frustrated or pissed off at it.

Three, you understand that working WITH your dog is more important than being the master of your dog. You will get more out of your dog by asking instead of demanding. Unless it is a true life or death situation, you do not need to dominate your dog to get your point across.

Four, I don’t know why I even need to bring this up, but again, your bond is the most important thing you can have with your dog. Don’t ruin your bond because you are not getting your way.

Fifth, we are assuming you have already been working with the dog on their name, learning their behaviors, etc.

Tools For Training

You do not have to go all out when training dogs. I talked about the various tools that I use when training farm dogs here. But some other tools that you would probably want to have on hand are below:

Training Pouch– This thing is absolutely necessary, especially if you are working from the ground up. I used to carry a bunch of treats in my pocket, and sometimes still do, but if I am doing a serious training session, I pull out the pouch.

Training Treats– Now, I am ALL about using dog food as treats because it works really well. Honestly, you may not need treats or food at all depending on your dogs needs. Some dogs prefer treats, others want praise and still others want a toy. So figure out what reward they want and use it. But when I am training my dogs, I use training treats because we are past the dog food as a reward stage.

That’s really it for a lot of these commands. I don’t train them to go to a board or place.

Let’s get to training!

My favorite commands and how I teach them

Sit, Stay And Down

I know, you came to learn about training farm dogs! This is basics! But let me tell you about the phase, “Paramedics save lives, EMT’s save Paramedics”. The idea behind this phrase is that I can do ALL these things to save your life, but if I don’t go back to the basics of care, none of it matters. For example, I am trained to defibrillate your heart should it stop beating. But that part doesn’t matter if I can’t breathe for you and get your heart pumping manually.

So we start with the basics.

Teaching your dog to sit, down and stay are the most basic and most important commands because if you can get your dog to sit and trust you enough to stay, they get all the good things. If they can’t lay down and rest for a minute, they are going to end up getting hurt or hurting someone else. The very first thing I teach every single dog that comes into my home is how to sit and down. Stay is a take or leave command for me. Rarely do I need my dogs to stay put. If I do, I just put them in the house or their crates.

I’m not going to bore you with how to teach sit because again, we are assuming you know how to get your dog to sit. If not, go to YouTube and come back.

Come

If you are teaching your dog to be off leash like I teach at the end of this blog post, you are already teaching your dog to come. But to be honest, I don’t have an actual command for getting them to come to me. Though, I guess you could say that the know the word or maybe it’s the tone. Usually, when it’s time to go back in the house, I yell out some version of “Come on, guys.” And the dogs all race to house.

Whatever command you are going to use to get your dogs to come to you, make sure you stick with it. This is the command that your dogs will associate with great things like coming inside, getting on the couch or bed, and generally being with you.

Bed

Giving your dog their own space is incredibly important, especially when you have multiple dogs. Our dogs go into crates when we feed them, when we leave the house, or when we have company over. This one can take a while to learn because some dogs have never been crated. Kodi cannot be crated because he absolutely refuses to crate. We’ve tried everything. Short of shoving his 130# butt into the crate, he’s not going. So he stays loose with Bear, but they still have a “bed” and they go there when it’s time to settle.

To teach Bed (or whatever name you want to give the crate), I simply put their food in the crate and say go to Bed. They have to go into the crate to get their breakfast or dinner, and as time goes on, they learn that the crate is a great place.

Also, don’t underestimate the value of other dogs knowing their crates. I did not teach Fenrir Bed. He picked it up from Blu and us placing his food bowl in the crate.

Leave It

This command is the second most important command on a farm. When your dog is locked in on something, like a chicken, it is important that you can get their attention away from that object. Or if they are digging to China, you to be able to get them to stop.

The way I teach this command is actually pretty simple and it’s a daily training thing.

First, I take the dog outside and let it play. When the dog locks onto something, I call their name. When they look at me, I praise the hell out of them. After a few times, I will say something like, “Blu, Leave It“. This introduces the command. Then rinse and repeat. This can take a few times for them to really understand what you are wanting and you should be prepared to intervene if necessary.

If they don’t respond when I call their name, I will usually do something to get their attention. Something like a gentle tug on the leash (attached to their prong collar because we are training) or throw a stick, ball, toy, etc near them to break their concentration. When they look at me, I praise them. Then I will slowly start to introduce their name and the command Leave It.

Quiet

This is one that has been freestyled (which I go over at the bottom) because I can’t stand barking dogs. If the dog has something to bark about, ok. But barking to bark drives me insane. So I accidentally, on purpose, taught the dogs that when I get up to check to see what they are barking at, if it’s nothing (or I can’t see anything) I will tell them to Quiet.

If I see something, I tell them good job and then go sit down. They are still barking like crazy because there is something there, but at least they warned me. Which is all I want them to do.

Drop It

We have all had the situation where the dog has something you do not want them to have. Whether it’s a ball for playing fetch, or a dead animal, we want them to spit out what’s in their mouth. On a farm, it is even more important because there are a bunch of things it could be. Last year, the dogs found the hole that contained the pig head…. Do we need to talk about the absolute horror of watching your dog carry around a pig head?

How to teach Drop It? With great patience.

Actually, the trick is offer a higher value treat as a trade. The other trick is to not treat it like a game. Which is weird because that’s how we are going to train it.

The easiest way to teach Drop It is by teaching the dog to play fetch. We start with a reward, most often a ball but Blu prefers sticks, and we shake it in front of them to get them excited, and then throw it just far enough for them to be able to get it while still on leash. Or further if they are allowed off leash. When they bring it back, a lot of people just yank the ball or stick out of the dogs mouth.

I’m sorry, but my dogs have very large teeth, and while I’m not opposed to shoving my hand down their throat if the situation calls for it, I am not doing that for a ball. So I teach Drop It, by putting them in a sit and then telling them to Drop It. Telling the dog to sit signals that you need their attention. This is when I will either take it from them, gently, or I will throw another ball or stick. It really depends on the dog.

This particular command takes time because you have to figure out how YOUR dog will actually drop that high value treat or toy.

In the case of the pigs head, we tried various ways to get them to drop the head, but nothing worked. We had to wait until they lost interest enough that we could call them into the house. Then we disposed of the head deeper in the ground, much further away.

Easy

This is a very important command that all dogs should know, regardless of type of dog, where you live, etc. It is invaluable to be able to put your dog at ease in stressful situations. Unfortunately, the only way to really teach Easy is to put in action. This is going to be an on going thing that will change and adapt based on your dog.

The reason why this command is so important is because your dog simply does not understand what is happening. Imagine with me that you are going to a new country with completely different customs than yours. No one speaks your language and you don’t speak theirs. You have fallen and broken your leg. How absolutely frustrating, terrifying, and nerve wracking would it be to try and navigate care?

This is every single day with your dog. They do not understand what you are wanting and every new experience can be absolutely terrifying. Not to mention there is this big goon trying to communicate with you.

So I teach Easy in a very soothing, laid back way. If I see my dog starting to get amped up, or freaked out, everything stops. I go to the dog and love on them and whisper Easy. Once they have calmed down, we will either return to what we were doing, or we will take a break.

An example of using it would be taking the dog to the vet. You know that you have an appointment in 3 months. So one of the ways that you could do this is by getting the dog in the car now. You notice the dog getting anxious, give them some love and a treat and say Easy as they start to calm down. Once the car has been mastered, and they can be trusted, take them to a pet friendly store and just walk with them. Anytime you see them getting worked up, stop and love on them. Whisper Easy to them and give them treats (or other rewards) until they calm.

Unfortunately, we don’t always know what is going to set a dog off. But if we can build a solid bond and then work through that bond, you will see your dog start to turn to you before they even get freaked out.

To give a real life example, all of the dogs hate when we go down to the range for practice. In fact, the only dog that will tolerate it is Bear, everyone else has to be put in crates. Bear knows that he will get his ear muffs put on, with a neck gator over the muffs and his head. Then we all walk down the range. He’s nervous and already shaking but he desperately wants to go with us. He will cry, howl, and go nuts if we leave him. So we keep working with him on it. While down at the range, someone is in charge of Bear. They love on him and give him treats and when he has had enough, he goes back up to the house.

There are voluntary and involuntary situations that you and your dog are going to find yourselves in. But having a command that the dog knows will comfort them? Man, that has made all the difference with our dogs. I could ask Bear to do ANYTHING and he would do it because I have worked with him and comforted him every time he gets worked up.

Freestyling Commands

One last thing to be aware of is that you will end freestyling a lot of your training. You can read every training blog or book and watch all of the videos. But at the end of the day, I have found most of my training is freestyle.

What is freestyle training? It is simply telling your dog what to do, over time, and them doing it.

For example, we can nudge the dog three times on the bed and they know to get down.

Another example is when we are standing around talking or whatever. All of our dogs will come up, sit down, and place their head against our hip to be loved on. We never taught them that.

We taught them to not to go out an open door just by making them sit at the door to go outside. If they don’t sit, they don’t go outside. This has morphed into being able to leave the door open and them not going outside because we didn’t let them out. It’s the weirdest thing.

You don’t have to use my commands to teach farm dogs

You may have a totally different idea for leave it, drop it, sit, down, stay, etc. Use whatever works for you. But always keep it simple. If you can pronounce the word or change the word constantly, your dog is going to get really confused.

Keeping commands simple and easy to follow will always be the most successful.

Also don’t worry if it takes your dog longer to learn something. Just stay with it.

Lastly! Make sure that whatever commands you teach, your entire family uses! I can’t tell you how many times Jared or the boys would irritated that the dog wasn’t doing what it was told, only to find out they used the wrong word.

Other Posts From Training A Farm Dog Series

How I Train My Farm Dogs

How To Train Farm Dogs

Tips, Tools and Hacks For Training Farm Dogs

Best Breeds For Farm Dogs

Commands For Training Farm Dogs

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