Another Life-Saving Skill that EVERY Dog Should Know

Next to teaching your dog to come when you call, I will venture out on a limb and suggest that teaching them to stop and down randomly (where they are) is the second most important skill that you can teach your dog. Here’s why:

I’ve always taught this skill as an important part of obedience with my dogs over the years. The other day, I was able to experience the full weight of that decision with my young dog, Ned. We were walking off-leash on a property that I’ve walked on for almost 2 decades with my dogs. Suddenly, I watched Ned disappear through the fence. I was shocked, to say the least. I had no idea there was an opening large enough for him to fit through. No other dog had ever found one before either. There is a busy road with an 80 KM speed limit on the other side of the fence. When I saw him going, I immediately called him and as I’ve taught him to do, he tried to get to me as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, this meant he was going forward rather than retracing his steps back through the fence. He was trying to get to me, but was running along the fence on the opposite side of it. As he ran, I was frantically looking for a way to get him back across to me. Luckily, he was hugging the fence trying to find a way in.

We were both coming up empty, so to stop his motion beside the busy road, I used my random down…