Retraining a newly adopted 2 year old?

[LabsAdored]

Hello all,..

I'm curious about retraining our Yellow(her name is Emma)that we have recently adopted. She is for the most part quite obedient, great with my kids, and very happy... except for when the cats get her excited. She already knows "come", "sit", "wait", "heel"... Some other commands are bit more difficult, like "stay", "drop-it", and "leave-it".

Is it possible to reteach her new command words, eg; replacing "come" with 'home"?..

[kassabella]

I adopted Ernie when he was 3.5. He wasn't trained. I learned later he had been taught a word. Off.
He would get on the furnitue and I would say off. He would stay and when I tried to drag him off he would bite. I learned later off meant leave. They would put his food down and say off. He learned what off meant in my house.

[Tanya]

you can train a dog of any age anything. you can even change their name at any time.

If you want to change the name of a knnown command, I would start training it from the beginning again (as if you were training recall for the first time). it may go much quicker as they know the gist of the command but I will still make sure to go through the full training process.

[LabsAdored]

Thanks for the tips!

She is becoming more comfortable with all the new faces, and is learning our new commands beautifully... I think we almost have the "leave it" command under control. That's a big deal around here because of our two cats(male Russian Blue and a female Calico), but I'm sure they'll be friends in no time

[Canula2000]

I agree what Tanya said, just start at the beginning. I love it when a foster dog starts to respond to me. It is such a huge reward for me. New owner, new rules, your dog will catch on fast.

[coley235]

I love seeing people adopting adult dogs. Way to go. My only suggestion for you is to be careful with what words you use for your commands. Replacing "come" with "home" can be confusing for a dog. Everything should have it's own word and action.

[BigBrownDog]

Since dogs don't speak English, you can use any word for any action - you just need to associate it for them. But, I am not sure why you need to change the word from "come" to "home". If she respomds to come now, I'd just leave it as is.

[Sams Mom]

Don't use "okay" as your release command. I use it with Sam. We got her at 14 months. The problem with "okay" is that we say it way too often and unconsciously. Or I do at least. Choose another word.

We release Sam from her "wait" and "stay" commands with "okay".

[LabsAdored]

Don't use "okay" as your release command. I use it with Sam. We got her at 14 months. The problem with "okay" is that we say it way too often and unconsciously. Or I do at least. Choose another word.

We release Sam from her "wait" and "stay" commands with "okay".

Our release command is "go". We use that for crossing the street and for entering buildings after we get her to "wait"

"come" is used as a distance release.

We are still working on her behavior towards our cats and our neighbors black labrador.

All in all, Honey is doing very well and she has learned a lot in the first week!