📛 Day 7 · Name Recognition

Day 7 with your dog

⏱ 10–15 minutes across the day 🎯 Goal: name + come-here combo — your dog orients and moves toward you consistently 🎓 Week 1 final session

🎓 Day 7: Graduation day. This is the final session of the Week 1 arc. Complete it with your dog, then check if you've finished all 6 skills — if you have, your Week 1 certificate is waiting.

Day 7: Name becomes recall. Name recognition was always pointing toward this. A name that reliably gets your dog's attention is the foundation of every recall — formal or informal. Today you chain them together for the first time: name → orient → come here → jackpot. This is Week 2's recall skill, previewed in Week 1.

What you've built over 7 days

Day 1: your dog learning the name as a meaningful signal. Days 2–4: distance, competing distractions, household consistency. Days 5–6: out-of-sight name response, naturalistic calls, the one-call rule. By Day 6, your dog was coming from a different room on a single call. That's the foundation for what you're building today.

The difference between "name recognition" and "informal recall" is simple: name recognition means your dog orients. Informal recall means your dog orients and moves toward you. Today you combine them — say their name once, wait for orient, then add a soft "come here" or a welcoming gesture that pulls your dog all the way to you. This is the preview of Week 2's full recall work.

What you need

Your Day 7 protocol

1
Reps 1–4: Same-room name-to-come chain, 4–8 feet
Say their name once, wait for orient, add "come here," jackpot on arrival
Stand 4–8 feet from your dog. Say their name once — wait for orient. As soon as your dog looks at you, immediately add your come-here signal: say "come," crouch slightly, open your body posture, tap your knee — whatever feels natural. The moment your dog starts moving toward you: encouragement ("yes, come on!"). The moment your dog arrives: jackpot — 3–4 treats delivered with real enthusiasm. Never move toward your dog if they don't come. If they don't come after the name + come signal: go to them, give a treat for the orient alone, and reduce difficulty on the next rep (closer distance, facing away so they follow). 4 reps at same-room distance.
2
Reps 5–8: Increasing distance — across the room and out-of-sight
Bigger distances: same chain, bigger jackpot on arrival
Move to greater distances: across a large room (15–20 feet), then from the doorway to another room, then the full out-of-sight call from Day 6 — but now with the come-here chain added. Name → orient → come here → jackpot on arrival. As distance increases, your enthusiasm on arrival should scale up proportionally. A dog who comes from 20 feet across the house earns more than a dog who comes from 5 feet — and your dog needs to feel that difference in the reinforcement value. 4 reps across increasing distances.
3
Real-life rep: one spontaneous natural call today
At some point today, do one genuine call from another room — jackpot arrival
As with Day 6, build in one real-life unstructured recall: from another room, mid-activity, when neither of you is expecting training. Call their name once, add the come-here signal when they orient, jackpot the arrival. This is the most important rep because it happens in a genuine context — your dog is responding to a real call, not a training session. The reinforcement history for real calls is what produces reliable real-world recall. One rep per day of this type compounds over weeks into a dog who actually comes when called, every time, regardless of context.
4
Week 2 preview note
Week 2's recall skill formalizes everything you built this week
Week 2 introduces formal recall — a specific recall cue (separate from the name), recall in outdoor environments, recall around distractions, and distance recall with a long line. Everything your dog learned this week is the direct prerequisite: name recognition means they already know their name is a meaningful signal. Out-of-sight response means they already know to move toward you across spatial barriers. The name-to-come chain today is the bridge. When you start Week 2's recall work, your dog will already have the foundation — you're building from existing understanding, not from scratch.

A dog who reliably comes when called — to their name, across a house, from another room, with one call — is a dog you can trust in more situations. Most owners don't have this because recall is undertrained and over-relied-on. What you built this week is the specific foundation that Week 2 will formalize into a behavior that holds under outdoor distraction and at distances that matter for real safety. You taught your dog their name from scratch and built a 7-day chain that ends in a dog coming to you across a house. That's Week 1. Well done.

Why over-reinforcing recall is the rule, not the exception

Every time your dog comes to you — whether called or not — should feel like a good outcome for your dog. Every time coming to you is followed by something unpleasant (a bath, nail trim, end of play, leash going back on) without sufficient reinforcement, you're building a recall that gets slower and less reliable over time.

The rule for recall, for life: never call your dog to you for something they don't want unless you've massively compensated for it in advance with training. If you need to end play, walk to your dog and leash them rather than calling them to you. If you must call them for a nail trim, give a jackpot before and after. The recall should have the highest reward history of any behavior your dog knows — because it's the behavior that matters most when something actually goes wrong.

Graduation rep. Make it count.

Day 7 — Week 1 final session. You taught your dog this.

Day 7 logged. 🐾

Week 1 graduation unlocks when you've completed Day 7 for all 6 skills. Keep going — you're close.

Back to skill dashboard → ← Back to Day 6
🎓

Week 1 complete. You graduated.

All 6 skills, 7 days each. You built something real with your dog — from scratch, in a week. Your certificate is ready.

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