1. You do not have to stick with traditional cues. The way we are teaching will allow you ultimately to choose any signal and make it work once your dog understands the behaviour. (This is very different than traditional training where the signal is used at the beginning of training and usually mimics a luring gesture). Basically the sky's the limit and you can have some fun with it.

2. There is benefit to picking a distinct cue that will be clearly different than all the come's that your dog will hear.

3. Your dog can learn to distinguish subtly different cues, but I think it's better to pick a clearly different one for a verbal recall as you will often be using it at a distance and it may lose some clarity at certain times.

With the recall cue specifically there are a few special considerations:

4. One or two syllables are better than a longer word. This will make it more distinct to your dog.

5. A word with a hard consonant or with a bit of energy typically carries better so your dog will be able to pick it out better amongst other noise. Eg. Disco, Bingo, Zip, Turbo.   This isn't crucial if you have your heart set on something different. Previous examples from students have been the names of liqueur or foreign words.

6. Remember that you may be yelling this out in public, so make sure you are OK to do that with the word you choose

7. Some of you may want to just use your dog's name as a recall. I don't recommend that because we typically use it a lot, and for lots of different reasons. We typically don't expect our dogs to come to us all the time we use it and certainly don't reinforce it consistently, SO it will really decrease the reliability we are trying for with our recall. Personally, I like to save the name as a way to get my dog's attention. Once they check in, I can then ask them lay down, come get a treat, stay where they are, or just give them lovie eyes. I don't want my dog automatically running back to me - there may be a situation when I need to get their attention and then get a down where they are, to keep them safe.

Whatever you do choose, remember that this word will be in training mode only for now. Outside of the controlled exercises you will be practicing, you do NOT use it. If you already have a casual 'get back here' word, just continue using that.