Betty needed help with her Yorkshire Terrier Mix:

“I have a mixed yorkie we travel in the R.V. If she is not on a leash but is with us and she sees an animal or something she is gone like a light, when we call she does come back, however, is there any way we can stop this behavior. people have suggested using a shock collar,I hate to resort to this but am looking for any suggestions to see if this behavior can actually be stopped”

Because Yorkies were originally bred as ratters, they have a very strong prey drive.  It is this instinct that is making your dog run off and chase.  Although it appears your dog has good recall after “the chase”, the risk is that she could get into an accident if she runs off.  I do not believe that a shock collar will be the answer here, though.

Ideally, you need to get a professional trainer involved if you want to deal with it as quickly as possible, but if you would like to try to modify her behavior yourself, here are a couple of pointers.

• Buy a long line (training leash) and use that until you are confident that she has the chasing behavior under control. The long line is your insurance that you can give her a gentle correction (a short tug on the line along with a command such as “leave it”) to stop her in her tracks.  This is much more effective than using a shock collar in my opinion.
• Teach her to focus on you, and use this as part of the routine for exiting the RV.  The routine should be that she does not enter or exit the vehicle without a specific instruction from you (”in” and “out”).  If necessary, teach her this at home first, where there are less distractions.
• The “out” command should involve her slowly getting out of the vehicle and finish with a sit until you give her another instruction.  To start with, you should keep her on leash for the first 10 minutes of her walk, then give her a release command to let her run as a reward.

Another tip is to get her chasing instinct focused onto a single object.  Find a toy she really likes that can be thrown quite a distance and teach her at home that she can chase this without reprimand (if she is taught to fetch it back to you to play with, all the better) . That way, you control what she chases and in which direction so any dangers can be avoided.

It never hurts to have a book to refer to when training your dog, and there are some very high quality ones available on Amazon, plus many downloadable guides like the one from Kingdom of Pets.  I am going to post a few reviews for visitors to this site to help them choose what suits them best.