Healthy boundaries are a way to protect yourself, giving yourself freedom to conduct your life in a way that helps you flourish. People model boundaries based on what they've learned in previous relationships with their parents, siblings, friends, and romantic partners. Before you can establish healthy boundaries, you need to recognize what unhealthy boundaries look like. Some unhealthy boundaries include: Needing to always be together with your partner. Manipulating your partner. Inability to have friendships with other people. Using alcohol and drugs to make yourself feel more comfortable in your relationship. Wanting the relationship to never change. Jealousy or lack of commitment. Healthy emotional boundaries mean that you are able to voice your desires and preferences. Your emotional boundaries separate your emotions from those of another. They protect your self-esteem. These "include beliefs, behaviors, choices, sense of responsibility, and your ability to be intimate with others." Some examples of healthy emotional boundaries are: Your own health and well-being are important, and you will not be forced to neglect your own needs. You have a right to be treated with respect. You will not be manipulated or forced to do things you don't want to do, even if the other person is attempting to make you feel guilty. You won't allow others to yell at you, make you feel bad about who you are or what you are doing, or call you names. You don't blame others for things that are your responsibility, and you don't allow others to blame you for things that are not your responsibility. You keep your emotions separate from other people's emotions, although you empathize with the people you care about. You convey your own needs assertively, and work towards cooperation if possible. This helps maintain mutual respect. Another aspect of physical boundaries is the physical distance between us and another person. People who are good friends or family members have less physical distance between them in their interactions. When someone intrudes on our physical space, we feel it internally. It feels awkward and unnatural. When you are in a relationship, make sure you are comfortable with how you express yourself physically with the other person. Have a conversation about what will make you feel safe and loved. Northern Europeans and North Americans observe the largest personal space distance. People in Middle Eastern countries, South America, and southern Europe have the smallest personal space distance, and touching is common. Eastern cultures consider touching or patting on the back as taboo and offensive. Physical boundaries are often described as personal space. Personal space includes physical possessions such as your home, your bedroom, your belongings, your car, etc. It is well within your rights to establish boundaries with others about respect for your privacy and your possessions. It is a violation of physical boundaries to go through another person's belongings without their permission. Even if you are concerned for their safety or suspect that there is a problem, the healthy and respectful route is to approach the person and speak to them. Make sure the other person knows that this has crossed a boundary and is not respectful behavior. When you learn how to be a gatekeeper of your emotional boundaries, you can achieve certain results that give you a better sense of who you are. These include: Having a healthy sense of who you are, independent from any other person. Knowing that you have the choice in how you want to feel and your ability to act on it. Being able to monitor how much you share about yourself so that you respect yourself. Being able to say "no" at times when you need to be assertive and true to yourself.
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One-sentence summary -- Understand the purpose of healthy boundaries. Compare healthy and unhealthy boundaries. Recognize what emotional boundaries are. Recognize physical boundaries for your physical self. Recognize physical boundaries for your possessions. Set emotional boundaries to improve your sense of self.

After several days or weeksdepending on your dogof on-leash training, choose an enclosed area, and see if you can get your dog to come while off leash. If he doesn't respond to the command, you may have to start using the back-up method again to make him chase you. Remember that the process will take time and patience, so don't allow yourself to get frustrated if your dog doesn't quite understand yet the first time you take him off his leash. The important part is to keep trying. Also, avoid repeating the command over and over if it's proving ineffective. Each time you repeat the command without the dog understanding, you risk weakening the association he had already begun to form with the command. If he's not responding at all, go back to using the long-leash training for another day or two before trying again. If you do initially have to take a step or two backward to initiate the behavior, reduce those steps, take smaller steps, and other similar actions to wean your dog off needing you to move to respond to the command. Occasionally ask him to come when he is not expecting you to. For example, call him when he is sniffing around the yard to test his attention to the command. As you try to increase the distance from which you recall your dog, you may have to get help from another person. The restrained recall variation involves having someone else hold your dog still, so you can get farther away without your dog following along. When you're ready, issue the command once (along with any hand signals you may also be teaching) and have the person restraining your dog let go. As always, use your clicker if clicker training and offer plenty of positive reinforcement when your dog reaches you. The best way for the person holding the dog to restrain him is by lacing fingers across his chest. Once your dog is successfully responding to the command for you, a round-robin approach offers new challenges and complexity to the process. Have two or three additional people besides yourself stand in a large circle at least twenty feet apart, and then have people on different sides of the circle take turns issuing the command and having your dog come. Make sure that each person has the proper amount of time to give your dog praise and a treat before the next person issues the command. Remember to use the clicker if you're clicker training and to have each person use the proper signal if you're using hand signals in addition to the command. After you feel more comfortable with your dog's progress, alter the training environment and increase your dog's exposure to distractions. If you notice that your dog always seems distracted during training, you should backtrack and work in a familiar setting again before moving onto more complicated environments. Make sure that you never progress all the way to open areas (or even enclosed park dogs where safety may be an issue) until your dog is successfully obeying the command in various locations with all different levels of distraction. If your dog is consistently struggling to make the leap from obeying the command on his leash to obeying it while off his leash, then don't be afraid to get help from a professional dog trainer. A training session with an instructor can guide you through these difficulties. You can also contact a professional trainer or canine behaviorist to get more advice. Each dog is different and therefore not every dog learns in exactly the same way.
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One-sentence summary --
Try recalling your dog off leash. Use restrained recalls. Try a "round-robin" approach. Expand the range of training. Get help.