Recall Training...

[fee]

I have a dog who is very well behaved except in one area - recall. He when he is off the lead sometimes something grabs his attention and he just runs. We are on a property so you can see how this is a problem. He is an only dog in our family at the moment and he does usually head toward our neighbours who have 2 border collies. I am thinking that loneliness from other dogs is most definately a factor.

It doesnt seem to matter what i do he wont listen to me to come back. I would love to learn strategies that have worked for you, things that i may be doing to contribute to this and what i can do better.

Thankyou in advance!!

[Keshwar]

Make being with you the best thing in his life!

You can achieve this in lots of ways. Have really tasty treats so that when he is with you he gets a great reward. Play games with him. Basically anything that means being with you is the bestest place in the world for him to be. Being with you has to be FUN.

Also make sure that when you call him that sometimes you let him go straight back to what he was doing. This way he doesn't see the recall as meaning that the fun stops when I go back to the Boss.

Good luck.

Bear.

[CliftonPark]

Hi

It is also important that when you recall your dog that it is 'always' for a good reason. Never recall your dog for things he doesn't like doing e.g. never call your dog back to you to reprimand him, bath time, or whatever he sees as unfavourable. You want to associate your recall with 'only' good things so he won't want to hesitate in coming to you. It takes time to build reliability. If you do recall your dog always be prepared to follow through. This means if Fido doesn't come, you need to go get him. If you don't he will learn that he is able to ignore you. For this reason I would not call him if he is highly distracted and having so much fun that coming to you is not going to be as much fun as what he is currently doing. In this situation I would go get him rather than call him for something he will see as less fun.

Hope this helps.

Good Luck.

[Guest rhapsodical78]

Have you thought about getting him a friend?

[Erny]

Have you thought about getting him a friend?

Getting him a friend isn't going to improve recalls unless the 2nd dog's recalls are so excellent that the 1st dog learns off it. Having a 2nd dog might simply result in the OP having two dogs who don't recall.

Edited August 4, 2007 by Erny

[Ms James]

I agree, having 2 dogs won't guarantee a reliable recall in either of them, even if the second dog does a great recall. That being said, I've got 2 dogs, one with great off-leash recall & the other wouldn't give a flying fig if you recalled him & would just keep going until the cows come home & even then he'll probably just keep on moving ;) Yep, that one never gets let off lead

I agree with Bear, make yourself the best place for your guy to be & eventually his recall will become reliable

[Erny]

I agree, having 2 dogs won't guarantee a reliable recall in either of them, even if the second dog does a great recall.

Yes - thank you MsJames. In my above post I should have added the operative word "might".

[Silvawilow]

I'm fairly new to dog training (only been doing it for about 18mths) so I'm not the most knowledgeable but I am learning!

My first dog was a dream to train, catches onto everything so quickly and very forgiving of my errors ;) However when it came time to train my 2nd girl I hit a wall with the recall. My yellow is easily distracted, "would you look at those birds" "look at that nice cloud formation", etc. She was fine on lead but once you removed it, who knew.

Anyway, I found that training the recall in my hallway was great. There was absolutely no distractions and nothing for her to feel the need to check out. Once she had the hallway mastered we moved into my kitchen (galley kitchen). She is very food motivated, so the kitchen was great for added distractions! She's now pretty good and I can now let her off when we go down the river and she always comes back!