Recall
There are a few approaches you can try to achieve a good recall with your dog, however remember you will never achieve 100% so always be on your toes.
I recommend from puppy age to let your pup off-lead in an enclose park, the reason being at this age they will naturally want to stay close to you any way so wont wonder off to far. There are some exceptions, like my pup who decided to squeeze through the smallest gap in the hedge and bolt for it. But USUALLY they won’t wonder off to far.
Hopefully you have already started calling your dog whilst in the house, if you already to this great, if not, now’s the time to start. Always have a treat to hand when calling your dog and give her loads of praise if she does come to you. Recommended recall words are “Rex, Come” “Rex, here” or a whistle. If she doesn’t DO NOT keep calling her name, try and find her, get her attention and make a movement like tapping your legs and then reward her. Again if you keep calling your dogs’ name it will learn not to come to you on your first command, she will think you are bluffing. Once you think you have a pretty solid recall within the home then you can begin to venture outside.
If you are not to confident to let your dog off lead straight away then tie a long piece of rope to her and let her venture off on that. When your dog is looking at or around you, say your command “Rex, Come!”. If the dog returns to you first time then reward her with a tasty treat or a toy to play with. If she ignores you then reel her in on the rope and reward her when she gets to you. Repeat this process until you feel confident she is listening to you. You can then make the process a little harder, try calling her when she is busy sniffing something, if she comes to you fantastic, reward her lots! If not reel her in again, reward her and repeat the process.
After this you can now start to let her off lead. Please remember that even though she responds whilst on lead chances are she’ll be a little more difficult off lead. Have lots of treats to hand and begin walking around, call your dog randomly every 5 or so minutes. If you can find a track which has lots of good places to hide then this will really help. Make sure firstly no-one else is around and then whilst your dog is not looking hide behind something. When she comes back and finds you reward her and give her lots of praise! Again doing this at least 3 times a day encourages your dog to keep an eye on you at all times. This aids recall work.
I cannot emphasise the importance of building distractions up gradually.
I can’t help but be disappointed in owners who have dogs who are perfect at recall alone and then wonder why their dogs won’t come back when there is another dog around or children.
Oh and always remember if you need to urgently get your dog back from a distraction, jumping around, yelling, waving your arms with preferably toys to hand is a good technique, if you look closely enough on your next walk, you’ll usually find at least one person doing this. Much to the amusement of the dogs of course...
Written by Nats