Recall.... Well when I am going to loose you, maybe...

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@Free spirit ,
this is a wonderful, encouraging story to share, but as a trainer, I do need to dash some cold water on the bolded bits, which are very likely to prompt unreasonable expectations in other dog owners:


QUOTE, "Free spirit:

When I adopted my dog 4 months ago, he had no recall at all.
I live in the country and longed to let him off the lead - wherever there was no livestock, of course. There are no fully secure areas to test his recall, so I devised a plan.

I used to take him to a park that had tennis courts, lock (us) in, and let him run off leash, then call him to me, giving a treat only when he came back first time.

It worked very well for me - it might be worth giving it a try. I only had to do it once, and he has been perfect, since.
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In more than 40 years of training dogs, I have never seen one go from zero trained recall, to “perfect” - meaning 80% or better compliance on a single cue - in a mere 4 months.

Even when recall training began in puphood, at 8-WO, I have yet to see any pup, 4-mos on & now a 6-MO dog, who is 80% or better reliable on one cue. // I am not saying it’s impossible, but it’s extremely unlikely, & with that wildly unlikely outcome as a template, dog owners with less perfect, perfectly normal dogs, LOL, will compare their own dogs’ progress with Urs, & they may feel bitterly disappointed, or think that their training is lousy, or worse, that their dog is deliberately defiant or disobedient -
& then really bad things can happen.

Also, & again I am speaking generally, from my own experience, my clients’ experience, & fellow trainers’ conversations & posts, dogs usually require many more than one training session to even begin to grasp the concept of, “stop whatever U are doing, & come to me wherever I am, the instant I call U”.

Proofing is the process of introducing the 3 Ds, which are Distractions, Distance (from the trainer), & Duration (of the behavior), to the training process, & that is precisely the area where most pet owners fall down - they skip proofing entirely, or do a very minimal amount with few distractions, all of them pretty low-level challenges, they keep distances between themselves & their dogs under 15 or 20-ft at most, & they don’t ask behaviors to last more than a few seconds... maybe a minute, at the very longest.

U don’t even mention taking him out on a long-line as an intermediary step in his training, something -between- recalls off-leash within a small fenced area, & off-leash recalls out in the wide, wide world... amid other dogs, wildlife, other humans, livestock, free-roaming cats, dropped food, rotting carcasses, fascinating scents, the rare & wonderful bitch in estrus, & all the rest of the things he would love to investigate, let alone all the other things he would very much like to avoid altogether, or would want to flee from in panic when they are met.

Dogs who have not been proofed are not trained, & cannot be expected to comply under circs they have not been trained FOR - obviously, we can’t proof for every remote possibility, but we can & should proof for all the readily foreseeable events, like cows in the country, motorbikes & lorries in town, friendly strangers & scary strangers (vets, for one), & so on.


A loose cat zooming out from beneath a parked car less than 4 feet from my Akita undid over a year of careful, consistent proofing to cats, & had me cussing her irresponsible arsewipe owner in all the languages I knew for months -
the bloody woman owned 14 cats that she admitted to, & fed more from outdoor bulk bins, so the neighborhood was awash in HER cats, their urine, feces, fights, stalking wildlife, etc., & I had the devil of a time getting my Akita to stand down from hyperalert scanning every time we walked out the door of the house -
Her dam*ed cats even came into our large fenced yard, night & day, so there was nowhere outside the house that was safely cat-free, in broad daylight or the wee hours in full darkness.
Retraining took months, with frequent setbacks that made me want to scream in sheer frustration. // We eventually got there, but that *one* cat, squirting out from under a car at near-touching distance, opened a real can of worms. Blast her. The eejit owner, not the cat.

- terry

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Well he had no recall with me he rarely even made eye contact at first. He may have had with his previous owners but he often surprises me i was told by the RSPCA that one skill that he had when he arrived with them was that he would fetch balls for hours and dropped them into a bucket at your feet and sure enough he did!. Yet when I tried to walk him he was like a whirling dervish. Anyway back to the recall I live in a very rural area, one of his favourite walks is through a big wood and when we go there he disappears deep in the trees i have had to buy some falconry bells for his collar so I can hear him, but one shout of Buster come and he appears like a little white bullet hurtling towards me.

@Free spirit , I think you've found his magic button I'm guessing he's very smart, has decided he really wants to please you, and has worked out what he has to do to achieve that!

Hi Judy i think you are right he just wants to please me he is like my little shadow. On his wood walk this morning he was hurtling back to me and a Muntjac deer ran across his path his little puzzled face was a picture i don't think he'd seen one of those before.

As the OP I thought I should update, his recall is improving, its not perfect. He is a strong minded dog and has no interest in being our shadows, although he does not want to loose us.

We tried/ use a long lead and his behaviour on that is different to when he is off. We have had to learn how to react to owners when he is on that, people seem to see a dog on a lead as threat. I can see how lead walked dogs can I acquire issues with sociability and other dogs.

There is a dog locally who when walked by its mum who lets it of the lead plays happily with ours, when with the dad who keeps it on the lead is head down and not wanting to play almost scared of ours. It's taken ours a whilst to learn to see who is on the end of the other end of the lead!

We have learned some off lead coping techniques, his wait is 95% so we get him to wait whilst we approach to put a lead on. He is slowly learning that coming back to us is the best thing for him to do and is choosing to come back to us, not necessarily for snacks or rewards (although he does still get these ) just because he wants to which will probably result in the best recall.

Being a rescue with unknown recall I started letting him off the lead in some Tennis Courts and agree that was a good start. He is good when he knows he cannot run free on the lead or in an enclosure, its when he knows he's free he has his moments.

The problem we have having tried lead walking only not given the space to work of his energy he becomes bored/ over energetic and chews more at home.

On the bright side of life we are now working on walking at a heel off the lead, we can reliably let him out the house and into the car of the lead. We have walked him off lead into the car with other dogs around at the end of a walk. Fair to saying he still does have bad days, but we can normally tell when he is having one.

In the house his behaviour is good, one night I left the kitchen door open and he slept in his bed in the kitchen. He's 10 months and progressing in the right direction his life will always be a school day but is that any different for the rest of us...

We have had some unwanted bolts to other dogs 70% of owners are good, encouraging and understand. On a couple of occasions where owners have not been understanding, I have had other people comment on the behaviour of the other owners rather than our dog! Interesting reflecting on this some of those unwanted bolts are when he is already excited and already playing with a dog. Something to work on.

You sound to me as if you are doing very well as he is still an adolescent. I wish I could speak to my dogs former owners i know the immediate former owners only had him for four weeks but i would love to know his life history before that. I have been to pop choir rehearsal this this evening and when I got home he was lying in front of the woodburner with the paper from a packet of biscuits he had pinched off the tv unit. Do you ever get curious, I only ever had dog from pups before and it was a lot easier but they are always worth it aren't they.

Free spirit said:

Well he had no recall with me he rarely even made eye contact at first. He may have had with his previous owners but he often surprises me i was told by the RSPCA that one skill that he had when he arrived with them was that he would fetch balls for hours and dropped them into a bucket at your feet and sure enough he did!. Yet when I tried to walk him he was like a whirling dervish. Anyway back to the recall I live in a very rural area, one of his favourite walks is through a big wood and when we go there he disappears deep in the trees i have had to buy some falconry bells for his collar so I can hear him, but one shout of Buster come and he appears like a little white bullet hurtling towards me.

Click to expand...

It gives me hope. My boy has great recall only when it suits him! He is a rescue and has only been with me a month. Some days he brings me near to tears with his behaviour both good and bad. It's a long road and you were super lucky to have found the answer so quickly.

There is a line of thought that dogs get along better off leash.
In my experience - yes, our boy is more at ease with others when not restrained by the leash.
I think this is also the case with many other dogs.
Perhaps ability to run away makes them feel more secure, perhaps they don't get to feel the nervousness of their humans flowing down the leash...

But. If there is a confrontation and a fight - it takes just a couple of seconds for serious physical injuries and possible long lasting physiological effects.

Many years ago, Ari The Ridgeback got in a fight with an off leash neighbors' shar-pey who ran up to him. Both were teenagers back then, under a year. Ari was on leash, I am a fairly strong adult and got between them very quickly, the entire episode lasted probably 10-15 seconds before the shar-pei's human got there and got a hold of him.... and yet shar-pei ended up at the emergency vet that night, followed by long recovery before he could walk again.

My strong advice - do not take chances, do not let your friendly playful baby-dogs and teenagers run up to unknown dogs, without checking them out first. If in doubt - call them back and walk away. And if recall is not good enough to be certain - keep them leashed. Let them loose with dogs they know and get along with, arrange for play dates, but be wary of unknown ones.