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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.
____________________________________
.
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
.
@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.
____________________________________
.
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
.
