How To Master Dog Recall Training

I'm going to give you some tips now on mastering recall. It is probably the most common thing I get asked about in basic obedience. Dogs with very poor recall.

There are some basic pointers that might help you. One of which is you have to be more interesting than the surroundings. It's no good standing there shouting at your dog, with your hands in your pockets, looking vaguely bored and I've seen plenty of people doing that.

If there's an interesting dog or a pond with ducks on it, or somebody playing ball with their dog, if they're more interesting than you, your dog's going to go that way. So, when you shout at your dog, sound funny, wave your arms about, look like your having an absolute marvelous time so that your dog wants to come back and be in your space. The other thing people get wrong tends to be punishing the dog.

The dog doesn't come back. They follow it around. At some point, it's either cornered or gets tired and they catch up with it and they tend to tell it off.

So, what you've now done is punish your dog for being caught. So, the next time, it's not coming. If your dog is persistently running and not coming back, a few good training classes might just help you.

A bit of basic reinforcement of sit down, heal, come, can help enormously with just the recall part. The second thing to do is buy yourself a long training line. This is essentially a very long lead.

I tend to use either 10 or 15 meter versions of it. You simply hold one end; the dog is at the other end. It has several feet to run about and be a dog and do normal things but it ultimately can't ignore you and it can't leave.

So, stop letting your dog off the lead if it doesn't actually come back properly. Teach it what you want. Be interesting.

And no matter how far you've chased it and how long it's taken, when you catch it, be nice. That's how to improve your dog's recall. .