It's only started happening recently. But he goes further and further away each time now when we ar out walking. He always comes back eventually but that's not really the point tbh. He could get run over, dog napped, attacked etc etc I'd use a long line but we walk in the woods so he'll just get tangled up in trees wouldn't he? Any tips please? i got half way through total recall but didn't finish it. Guess that is where I've gone wrong. Do they do training classes for this sort of thing? Thanks Lou xx
Is Bob ignoring you calling him back or just roaming further and further without you calling him back? If he is ignoring you, although I'm no expert, it sounds as if you need to go back to basic and retrain his recall using Total Recall. I've used long leads with Juno in many places when we've been on restricted exercise including through woods. If you use a long lead it just means you have to keep him closer to you and not allow him to charge off, and keep to any paths through the wood. A trainer would be able to help you with Bob's recall, but it does come down to you training with Bob. Good luck
Yes, they do training classes for this kind of thing. It's a "thing" most people who have their young Labrador off lead for significant amounts of time have dealt with. You need to walk Bob off lead at times when you can focus on him completely. Having a good recall would definitely help, but there is a problem with constantly using your recall to get a dog to stay close - it's a good way to ruin a good recall. But definitely dust off Total Recall and get on with it.... First, try an about turn walk (that's described in Total Recall) - if where you walk allows you to do this. London and an over confident dog do not allow me to do this. Also try rewarding check ins walks (this is my main tactic in not hugely challenging places). Take a stack of yummy treats, and a clicker and every time Bob looks at you, click and treat. Make sure the treats are massively yummy. You have to do this for ages. But it really works. Play with your dog. Keep his attention on you. Get him so he is hanging round you, waiting for the next game. The basic idea is your dog has to watch where you are - but you can't just switch off and let your dog wander further and further away. You have to have 100% of your attention on your dog and be engaged with him the whole walk. Once he is "trained" to stay close to you, you can start to relax, but it takes a good long while. Long lines are a management tool, in that they can prevent self rewarding, but they do not train your dog to stay close unless it wears the line so long it doesn't know it has it on (which means wearing it all the time for months and months, and the line is cut down gradually to remove it over more months) - not very practical.....
That makes so much sense. Will get back on it. I've let things slip. I used to hide from Bob, about turn, take cat food as a reward, play games. I've got too casual and over confident. I'm back on the case Xx
What Julie said. Since day 1, I've employed the tactic of rewarding check-ins. In exciting territory, this is literally clicking and treating for the quickest glimpse in my direction. I started doing this in low-distraction environments, obviously, but now I can be a bit more discerning and only treat for them being in a small circle near me when it's somewhere really familiar. Of course, sometimes we don't see (or more specifically, smell) the distractions and I've found in the last couple of weeks that they're smelling some amazing things in the woods that they want to go and investigate. So, even in our regular haunts, I have gone back to clicking and treating for any contact. When you start watching them like a hawk, it's quite amazing how often they do look towards you. It's really easy to switch off from your dog on a walk and get absorbed by your own thoughts - processing the day - but it's really rewarding when you end up with them spending more time with you and you feel like you're actually walking together, rather than independently. By being aware of them all the time, it also means you can pre-empt them running off - you can watch the body language that says "oh, my, that smells good!" and interrupt it with a treat or a game. By making yourself the most exciting thing in his world, he will want to spend time with you. We're certainly not all the way there yet (a long way from it), but I can see how it makes a massive difference when I'm tuned into them, rather than just mooching along in my own world. My recall seems to be pretty good at the moment (although not infallible in out-of-the-ordinary situations) - they came away from a cat for the old boy (my husband) yesterday when he was walking them, and this evening they shot off into the trees after an amazing smell while I was too busy watching where to put my feet walking down a steep bit - but came back to the whistle. I've been working on the recall massively recently and it is definitely paying off, but I agree with Julie that you shouldn't be recalling Bobbert all the time, because he'll associate it with stopping fun things eventually. The goal is to make him stay close because you're exciting, rather than having to call him back all the time. I heard someone describe it once by saying the most successful walk is the one where you never need to use your recall. I think that's pretty accurate. A couple of things we've talked about on another thread is "finding" a load of treats you've scattered on the floor and making a big deal of it so he thinks you're amazing for finding a jackpot, and pre-loading a "sausage tree", which is a tree with loads of pieces of sausage shoved into the bark that you "find" and help him reach. My two love these games so much, their tails don't stop wagging! I also like to do lots of little bits of training as we go along. Even if it's asking for a sit, or a hand touch etc, it keeps their attention on me all the time because when I ask them for something, they get a really tasty treat. You don't want to overdo it, so keep it all stuff that he enjoys doing (the hand target is one that my two love and will come running to do) and high value rewards. Good luck
I reward check ins too. To me a voluntary return to check in with me is every bit, if not more, valuable as a prompt recall. But out in the great big world food treats don't cut it. A throw of the ball is the highest reward I can offer when we are out off leash. Of course that sends him racing away again but if I throw the last ball back the way we came from he's guaranteed to come back to me in order to keep the outing going. Play around with your pup to see if there is a reward you haven't thought to use yet. Food works for us indoors, say at an inside trial, but outside with lots of space it takes a lot to trump running for joy.
It's not the food vs the running though - it's not a competition between the reward and the alternative. By making looking towards you rewarding, again and again and again and again, you generate a trained response. Rewarding with play and balls is good, but I will reward something towards 150 check-ins on a walk when I'm working on keeping his attention (and if I can't keep it, I'm working in too an exciting place). Throwing a ball that many times I think risks generating a ball mad, obsessive dog, one of those dogs that is leaping round "ball, ball, ball, ball" - I think it ruins steadiness. Much rather use food, and 5 or 6 careful retrieves.
Good advice here for you . Its so easy to become over confident , complacent even , which tells us that recall training is really ongoing , as is all training
I agree you're trying to build habit through rewards. Each dog decides what is rewarding, some trainers work hard to increase the value of food in the dogs eyes as it's an extremely convenient and quick reward. If your dog prefers play personally I would still work on using food and use play as a jackpot every now and then.
Agree with everyone's comments, especially creating a habit of regularly checking in through food motivation, with the odd retrieving game thrown in. I have been able to phase out the rewards mostly when checking in....and use a release cue "OK" so he knows to carry with what he wants to do...he chooses to check in.which is a quick glance back.. or looks like he wants to work..he has a special expression meaning can we DO something now please? Not so long ago...when Benson was around 10 months to just over a year, we really had a problem...everything else was just so much more interesting than us..I would barely get a backwood glance on a walk. He didn't bolt off (now that is a very different behaviour) he would just sort of amble further and further away. I didn't want to contaminate my recall, which wasn't particularly strong as it is, so just worked on making myself more interesting. We also upped the ante on rewards, roasted chunks of beef, chicken, cheese cubes...explored charity shops for soft toys, fur balls, frisbees...ended up with a HUGE bag for walks, honestly takes me a good 5 mins to get my walking gear ready these days! It has worked though, and now walks with Benson are a pleasure, I am getting compliments on how well behaved and obedient he is. It was hard work though, and I have to be engaged at all times with Benson We walk together....I want him to be aware of me as much as I am aware of him.
DEFINITELY finish Total Recall or even start again. Take it from me, we have a rescue Labrador x Pointer - Charlie that we rescued almost 4 years ago who had a history of absconding (we weren't told by the rescue centre ) and it took us over 3 years to sort it out. Good luck with Bob xx
I used every training tool I could think of to deal with this! And the end result is sensational, but boy we've been working on most of this stuff for over a year. And costing me a fortune in chicken! Checking in - check Eye contact - check Wait - check Stop - check Voluntary heels - check Recall (verbal and whistle) - check Plus three recall-ish like cues which are the perfect way to erase any worries about damaging or wearing out a formal recall. "this way" as a sort of recall, which means get back here because we're going this way, not the way you think you're going! "find it" we started through playing food find it games. Thing is, the food to find is always to be found in my general vicinity. So if I shout "find it" she'll come bounding back to me to start her search I can also just say her name and achieve a 8/10 recall. The fascinating thing is, that was never trained it as a recall. Just simple luring to train a "look at me"/"pay attention" response. But it stacks up that she has to return to me to pick up her reward! It's absolutely joyous to get a recall from her name, but I have to be so careful. It never ceases to amaze me how many folk think there dog will respond to a name call as if by magic. But you have to be so careful, for a trained response to their name you must never throw their name around in conversation or use it in vein otherwise it'll lose it's meaning in no time at all. Because real deal recall is a lot of work, and you're in no mans land until the training for that is established, you need more tools. If it were me I'd start with some of the low hanging fruit, especially the "find it" game straight away. Start at home, just toss some food in their line of sight and say "find it". Once he gets the hang of it, toss some food when he's not looking. When he's found it say "all gone" to keep the game fair, and if you threw more than one piece you can add "there's more!!! find it!!". If you have typical greedy food obsessed Labrador, I reckon you could start seeing results in just a couple of weeks. Move the game outdoors, and call a "find it" as soon as he's heading away further than you would like and see what happens! The real magic only for me happened a couple of months ago. One day I was offered an n automatic wait about 10 meters in front WOW I captured that straight away. It also largely solved a chronic scavenging too problem - it keeps her close enough to supervise (leave it, no, etc) and now she is always working her little brain to figure how to earn a treats from me (by offering a waits, coming back for a heel that I didn't ask for etc) rather than seeing what she can find for herself Some of those tools might not be bullet proof and 100% proofed but it doesn't really matter. With so many alternatives to fall back on which will broadly deliver the same end result I can feel pretty confident. I know that's a lot to take in! There's plenty of info on the interwebs on how to teach all these things, but any half decent 1-2-1 trainer should be able to show you the ropes. I'm not sure the group environment of a training class is necessarily suited to teaching those. I much preferred having someone come out and help me on our home turf and the park, so the training is associated with that environment and those stimuli.
I think they get to a stage where you think their recall is 100% and you relax and stop reinforcing tne training which is why these things happen. Harley isn't food motivated at all and it's difficult to reward with treats as 90% of the time she isn't interested. I use a ball personally. For a really good reward I will throw the ball far, other times I might just drop it behind me in long grass when she isn't looking for her to find it. If I need to get her attention I get a ball out of my pocket and she comes. She only gets roughly 5-10 throws of the ball over a period of an hours walk, but quite often I hide balls in the grass for her to find. This really helps keep her attention. She also checks in with me a lot to see what I'm going to do next.....hide behind a tree, drop or throw a ball, run with her, play tug etc.
