Ted is now over 2-and-a-half and had been doing really well on recall to the whistle. To be fair, he is still mostly obedient. But cracks are beginning to show. A couple of times he has not returned to the house from the garden when called - because he’s rewarding himself under the bird feeders, hoovering up dropped seeds. And now, a couple times in the park he has galloped off out of sight and not come back on the whistle. It culminated yesterday in an ugly encounter with an angler at the lake whose bait Ted was determined to get. He wouldn’t come back and evaded my grasp for several minutes as the angler got angrier. He’s been getting a high value home made liver cake treat which now seems to be less effective. I’ve now started on extra mature cheddar and hot roast chicken. My question is, do I go right back to basics on Total Recall or can I just take a few steps back?
Hi @Deejay50 No need to go back to step 1. But you definitely need to have him again on a long line. You have to be able to stop him from self-rewarding himself with seed and bait. On long line practise some distance away from distractions and only gradually move closer to seed and bait.
It sounds like you especially need to work on recalls away from distractions. To do this, you need to get someone to act as a Distractor for you. They will have food (which they will waft around without letting him get it) or a toy - whatever you think will be distracting. And you practise calling him away from that distraction. You can only call once, then the Distractor must remove the distraction behind their back and you must go forwards with your reinforcement food, put it on his nose and lure him back to where you were when you called - and you then feed him. Over and over, he never gets the distraction... he only gets your reinforcement.
Thank you, Jo. Have only just seen your post. I will certainly try this too. It makes perfect sense and tailored to Ted’s issue. Would a similar technique apply to keeping Ted out of our garden’s runner beans, French beans and raspberries, all of which he spent last summer snaffling off the plants? He does it whenever he’s in the garden whether we’re with him or not.
Dennis, that one really falls under 'prevention'. When there are choices a dog can make, in any environment, which are choices we don't want them to make, then we simply can't let them have free access to that environment - because they will make the wrong choices, and get reinforced doing that (because the behaviour is self-reinforcing) and therefore they will just do it more frequently in future - and that's the beginning of all unwanted behaviour. Gardens are very problematic for dogs, because they present a lot of choices we don't want them to make - digging holes, eating toxic plants, ruining flowerbeds, eating sticks or gravel and potential gastro issues involving foreign objects, and some even learning fence-fighting or attempting to escape. So, as with every situation, it's about direct supervision when the dog is out there - or preventing the dog from having access to what they can't be trusted around. My own dogs go in our garden to toilet in the morning. Then they go in the garden to toilet before dinner. And they go in the garden to toilet before bed. Each trip outside lasts about 1 minute and is supervised by me, standing there with them. They don't have unsupervised access to the garden. I would never allow that.
