Murphy is 6 months and up until now has always been good at not going too far away when off lead and even if there are dogs in the distance he has shown interest but when iv called him back he has come. UNTIL NOW! I have just been up the white horse which is a big area of fields and land on the edge of Salisbury plain and there is a pretty large section where the grass is kept short and is great for playing etc if you don't want to trek through long grass, anyway as soon as we arrived he seemed to be excited and I didn't let him off the lead until the other dog that was there was a good distance away. Anyway as soon as he was off the lead he legged it over and it was probably double the distance away from me that he has ever been. I called his name (which isn't his recall command) and was making lots of high pitched noises to try and get his attention and eventually after I had walked almost the whole distance to them, he looked up at me and I legged it back in the other direction so he chased me. He then was fine playing with a tennis ball with me for about 5 mins and then suddenly out of the blue he legged it to that other dog again! Dropping his ball half way there. So I did the same calling his name etc whilst walking towards them and eventually had to grab his collar because he wouldn't leave the collie alone and the owner said she was worried she might snap at him because she's very protective of her ball. I then put him on the lead and we wandered through the long grass. Fast forward 15 minutes of lovely waking and sniffing (I'd let him back off the lead) he then legged it a huge distance again to 3 new dogs that had just arrived and tried to play with them, one a golden retriever came to see me and Murphy stayed with him, so near me but every time I tried to grab Murphy's collar to put him back on the lead he moved out of the way. Finally I grabbed him and that was it. Home time. Now I know that I need to sort out his recall, and I know that this is quite common because he just wants to play but did I do the right thing to get him back? And is the reason he is starting to go further away because he is getting older and braver? This is the first time anything like this has happened and I wonder whether it's because the last 2 times we have been up there it has been to meet a load of other dog walkers off Facebook and then the dogs all played together for ages so I wonder whether he now associates being up there with playing with other dogs? Look forward to hearing your thoughts. Sorry this is a bit of a babbly post!
Re: He legged it! Hi there - I think this is all quite normal, and if you haven't practised on easier come aways from dogs, doing it across a field is a big deal. I don't think anything you did was wrong, if you didn't have much chance of using your recall successfully to do something different was exactly right, I think. Although, all of that said, I spent ages and ages on exercises to get Charlie away from other dogs, and for ages and ages didn't use my recall "for real" around other dogs on walks. I even posted on here about the problem of getting Charlie away from other dogs without using my recall command! In the end I used my recall command to recall him away from other dogs on walks. It worked...
