I worked hard on recall with Cassie who is now 9 months old, although I have not read Total Recall but I will soon. I'd be grateful for the thoughts of others on this forum, in the meantime. I've gone with the advice of being off lead from an early age, not calling her when obviously not going to come etc, about turn walks and so on. She does keep her eye on me when we are out walking and often returns voluntarily - so far so good. But often when she looks at me from a distance and I call or whistle one of 2 things happens. Either she bounds towards me with enormous enthusiasm - and scoots straight past me and performs circles etc, or she saunters towards me and stops for a sniff here and there, before arriving eventually. It's so tempting to keep repeating her name but think I've got that one now! I'd really like to sharpen this up. The last few days I've upped the treat value to sardines ( will I have to smell of them forever - I keep getting them in my hair for goodness sake!), and chicken , and had a couple of more intensive training sessions rather than a "walk", and seen an improvement. But I was wondering would I benefit from using a "long line"? I really want to do low level gundog training with her and feel perhaps I won't be able to progress until I can get this better. Hope this is not too long winded.
My best advice for sharpening up recall is to play "ping pong recall". You throw a large, high-value treat in one direction, then, when the dog turns to look back at you, you turn away from them and throw a treat in the opposite direction. Blow your whistle as the dog is running towards you - eventually, you'll change this to when the dog is just finishing the treat in its mouth so the whistle comes before the turn, but to start off with, you need to get the dog understanding the game. Do this ten times (five each way) and, on the last one, call her to you for the treat. If you use a clicker, once she gets the idea of the game, you can start clicking at the point she starts to accelerate towards you. My dogs LOVE this game and it really helps to sharpen the recall. You need to make sure your treats are easy to see, so make them big and smelly (chunks of warm sausage are great) and do it on short grass or similar so that it doesn't get lost in long grass. For a puppy of her age, only play this game once every few days, because it's very high impact and high energy. Now, yes, you're sending your dog past you, but that's OK at this stage. What you're trying to train is the turn and acceleration towards you. You can also use a puppy switch retrieve. If your puppy likes dummies, then you can use these, otherwise balls would be OK. You need to have two identical retrieve objects of high value. Without asking for any steadiness, throw one of the dummies to your left. Once the puppy picks it up, call her back to you and, as she reaches you, make the second dummy "come alive" by jiggling it. As soon as she drops the first one, chuck the second one to your right. Repeat for a few reps. You may need a few sessions before she gets the idea of this game, but once she does, she should race towards you to drop the dummy so she can chase the next one. As she progresses through her training, this will change to asking for a delivery to hand between, but your focus at the moment is training her running towards you is really rewarding, so that's what you need to keep as your goal. Again, this is high impact, so don't play it often as her joints are still delicate. And, when you do play it, only do a small number of switches (2 or 3) to keep her wanting more. You don't want it to become boring.
Thank you @snowbunny, I will do this. What you call the "ping pong" game I am familiar with as I learnt it at a force-free training class we went to, but I've never tried it outside as we were advised to use small pieces. I will follow your advice with the bigger pieces.
My +R gundog trainer showed me it when my pups were 9 months. I was using chunks of Cumberland sausage about an inch long. Yup, the dogs love ping-pong recall
Hi Selina, I am having great success with Pippa's program from her book Total Recall. I can't recommend it enough. I can successfully recall my dog from chasing deer, horses, food, horse droppings, other dogs, screaming running children, cats, foxes and just about everything including wood. She runs to me like a rocket. I think not only upping the ante is important, but how you serve it. Warm it up and put it in a thermos- which you do not intend to ever use for yourself again. Dripping chicken with beef lungs....yum yum yum. Make sure your puppy is hungry when you go out,and praise her- making a huge fuss about what a star she is, when she comes back. I do 5 minutes recall, 5 min. walking on the lead and then 5 min. play time with her. This works so well. I couldn't be more proud of my girl who was a right derelict when we started. Keep us updated.
Thank you both for your replies, I shall be getting the necessary supplies asap and applying all the advice. This is the thing - recently I have been impressed with her "whiplash" turns when coming across the unexpected on our walks eg, people, startled sheep the other side of the fence, but not coming back to me directly. So now I have action plan! @snowbunny , what is a +R gundog trainer?
I had to refresh recall training too. WE had exemplary recall till about 18 months. I discovered North/South fetching for our field training and morphed that into a whistle recall. It worked and I can call him off of deer, wild turkeys and all sorts of moving vehicles like snowmobiles and ATVs. In a short time he got so he looks to me when he hears a snowmobile. I don't throw the ball as a reward every single time now but I do make a point to use it once and then and refresh. The N/S is sort of like @snowbunny's ping pong but with tennis balls, his favourite balls.
I used the ping pong style to train Harley and still do, but slightly different now she's a bit older. I play long ball, short ball. I throw one ball quite far then send her to retrieve it, whilst she isn't looking at me I throw her other ball into long grass nearby. When she gets close to me I point in the direction that the hidden ball is. She loves this game and will happily ignore everything around her to play this on walks.
Can I ask how you trained recall off chasing things? From what I got from Total Recall, when proofing something you need to set up the situation so that if the dog ignores the recall, she is prevented from self-rewarding. But I can't see how to do that with chasing wildlife? And I can't see how to gradually test it either, because she is either chasing, or not - there's not a situation where she is 'sort of half-heartedly chasing' where I could test and train the recall and gradually build it up. Did you just make your recall so rewarding in other situations that she just began to come away from chasing automatically?
I can't speak for @Dawn_Treader, but there are places you can go to train this sort of thing. Many gundog places will have game pens which you can use - you start with your dog outside of the pen, rewarding him for ignoring the game, gradually getting closer and eventually end up in the pen amongst the bunnies (or whatever). In the south east of England (and probably elsewhere, too), there are a couple of deer parks where you can walk your dogs. The deer are wild but pretty ambivalent to dogs and people, so they're great for working on training. Obviously on a lead and then a line if there's any chance of chasing. It might be worth looking in your area for opportunities to train in this sort of environment?
I managed to do this as well and the only reason I can think it worked for me is that I allow the chase but it's after my tennis ball and he can catch it. He can't catch a deer or a snowmobile. I just whistle and throw the ball in the opposite direction, same as we did when we started training this. As I said above, Oban now looks to me automatically when he hears the motorized vehicle temptations. Wildlife are harder, they tend to just pop out, out of nowhere, and as you say it's hard to proof for them. But it works on them too as he knows he will get a chase and that's what he wants the most. I don't reward with a throw of the ball for every vehicle but I do for turkeys and deer and the odd mother grouse playing the broken wing trick.
Hi Lara, Great input from Snowbunny. For me I am in advance recall training, and it seemed to be ingrained in her sub-conscience pretty strong. The horses were planned; but the fox and the deer were not. But I had confidence and I felt in my gut that it was time which was a gamble, but I got lucky and I have learned to trust my gut. It could have gone very badly. Each dog is different and I suspect that there is no one size fits all training.
I find a well trained stop whistle much more effective than trying to recall from a chase. Look at stop whistle training.
thanks Heidrun. We have been working on the stop whistle, and it is currently working 90% of the time in the fields (although only when she is bimbling about, not super-hunting mode) and pretty much 100% in the house, even when she is running to a treat on the floor. But I am not sure how to progress it outdoors - but I will start a new thread at some point about stop whistle, I have a nasty habit of hijacking other people's questions at the moment!
thanks! yep you are right, its just so challenging trying to read a situation in a split-second and decide whether it is right to attempt a recall or not...I am so scared of 'breaking' it!
ah good advice - unfortunately, Indie isn't too bothered by balls when there are real-life furry squeakers to be had even if she gets a whiff of a long-gone rabbit, a thrown ball would be just a minor annoyance to her! I can see how replacing a chase with an 'authorised' chase would be a great method though, if I could work out how to get Indie interested.
