Thank you for allowing me to join the Lab Forum. As you can see from the subject title, I don't have a labrador. I have a half border-collie/half greyhound lurcher! He's just over 18 months old, and has been castrated less than a month ago. He is a clever dog - you can tell he's half collie - but he has recently shown the greyhound/sighthound tendency to chase squirrels and rabbits and deer etc, and to run further away for longer and longer! We want to nip this in the bud. We live in a city - relatively close to a lot of large outdoor spaces and forests and we run a lot and he gets plenty of exercise. But it's a city - with many other dogs about. We don't want him to get in to lots of trouble! So we began Total Recall this week and are following this excellent book very diligently. So far, so good - but we're still in the very early stages! My question is: while we follow the course, should we NOT let him off the lead at all? We see that Pippa Mattinson says "an absconder" should be kept on lead – that exercise on lead for a bit certainly won’t harm the dog, even if they don’t like it. But what to do with a dog who is veering in the direction of “out of control” but is definitely not "an absconder"? We’ve bought a long line and a harness in preparation for later stages of the training. But we aren't sure whether we should be allowing him to run free with the long line on NOW or much later? Any advice very gratefully received.
Hmmmm... a bit of a poser! Welcome to the Forum. The thing is, you don't want to risk damaging your recall by using it in places and/or situations where there is a strong chance he will ignore it. So I'd say don't let him run free in those places until you have been able to proof against squirrels etc. Is there anywhere at all that he can run free without putting himself in danger?
Thanks for your reply Selina. Oh yes, lots of safe places. My concern is more about the training: apart from the puppy training in Total Recall, should all the adult dogs be kept on lead until we've reached the bit of the training where we move outdoors to longline etc? The book seems to suggest that you can let them run loose, but that you should not USE THE NEW RECALL until it's solid. But that doesn't mean you can't use another method e.g. his name or a squeaky toy... or? And I'm really hoping Pippa or an experienced trainer here will be able to advise? To be fair on our lurcher, he's not an absconder. But we want to really get this recall right!
So, you don’t want to let him rehearse behaviour you don’t like. In the case of a prey-driven dog, that means not giving him the chance to chase wildlife. So if you have areas where he can be off lead, where you can train recall but only use it when you know it’s going to work (as per the protocols in Total Recall) and, most importantly, where he won’t have the opportunity to rehearse chasing behaviours, then he can be off lead. Otherwise, you’ll need to use a line. If you can guarantee his focus on you during training games - eg whilst playing ping pong recall - I’d let him off the line for these, but you really need to protect your training and not let him practice those things you’re trying to train against. In my mind, the most successful recall is the one you don’t have to use so, whilst recall training is one of the most important things to spend time on, you should very, very rarely be actually using it to call him away from things he wants to do; that’s the quickest way to poison it. Instead, work on ways that your dog chooses you over the environment do you don’t need to recall him.
