Happy Sunday everybody. I just wanted to know if anyone can suggest some good and fun recall games? I have a seven month old puppy who seems to be doing well in his recall. He comes back really well on walks and comes away from other dogs when playing. He's a little bit keen to meet other dogs on walks though and if there is something really interesting on the floor hes not so quick to respond so I want to keep strengthening his recall with some recall games. Has anyone got any suggestions? Thanks everyone
Some ideas could be anything that orientates the dog back to you, middle, hide & seek, push back & jam, Funder (throwing the treat between your legs the dogs runs through your legs to get it, you turn, they then look back to you, mark, throw another treat), chase me...
Here are some ideas Snowbunny suggested when I asked a similar question and my little pup loves playing them on our walks now. I hope she won't mind me re-posting them here. From Snowbunny: "I would try to think about playing little games with her every few minutes on a walk; these can absolutely be training games. One of my dogs’ favourite is the “reaaaaddddyyyy..... steeeaaaddddyyyy....” game, where I build the arousal and then ask for a behaviour. That, LLW games, recall games... anything really, interspersed with quiet mooching" "anything that encourages him to be near you Ideas are: - Magic Hand (kibble in hand at my waist to get the pup into a good position, then every now and again drop a piece of kibble through your fingers for him to catch - you have to practice catching first, though!) - Imaginary circle - when your pup enters this circle around you, mark with a clicker or a "yes!" and feed him a treat - throw it out of the circle so he has to reorient to you. You'd start this off stationary and build up to movement. Over time, you can make the "circle" smaller and/or be more specific about him being on your left and where you want him. - General fun "keeping pace" games, so once he's used to being in the heel position, you could challenge him by walking really slowly, then sprinting. Or quick changes of direction, spinning in a circle. Try to "catch him out", but keeping it fun and high energy. I find this hugely powerful with my young girl; I started this from pretty much 8 weeks with her and she's been able to walk really well at heel since she first went out on walks, huge distractions aside of course! - Throwing a piece of kibble away from you but feeding a really high value treat close to you. Again, it's about him orienting back to you and learning that being with you is really amazing. You're encouraging the concept of being close to you. You don't need to be doing these all the time, just choose a game, play it for a couple of minutes then release him with "go play". After a while, you'll probably find that he doesn't actually want to go play at all, and would rather stay with you, playing brilliant games!"
