Tess is almost 7 months now and her recall is still very good I would love some help to come up with a way to address the following though; Tess is very excited by other owners and their dogs so if I see somebody coming I get her on her lead. We have just started practicing 'look at that' to try and prevent the crazy lunging we usually get at this point! Occasionally somebody takes me by surprise and Tess sees them first and bounds up to them. If I recall her while she's running away from me I know she won't stop, spin around and come back to me. She will come away from the owner/dog once she's got to them (so long as the owner doesn't distract her!!) but of course by then she has got to where she wanted to go. How can I proof Tess's recall so that she'll turn and run back to me when she's already running towards something she finds so incredibly exciting please?
It is possible to proof a dog's recall so it is good enough to stop her in mid flight to another dog/person/exciting thing....you need to do this with extensive "set ups", slowly increasing the difficulty, and providing hugely valuable rewards for compliance. You need other dogs/people/exciting things to be removed if she does not comply to prevent self rewarding. BUT...to attempt to do so "for real" out and about on walks, is the fastest way I know to ruin any recall you have. This is because a) it's quite a difficult thing to do, and most people do not put in sufficient training in order to do it b) you are constantly calling your dog away from things she wants to get to - so your recall become "punishing" to your dog c) other dogs/people/exciting things do not disappear when you need them to do so, and your dog gets rewarded for ignoring you. It is better to do 2 things in addition to training your recall (still working with set ups, in small steps, with high value rewards 1) Proof other cues - such as walk at heel - against the appearance of other dogs/people/exciting things, so your dog does not dash off to say "hi" to other dogs and interesting people in the first place. 2) Train a stop whistle. When you are asking your dog to recall when it is heading away from you at speed, a recall is a "stop turn and refocus on the owner" AND then "head away from the temptation back to the owner". It is easier to train this in two steps: STOP and RECALL. If you want your dog to stop, turn, focus on you, and recall away from something great, you have to put in a fair amount of work. It is well worth it though. Best of luck with it.
Great advice Julie, thank you. Thinking about it, she does actually stop in her tracks and recall back to me if she's running after our own children - and your description of how difficult that is makes complete sense! Of course she's always greatly rewarded (as she is for any recall!). When running towards others I don't recall her because I know it's no use, but I run after her and recall her once she's got there and I'm closer. Of course I shouldn't let her get in to that situation in the first place and I try not to. I think number 1) is the key and we're really not there yet. I've actually just gone back to basics with loose lead walking. We took Tess out to a chilli festival with the family and in retrospect it was way too much for her (and me!) and I don't think I got her to walk one step on a loose lead while we were there. It prompted me to a) get the clicker out and practice an off lead clicker heel in the garden (it's one of the first things I did with her as a puppy but I see now that we never really took it beyond walking around the garden, which of course is easy for her!). I had also got lazy about using the clicker for lead walking and I've reintroduced that too. b) to order her a big girl's harness, so that if we do go somewhere where I know it's going to be hard for her to walk nicely I'll have better control of her. I can't believe I never came across 'Look at That' before and I feel like that's helping with distractions already, possibly partly because I'm not thinking 'oh no, don't see that dog because you'll lunge to get to it' but instead am encouraging her to look but getting her attention straight back to me and moving off in the opposite direction while they're still at a distance she can cope with! Last night I took her dinner and we walked to the corner of our road (it's not busy but there were several cars and people/dogs in the distance) and she had her whole meal while practicing Look at That! We have started to do a stop whistle and she does it beautifully by my side but at distance (just a little way from me) she's either very cautious or comes back to me and sits. I saw a video for a clicker stop whistle yesterday which looked great so I think we're going to try that Thanks again Julie, I must admit I haven't had my clicker out for ages, not through laziness but just through reading so many things and being unsure of what's best. Since I've been using it lots this week I've been having much more fun with Tess and I think she is too, feeling positive
