Hi Everyone, Bodhi (chocolate lab) is 1 year 8 months. He is the sparkle of our lives and I cannot imagine life without him! He is goofy, happy, curious, and loves all dogs and people. He is a very social boy. I had an incident where I let him out of the car to let a friend hug on him. Rather than hopping out and receiving affection, he ran around the busy parking lot, towards the street, and wouldn’t come back…. he was wanting to play. That huge mistake I made could have cost Bodhi his life. The experience prompted me to immediately purchase Total Recall. I’m absorbing as much as I can before we start the exercises. And if I can be honest, I feel almost paralyzed to begin the training because I'm a perfectionist and have a deep fear that I will fail Bodhi again. I'm very, very scared to let him out of my sight and off the leash. Bodhi is 100% action-focused. He LOVES other dogs and people. Anything fun and playful immediately stimulates him! He is inconsolable when we are near daycare or dog parks so we’ve avoided those lately, but feel bad because of his affection for other dogs. My husband and I become invisible around anyone/anything else. He knows the basics but, admittedly, we (Bodhi's parents) could use some refreshers ourselves (and motivation) to revive the basic commands back into his repertoire. Poor kiddo, bored out of his mind with old, structured mom and dad life. I don’t blame him for pulling mulch and rocks out of the garden to taunt boring ol’ mom to play. He’s such a fun, sweet boy. (Reading all of this is making me see why Bodhi is way more excited to be around others than his parents ) I have a few questions on signals and equipment: Recall signal: Since “come,” “here,” or “Bodhi come” do not consistently work, does that mean we pick something like….”bananas” as the new recall signal? So he (and ourselves) are starting fresh with a new word to build a new association? Then the recall sounds something like this, “Bananas!” pip-pip-pip? What length of long-line should we get for training in an open setting? Does the long-line need a handle and what are your experiences with a handle? Is Bodhi at a good age to still be recall-trained? Any other Total Recall tips are much appreciated! Thank you! Angel (Bodhi's mom)
Well done on deciding to train Bodhi. The program described in Total Recall works extremely well, although of course like any training program it takes time and effort. If you want to use a word (like banana) as your recall signal that's fine, but if you intend to train a whistle recall then you don't also use a word, you just blow 'pip,pip,pip.' You are training a conditioned response - an automatic reaction to hearing the whistle - by associating the whistle very strongly with food. Do follow the program in the book as closely as possible - don't be tempted to rush ahead. In the meantime manage behaviour by only letting Bodhi off lead where you can go and collect him easily without using your recall whistle, or use a longline as you have considered. The longline shouldn't have a handle, it just trails loosely on the ground as a back-up until he is trained. They are usually around 30 feet long. Do start training - you can definitely achieve success and don't worry about little blips as everyone has them. If something doesn't go quite right simply take a step back in the training plan and repeat the earlier stage for a bit longer. Good luck!
Hi @Joy Thank you so much for your advice! Much appreciated in your further explanation that I don't pair the whistle with a recall word, I was confused in the readings. I'm glad we don't have to use a new word, my husband and I were trying to come up with something that would flow naturally. All of this has been very helpful! We'll start soon and I'll try to follow up with progress!
