A bit of recall help?

[AshR1 214]

just going to pick some brains, whats people's tips on recall training, my bitch is close to 7months (know she wont have the best recall anyway) in the garden she's perfect but its just a bit confusing for me when at first on a walk she'll come to her name no bother but as we get further into it she doesnt want to return, i just get a bit worried incase she were to walk into a road or get into some sort of accident. any tips on how i could improve on this

 

all help is welcome and appreciated!

 

Ash

[AirgunGuy 362]

I've always found reward training to be the best form of training. Dogs will do anything for a biscuit. When out, simply call her while holding treat. When she comes, give it to her and praise her. She'll pick it up in no time. Once it's well established then gradually phase out the treat and just give her the praise

 

Just remember that she's still a pup and that there will be more interesting things out there than you

Edited October 15, 2012 by AirgunGuy

[echo 24]

Get a gun dog whistle,every time you blow it feed the dog.Get it 100 percent indoors and then the garden and then out doors

[AshR1 214]

Tried treats, she's not interested one bit, she must think its a game, had her out the other night and was trying to get her back for over an hour! she started wagging her tail and barking, wouldnt come closer than 2meters to me, i tried walking away and still she doesnt return. her recall indoors and in the garden is near spot on though, so think i should still carry on in the garden for longer so she gets more of an idea of it?

[AirgunGuy 362]

At 7 months mate she's still a pup and views being outdoors as playtime. She's very young and can't be judged at that age. Keep working away with her and as she matures and grows out of her puppy phase she should come good

[AshR1 214]

yeah thats my plan, thanks for the help, much appreciated!

[hutch6 550]

What games do you play with your dog when out and about to be engaging to the dog?

 

Does the dog have a favourite toy?

[liam mc 18]

Try using a lenght of rope tied to her collar about 20 feet long letting it trail behind her then you can coax her into you and give he plenty of praise, remember no matter how long it takes you to get her to come you always praise her so she always associates coming to you as a positive, also dont always just call her to put collar back bring her to you just for a pet and eventually she will be 100 % good luck

Edited October 20, 2012 by liam mc

[hutch6 550]

Here's a little something that I've found with my dog and applied to how dog’s think and how she’s wired. She's a saluki cross (could be pure, I have no idea) and she is ruled by the two windows on the front of her cranium. Using sight and ears at the same time doesn't come naturally to her unless she is listening for something in the undergrowth. It got to the point where if I wasn't in sight i.e. behind her, then I didn't exist to some extent.

 

When we go out she goes through various stages in attention and once I understood them I found it easier to recognise the first few stages and I could work on those without her going to the next few stages which meant she zoned out and I would have to wait for her to return.

 

Using a few senses to do different things can be complex when you think about it. If you were thinking about starting a job such as changing the car battery then your mind is on the task, where the tools are, where the car needs to be, what music do you listen to whilst you do the job etc. IF someone asked you a question you will be able to give a decent enough answer but if you were held in that frame of mind for some time and asked questions over and over then you become pretty efficient at having your mind planning the job and being able to listen and answer all at the same time.

When you start the job, let's say moving the car, then the engine noise, the safety and the hazards in the direction you are driving the car fill your mind and answering any questions becomes tough again.

Now you have the music on, your head in the engine bay, you've chosen the wrong spanner and you're now thinking about next year's holiday. Could you still answer a question or would you respond with "just a second!"? It is this point that we find that getting our attention becomes harder for one reason or another and it is similar in dogs

 

This is the same thing that your dog goes through and the various stages remain until either a change in the environment happens or their attention is taken up with a distraction.

 

If you walk the dog in the same spot every day and there are no other people or animals around then the only real distraction are the new scents of dog marking areas or previous scent trails left down. The dog becomes accustomed to the environment to the point where they know where everything is, accept that they aren't going to see anything new or to investigate so they remain on the same level in their mind meaning it is easier for you to train them because they can learn to not only be aware of their environment but also learn to use their ears at the same time. Herding dogs are the bees knees at doing sight and ears at the same time as they keep their eyes fixed on the target but use their ears to listen for the next command before responding accordingly.

 

Think about what your dog looks like when you go to somewhere it regularly goes for a walk, it will probably be aware but not altogether alert and you can easily grab it's attention. Now think about what it looks like when you take it to somewhere new. It will most likely be more rigid, alert, soaking up the surroundings, watching everything and a lot more eager to get going. If you arrived by car then take some time to do a bit of training with the dog right where you are by getting the dog's attention and training it to focus on you. The biggest reward you can give the dog is to set off into the new environment as it is where the dog wants to get to as it's exciting and full of potentially amazing stuff to explore and the dog is eager to indulge itself. The problem you have is that the dog is already too high of a level above what it can divide into awareness and listens to commands. Training the dog here will not only teach it that it isn’t going anywhere fast or teaching it to focus on you but you are making direct in roads to training it to use its eye, nose and ears all at the same time. Never underestimate the scents that dogs pick up no matter how crap we think their noses are so somewhere new floods their senses. When the dog can focus on you for a few seconds then you can give the dog the reward it wants the most and that is to move off into the new environment. Take a few yards and ask the dog again to focus on you for a reward be it a titbit a game of tug or just verbal praise.

It takes a while to recognise the signs in your dog as it goes through the stages so you need to really watch what your dog does and when you suspect it of going above the level at which it will respond then you need to interrupt this by getting the dog’s attention. If it quickly escalates to the point where the dog zones out completely then you need to have the dog on a lead to begin with and simply lead the dog away from the stimulus until it relaxes again and you can get its attention first time again. Any dog that is less than 75% recall should not be off lead as you have no control and simply cannot teach recall otherwise because if you don’t have recall you don’t have the dog’s attention and everything then becomes self-rewarding for the dog meaning “Why do I need you? I’m independent and doing my own thing”. You’ve lost completely. This is the equivalent of being up to your eyeballs in whatever you’re doing and you just hear a noise in a familiar pitch to someone you know but you don’t hear a single word or give them any attention at all.

On a short leash you can make being near you fun – “exciting things happen when I am near to you so I enjoy being near you”. To train through the zone stages you can use a long line as you can work at varying distances and yet still have control to reel the dog back in to you.

 

Signs of hitting the next zone are the dog’s ears pricking up or it staring for prolonged periods or missing a stride as it pauses to watch something or it could be the dog lowers or raises its head. These are the giveaways, the tells, and it is when these happen that you are in a new level and need to train again so the dog learns to use its ears to listen and gets a reward for responding. Let’s say that your dog’s ears prick up and it focuses its eyes on something to your right. You say the dog’s name and the ear’s lower meaning it has come down a level but it is still focused by sight on the object, you don’t have the full attention of the dog. It’s like you saying “Hutch?” and I reply with “What?” but I continue doing what I am doing without looking at you. Do you have my undivided attention? No.

A lot of people just use the dog’s name, in my case “Lucy”, and then stop there thinking the dog will give them 100% attention but the dog does the same as we do, they donate an ear or two to you in order to listen to what you have you have to say but this is the same as saying “What?” as a response. Put a command after the name and you have just that, something to follow and a done often enough you create an almost voluntary response in the dog. “Lucy (lend me your ear) Here (instruction)”.

 

We teach our dogs their names by saying their name and when they look at us or respond in a way that shows they are interested we praise and reward them. If we didn’t do that then it becomes just a noise without any meaning and the same goes with everything else we teach them or we ourselves have learned to form our language. Without a clear understanding of the word then it becomes just a noise.

 

To teach the dog to come you have to give it an association with the word, an action, something it can make the connection with. Think about how you teach a dog to “Sit”. I bet 99% of the time the dog is made to sit right in front of you, why? Because it is easier to teach in that position with the luring using a treat or a bit of pressure applied to the back end. I am willing to bet that you ask the vast majority of dogs to sit when they are 10yrds away from you and they will come right in front of you to sit. They won’t sit where they are because of how they have been taught. Sit to them means to put their backside on the deck right at your feet. It is an action of events in one word so they will come to you to sit. You need to do the same association with the recall command.

 

When you walk along with the dog you use “Heel” or whatever you choose for the dog to be at your side. Why complicate matters with having a different word for the same position? IF the dog walks in front of you and you say “heel” and it turns to fall in behind you on a loose leash then you already have a connection in the dog between the command and the place or position it associates with that command. Why can’t you use this to get a dog in position that is three feet in front, four yards in front or fifteen yards in any direction? The command means “put yourself at my side”. For this exact reason I do away with having two commands and use just the one because it is easier to teach thoroughly and avoids confusion whilst getting the dog into the position you want that are the same in both commands. For this I use “Slowly” with my collies and “Here” with Lucy.

 

So how do you get a dog that is five yards away to come to you if it doesn’t know what you want in the first place? Well dogs are pretty simple creatures really and one of the benefits of this is that if you point to something they tend to look at the end of your finger rather than searching the foreground or distance for something interesting. I use this to my advantage and I point to where I want the dog to be whilst it is on a short leash so when it comes to inspect the end of my finger it’s easy to put a treat between thumb and forefinger as a reward for being in that spot. The dog walks in front and you can both say its name and point to the position or you can walk backwards, wait for the dog to start catching you up and point but any time the dog is in the position it is rewarded.

When you’re feeding the dog you can say “Here” and walk a little before feeding the dog. It is a natural word to use to get something near you “Hutch, come here!”, “No it’s over here”, “Well it was here”. They all mean to be in the spot where the person is so it’s very natural to call a dog using here because that is where you want it to be. Cal it here and when it gets there, take a few yards to another position and ask it here instead and then here somewhere else. The dog will just follow you about. So that is conditioning covered but you can also capture the behaviour to.

 

Capturing a behaviour translates as – allowing the dog to offer a behaviour and then marking it with a word for association. In its simplest form what that means is if you are out and about and the dog just turns and comes towards you whilst it is in motion you say “Here” and when it gets to you then you reward it. Shepherds don’t teach a dog the “Away” and “by” commands by conditioning as you can’t. You are too close to the dog walking it this way and that way and it becomes unnatural for them to leave you to go left or right when you have spent months teaching them to follow you left and right so it will remain at your side looking up at you as if to say “well lead the way then!”. To teach these they capture the behaviour. The quickest way to do this is to pen some sheep in a circular pen and allow the dog to chase them around it from the outside. Anytime the dog chases anti-clockwise the shepherd will give the “Away” command. Anytime the dog chases clockwise then the “By” command is given. If your dog knows that the word “Good” means they’ve done well then sling one of those on the end. Dog chases clockwise “By….Good….By”. The next time you say that word to the dog it will think “What was I doing when I heard that noise? Oh yeah!” and off it goes.

Apply this to your dog and anytime it runs towards you put a word to it such as “come” or “to me” etc. You can even run in the opposite direction and when it pelts after you then you can give the word the dog is to associate to the behaviour it is doing.

 

So you have methods of teaching it and you are also becoming aware of the stages your dogs through from being all ears to being deaf. You have the full toolset for teaching recall and you should have a clear idea of what your dog is capable of before you move it up a notch. By this I mean there is no point trying to teach a dog to recall in a field full of rabbits or other dogs if you can’t even get it to come to you if the TV is on.

 

A good little game to play in the house or garden is to toss a food treat on the ground and recall the dog to you and then you release the dog to go get the treat “I have to ignore that, do this and now I can get my reward”. Three simple but massive steps for a dog.

Edited October 30, 2012 by hutch6

[Tiff 36]

Don't feed the bitch in the morning, try a couple of days where you put half of her meal in your pocket (assuming its biscuit or if you don't mind a mucky pocket), and every successful recall gets a varied number of biscuit. Feed her the rest upon returning to her kennel or back in the house. Once she's figured out that you are hand feeding her, take her out on her walk and do the same.

 

7 months is more than old enough for a rock solid recall, even if she is a saluki or salukiX.

 

Try a higher pitched tone of voice for calling the bitch, and don't get stressed about the recall, because your frustration will come through to the dog.

 

Don't use the bitches breed as an excuse for bad behavior or results in your training, change what you do and you will have success. Good luck!

[skycat 6,173]

Wow! Great post from Hutch

 

I'd just add, that at 7 months, the pup may well be mature enough for a rock solid recall, but you have to remember that the Saluki type is one of the most independent creatures on earth, and all its instincts have evolved to see and chase what is moving: like Hutch says, zoning out anything else.

 

But the dog that comes within a few metres and stands there, failing to make those last few steps to you, is showing that you represent something negative in its life. The end of freedom, being told off? One wrong word, a bad tone of voice when you get frustrated at the dog not coming to you, and the coming to the owner thing has received a big blow.

 

If I sound cross when I call my Saluki types, they won't come near me: they are not only ultra independent, but very sensitive too, and there's no way they are coming to me if I have steam coming out of my ears.

 

Do you play with the pup? Do you have mad games together, like tug? This really works, for a number of reasons: I can send you some articles on how to do this, if you want, which explains how it works, and how to train for the tug games. Drop me a pm with your email address and I'll send you the information.

 

Basically, it revolves around the premise of reward, but not a food reward which comes way down the list in terms of reward to a very prey driven animal, but also conditioning, brain washing: in its truest sense. If the dog has always got into the habit of coming to you for a massive release in energy, and along with that, a huge amount of fun where it gets to grab on to something (this satisfies the prey drive) ... once you have got its attention, then so long as there isn't something else running around in the distance, it comes to you for that release and reward.

[Peter Leemooch 160]

I just think the recall of a dog in the garden can not be used as a guide when he is out its a different world his concentration will come with age just keep doing what you doing and be patient

[dsullia 32]

When you get her back to you do you put her lead on and go home? i just wondered as if so she may want to come back but not want to go home thats why she comes close and dose not run away,and in the garden maybe her recall is spot on as there is no going home or leads involved.....if so only way forward i can see is the long road of getting her back in the field praising her and then sending her of again so she stops thinking we are going home when he calls me,may help but i am a silly old sod and could be wrong but it worked for myself good luck pal.

[terryd 8,538]

I have been using the gundog whistle on our cocker who is 7 and he is a hundred percent in the house and gets a reward when he comes. I have started to use it when we are out and about also but not over doing it and so far he has just swung round and come straight back. I think the whistle helps obvisouly to take the emotion out of your voice which he tends to just blank when we are out because he senses my frustation other wise. I will phase out the treats eventually

[ftm 3,357]

spot on terryd!