Four Top Tips to Improve Recall

Recall is without doubt one of the most important skills you can teach your dog. It means you can you call your dog away from potentially dangerous or unpleasant situations, gives you peace of mind about walking your dog off-lead and puts other dog walkers at ease if you are seen to be confidently able to manage your dog while out and about.

That said, there are so many interesting things going in the dog’s environment – different scents, sounds, sights, people, dogs, cars, bikes, birds, sheep – how can we ever hope to get our dogs to come back to us?

Well, as with all reward-based, force-free training, we start off slowly and build up so that each stage is nice and strong before moving on to the next. Alongside that though, here are four key things that will make your recall super strong.

Keep it fun
One of the most common recall mistakes is only calling your dog back when it’s time to put the lead on and go home. It’s the human equivalent of last orders being called at the pub – you know that your time is up and there’s no more fun to be had! Likewise, your dog will quickly learn that coming back to you means the end of their walk, so they might just decide not to bother! To remedy this, throw in five or six random recalls during your walk, always rewarding your dog and letting them go back running around freely afterwards. By doing this, you teach them that the majority of time they still get to play after coming back to you, making that one putting-the-lead-back-on time not so bad after all.

Be generous
The cornerstone of reward-based training is rewarding our dogs for behaviour that we want, which makes it more likely to keep happening. Recall is a behaviour that should be continuously – and generously – rewarded. Ensure you always have a supply of high quality treats (think single source protein like ham, chicken, cheese, hot dogs, etc) that your dog will really enjoy. After all, if you’ve got any hope of being more interesting than a flying pigeon, you’ve got to bring out the good stuff!

Always stay calm
If for any reason your dog doesn’t listen to their recall, getting frustrated or shouting at them won’t make it any stronger. Coming back to you should be a positive experience for the dog 100% of the time, so even if you’re annoyed that they haven’t listened, keeping things nice and light and calm will pay dividends in the long run. Dogs are experts at reading body language, so maintaining a nice open and relaxed posture (even if you don’t feel it!) will reassure your dog that they don’t have to worry about coming back to you.

Add movement
At the beginning of recall training, we often use movement as a way of getting your dog excited about coming back to you. Dogs love movement. It’s something we generally phase out as the recall becomes stronger, but it can still come in handy! If you think you’re dog might need a bit more motivation to come back to you (say there’s a really interesting squirrel and you’re not sure your recall word alone will cut it), running away from your dog (bonus points for jazz hands while you run) will immediately make you more interesting and increase the likelihood of a strong recall.

If you’re interested in working more in-depth on your recall, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and I’d be happy to help. For in-person appointments, I serve the West Berkshire area (based in Newbury), but can offer virtual appointments for anybody further afield.