Reliable Recalls
A reliable recall is essentially the Holy Grail of pet dog training. It’s the behavior everyone wants, but it seems so hard to get. A recall can be a lifesaving behavior and therefore we want it to be as reliable as possible. How do we train it and how do we maintain it? Here are a few of my best tips for recall training!
Teaching Recall
The first step to a reliable recall is… train it! Here are some tips to follow when teaching a recall.
- Start in a low distraction, indoor environment. The best place to start you recall training is typically inside your home. Your dog is comfortable in this space, it is less novel, and you can better control the level of distraction. Start in a quiet room away from others.
- Start with very short distances. Whenever we train a new behavior, we need to start small and gradually build the difficulty level. The further your dog is from you, the harder the recall will be. So start small, just a few feet away is plenty! Gradually work on increasing the distance of the recall.
- Pay the big bucks! Recalls are hard work, and therefore deserve higher pay. This is the time to pull out your high value reinforcement. Cheese, chicken, hot dogs, etc! Don’t be stingy here!
- Use a long line when practicing outdoors. Once your dog is doing well with recalls inside, you can move to a low distraction, outdoor space. Somewhere quiet and close to home is a good place to start. Just like you did inside, start with short distance recalls and gradually build up. Use a long line to keep your dog safe as you work on gradually increasing the distance of the recall.
- Be exciting! There are so many distractions outside; smells, sounds, critters, people, dogs… It’s so exciting! Make sure recall games are fun by getting animated and encouraging your dog to focus more on you, because you too are fun and exciting!
- Don’t repeat your recall cue! Every time you repeat a cue, you weaken it! Humans are very noisy creatures and if we want our dog to understand our cues, we can’t let them become part of the white noise that is constantly coming out of our mouths. Hold your cues like precious gold, and don’t squander them! If you use your recall cue and your dog doesn’t respond, don’t repeat it, just go get them!
Maintaining Recalls
Once your dog knows a recall behavior, we want to be careful to maintain it. Here are some tips!
- Always pay! Most of the behaviors we teach our dog will eventually go on a variable schedule of reinforcement, meaning we will only pay our dog sometimes when they perform that behavior. For recalls, I recommend always paying! Even if the reward is just to immediately release your dog back to fun, you should strive to pay for every single successful recalls. This is because recalls often include our dogs giving up some other reinforcer to return to you. We may be calling them away from other dogs, an interesting smell, a critter, etc. Therefore, we run the risk of damaging our recall long term if we do not pay them for giving up the other fun things to come back to us.
- Ask for attention, then a recall. Teaching name attention can help preserve your recall… how? Anytime you need to recall your dog, say their name first. If they turn and look at you, go ahead and recall them. If they don’t look at you, do not use your recall. Why? What are the chances that your dog, who can’t even look at you right now, will actually be able to come running back to you? Name attention is a good way to test and see if your dog is too distracted in the moment to be able to respond to your recall cue.
- Don’t only recall away from fun. We often use our recall to end the fun. We recall our dog to come inside from the backyard. To leash them up at the bark. To call them away from chasing a scent in the woods… If our recall is only ever used in this way, it is eventually going to become a predictor that fun time is over, and who wants that? An easy way to deal with this is to practice recalling your dog and after they get to you, immediately releasing them back to the fun. This way your recall cue doesn’t only predict the end of fun, sometimes it just means a pause in the fun!
- Never stop practicing! Make sure to regularly practice your recall in all kinds of settings. Make reliable recalls a habit by practicing consistently at a level you know your dog can be successful at!