Recall and Off-Leash Work

I think one of the most common things that I’ve been asked about is recall and off leash work. We got Athena August of 2015 at 10 months old and Tango in March of 2017 at 3 months old. Athena is incredibly human addicted and food or toy motivated that she was pretty easy to teach those invisible boundaries. Tango. Not so much. We have a nice 2 acre plot and even fencing in a portion of it is just financially not in the cards so Tango was looking destined to be on a tie out for his life. He just couldn’t be trusted to not chase after everything and boy is he fast! So how did we get here? Lots of work. Lots of patience. Nothing in dog training happens over night. I started the foundation while out on walks and every time my dogs made contact with me, they got a treat. Reinforcing that if they acknowledge my presence, good things happen. I would do this same thing while out in the yard. While they’re out and about sniffing and exploring, when they would make contact with me, they got rewarded. We also practiced making me the most awesome and fun thing to be around so why would they want to run off? We would play catch me and when they would chase after me, once they reached me, they got rewarded and we also added the side collar grab (because this is what you’d be doing if your dog actually got loose). Once I grabbed the collar, guess what? They got released back to play because if everytime you call, grab collar and go immediately back inside, you can bet your butt that your dog is going to avoid coming when called if it was ALWAYS the end of fun. Tango and I have been working on this for months, so when I say you need to have patience, you need to have patience. Off leash is certainly not for every dog but recall is something you and your dog should have a strong, solid relationship with.