BEHAVIOUR
How to Teach a Dog To Come When Called | A Minute to Learn It
Want to teach your dog to come back to you when called? Dog trainer Garima T shows how you can perfect a reliable recall with your dog.
Table of contents
A "Recall" is your dog’s ability to respond and come back to you when called. Unlike commands such as a “Sit” or “Down”, a recall is an essential life skill that we prepare our dogs for throughout their lives. This gives us the assurance that they will come back to us, even on that one unfortunate day when we do not have any rewards and need them to retreat to us to ensure their safety.
Though it is clearly quite essential, our recalls are often so overused that the dog stops responding to them. The very simple trick to having a fantastic recall is to avoid using it indoors on a daily basis and instead practicing it regularly like an exercise with rewards. The reason most of us fail at achieving reliability is that we practice indoors for a couple of days and then start applying it outdoors directly, where the environment is extremely tempting for our dogs leading to conflict in their decision-making.
We must also understand that the foundation of a good recall also lies in the relationship we have with our dogs. They should want to come to us, instead of just learning to respond to a cue. This means we have to always be interesting and valuable enough to them when compared to any new exciting environment. And building this response takes a lot of repeated practice.
The right approach to teaching a recall is not one to have control over our dogs every living second of their lives, because let’s be honest, that wouldn’t be practical. Dogs will be dogs! Instead view it as a safety tool, like a seat belt.
Though it is clearly quite essential, our recalls are often so overused that the dog stops responding to them. The very simple trick to having a fantastic recall is to avoid using it indoors on a daily basis and instead practicing it regularly like an exercise with rewards. The reason most of us fail at achieving reliability is that we practice indoors for a couple of days and then start applying it outdoors directly, where the environment is extremely tempting for our dogs leading to conflict in their decision-making.
We must also understand that the foundation of a good recall also lies in the relationship we have with our dogs. They should want to come to us, instead of just learning to respond to a cue. This means we have to always be interesting and valuable enough to them when compared to any new exciting environment. And building this response takes a lot of repeated practice.
The right approach to teaching a recall is not one to have control over our dogs every living second of their lives, because let’s be honest, that wouldn’t be practical. Dogs will be dogs! Instead view it as a safety tool, like a seat belt.
Will your recall with your dog work in a dog park?
Nine Tips to Perfect Recall with Your Dog
Here are a few simple tips to make your recall effective:
- Have a sacred recall word and do not overuse it, especially at home. At home or in a familiar environment, choose more casual words such as their name, “over here”, etc.
- Practice, practice, practice! This is one cue that you never stop training for.
- Practice outdoors on a leash, 6 feet or a long line to ensure minimal errors until you reach a point of absolute confidence in your dog.
- Always start the foundational training in a no-distraction environment for your dog to understand the exercise and slowly build on mild distractions indoors, before taking these skills outdoors to practice.
- Once your dog begins responding reliably to your cue words, practice in different environments, and in real-life situations around different triggers.
- Understand your dog’s reward value system and have a reward of appropriate value depending on the environment you will be competing with.
- Learn to use yourself and your personality combined with tangible rewards to make the recall more fun for your dog. Prepare yourself to be a clown if required in a social space.
- Completely refrain from using the recall word to call your dog for unpleasant consequences such as reprimanding them for toileting in the wrong spot, destruction of household items, barking, etc. You must always have a positive association with your sacred recall word.
- During playtime, teach your dog to chase you instead of playing games where you chase them. Because they might just end up playing this game with you outdoors without realizing how far they have gone and the environment not being a very safe one.
As a general rule, it always helps to teach your dog to stay tuned to your presence in any space. They must look up to you as the tour guide, checking in from time to time. If you teach your dog that, you will never have to struggle with calling them back. The dog must understand and believe that you as their guardian have a much better understanding of the world around them and that they can rely on you for their safety.
Remember, our dogs are a different species and we must work with patience and consistency to see about any result in terms of the desired behaviour that we expect out of them. We must be as much in the game as we expect them to be.
Happy Parenting! 🐶
Remember, our dogs are a different species and we must work with patience and consistency to see about any result in terms of the desired behaviour that we expect out of them. We must be as much in the game as we expect them to be.
Happy Parenting! 🐶
Keywords:
About the author
Get daily pet parenting tips to your Whatsapp
thePack.in
Happier together
with dogs
Copyright Interspecies Caretech Private Limited 2023