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.