Have you ever wondered why your dog has selective hearing when off-leash? Have you tried to enjoy an off-leash outing with your dog, just to end up calling their name over and over again, spending half of your afternoon trying to catch Fido?

 In this article, we’re going to go over 5 simple rules of recall that will help you understand why your dog tunes you out, and what you can do to improve recall.

Rule #1: Don’t call your dog for anything bad

Imagine you are at the beach with your dog Fido, who is engaged in a game of chase with his buddy, Bandit.  While Fido is playing with his friend, you call him over “Fido, Come!” Fido obliges and trots over, expecting to get a treat and be allowed to go play again. Instead, you leash Fido up and lead him towards the exit.  While this is happening, Fido is looking back thinking “Bandit! Noooooooo!”

Chances are, the next time Fido is asked for a recall, he may think twice “Is this one where you give me a treat? Or the one where you leash me up and take me home?” Whenever we think about recall, we want to make sure that we’re always calling the dog for something good, otherwise they might start to form a negative association with the cue.

Rule #2: Only Say it Once

If we repeat cues over and over and over, they will lose effectiveness and the dog will ultimately learn to ignore. While it feels natural to repeat ourselves if we think someone doesn’t hear us, it can be detrimental to our dogs’ training to repeat cues, especially recall.

Instead of repeating ourselves, we’ll want to follow rule number three and make it happen.

Rule #3: Make it Happen

This rule piggy backs off rule number two. If you ask for a recall and your dog ignores it, instead of repeating yourself or letting it go, make sure you make it happen. By that, we mean go get your dog’s attention and lure them back to you. If they aren’t able to perform the recall with an extra prompt, they should go on leash at this point. If your dog doesn’t have reliable recall, they shouldn’t have off-leash privileges, unless in an enclosed area. 

Rule #4: Work at Your Dogs’ Level

A good analogy for dog training is working out – if you’ve been accustomed to sitting on the couch and eating potato chips, chances are getting up and running a 10k marathon is going to be pretty hard to accomplish. The same goes for your dog’s recall – if you’ve only worked on recall from 10 feet away inside your home, and then you expect your dog to do a recall from 30 feet away at the dog park while playing with other dogs, that is going to be way too big of a jump for your dog to be able to perform. When working on recall, be aware of the distractions in the environment, and try to work at your dog’s level, while gradually building up. 

Rule #5: Make it memorable

In other words, try to make coming to you more reinforcing than what you’re calling them away from. If you call your dog away from chasing a squirrel, and after turning on a dime you only give them one piece of kibble, chances are next time your dog will choose to chase the squirrel. If there is a strong reinforcement history for recall, your dog will be more likely to choose coming to you in the face of all manner of distractions. You get what you pay your dog for!

How to improve your dog’s recall:

Change the Word

If you’ve been breaking any of the above steps, the first thing to do is change your dogs’ recall cue. If I’ve been in the habit of repeating cues over and over, or if I’ve called my dog for anything bad, chances are that I’ve created a cue that my dog has learned to ignore, or intentionally avoid.  Instead of trying to backtrack and fix the original word, it will be easier to start from scratch with a new word.

Baby Steps

Whenever you work on your dogs’ recall, make sure you are starting small, and gradually increasing difficulty. Dogs are horrible at generalizing behaviors, so make sure to start from scratch when trying new locations initially. The next paragraph will go over how to grade the difficulty of recall for your dog. 

Distance and Distraction: Two Competing Factors

An easy way to determine difficulty in recall for your dog is by grading the distance and distraction that you’ve already worked on with your dog. In our earlier example of only working on recall from 10 feet away inside the home and moving to a dog park, we know that 30 feet away is going to be way too big of an ask for our dog. I would even say that 10 feet away will probably be too hard, too, because the distraction is so high. It might be smart of this dog owner to try 5 feet or less to keep their dog successful with this higher distraction. As they get more practice in this context, they’ll be able to increase distance.

When initially working on recall with a dog, I like to think of distance and distraction on two weighing scales – if the distraction is really high, the distance should be really low. If we want distance to be high, the distraction should be low. As we build up a reinforcement history in these different contexts, we’ll be able to increase both distance and distraction, but if we push it too early, we risk breaking rules and getting frustrated with our dogs.

Hopefully these tips give you some actionable ideas on how to improve your dogs’ recall and we would love to see you and your dog in action – be sure to tag @city_pups_sf on Instagram!

Have you tried implementing all of these rules but still need help with your dog’s recall? Fill out the form below and we would be happy to help!