How do I get my dog to recall with distractions?

Teaching your pooch their name makes it easy for you to grab their attention when you need it. After you’re confident you can get their attention, you can add in your chosen recall. Start indoors, in your garden, or in another enclosed space with some tasty treats to hand. Get your dog’s attention with their name, then use your recall cue and take a step away from them. Reward them with praise and a tasty treat when they come to you. Gradually increase the distance between you and your dog and the level of distractions you call them away from. You can eventually leave the garden and venture out into the world. Let them move away from you before using your recall cue, and use a long line attached to. If your pooch keeps darting off when you call them, stick with training on a long lead attached to a harness, and only let them off-lead in secure areas. Only let your dog off their lead in open spaces when you’re confident they’ll come back when called.

To teach your dog recall with distractions, you need to figure out your gap, which is the situation where your dog is not able to recall. For our training session, I decided to use chicken as the distraction and chose to work in a relatively small and clear space. I put some chicken into a bowl and then put that bowl inside of an x-pen, which allowed me to build up a bit of a reinforcement history with Otis for recalling away from that chicken while off leash without having to worry about him failing a recall. This started to look too easy in a hurry, so I removed the x-pen, and I focused on recalling him early in his approach to the chicken, marking behavior quickly, and using some of my own body movement after the recall cue to help him out. At the very end of the training, you can release your dog to go eat the distraction chicken as his reward, or you can play around with your rewards to see what is most reinforcing, for example, a treat tossed away that your dog gets to chase may be much more motivating than simply handing your dog a treat. Recall has to be fun and involves relationship, so simply doing fun things with your dog will improve your recall, especially playing with them.