How to get a dog to recall when distracted?

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. Always reward your dog when they come back. 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. Add in some distractions and increase the length of the recall distance. Gradually increase the distance between you and your dog and the level of distractions you call them away from. 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. If you find your dogs recall isn't quite where it should be, it might be worth enrolling in some dog training lessons.

To get a dog to recall when distracted, you need to figure out your gap, which means identifying the situations 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, allowing 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. I knew this would be hard, so 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 some point, I want him to recall off chicken when he is about to eat it, but I know that day is not today, so I am starting where we are and will work up to that. Recall has to be fun, and simply doing fun things with your dog will improve your recall — especially playing with them. I can do a lot to strengthen a recall using food, but I have found that I actually need toys and play to really really build that crazy speed with recall.