How do you practice off leash recall?

Teach your dog to respond to their name before adding recall. 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. 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. 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. Let them move away from you before using your recall cue, and use a long line attached to. Only let your dog off their lead in open spaces when you’re confident they’ll come back when called.

To begin changing this narrative, we start by building value for a new recall word. Practice calling your dog using this word a few throughout the day, but only use this word if you are in an environment with minimal distractions and have high-value reinforcement to reward your dog with when they have successfully come to you. Use motion and verbal encouragement to add value to the behavior. I toss a treat to get my dog away from me. Once my dog has eaten the treat, I say “Fido, come!” in a fun, light voice, turn away from Fido, and run away, saying “Yay! Wow!” as the dog continues moving towards me. When my dog reaches me, I click and reward with high-value treats. We begin to generalize the behavior by moving into different rooms of the house, and eventually into the yard. If my dog is unsuccessful, I need to take a step back and decrease difficulty temporarily before making it harder again. We reward our dogs every time they offer engagement while we are out in the world, no matter the type of leash or exercise. Go slowly with your recall training! It takes time to build value for coming back when called, and know that it’s impossible to spend too much time on each expansion of freedom.