I'm gonna get ya!

The perfect recall.

The majority of dog owners I've met or seen out and about, have not achieved this and have no clue how to do this.  I myself have found this an extremely difficult task, not to mention at times, nearly impossible.  But really, I just haven't worked hard enough at it, and at one point I was extremely close, but a busy schedule/life imposed and my dog (Zoe) went out of practice.

Yes, practice.  Because at one point your dog may have "got it" but if she stops doing it, she'll forget.  Same with anything else in life - you stop doing something, you get a little rusty.  So my dog is a little rusty with her recall.  She's still "okay" but nowhere near as great as she was and can still be. At the height of her recall success, I was able to call her off of dogs she just started to/wanted to play with.  Excellent.  A few months of not really working on her recall now made it hard to even call her off smelling things.  Doh!

What makes me cringe is when I see people calling for their dogs at the park.  They call, call, call and call for their dog.  Over and over and over and over again.  No response, because their dog is busy playing with another dog or just running around sniffing.  PLEASE!  STOP!  It's hurting me to hear it!  And the worst part?  When the dog finally comes back, she either gets yelled at and smacked a little, and/or she gets the leash clipped on.  -_-

I once witnessed a lady calling for her dog like crazy because he ran off doing things when she let him out of the car at the trail head.  She was calling for him for over 10 minutes and commented that he was probably busy eating some dead animal.  Finally, he came back and the first thing she did was start yelling at him.  She came over to us and said he came back licking his chops (like, see, he was eating something!).  Maybe he was, but more likely he was licking his lips because he saw her angry face and was attempting to appease her.  Which of course just prompted her to continue yelling at him.

My point?  A) continually calling for your dog when they're obviously not listening just teaches them they can ignore you, and B) calling for your dog to punish them (aka clipping on the leash or yelling at them) makes them not want to do it.  Lots of people need to learn that.

I try to avoid the calling for her when I know she's really preoccupied and definitely try to avoid calling her repeatedly.  Every now and then though, I catch myself doing it, just out of habit.  Bah!

Anyway, the point of this post is, I found a new way to reward Zoe for her recall.  What she loves playing is the chase game.  I don't always have super awesome yummy treats with me just because I forget or I just don't have it in the house and boring regular treats just aren't very interesting compared to sniffing.

So anyway one night we were at the park and she was running around sniffing.  I called for her when she wasn't too far away and when she came at me, I stuck my hands out in front of me saying, "I'm gonna get ya!" my cue for her to be chased (and if a toy/stick is around, she grabs it first).  I think she really liked that.

I let her go off again, sniffing, this time going really far across the park and running just outside the gate.  I was THIS close to calling for her, but I was waiting for the right moment (the right moment being when she picks her head up and looks in my direction).  So  amazingly enough, as soon as she picked up her head and looked at me, I called for her and she shot straight back to me like a bullet!!  I played along and started my "I'm gonna get ya" game as soon as she got close enough.  After that, she wouldn't leave me at all so I couldn't practice more recalls.  So instead, we kept on playing the chase game for a little while.  Whatta dog.  :)