JE-UK

A reliable recall in the face of distractions is never "finished", in my view. We still practice all the time.

My rule of thumb is that for every 20 times I recall the dog, only one of those can be something the dog doesn't desire, i.e. going home or leaving the interesting bit of trash. The other 19 times, it is games, yummy treats, or release to go back to whatever was so interesting. My theory is that the result is two-fold ... the dog builds the habit of returning quickly, plus he feels happy about it.

Because we do our daily walks in a park where teenagers leave fast food trash, I practice recalls every day with MAJOR distraction .

Poodles are smart; I'm not surprised the OP's dog knows the difference between wearing a leash and not. Mine certainly does. Lots and lots (and lots!) of recall practice off lead builds a reliable recall, starting with minimal distractions and slowly working up.

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"Yes is so much important than No." Dominique Barbier

Chagall's mom

I cannot thank you enough for sharing this bit of brilliance! I never heard of doing something like it before, and I certainly wouldn't have come up with it myself. I will both employ it, and share it widely!!

Megan

I agree, that is a really good piece of advice that I will use with Diamond. I guess I will have to teach her a new word in place of "come" since to her it means "come catch me" instead. How should I go about teaching it to her? I would only need if for when she's off leash and outside since that's when she doesn't listen to me. Should I just take her in the backyard without a leash to practice or should I keep her on a long lead at first?

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"Whoever said money can't buy happiness forgot little puppies"
-Gene Hill

fjm

Behaviour first, word later is a good rule - and probably easier t achieve with a long line. Jean Donaldson's 'Train your dog like a pro" is excellent on the incremental stages of teaching a behaviour, through duration, distance, distractions, etc.

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To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden,
where doing nothing was not boring- it was peace.

~ Milan Kundera

afkar

Another encouragement (not always easy to do depending on ground conditions & your nerve) is to just call her name without anything else then when you have her attention lie face down on the ground with a yummy treat concealed in your hand. Wait till curiousity works for you & Diamond comes to investigate - don't grab but do treat & slowly sit up, stroke or play then release a bit more treat. Send her off again to play, then call again turning your back & wait for curiosity to help again. I have always done the recall/release/ play/ recall etc with mine & have always got great recalls even at places like the beach. The treat value is always high when away from home. Cheese, coconut cubes, liver & the like.

Arcticfox

I remember back when we were petsitting a friends 5 year old golden retriever, who'd never been off leash before except the odd time she managed to dash out the door and played keep away up and down the neighborhood. My dad and I would take her down to a huuuuuge park in our area and let her run free. At first she wouldn't want to come back to us, but we would just practice our new phrase along the lines of "head petting!" in in Chinese, and just give her some love and petting then letting her go. She LOVED attention so eventually she came for her petting session whenever we said that, even when offleash, and we'd do it every few minutes on walks and such as well. She never did end up coming when we called "come here" though.

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Sookster

Good ideas here. I would mainly recommend making it obviously clear that you will not chase her. Whatever word you decide to use, I would practice on the long line until she comes bounding back to you every single time. You mentioned in one post that she "sometimes needs a little tug". Then she doesn't know the command well enough. Once she no longer needs that little tug, I would let her loose in the yard with the long line still attached but dragging the ground (you aren't hold it). This way, if she chooses not to come to you, you just need to get to the end of the line and re-enforce instead of trying to actually catch her.

Get down on her level when you call her to come. Kneeling, crouching, or lying down, as afkar mentioned, will peak her interest and encourage her to come to you (practice these first on lead, then progress to off-lead once she is 100%). Facing the opposite direction (not looking directly at her) can also help in some cases.

And I can't stress enough that the rewards need to be extremely high value, as several others have mentioned. Find the one thing she loves more than life, and use that as a reward for recalls.

Remember, you don't need to up the criteria (asking her to come off leash) until she fully understands what you are asking. This will cause failed attempts, and if she gets by with not following through on recalls, she will learn that she doesn't always have to listen and that is when your recall command becomes useless.

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katbrat

I use "come touch" with Lexi and she has gotten to the point that she will come for that every single time. The "come" command, she acts like she can't hear, doesn't understand or walks really, really slow to where you are. When we were learing "come touch" I would reward every single time with high value treats. The instructor when we did obiedence used the phrase "you will become a human Pez machine!" I always thought that was a pretty funny analogy. Now, I will give the command and sometimes she gets treats and sometimes lots of praise. We will practice this outside or just when she is in another room. Is it just in the snow that Diamond wants to be chased? I ask this because when Lexi first saw snow and when we have gotten a good amount of snow, it's like she would get outside in it and forgets everything she knew. I had had to be very firm and for awhile she only went out in the snow when it was deep on a leash because all she wanted to do was root around and play in it. No snow on the ground and she would listen every time, snow on the ground and it's a maybe and back on the leash she went until she was consistant. Over time and with being very consistant, she would recall with "come touch" even in the snow. Good luck with Diamond!

PoodlePowerBC

I am reading "The Other end of the Leash" by Patricia McConnell. She has some very interesting points ... one of which is that dogs work better by sight than command. When you are training a recall, she recommends to have a hand signal as well as a command, and body signals are very important as well. Great book! Think I'm going to have to read it a couple of times to really get it though From day one I used hand signals with Russell , and when he was going through the terrible teens, I switched from "Come" with a hand signal to "touch" with a hand signal. It really worked for him! He was maybe 50/50 with "Come" at the time ... Now he has a near perfect recall at 15 months with any distraction that has come up so far. Good luck!

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Walk with someone who will accompany you willingly, preferably a dog.

tortoise

I'm huge on recall. My pup is 3 months old and I have barely started training it. BUT, I cannot, will not, tolerate a dog running off, or doing the chase me thing. Twice in the house my puppy has decided to run off. I chased him down and scruffed him, then crated him for a couple of hours. Harsh? A lot kinder than getting hit by a car, right? Yesterday, he was loose outside when a neighbor was walking by with their dog. I called him and he stopped dead and came to me. That is without training. He has never heard the words "come", "here" and his name is only used when I'm training the come.

A dog has to learn that you are in control even when you're not in control. And the dog needs to learn self-control.

You have 2 options:
1. Add corrections. I'm not a fan of throw chains and don't incorporate them into training. But, if chucking my keys at the heels of a naughty puppy will help create life-saving recall, that is what it takes. I own an electric collar, but if you're already having problems with leash-wise, you'll probably have worse problems with collar-wise. A long leash is perfect with all the advice here.
2. Retrain with rewards. In this situation you have to WITHHOLD to create value of the reward. If you are using food rewards, withhold food for a day first. If you are using play, take all the toys away for a week first. If you are using praise, crate your dog and don't pet it for a day first. (This can seriously backfire with a couple different temperaments of dogs.)

But in reality, you need to use both rewards and corrections. Finding the balance for you and your dog is the really hard part! It so depends on the dog, but I encourage you to really WORK at playing with your dog. Don't let this get your cool. Work at playing with your dog on a long leash. As soon as she stops playing with you -step on the leash walk away. Put her in a crate, quiet room, or if you were playing outised, just go inside. The better your relationship with your dog, the easier this training will be. If you can get your dog engaged with you, you won't have this problem anymore.

This is a problem that can be fixed with rewards-based training. (Yay!) But it will take a lot of work. A lot of work! It's worth it.