Recall

[ellieraven]

I know that you shouldn't let a dog off the lead unless you are completely sure that the dog will return to you when called, one of the walks we go on is all fallow fields and no roads around so I do let my dog Kym off sometimes and she is usually very good but the other day she spotted a squirrel and shot off across the fields and would not respond to me calling her, she was totally focused on the squirrel. I was getting quite anxious and eventually managed to catch her after chasing her for quite a distance. I think I need to work on recall - I recently met someone who uses a dog whistle and found it effective. Can anyone give me some advice on this and what is the best way of going about it please.

[dominique]

I'm no expert by any means, but what I do is practise in the garden. When the dogs are out of sight I shout 'come' followed by a blast on the whistle and when they come back I reward them with a really tasty treat and over the top praise. I've now got to the stage where i just blow the whistle and the greedy gits come belting back to me . Not sure whether this would work with a less food orientated dog that was on the chase though, and it certainly wouldn't be reliable enough for my lurcher outside of the garden as food is not her main priority.

[ellieraven]

Thanks for advice - Kym is very food orientated so this would probably work - stupid question but do you use a dog whistle or just a normal one ?

[dominique]

My trainer uses both, but I use a gundog whistle that i bought from ebay. This means that I can buy the same pitch dog whistle over and over again, which hopefully means that my dogs will always recognise it as coming from me. Hope that makes sense ;D

[ellieraven]

Think i'll go and buy one then and get practising ! thank you - Faversham, just down the road from me, i'm always looking for good places for walks so please let me know where you go.

[whiskydry]

I bought a dog whistle from pets at home. I basically started off by giving it a blow any time I gave food of any kind, ie meals or treats. Very quickly my hungry hounds got the association and would come running to the whistle. Then I started using it to call them in from the garden, with of course a treat to reward them. What's good about it is it sounds the same no matter who is blowing it, and whatever tone of voice you would have iyswim. So if you were shouting a chasing dog chances are you'd be getting a somewhat panicky tone of voice, but the whistle is consistently just a whistle.

But the chances of a chasing hound choosing a lump of cheese over the squirrel are slim, I'd say.

[mtbbuxton]

We have a double ended whistle which makes two different sounds. Mayo completely ignores the higher pitched whistle sound, but comes belting back to the lower pitched sound. Apparently, different breeds of dog respond better to different tones, so if you can try Kym with different whistles to see how she reacts before you buy one, you stand a better chance of it working. If that's not possible, I'd go for the double ended one and hope she listens to at least one of the tones We were also advised by a trainer that a whistle takes the emotion out of recall and means you're more likely to get a consistent response no matter who is doing the calling back. Our trainer said to give two short blasts on the whistle and then call their name. In time the idea is that your dog will hear the whistle and anticipate the callback.
Good luck
Moira x