Boiled meat as treats - incredible improvement of recall

Hi,

Just wanted to share

I started using boiled meat for Stella as treats and her recall improved incredibly
I went to a Recall Workshop organized by training school Wizard of Paws and they gave us the following advice there:

- Use treats the dog really likes - which is proper meat in Stella's case.
- Stick with just one command - so I use "Stella come" instead of calling all sorts of desperate long sentences which is what I used to do.
- Make the recall more interactive - such as carrying a favourite tug of war toy and play with the dog when he/she comes or give him/her the trat and then make 1 step and call again and give more and stuff.
- They said as well that it's good to play "restrained recall" or "dog tennis" which means that 1 person holds the dog for a while when another person calls from a small distance which builds up the excitement and the will to come.

I must say the workshop lasted 2 hours and right away I could see SUCH a big difference immediately! It's been couple of weeks now and our walks got much more relaxing and so much more fun. She is so eager to come now and does not run away all the time to greet everybody, she is much more "connected" to me.
It's just incredible

I still don't let her off around roads (busy or not) or children playgrounds, buggies, frail elderly... or too many people especially if they do not have dogs or have fancy clothes because she can still jump a wee bit sometimes but the recall is getting better and better

So I am so happy and so excited Stella is an absolute sweetheart

Wow, pleased to read that you found something that works very well for you. I know what you mean about using a simple call to you, we use HERE or This Way. Using a high quality treat for this is a good idea as it is probably one of the most needed commands.

Well done to Stella keep up the good work

Will try this, Enya's recall is lousy, when I call she seems to go in reverse, in fact she's worse if I try to call her, its like ha, thats what you think, I'm off!!
Thanks for sharing the tips!!

Some really nice tips. thanks

Hi,
Thanks,
Yes Stella is so clever that she learned to stop behind time to time and she looks at me and waits for me to call her so she gets the meat....
But it works fantastically, she can be off lead much more often now and I don't have to be stressed out so much
Xx

maria0077 wrote:Hi,
Thanks,
Yes Stella is so clever that she learned to stop behind time to time and she looks at me and waits for me to call her so she gets the meat....
But it works fantastically, she can be off lead much more often now and I don't have to be stressed out so much
Xx

I'm sure thats a level we would all love to achieve

That's great news, and brilliant advice too. Clever Stella!!

We started Duke on recall today, i walked about ten yards away from Gill while she held Duke , i called him and was really happy that he ran to me straight away , we repeated it with me holding Duke and he ran straight to Gill , so far so good i must add though that for the past week i have been throwing a ball in the garden for him and calling him back so i think that rubbed off .

Great progress

The first time we tried recall was in puppy classes with the trainer holding the lead, and Loki making a "heeeee" noise (seriously ) in his excitement to run to us. Add in some delicious food and it makes for great recall practice. Glad it's working so well for you

Oh, thanks, I didn't want to give an impression that Stella is 100% reliable with recall now
It's just that she's improved so much but we are still continue working at it. She used to be quite terrible, too friendly and exuberant, the recall was maybe 10% when there were people and dogs around, now she can be some 85% or so It's so much fun and it's nice to see the progress and how eager she is to learn
Xx

thank you, Thank you, THANK YOU!

I was on here tonight looking for help about walks and recall and I saw this. I'd forgotten all about dog tennis!

I was feeling sad as my dog has been great with our training but recently he is always on the hunt for cats when on walks. We used to be able to play fetch with no problem but now he's off and getting in to scrapes. I'm looking forward to trying what you've passed on.