Half the fun of having your dog on the road with you is being able to let your dog off-leash to explore. Many of the truck stops require your dog be on a leash at all times, but parks and other public facilities just require your dog be under voice control. Voice control means when you call your dog, it must come immediately, not in a little bit or not come to you at all. Since not everyone who uses parks or public facilities are dog friendly, it is the dog owner’s duty to have their dog trained to come if there is an issue.
What Motivates Your Dog? To teach a really reliable recall you need to first figure out what motivates your dog when they are outdoors. Does your dog love pieces of hotdogs?? Get some! A good game of tug-of-war with his favorite toy? Bring that toy on the road with you! Have something fantastic on hand to encourage your dog to leave behind that great smelling bush or a new, exciting stranger. Your dog needs to come running at a moment’s notice so it’s up to you to figure out what that something is.
The Value of the Reward is a Consideration. My dog loves her dry dog food and she will work very hard for it at home if there isn’t much going on. However, she is less inclined to work for plain old dog food if there is a lot happening. When the environment is filled with distractions, I bring out the big guns, like some yummy hot dog bits. With some dogs, food is the magic trick, but this isn’t true with all of my clients’ dogs.
If your dog likes food but LOVES play, maybe a tasty treat isn’t what’s called for. Instead you might want to focus on your dog’s drive to play. Kim Salerno, the President of TripsWithPets.com, has a rescue Lab named Tucker who went with me a few times on my off-leash adventure walks. Unfortunately, we had to stop the walks for Tucker because he wouldn’t come when he was called. So Kim hired me to work with the two of them to try to improve his recall. On the walks, I observed that Tucker was crazy about chasing birds and critters. He had an incredible prey drive. I thought to myself, if only we could channel that. I suggested Kim buy a special toy she would only use for rewarding Tucker’s recall. Kim went out and bought him a realistic looking stuffed rabbit. I had her build up Tucker’s enthusiasm for this time over the course of a couple weeks (see “How to Create a Motivating Toy”). Finally to really kick in his prey drive I had her buy rabbit scent at a hunting store to rub into the fake rabbit toy. With some really hard work on Kim’s part, we were able to vastly improve on Tucker’s skill. His recall wasn’t good enough to be able to resume my group walks, but it was much, much better.
Okay, so you’ve figured out what motivates your dog, now what??!! Understand the recall is one part of a whole chain of behaviors.
- First, teach your dog to acknowledge you when you call them. If it doesn’t work, the rest just isn’t going to happen. The paying attention part is the piece I have my clients work on first.
- Second, condition the word “come.” The conditioning I am referring to is classical conditioning, also known as Pavlovian learning or associative learning. Below is an exercise designed to increase the likelihood your dog will tune in when they hear you call. For example, let’s say every time I was to say your name, I gave you a $20.00 bill. Soon enough, you would get to feel all warm and fuzzy inside every time I spoke and you would orient to me. You wouldn’t be able to help yourself. Imagine if you could do this with your dog. If you could say “come” and have your dog turn towards you, the next step, actually getting the dog to come to you, wouldn’t then be much of a stretch. Pair the word “come” with the doggy equivalent of a $20.00 bill every time you say it. This will help your dog to begin to develop a reflexive response to turn towards you every time they hear you say the word.
- Here’s how you do it: Count out 20 pieces of your dog’s food. Say the word “come” and give your dog a piece of kibble or a treat. Do this 20 times over the course of the day and every day for a month. Don’t worry about whether the dog actually comes to you. That isn’t the point. The point is you want to have the dog make the association between hearing the word “come” and good things happening. You want to build up the warm and fuzzy.
- Reward Check-Ins. In addition to conditioning the word “come”, I also suggest you begin to reward your dog for turning and looking at you or coming up to you on walks. You can do this on leash or off. You can even do this when you are hanging out in your house or back yard. I call these check-ins and I see this behavior as precursor to the skill of coming to you when called.
The bottom line is you cannot expect an animal to come running when they haven’t been trained to do so. Getting your dog to reliably come to you when called requires a lot of work both on leash and off. If you are the type of person who knows that you will never have the time available to really practice this skill with your dog, do yourself and your dog a favor and keep them on a leash. It’s the responsible thing to do. You could even use a long line or a long leash on your park or truck stop walk, allowing your dog to have some freedom but not enough to be an irritant to others or a danger to themselves. Remember, an unleashed, untrained dog could run off and get lost, or worse, get hurt. On leash or off, be happy with your road companions.