Maintaining Control Off Leash

By Jess Sandstrom

There are few things quite as pleasurable as watching your dog zoom around the park with glee,  free to stretch his legs and act out the internal fantasies of the wild beastie within. But what may be a joy to some could be a cause to avoid the area for others. It is a hard concept for some of us dog lovers to comprehend but - not everyone (be it human, dog, cat or chook) likes our furry four legged steam rollers - Even if they are just being friendly.

So, how do we find our compromise? And how do be avoid being that person whose dog went flying sideways, sopping wet into Joe and Janes beach picnic...

One way to keep your dog in check is by building up a reliable recall or in other words, to train your dog to come when called. An easy way to do this is to create an intensely positive and rewarding association within your dog to the command for recall, whatever you choose it to be. You essentially want your dog to be desperately hoping in his heart of hearts that his beloved owner might call him over simply for the joy of it! However, if we want to stand any chance of this association winning out over the ever changing sights and smells of the surrounding environment we are going to need to put the time in and invest ourselves in our dogs learning.

To start off you will need to a distraction free environment which could be your lounge room or enclosed backyard and some high value rewards, ideally something that your dog doesn't get to have very often, BBQ chicken is great. A phrase that you'll often hear dog trainers say is to Set up for Success and this is a great example. You want to pick an environment and a reward that makes it virtually impossible for your dog to get it wrong. Nothing is more fun than feeling like you're really good at something and much like in humans to feel like you are doing a great job at something builds confidence and often a desire to do it again.
 
Well I've got my tub of roast chicken and the dog in the lounge room. Now what? Of course Rover is going to be acutely aware of the fact that his dearest owner is in possession of the most delicious food on the face of the plant. This is a key factor for the human element of dog training - Patience.

When your dog gives up begging for the chicken (you may need to put it out of their line of sight) and becomes disinterested in you call him to Come. When he starts to move toward you, you basically want to throw a party and by that I mean get REALLY, ridiculously excited to ensure that your dog will come all the way to you. When he does, bestow him with a tasty morsel of chicken and make a big fuss over him like he's just done the single most remarkable thing any dog has ever done.

You can now allow your dog to become disinterested again (you may like to use a release cue if your dog has been taught one) and repeat the exercise being sure to do everything in your power to ensure a correct response 100% of the time and rewarding your dog for every single correct response. Short, positive sessions are best which makes it really easy to fit this exercise into your daily routine. Just one or two 5 minute sessions a day is all it takes to start teaching this invaluable skill.

As your dog succeeds in the first low distraction area you can begin to move into a slightly more distracting environment, for example you could take it from the lounge room into the backyard, then to the road outside your house on a quiet weekday. Then start practising on on-leash walks around the island when no distractions are present, in the park on-leash and off-leash when no one else is around and so on. Try to think of every conceivable environment and the varying levels of distraction and stimulation that can occur in these environments so you can slowly and incrementally make it more and more difficult and true to a real life situation for your dog. Remember to Set up for Success!

Once your dog seems to really know what they are doing and is coming to you reliably in a particular training environment you can begin to slowly and gradually fade out the food rewards. This is a very important step in the progression of your dogs training because of course we don't want our dogs recall to be dependent on our having a yummy piece of chicken! It is vital that the food rewards are phased out slowly so we don't affect the positive association we have worked hard to build up through our training sessions - Recall = Chicken and LOVE!


A common error when first training for recall is to try and call your dog when they are busy doing something (sniffing, scratching etc) and when they don't respond immediately to call them again and again and again and again. For starters we must remember that in the early stages our dog doesn't know what we want him to do yet so we have to cut him some slack, be patient and set him up to win. Pick your moment to call him over to you and only call him once. If he's started to sniff something it's probably not a good time to ask, just wait until he is at the 'goldilocks' point of distraction for the level that you have trained to and then call him, if it turns out it wasn't the right moment you can throw a party and get super excited to get his attention.

If we give a command to our dog over and over again without their responding we risk either teaching our dog that the recall command means nothing at, known as learned irrelevance or we teach him that the command is not simply "Come" but that it is "COME!!" repeated 27 times when my owner is going red in the face. 
It is very important in all aspects of your dogs training to have realistic expectations of what they are capable of and what you have trained for. If you've only worked up to training recall in your backyard and you allow your dog off-leash down at the park on a sunny weekend you can't really get mad at him for putting his earplugs in and ignoring you in the middle of playtime with another dog! You just haven't trained to that level yet. Think of parents trying to call their children back from the surf when they are all having a great time out on their boogie boards.... Suddenly the earplugs go in then too don't they?
 
Another common error is to accidentally taint the positive association of recall after your dog has learnt and proofed the behaviour. Some of the ways this can happen is by:

• Only calling your dog to come to put him back on the leash and go home.
• Only calling your dog to you when he's being naughty.
• Getting angry at your dog if they don't listen or don't come to you quickly enough.

Of course the first two points are half of the reason that we taught our dog recall in the first place and need to happen at one point or another, but how do we avoid tainting the recall? Luckily, it's really easy if you are aware of it.

All you really need to do is maintain that positive vibe by doing things like randomly calling your dog in when he's not doing much at all. When he gets to you give him lots of pats and tell him what a good boy he is, maybe even grab a toy and throw it, then let him go back to whatever he was doing before. Not only will this help to generally maintain the skill but it will also help keep that important positive association. You can even get the kids involved and play a recall game with the whole family!

The third point should hopefully be self explanatory but just put yourself in your dogs shoes; you're racing around the park with your dog pal having an absolute blast and you hear your owners call. You think for a moment... This game is the best fun you've had all day, but owner probably has something great over there too! Unfortunately this moments consideration has been a moment too long and now owner is MAD. She is shouting and angry and I think I might get in trouble!! Will I go to her?... Or can I out run her and keep playing this awesome game?

Well I know what I used to do when I was a kid and Mum was angry with me - Run for the hills!!! When we begin to understand how our dogs learn and offer a little patience we can be much more effective leaders, teachers and companions. All things are possible with positivity and the right guidance.

Jess Sandstrom is a qualified and insured Dog Trainer from Elvina Bay who has honed her skills and built up experience by spending years working hands on with rescue dogs at a local shelter. Jess is extremely passionate about animals and particularly about creating harmony between pet owners and other residents in our gorgeous offshore community.


If you ever need some expert advice or training for your pooch from a trusted local contact:

Jess Sandstrom
Jsk9coach@gmail.com
0425 349 326

http://maeradogtraining.com.au/

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