How to Practice Dog Recall Off the Leash

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Elise McMahon for ExpertVillage.com. And, in this video series, we're talking about how to teach your dog a reliable recall. If you'd like to find out more about my services, you can visit my website at canineheadstart.com. So, in this video clip, we're talking about when you've reached the level you're working with your recall with your dogs and you're doing it off leash. We've talked about how to take the step from going indoors in a confined area, into outdoors in an unconfined areas on leash. Now, we're going to be doing it off leash. When you first do your off leash work, you definitely want to make sure that you're somewhere where the dog cannot get away or injured if they do happen to ignore your recall or if they wind up chasing something. So, if you can find some large confined place, a friend's backyard, a large tennis court, something like that, that's where you want to first do your off leash work with your dog. For the sake of this video, we're going to be doing it in this room. And, we're going to do off leash work with Teddy using lots of reinforcement. So, we're just going to basically show you everything we've been talking about with the commands, the behavioral markers, the fine dining. And, we'll show you how that all comes into place when working with your dog off leash. So, I'm just going to move away. This way, Ted. Good boy. And, you notice that right now I didn't use a come command with him. I just asked him something else which was I just said "this way" to get him to come to me. He was pretty relaxed. He was sitting next to his Mom. Not positive that he would have followed me. So, I didn't want to risk using the come command and having him ignore me. That was the first rule that we had covered. So, we're going to have Sue call her dog. She's going to be using, first we're going to do one where she's going to be using his regular recall, so it's just going to be the c-o-m-e command. And then, she's going to fine dine him by giving him about three treats. All right. And, why don't we do that now. Teddy, come. Good boy. Good boy. Very good. Good job. Now, I want to get Teddy back to me. And again, I'm not going to call him just because I don't know if he'll leave his Mom. But, I'm going to use an alternative. Teddy, this way. What a good puppy. He come to me. I give him a cookie. And, now, we're going to do the ecall. And, we're going to do fine dining again. So, this is your n-o-w command for Teddy. Teddy, now. Good boy. Very good. Good. So, you notice with Sue, she started the praise, really nice timing, she started the praise as soon as he started to come to her. She fine dined him when he got to her. She gave him lots of physical and verbal praise once he was there. Good job, Teddy. Yes, you're a very good student. So, if you're going to do this kind of off leash work which is really important that you graduate to off leash work, remember that you want to do in some sort of a safe place for your dog while you're seeing how he responds to this kind of a work."