Ok last week of the 6 week intensive Recall Challenge!

This week is all about using toys to teach a dog how to call off of chasing something. If your dog does not play with toys I highly suggest you invest in some toys that hold food, so you have that toy as the visual target that you can throw further while still using the food as the motivator, you can do all of these exercises using food stuffed toys, you will just have to then run to the food toy with the dog to give them the reward if they do not retrieve it for you and for recall training that is ok. I have a series of videos all showing me training this with different dogs and will share them all with you so you get to see many examples. You got to see Nick’s video in week 4’s post. Here are more examples of calling off toys.

We also sometimes have distractions between our dogs and us that they need to pass while recalling to us!

Recall work is never “done” you need to always keep adding to your recall bank by training and reinforcing the fast responses you want. If you stop rewarding fast responses their performance will start to decline as all behavior is fluid. So keep rewarding your dogs for coming to you, just mix it up how you do that, sometimes use food, sometimes use toys, sometimes use affection and keep it fun and interesting.

Here’s one more challenge for you:

Sit in a chair blindfolded, call your dog without moving your body, hands, stay on the chair arms until you feel your dog is all the way to you, then reward.