Teaching recall, from the garden to the street

Pick a new word and use it only for recall. If the old word has been said for years without consequences you do not repair it, you replace it: rebuilding from scratch costs less time than fixing an emptied cue. The first sessions happen in a closed room or in the garden, with no other animals present, before the main meal, when the dog is hungry but not wound up. Each session lasts three minutes and contains five to eight repetitions: past that threshold the game stops being interesting and responses get worse exactly while you think you are consolidating.

• A two syllable word that is easy to project at twenty metres.
• Three tiers of reward: the daily kibble for level one, cheese or boiled chicken for the middle levels, one exceptional item reserved for recall in a difficult environment.
• A 5 metre long line for the garden and a 10 metre one for outdoor work, always clipped to a Y shaped harness and never to a collar.
• A consistent marker: the same short word or a clicker, delivered the instant the dog turns towards you.
• Two pockets or a treat pouch: rewards belong on your body, not in a hand held out in front of you.
• A notebook for the two numbers you record at the end of each session: how many times you called, and how many times the dog arrived without you repeating.

1. 1

   Load the word without asking for anything

   With the dog a metre away, say the word once and half a second later hand over a treat. The dog does not need to move and does not even need to look at you: at this stage you are building the link between a sound and something good. Repeat five to eight times, then end the session even if it seems to be going brilliantly.

2. 2

   Call from two metres and reward in a series

   Once the dog turns towards you at the sound, step two metres away, call once and mark the moment it starts moving. On arrival deliver three to five treats one after another rather than a single one: the duration of the reward affects the strength of the behaviour more than the amount of food.

3. 3

   Add a collar touch before the treat

   Before rewarding, rest a hand under the throat and hold the collar or the harness ring for one second, then reward. A dog that associates handling with the end of the game learns to stop two metres away and dodge your hand: adding this step now prevents a problem that otherwise appears in the third month.

4. 4

   Call while the dog is mildly distracted

   Wait until it is sniffing a bush or drinking, call once and watch. If it disengages within two seconds, reward with the long series. If it does not, do not repeat the word: walk two metres closer in silence and in the next session start again from the distance where the response was reliable.

5. 5

   Alternate recall and freedom

   After the reward give a release signal and let the dog go back to what it was doing. If every recall ends with the lead or with going indoors, the word becomes the announcement that fun is over and it loses power within weeks, no matter how good your treats are.

6. 6

   Raise one variable per session

   Move from two metres to five, then ten, then twenty. Distance, distraction and location are never increased together: if you change two things in the same session and the response breaks, you have no way of knowing which one was too much, and you end up backing off on both.

7. 7

   Always finish on a successful response

   The last repetition must be easy, at the distance where the dog always responds. Ending on a failure leaves that attempt as the most recent memory, and it is the one you meet again next session. If a session is going badly, drop a level, get one clean response and stop.

The criterion reads only one way: if the score drops below threshold for two sessions running, you go back to the previous level for at least three sessions. Stepping back is not a punishment and not wasted time, it is the fastest route to a solid response. With two sessions a day the average progression takes four to six weeks to reach level five. Recently adopted dogs, adolescents and dogs with a history of running off take longer, and that is fine: the protocol has thresholds, not a deadline.

Outside everything changes: smells, other dogs, noise, surfaces. The long line exists to stop the dog rewarding itself by running off, not to reel it in. Let it trail on the ground while you hold one end; if the response does not come, gather the line in silence and walk closer until you reach the distance where the dog does respond, without saying the word again.

1. Choose three places of increasing difficulty: an empty field early in the morning, a path with a few passers by, a busy park in the afternoon.
2. In the first place work at level four for at least three sessions, even when it looks easy: apparent ease is usually the effect of a stimulus poor environment.
3. Allow two minutes of free walking on the line before each session, because the dog needs to have sniffed and emptied its bladder: the first call should not compete with a physiological need.
4. Keep rewards in two pockets, the ordinary ones for easy responses and the exceptional ones for responses that arrived despite a genuine distraction.
5. Do not remove the long line until you have seven consecutive days at eight responses out of ten or better in the hardest location.
6. On the first day without the line, shorten it to 3 metres for two sessions first: going from ten metres to nothing in one move is the exact point where most recalls break.

A sudden decline in an adult dog that used to respond well deserves a phone call to the clinic before a rewrite of the training plan. Hearing loss, pain that makes running unpleasant, and vision that fades at dusk often present exactly like this: as a recall that stops working for no visible reason. Rule out the physical cause before you rebuild the protocol.

A recall that is built and then never rewarded again decays within a few months, because behaviour follows consequences rather than intentions. Maintenance costs a few minutes a week and it is the part almost everybody skips.

• Three to five recalls a week paid with the exceptional reward, including short distances in easy situations.
• At least one recall in five ends with a return to freedom, never all of them with the lead going on.
• One refresher session at level two after any two week stretch without off lead outings.
• Long line back on for the first three days in any new environment, including holiday houses and friends' gardens.
• Every missed response logged with location and distraction present: three episodes in the same context point to a level that needs redoing, not to a distracted dog.