Thursday, August 18, 2011

Pieces of a Good Recall

1)  Dog turns away from something potentially interesting.   This could be a smell, a sound, something still, ,something moving, an animal, or something very edible.    Your dog could be moving or still when you call.
2) Dog runs to you at full speed.    A fast moving dog is less likely to be distracted on the way back and he will have a straighter line.
3) Dog is close enough for you to hold. A dog that stops further away.... is not very helpful in most contexts.
4) You can hold the collar.    This is especially important for emergency situation.

Just like with anything else, we train one part at a time.  We have exercises for each piece.  Once the pieces are separately trained, we can put the behavior chain together and run through the complete exercise.  

1 comment:

Raegan said...

If you classically condition a collar grab, this is a particularly good one to backchain, since the preceding steps will be strengthened by the dog working towards his CC collar grab.