Being able to get your dog to return to you is vital, after all it is a legal requirement that owners are in control of their dogs at all times. How do you do that? By calling or ‘recalling’ your dog. Your dog must understand that when you call its name, it must return to your side.

Before doing any kind of training, you need one vital thing. The dog. Sounds like I am being funny doesn’t it, but imagine you are setting up the living room for your ‘Sit’ training session and your dog is sprawled out in the garden sunning themselves in the sunshine… You are ready for the training but your dog is elsewhere. You need to get your dog’s attention!

Keep it positive

Remember, your dog will only come back to if it thinks it is going to get a positive reaction from you. I see so many people in the park that have lost control of their pet, shouting at it (remember FENTON!!!!) and breaking the bond of recall trust. For example, I saw a guy shouting at his dog for ages once, the dog was standing 100 meters away looking at him as stiff as a board. Every time the owner stepped forward the dog ran off. When the owner did eventually get the dog, he grabbed it by the scruff, slammed it to the floor, put its collar on and yanked it so hard all the while he was shouting at his dog. That just isn’t going to encourage the dog to come back next time because it will be scared about being punished.

If your dog anticipates a negative reaction from you, all that it going to happen is that you will teach your dog not to come back when you call it because something unpleasant will happen. No one is perfect, and there will be the odd occasion where it will happen – we are only human – however if these are occasional incidents you should be able to recover from it.

What is in a name?

Dogs love to be off lead and running free but there are times you need to be able to get your dogs attention. There could be a dog running up behind it, a dangerous situation unfolding, an emergency which requires your dog return to you or perhaps just the end of the off lead section of the walk.

By teaching your dog a name, you are also teaching them how to respond when you call it. The aim is that when you call your dog, it comes to you/looks at you/ engages with you and waits for your instruction.

Give your dog a name

Before you can teach a dog recall, it first needs to know its name. This should be one of the first things you train your new dog. If you are the new owners of a rescue dog, you may decide to change the dogs name, that is fine to do. Some dogs will have learnt a negative attachment to its name if they have come from a difficult situation.

To start this training, you have to decide on the dog’s name and then be consistent, dogs will get to grips with nicknames eventually but to start with you need to pick one name and stick with it. Is it going to be Archie, Archers or Archie-poo that you want to be calling in the park?

Treat for attention

Start in a quite room with minimal distractions and start by having some really tasty treats. Let your dog mooch about and every time the dog looks at you, reward the dog by throwing a treat close to it. The dog will soon learn that looking at you gets a reward. Throw the treat just to the side of the dog so that it has to move to get it, encouraging your dog to keep looking at you as to where you will throw the next treat.

Now that your dog understands that checking in and making eye contact is a good thing, you can start to add their name in. When the dog looks at you immediately reward by throwing another treat to the other side of the dog.

Practice makes perfect

Now you need to repeat this over and over to strengthen to e attachment that their name equals something positive. Either fuss, a treat, a toy or attention of some kind. Repetition is key to a strong bond. You can even start to wait until they are a little further away and increase the distance until you can do it from just outside the room, or another room altogether.

Take it outside

Just because your dog is responding to its name indoors, doesn’t mean it will respond outside. Silly isn’t it, but there are a lot more distractions outside, smells, sounds, other animals etc. Start by repeating all the above in the garden on a lead. This will lead on to lead training and getting their attention on walks.

There is so much importance on making sure your dog knows its name and that when you call them you expect them to listen to your instruction. Every training session you will undertake moving forward will rely on the solid foundations you build now.