Recall: Getting Your Dog to Actually Come Back

Think about what usually happens when a dog finally comes back. The lead goes on, the walk ends, and sometimes they get told off for taking so long.

From the dog's side, coming back reliably predicts the end of everything good. It is not stubbornness. It is arithmetic, and they have done it correctly.

Rule one: never punish the return

However long it took, however cross you are, the dog that comes back gets a party. If you tell off a dog for a slow recall, you have just punished the one behaviour you wanted.

This is the single most common reason recall breaks down, and it is entirely within your control.

Rule two: pay properly

You are competing with a field full of rabbit smells. A piece of dry kibble is not a competitive offer. Use chicken, cheese, sausage or liver — and use a lot of it, especially in the first few weeks.

People worry about "bribing". You are not bribing; you are paying wages for a difficult job. The wages get smaller once the habit is solid.

Rule three: use a long line, not hope

Get a 10-metre training line and attach it to a harness (never a collar — a dog hitting the end of a long line on a collar can hurt their neck).

The line means you are never testing a recall you might lose. Every single call ends with your dog coming back, so the word never gets a chance to mean "optional".

Building it, step by step

1. Pick a fresh word. If "Bella, COME!" has already been shouted across three parks with no result, that word is burnt. Use something new — "here", or a whistle.
2. Start indoors. Say the word, run backwards a few steps, feed generously when they arrive. Ten reps, twice a day.
3. Move to the garden, then a quiet field on the long line. Only call when you are fairly confident they will come.
4. Catch the collar every time before you feed, so being held never becomes a surprise.
5. Let them go again. Nine times out of ten, recall, reward, release. This is what stops "come" meaning "walk over".

The two-minute rule for the park

Do not save all your recalls for the moment you want to go home. Call your dog back randomly throughout the walk, pay them, and send them off again. A dog called back twenty times per walk and released nineteen of them will come back the twentieth time too.

When to keep the line on

Keep it attached for rescues in their first month, adolescents between roughly six and eighteen months when recall famously falls apart, and any dog with a strong chase instinct near livestock or roads. There is no prize for taking it off early, and around Calderdale's sheep fields there is a serious price for getting it wrong.